What Is an Experience?
An experience is the information we become aware of, through our senses and through our own thoughts.
It is what is present, before anything has been decided about it.
Where Experiences Come From
Six channels, running all the time.
What We See
What We Hear
What We Smell
What We Taste
What We Feel
What We Think
An experience begins as awareness of information arriving from outside or inside ourselves.
How Awareness Happens
You see a face across a crowded room and know it is your friend.
All of that happens before you have consciously thought about it.
Sensory Input
Memory Search
Pattern Match
Awareness
Awareness happens automatically and almost instantly.
Every Experience Starts Neutral
Every experience begins as information. The experience itself is neither good nor bad.
Whether it feels safe, threatening, exciting, embarrassing or comforting depends on the beliefs that interpret it. The same sound, the same message, the same room can land completely differently on two people, or on the same person on two different days.
Experience comes first. Meaning comes second.
Awareness Plus Meaning Equals Recognition
Awareness tells us something is here. It does not yet tell us what it is to us.
In everyday speech we say we recognize someone when what we really mean is that we are aware of them. The two get conflated, in the same way feelings and emotions do. To truly recognize something is to know what it means to us, and that meaning comes from our beliefs.
Awareness
Our starting point.
Meaning
Activate our beliefs.
Recognition
What this experience means.
Watch it happen in a single moment:
Something Happens
Someone says your name.
Sensory Input
You hear a sound.
Pattern Match
Your brain matches it to something it has heard before.
Awareness
Someone is speaking to you.
Activated Beliefs Create Meaning
Is this good? Am I in trouble? Are they happy to see me? Are they angry?
Recognition
Now we know what it means to us.
Awareness happens here. Meaning is supplied by our beliefs, which is the next stage.
Awareness Is a Skill
Awareness is where every experience begins, and it can be practised.
The 4-Steps™ teach us to notice our experiences more clearly before we automatically interpret them, then to work with the beliefs that give them meaning.
