Limits of Human Perception‏

According to kabbalistic teachings, just as we are limited in our ability to see energy on a physical level, we are also limited in our ability to see the energy of fulfillment.

Everything we want could be inches away from our lives, yet we pass right over it.

The reason for this limitation is our five senses. Our five senses prevent us from perceiving total reality. We fail to see radio waves, atoms and TV signals that bounce off the walls of our home. Our five senses act as curtains that filter out most of true reality, leaving us with a very limited picture.

Even medical science tells us that humanity utilizes a mere 4% of our total brain capacity. Where is the remaining 96%?

And how are we to make decisions and judgments in life when we are permitted to glimpse only a microscopic portion of truth?

The great 20th century kabbalist, Rav Yehuda Ashlag, revealed a stunning secret when it comes to our five senses. He said that a human being usually perceives things in the opposite.

For example, consider a person living in total isolation since birth. He's never seen a living creature. Suddenly, placed before him is a newborn calf and a newborn baby. What does he perceive? Well, the baby obviously cannot take care of itself. It cannot walk or move around. It cannot feed itself. The infant cannot perceive his surroundings. If a fire erupted, the child would not sense any immediate danger. In essence, the newborn is helpless.

The calf, on the other hand, immediately perceives its environment. It knows to run from fire.

The person perceiving this situation would now have to assume that the calf is the superior, more advanced and far more intelligent creature.

Rav Ashlag tells us that as much as one creature is advanced and evolved at the beginning of its process of growth, it will be less developed at the end. And as much as another creature is less developed at the beginning of its process, it will develop that much more at the end.

Sure enough, over time, the baby advances far beyond the calf. Meanwhile, the calf hardly advances at all.

How many times have your five senses showed you the opposite in business deals and human relationships? What looked promising and full of potential at the beginning turned out to be disastrous in the end! And vice versa.

This simple analogy is worth pondering this week. Look for opposites and know that nothing is what it seems