Page 9 - Becoming Aware_Neat

- 8 -

pattern that spontaneously separates itself

from the background - the presenting material

world - in response to the perceiver’s over-

riding psychic state. We look at flames, at

passing clouds, or at patterns tea-leaves make

at the bottom of a drained cup, and every one

of us will see different images in them.

“Unfinished business”

Our perception, by its very nature, will scan

the presenting field in order to isolate a

foreground image that is personally

meaningful. Instead of perceiving the totality

of the world as it really is so that we can

respond to present actuality in an appropriate

way, our attention is focussed on scanning the

present field for patterns that relate to

unadmitted, internalised and therefore

unresolved feelings about the past –

‘unfinished business’ – that distort our

perception of what’s going on around us and

prevent us from presently seeing the world as