Perception of Consciousness
The Time and Reality Series
Mt. Moran reflected in the Snake River, Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming.
Paying Attention
Perception is a combination of perspective, attention, and recognition. We can only see things that we are prepared to see. Even if we do not know what we are looking for, perception is that quality of mind that is open to receiving what appears before us.
My favorite place in the world is Yellowstone National Park. Recently, I entered the park before dawn from the East entrance, and after passing over Sylvan Pass, there is a turnout where you can see the tops of the Grand Tetons over a hundred miles away.
I wanted to be there at dawn to see the sunrise on the Tetons. At dawn, the natural world is alive. Several years ago, at the Lake Butte viewpoint, I heard two bull elks bugling during rutting season. One elk was above me on the mountain, and the other below me down close to the lake.
The Grand Tetons from Sylvan Pass, Yellowstone National Park.
From Sylvan Pass, the road descends quickly down to Lake Yellowstone. As I approached a switchback in the road, my eye caught several deer crossing the road. I stopped. Let them cross. Took some pictures and moved on around the curve, and then turned off the road because I knew a place to capture the deer on the upward side of the ravine that the switchback crosses.
I watched as the deer foraged for food. Later that afternoon, as I returned to Cody where I was staying, I came across a father and son at the same spot I was at that morning. They pointed me towards a tree where a Bald Eagle was perched. Here are images from the videos that I took of these two opportunities.
These moments were not simulations of opinion or AI generated imagery. This is nature alive ignoring our human presence. Not long after seeing the deer, I stopped on the side of the road with a group of photographers. They were watching a grizzly bear up on the ridgeline. It was here that perception as perspective, attention, and recognition came into play.
To venture into the wilderness of places like Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons requires respect and humility. Being conscious of the world requires the same. We cannot see or experience all that is available to us. We must be alert and prepared to encounter the world of reality that is beyond our making or control.
Respect for What Is There
‘O, what a world of unseen visions and heard silences, this insubstantial country of the mind! What ineffable essences, these touchless rememberings and unshowable reveries! And the privacy of it all! A secret theater of speechless monologue and prevenient counsel, an invisible mansion of all moods, musings, and mysteries, an infinite resort of disappointments and discoveries. A whole kingdom where each of us reigns reclusively alone, questioning what we will, commanding what we can. A hidden hermitage where we may study out the troubled book of what we have done and yet may do. An introcosm that is more myself than anything I can find in a mirror. This consciousness that is myself of selves, that is everything, and yet nothing at all - what is it?
And where did it come from?
And why?”
