Although we need our eyes to see, all that our eyes perceive is impressions of light. Our eyes account for only 10% of our perception of vision. People who have 20/20 vision, with or without corrective lenses differ widely in their visual intelligence.

Easily and effectively you can learn to see more by, well, seeing more. See people, places and things that are new to you.

We see through our memories. The more visual memories we have that are of different people, places and things, the more we are able to perceive.

Science has discovered that 90% of vision happens in our brains. Our brains decode the impressions of light sent by our eyes into meaningful data. We experience the brain’s translation of this data as seeing.

People can be blind, or partially blind when specific areas of the brain that relate to specific types of visual recognition, such as faces, is damaged. We are all also relatively blind to what is radically new to us.

There is a documented story of a European medical doctor who was working with a tribe in Africa over a century ago during the colonial period. He became good friends with the chief who was very intelligent and they spent many off hours together. The doctor was introduced to the tribal culture, which included sculpture and other visual artistic expression, but not painting.

They returned to the show, where painting by painting the doctor pointed out what was in the painting until the chief actually had enough new visual memories of paintings depicting people, places and things, that he could see them on his own. Then the chief became delighted with the art and new experience!

The above story explains how we gain greater visual intelligence. Being able to discern images that are comprised of paint, ink or pixels is something normally sighted people in the industrialized world learn to do by the time they are toddlers. But the average toddler, no matter how intelligent, cannot see everything in a detailed painting, such as a Rembrandt, that an adult can. The toddler lacks the many visual memories and encounters with works of art that are necessary to view the subtleties of Rembrandt’s work

This is why young children especially enjoy books where the illustrations are simple and brightly colored. Bright, basic colors are the first ones we learn to see. Yet it is important to introduce and point out more complex shades and color variations to children as the focus it helps them acquire new visual memories and understandings.

Travel, meeting new people who are not of our own familiar racial groups, seeing art and going to movies that include new and different visual information, such as people, places and things created by special effects allows us to increase our visual memories. This means we can recognize. This increases our functional visual intelligence.

So, take the time to break out of your daily visual rut of the places you go, and the environments and people you see. The more different people, places and things you learn to see, the more you will be able to see. Increase your visual intelligence!

Basically, what the eyes see are impressions of light. About two million optic nerves are required to transmit visual signals from the retina—the portion of the eye where light information is decoded or translated into nerve pulses—to the brain’s primary visual cortex.

The brain uses memories to interpret what the impressions of light mean. This process is much like decoding a message into meaningful information.

This is a recent discovery. It led to scientists being able to stimulate certain areas in the brains of volunteers so that the volunteers” saw” images that their eyes were not focused on.  It has also led Paul Bach-y-Rita, a neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. to a new way of helping people see using their tongues via a device called BrainPort, which device uses the tongue to send the impressions of light to the brain. Paul Bach-y-Rita, has devoted much of his career to a single, revolutionary concept: that our senses are interchangeable, and they may be. The big difference as to how we perceive what we sense occurs in our brains.

There are medical cases of people who suffer various kinds of blindness due to brain injuries, although their eyes are fine and able to transmit impressions of light. One of the most interesting is that of a man who cannot see faces. He can see landscapes and objects and bodies, but due to a brain injury that affects the portion of the brain where facial memories are stored, he cannot distinguish faces, even of his own family.

The more varied and different visual memories a normally sighted person has the more that person is able to experience seeing specific people, places or things. This includes people who use corrective lenses to achieve better vision.

You know how easy it is to recognize a person that you know well, like a close family member within a crowd, such as at an airport or train station.

You would not need a photo to spot your closest friend, partner, mate, etc.,You would not even need a description of what they would be wearing to easily recognize the people closest to you.

Next, imagine this same crowd, but this time you are going to find someone new to you, but basically normal looking, that you only met briefly yesterday.  Can you remember the face of the person who you chatted briefly with in a line, the clerk at the check out, the taxi or bus driver, the person you rode with in an elevator, or asked for directions? Could you pick them out from a moving crowd?

It is almost impossible to accomplish the above task of picking a stranger out from a crowd. To easily to this the stranger would need to have a physical characteristic that visually sets them apart from most people, for instance their hair is dyed a bright green.

The reason we can easily recognize people we know well is that we have many, many visual memories of them. We have learned to distinguish them. We notice when something changes, such as they got a haircut, new eyeglasses, if they look tired, seem upset although trying to hide it. Do to our many memories we are mini visual experts on the people who are close to us.

Yet our eyes see the stranger as well as they see the person we know well.  What makes the difference in our ability to see and recognize happens in our brains.

Until recently improving vision only meant correcting what the eyes could perceive, such as through corrective lenses.

Now you can also radically improve your vision by consciously gaining more and special visual memories to change how your brain sees. You can increase your visual intelligence, which will change how effective you are in life, plus increase your enjoyment of your life.

See www.artofseeingthedivine.com to discover how you can add special visual memories to actually change the way you see the world and easily improve your life while you have fun!

Yet, people cling to what is familiar as our brains equate familiar with safe. Granted, we have survived in the environments that are familiar. Yet, there may be better environments and ways to live. Change can happen that can make what is familiar and safe absolutely life threatening.

When Safe Becomes Life Threatening

After hurricane Katrina, questions were asked as to why people who could evacuate failed to do so. Many people chose not to leave their homes when conditions of weather, wars and even domestic violence would seem to indicate that leaving is wise. Our brains have many memories of surviving within our homes and environments, but none of surviving in the new and strange environment that is the obvious logical choice to anyone except the person involved. What is familiar can seem safe even when it is not.

There are perceptual and neurological reasons why we prefer a phrase such as new and improved over revolutionary when it comes to the products and entertainment experiences that we choose.

How We Learn to Perceive Things

Science has discovered that the greater part of perception occurs in the brain as it decodes the impressions it receives your eyes, ears, mouth, nose and skin. For instance, the perception of vision, which is the dominant perception for healthy normal people occurs ten percent in the eyes. Ninety percent of vision happens in the brain as it uses visual memories to decode the impressions of light received from the eyes into meaningful information.

Our brains use memories to decode perceptual information. We began to collect and store this information from the moment we were born. New perceptions build upon past ones. Children must first learn basic shapes before they can master recognizing more complexly shaped letters,

Something that is really radically new is actually difficult for us to perceive as we lack the necessary memories. This explains partially explains why life changing inventions, such as telephones, televisions and personal PCs took a while before being adopted my most people. However, cell phones were more quickly adopted as they were not much different from cordless phones that were already in use.

Babies are known to touch, taste, listen and look at almost anything or anyone they can experience. We use our senses to verify and enhance the information we receive. A crawling baby learns spatial understandings from touch and vision. Babies watch our mouths when we speak, learning how to move their own mouths to emulate sounds. Babies feel and look at things to understand and simultaneously create memories of the experience for later use.

People continue to learn to perceive more variations of color well into adulthood. A similar process can occur as instrumental music and variations such as chords, as opposed to simple notes, can be learned throughout adulthood. When a perception is primarily based on a single sense, the way that color is based on vision and cannot be really heard, tasted, touched or smelled, the learning time for greater comprehension is prolonged. Language is used to convey understandings of lighter and darker, color mixing, hue, saturation, cool or warm, etc.

How You Can Speed Up The Learning Process

You can help yourself learn how to use anything new by using as many senses as you can to explore it. If it’s a new food dish, taste, smell, touch and vision are all used to perceive the food. A new gadget can involve touch and sight, plus sometimes sound. When we meet someone new we see them, hear their voice, perhaps touch with a handshake and perhaps enjoy the scent of their perfume.

Another trick to acquiring a quicker understanding of something new is to create many contacts or interactions with it. The brain experiences each new encounter as a new set of memories. The more sets of memories (encounters) the more comfortable we feel with the person place of thing. The brain can be tricked into perceiving many encounters instead of one prolonged one. For instance, with a new gadget before you read any instructions. Pick it up, examine it, turn it over, put it down, move your attention elsewhere for a few moments, or even just close your eyes and think of something else.. Then again pick it up, look at it, turn it, then put it down and put your attention somewhere else. Repeat this a few times. Suddenly the new device will see familiar and be easier to learn to use.

Our brains are wired to judge any perceived threat with a flight or fight response. Anything truly unfamiliar is perceives by the brain as a possible threat once a person reaches brain maturity at after twenty-six years of age. What is radically new, whatever one lacks perceptual memories of—or similar memories of—seems threatening as the brain has no data to recommend the thing as being safe.

When a new form off art comes along it can be difficult to see at first. Many of the well known Modern Art movements were first considered scandalous, or boorish, silly and even, were reviled by the establishment as not really being art at all! Impressionism, Cubism, Dadaism, Abstract Expressionism, Pop and Minimalism are a few examples of art that received little welcome and much derision at first by the established art community.

What’s Obvious?

Obvious is what wasn’t until it became so. Being the first to recognize what is obvious, and the championing it to others is the work of the geniuses in any field. However, those who are prominent in the field have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo.

When Andy Warhol first showed his works depicting cans of Campbell ‘s soup and Brillo box sculptures the critics and public were unable to see the work as art. They recognized the products, butt the works themselves were reportedly difficult to look at as people’s brains had to learn to see everyday images of products and the media as subjects for art.

While Warhol’s works remain the same as they were, more people now easily see and understand them as art. What changed was people’s brains as the works were shown in magazines, newspapers, galleries and finally museums they became familiar, safe and appreciated as people gained visual memories of the new Pop Art.

Benefits of Being an Early Adopter

While we are comfortable and interested in what is slightly new, or as they pitch in Hollywood , “It’s just like [insert hit film] but different”. What is radically new, or too different is seen by our brains as a possible threat—and therefore most adults are not early adopters.

The benefits of learning how to embrace the new and radical but acceptable media, inventions and art forms of contemporary life outweigh the learning curve of building new perceptual memories. Building new perceptual memories actually builds your brain and ability to comprehend and use more information.

You can consciously override your brain’s suspicions about the radically new through simple tricks to rapidly create perceptual memories. What is new to others can become incorporated into your life with ease.

The people who were the early adopters of new technology, media, developments in the arts and society tend benefit from it most. By finding ways to use what is radically new in their lives they find new profitable investments, create businesses and become leaders in their communities that others turn to for information.

Researchers from Japan ‘s ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories announced that they developed new brain analysis technology, which can reconstruct the images inside a person’s mind and display them on a computer monitor.

At present, the system is only able to reproduce simple black-and-white images. Dr. Kang Cheng, a researcher from the RIKEN Brain Science Institute, believes that improving the measurement accuracy will make it possible to reproduce images in color.

“These results are a breakthrough in terms of understanding brain activity,” says Dr. Cheng. “In as little as 10 years, advances in this field of research may make it possible to read a person’s thoughts with some degree of accuracy.”

ATR chief researcher Yukiyasu Kamitani says, “This technology can also be applied to senses other than vision. In the future, it may also become possible to read feelings and complicated emotional states.”

This further points to the understanding that the brain functioning that applies to vision also applies to emotion. Emotion is energy. When the brain learns to actually see more energy, it begins to decode emotions and feelings as energy, rather than replaying the experiences and feelings. Changing one’s perceptions, especially vision can be the key that the average person can use to unlock more emotional freedom and success.

In the human brain, emotions and perceptions are linked. Lower emotions, such as fear, anger, hurt, anxiety, etc. are part of the flight or fight response that is linked to perception.

Sixty percent of a normal person’s brain is dedicated to the perception of vision. Ninety percent of vision occurs in the brain as it decodes impressions of light received from the eyes. Through this same system memories of emotions, especially unresolved (unwanted) ones that are consciously or unconsciously associated with the people, places or things perceived can be restimulated. So, as a person goes through the day, an ongoing unconscious barrage of negative or unwanted emotions can be experienced without the cause being consciously recognized. A new unique practice of creating visual memories through art can bring relief.

The scientists analyzed changes in cerebral blood flow; they were able to reconstruct various images viewed by a person. Then using a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine, the researchers first mapped the blood flow changes that occurred in the cerebral visual cortex as subjects viewed various images held in front of their eyes.

People were shown 400 random 10 x 10 pixel black-and-white images for a period of 12 seconds each. While the fMRI machine monitored the changes in brain activity, a computer crunched the data and learned to associate the various changes in brain activity with the different image designs.

Then, when the test subjects were shown a completely new set of images, including one of the letters N-E-U-R-O-N, the system was able to reconstruct and display what the people were viewing based solely on their brain activity.

This scientifically also validates previous understandings of psychotherapists and hypnotists who uncover visual images and emotions as their clients describe what they see and feel throughout an incident their memory.

Through a series of simple Visual Exercises /Experiences and also by looking at a works of Post Conceptual UnGraven Image art, which depicts the energies, the essences that surround us, always and now, anyone can easily create and accumulate the new transformative memories. For further information see The Art of Seeing The Divine.

The research results appear in the December 11 issue of US science journal Neuron.

How a person actually sees can help create a happy and fulfilled life – or the opposite.

Recent scientific findings indicate that for the average person ninety(90%) percent of the perception of vision takes place in the brain. Average refers to people who have near normal vision with or without corrective lenses and normally healthy brains.

The remaining ten percent (10 %) of the process of vision occurs through the eyes. happens in the eyes, which receive perceptions of light that they send to the brain.

People have been rendered blind, or blind in specific ways by damage to their brains. For instance, one brain injured man can see, but is not able to recognize any faces.

The majority of the complex processes that we call vision happens as the brain decodes the perceptions of light received from the eyes. It does this by comparing and contrasting the perceptions to visual memories it has of prior perceptions.

The more visual memories a person has of different sights, including people, places and things, the more perceptive a person is, especially in relation to what has been seen previously. These memories are stored variously in a person’s brain and can be interconnected or cross referenced.

Some of this information was discovered when medical breakthroughs for a few conditions allowed surgeons to restore the eyesight of adults who had been blind since birth or early childhood. While the procedures were a success, the patients were completely unable to see how many fingers were held up, recognize faces or see anything more than impressions of light.

The newly “healed” patients were effectively blind as they lacked any visual memories. Newborns lack visual memories, which is why they seem to see, but do not respond to visual information at first. Over time, with increased visual experience, the patients created visual memories. Eventually, much in the way that children do, they learned to see and understand complexities of color, space, form, density, etc.

When an average adult sees something, the brain decodes the impressions of light sent by the eyes to make it usable and relevant. The similar memories that the brain uses may have additional meanings and understandings that are irrelevant decode the impressions of light, but are understood as relevant by the brain.

When the brain decodes impressions of light, it is decoding impressions of energy and pre-matter or basic particles. This is what light is. So, to the brain, data memories that are similar to the impressions received are relevant, and if those memories include more data of energy and basic particles it could be relevant, too.

Actually, the brain is bringing up many, many memories seemingly simultaneously, and even from different areas of the brain to decode a complex image that contains a lot of data that involves unfamiliar people and things. These memories can include emotion, which is energy and basic particles and like all memories is stored as such.

If I person has a history of being upbeat or happy, beginning with a comfortable, supportive and healthy childhood and continuing into adulthood, any emotional energy attached to the visual memories used for decoding are likely to be happy or at least neutral. These emotions may seem relevant to the brain as a part of the visual data since they offer additional information of energy and basic particles. Or, they can simply be brought up as part of the memory package.

However, people who have childhoods and/or adult lives filled with stress, trauma and unwanted emotion are unconsciously reminded of emotions and unresolved memories as the brain decodes current impressions of light of people places and things that should be easy to encounter and non- threatening.

The memories used as the decoding data are not usually brought to consciousness, but emotions, being emotions, can be felt.

People who have a tendency to be sad, angry, fearful, guilty, or any other unwanted emotion, may be experiencing these emotions on an ongoing and constant basis as their brains decode the impressions sent by their eyes. This is why going away, to someplace new and strange can seem so uplifting—no memories to re-stimulate.

Thoughts are things – or more precisely energy and pre-particles (matter). Memories are thoughts that are stored. Emotions, which are usually produced by thought, whether conscious or unconscious, are energy and pre-particles, too. Both can be seen and measured through brain imaging.

If the brain is taught to visually recognize emotional energy as just energy when it decodes perceptual impressions, emotional subconscious re-stimulation would abate for most people.

For example, when decoding a light impression of a cup that is similar to a cup used by an abusive older relative in one’s youth, the brain would select visual memories of the original cup to use in the visual decoding process. Like post it notes attached to a memo, negative and unwanted but experienced energies and pre-particles of the emotions of fear, anger, sadness, etc, would all fleet by unconsciously as attachments to the memory. These could be experienced, and even then misunderstood as a part of the individual’s personality.

Ironically, we refer to people’s positive or negative, glass half-full or half-empty world views as their “outlooks”. This could be literally correct.

If the brain uses the same memories, but learns to “view” the energies of the emotions as just energies and particles (without adding or attaching the significances of fear, anger, sadness, etc.), which are irrelevant to decoding visual information, the emotional information is not felt, even unconsciously.

This may seem impossible but it is already being accomplished by scientists through brain imaging. The brain’s emotional centers, and even specific thoughts are being seen as energy. However the scientists and doctors have lack knowledge of the actual specific content of the thoughts – but they can see the energy of the thoughts in brains.

It is also being accomplished through a new form of art, Post Conceptual UnGraven Image, founded by artist and author Judy Rey Wasserman. The brain can be taught to see more energy through specific visual images that purposefully use strokes to symbolize energy, which form pictures, just as traditional artists form imagery. This gives the brain a way to create and accumulate visual memories with information it previously lacked, but which human eyes are capable of perceiving.

Intense exposure and looking at these works of Post Conceptual UnGraven Image Art and through various Visual Exercises/Techniques that use the images in a new e book, The Art of Seeing The Divine , seem to be able to change the way an individual actually sees the world. Simply, thanks to the new visual memories more energy is seen everywhere. After this is established the brain seems to understand emotions that are attached to memories it uses for visual decoding as simply energy and particles. The emotional significance of that energy is now irrelevant. Thus, fewer unwanted emotions are experienced. Since sixty percent (60%) of the average person’s brain is allocated to the perception of sight, lowering the amount of ongoing memories of negative or unwanted emotions offers a great deal of relief!

Ironically, one of the unheralded benefits of most meditative practices happened when the practitioner closes his or her eyes. This effectively ceases any and all visual stimulation or decoding, and therefore no emotional memories are brought into the experience this way. Of course a person may remember images or envision at will, but once a person’s eyes are closed any outside visual stimulation ceases.

Visual perception is a basic and effective way to navigate the world. We rely on our sight so much that it is the only sense that must be “turned off” in order to sleep. It is also the sense we have the most control over, simply because we can and do close our eyes. We cannot as easily shut out any other sense. We are just beginning to discover the benefits of additional conscious control through purposefully adding visual memories.

On a moment to moment basis we are flooded (and that is an understatement!) with memories as the brain uses to decode the impressions it receives through the senses of smell, touch, taste, and sight. By far and away, the most important and consequential sense for the average person is the sense of sight.

Sixty percent of the normal person’s brain is dedicated to the perception of sight. This leaves the reaming forty percent (40%) of the brain to the other four senses, running the body and other tasks. Clearly indicates that sight is a normal person’s most important method of perception.

Scientists, including medical doctors have discovered that ninety percent (90%) of the perception of sight happens in the brain as it decodes the impressions of light that is received from the eyes. The brain does this by comparing the impressions of light to memories of previous impressions of light.

A baby’s eyes do perceive after birth, however it takes a couple of weeks of the baby gaining visual memories before the brain begins to have enough memories to decode the impressions . After about two weeks the baby can recognize the basic caregiver visually to a degree.

As the child grows more visual memories are gained. Learning to read means being able to distinguish shapes, so the letters can be discerned. It takes many visual memories of seeing something new before enough memories accumulate that it can always be decoded.

If you can read this text yourself you have many, many visual memories stored that help you to accomplish the task. When you see something new, a new gadget, person, place, etc., you have so many memories of things, people and places that you easily decode much of the image. Yet new images, mean gaining more visual memory.

Gaining visual memory, seeing new things is something that most people enjoy. This is why we watch the special commercials during the super bowl, like to change fashions, want new gadgets – especially those with screens, etc. New visual experiences are usually at least interesting.

When the brain receives impressions of light from the eyes it almost instantaneously calls up previous memories that contain similar data to decode the impressions. However memories that contain visual data can contain more than visual data. Memories can be like holograms of a moment that include perceptions of vision, sound, taste, touch, smell, thoughts and emotions. So as we move through the day, from moment to moment we are constantly reminded of all kinds of memories. Mainly, we are not conscious of this.

However, if you have ever seen a thing, person or place and though or remarked, That reminds me of… you consciously experienced the process.

Usually this occurs as the brain is not too sure if what is being experienced at the moment is the thing, person or place, so it includes a kind of wake up call or question. This kind of “wake up call” is also used when the brain perceives something that could mean danger, such as when the vehicle directly in front of one slams on its brakes.

Tag-along thoughts and emotions can be misunderstood by a person to be relevant or to somehow belong to them at the moment. This is a mistake that can have many repercussions, especially if the thoughts or emotions have negative content.

For example:

On a warm spring day Jane goes for a walk. On the way she passes various stores and shops. One shop has especially interesting objects that draw Jane to its window. In the corner of the display she sees an antique cup that is much like the one often used at the home of a much disliked great aunt who was verbally abusive, telling Jane that she is incompetent, too sensitive and not as pretty as her own granddaughter. This great aunt even cane when no one was looking.

However at the moment that Jane sees the antique cup she is distracted by the loud honk of a car and squealing brakes of a car as it swerves out of the way. Jane turns to look.

As Jane continues to walk down the street she blames her less happy mood on being startled by the honking and squealing brakes. Jane thinks to herself that she is too sensitive. She feels that old sense of worthlessness again, which she knows is untrue, but somehow she feel it. Jane accepts these thoughts as relevant to the moment, rather than recognizing that these thoughts are just memories that were re-stimulated as the brain decoded the vision of the antique cup in the window.

The above example of how thoughts and emotions may just seem to occur is one most everyone can relate to. We have all been reminded of emotions and thoughts that we then experienced and even continued to experience because we assumed they were relevant. Some people continue to experience thoughts and emotions that are unwanted because they do not know how to let go of them.

The primary source of memories, including emotions, is the perception of vision.

To gain more control of visual memory, discover how you can consciously create visual memory. Learn more at: The Art of Seeing The Divine.com

The aural pun and reference to the words eyes and ayes is intended and meaningful.

Yesterday this blog moved from another software and site to be hosted through The Art of Seeing The Divine web site and host using WordPress software.

Since the spring of ’08 the new web host has always provided excellent technical assistance. They helped set up the Art and Inspiration blog for Post Conceptual UnGraven Image, which also uses WordPress.

However yesterday, the very nice and helpful tech person mispelled the word Divine as Devine.

After I had listed the new site with technorati, I actually looked at it today and noticed the misspelling!

I was so busy yesterday configuring and recoding and creating the theme, adding widgets, moving posts, etc., that I assumed I knew what I was seeing. My eyes actually know the word, Devine as it is the last name of actor Andy Devine, so they did not alert me to the problem — until this morning.

As a writer, I have a difficult time catching my own typos until days, even weeks later. I love spell checking!  I tend to see what I think I see or wrote. The old proofreaders trick of reading the piece out loud fails me as I will read aloud what I meant to write, at least for the first day.

Anyway having the title misspelled for a day gave me an insight.  There are two letter i’s in the word Divine.

Visually if you look at the word it kind of resembles a nose -v- (the letter V) stuck between the two eyes (letter i’s).  If those i’s were rotated 45 degrees the effect would be obvious.  Here is how the eyes would look on their sides:  ._  ._

Unfortunately the text formatting will not allow me to configure the V between those eyes, but you can imagine that easily.

The visual image of that nose and eyes indicates both a sense of The Divine looking at us through the word — or us, being enables to look though the Divine. The idea of having Divine vision can actually be seen as embodied in the word divine.

This is meaningful to me since I am all about helping people see the Divine essences.

The I realized that the play of sounds in English — eye and aye are pronounced the same — adds another level of positive or affirmative information.

Seeing more, even in something as simple as a word is how we learn.

The more meaning something has for us — the more perceptual references — the more we actually physically perceive it.  Perceptual references expand oyr brains, and we gain the capacity to think smarter. We can form or recognize good ideas and “see” relationships or connections. This helps empower us and bring success in life.

That is what The Art of Seeing The Divine is about and what the visual information and exercises help a person successfully accomplish.

This kind of learning — brain growing, empowering and perceptual is fun, or at least interesting.  It can change your life.

From now on when you look at the word, Divine, you will have the memory of this blog, and the visual information of the “nose (V) and eyes (i’s) tucked into the middle of the word. The word will have new meaning.

I will never see the word Divine in the former way again– or mistake Devine for Divine!