Our
perceptions or the reality that exists in our 
heads
is all based on interpretations we have made from what we have experienced
in the past and what we believe we desire in the future.
All our present actions, thoughts about who and what we are and how and
what the people around us are are based upon the filtered experience from
our past.
The actions and thoughts of all the people that we encounter in our life
are also based on their past perceptions of who and what they are and
who and what they have encountered. You, as you read this and process
shapes (letters) displayed on your monitor, will interpret it through
your intellect and begin to assimilate it through your perceptual filters,
hopefully comprehending some of what I intend to convey.
William Glasser, M.D. in Stations of the Mind: New Directions for Reality Therapy says,
All of us perceive the world in terms of our own needs; none of us is capable of perceiving the world as it actually is. It will appear different to each of us because our specific needs from which all of us create our internal world are never the same, all we ever know of the real or external or outside world is the energy that comes from the world and strikes the sensory receptors of our perceptual system.
Everything else that we claim is the real world is in fact our own perceptions of that world, perceptions that we are constantly trying to change so that they coincide with the world in our head.
In
”Creative Work -The Constructive Role Of Business In A Transforming
Society” by Willis Harman and John Hormann, there is a section that
suggests that there are four distinct levels with which we see both ourselves
and the
world around us.
