Perceptions are deceiving.
This past month we have been shifting things around in our house. At one point my wife was putting some shelves in a cabinet that had been built last year but these two shelves had never been putting in place.
From where I was watching I could see that while she could slide them into the cabinet they would not go down flat. They didn’t fit.
From my perspective they clearly were a little too wide.
My wife said they needed about a half inch cut off and pointed to the boards clearly (from my perspective) that they needed a half inch cut off the side, so that is what I did.
When I brought them in she was a little surprised because, as the person trying to fit them in, she knew they had been a half inch too long.
Now, once I knew they had been too long and not too wide, then I could see that when she was pointing she was pointing to the end of the board but when my perspective already had set in place that they were too wide I saw something completely different.
We respond based on our perceptions. If you are doing an improvised drill and expect a lead hand strike but instead it is a round house kick, then your response is going to go very badly.
If we can lose our perceptions, then we can be open to see what is really happening and respond accordingly.
Oddly enough this could be seen as Mushin or no mind, which perhaps can be interpreted as being without perceptions.
Maybe they were on to something there.
Losing our perceptions can also enhance learning because they simply get in the way. We see something and immediately relate it to something we already know and may miss that in reality this is something new we are seeing. Only our perceptions have gotten in the way and we need to let go of them to see clearly.