I participate in this physical reality through my senses -- touch, sight, smell, taste, hearing -- a way of peeking out of myself and encountering the world around me. Some of the senses are for a close range only (touch and taste), and others can let me know about things at a distance. My imagination and my spirit have their own ways of reaching out and understanding, in different ways from my physical senses.
My brain creates a seamless representation of reality -- putting together small glimpses into an apparently fully experienced surrounding. Testing has shown this really is a "virtual" semblance; that we actually can be unaware of something that's there, depending on where our attention goes. In fact, there have been tests that show that our eye movements on looking at a picture can totally avoid an area that we would be uncomfortable with, and that we don't therefore consciously see it, though we must have done so unconsciously or else we wouldn't have avoided it. We all have true physical blind spots, an area we can't physically see because the optic nerve (which doesn't have light receptors) is in the middle of the field of receptors at the back of our eyes. We "extend" what we see in our brain to fill in the blind spot, so we're unaware of the gap. In someone with bad glaucoma, there is a bigger and bigger blind spot, but a person doesn't realize it until it is truly huge, because we're so good at filling it in plausibly, as an extension of what we do see.
We tend to psychologically and intellectually see the things in the world that reinforce our prior beliefs and attitudes and conceptions, going places and talking with people in ways support what we already think. How many people have a true, open, interested, learning type of conversation with someone of a different political leaning, rather than avoiding or debating? How many people actually go to learn from a person in a totally different way of life, rather than judging from afar (whether that person is poor or rich, or homeless, or mentally ill, or in or from another country, or a different race or culture). We tend to listen to news and read magazines or books or newspapers that resonate with what we already believe. If we think we're "bad" at sports or math or art or music, we don't tend to participate in them. We go ahead satisfied with our current vision, seeing nothing to contradict it.
On the other hand, our understanding and learning are also based on using our imagination and empathy, and simulating or emulating some part of the outside universe in our brain. (It could be a person, or a concept, or an animal, or a thing.) New neuroscience research talks about "mirror neurons" that activate when we see someone else doing something or feeling something, that lets us feel/do the same thing in our own brain. People learn this way, as a child mimicking what an adult does, or someone of any age using another person as a model. Likewise when in meditation (or aikido) I imagine being like a mountain, or a deep still pool, or putting roots into the ground like a tree, I'm understanding and emulating something in the world around me, and my "self" enlarges and can take on new attributes. In my family we've had cats and rabbits as pets, and sometimes my children and I would play like we were bunnies or kittens.
Play and awareness and open curiosity make it the most likely we'll actually learn, rather than creep carefully (or move forcefully) through the world peering out blindly from our encrusted shells seeing only what we expect to see. Love and compassion and awareness make it most likely that we'll understand those around us (and ourselves), and work together to make things better for all. Awareness and openness make it most likely we will see both opportunities and dangers around us. Fear and anger and judgment will tend to close us off, make us less likely to be able to learn, and more likely to be hurt by something we don't see.
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