What we see is not just what’s in front of us. Perception of what we’re seeing can be changed by what we saw in our early lives.[i] In 6th grade we learned how our eyes are made to work. The primary-colored diagram we used, shows light enters the eye, through the cornea, past the iris and through the pupil, to the retina with rods and cones. The optic nerve takes the impulses from the retina to the occipital lobe in the back of our heads. The image is upside down there, but our brains know how to straighten that out. It’s like a camera, taking a picture of what’s in front of it. It’s reversed.

But that’s not the whole story. What we didn’t learn is that the optic nerves start behind the retina in the base of our eyes called the Sylvian Fissure.[ii] This area is also called “the roots of the eyes,” and is the locus in the brain where we perceive, feel, empathize with, or process cognitively. It’s the center of our consciousness.[iii] Before the impulses from light on the retina travel on the optic nerve, they come into our sense of the world, then travel along each side toward the back of our heads, crossing near the pineal gland, past the amygdala, hypothalamus, and pituitary glands which can trigger emergencies,[iv] eventually reaching the occipital lobe where visual processing occurs.

Location of Sylvian Fissure in a human brain.

If you are like me, you have images from childhood in your consciousness through which you see things. And your amygdala may be firing from fear of what you saw in the past. Since my 1st grade in an old-fashioned Catholic school when images of brutalized saints around the classroom burned into my seeing, I have been looking through my fear of God.

Since images broadcast on TV in 1968 of violent Vietnam War protests, police retaliation on Civil Rights marchers, and the assassinations of Dr. King and Senator Kennedy, I have been looking through my fear of speaking and getting punished for it.

Since from my earliest days I saw pictures of women being mommies and cleaning house, I have been looking through my lens of how women are supposed to be.

If you are like me, you need new images in your consciousness. We need to look around us for evidence of what is real and not real, not limited by images stored in our Sylvian Fissure. We need to look for evidence that disconfirms what we were taught - that show the design of the world is generous, that people are mostly kind, and that women can do what their strengths and talents lead them to do.

I hope you will write back what you used to see and how you overcame it to see plain reality.

[i] As you know, I am not a neuroscientist. All of these images are from Adobe Stock. I’m studying and this is the sense I’ve made of my experiences so far. I’d love to read your comments about your experiences and research, too.

[ii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateral_sulcus

[iii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insular_cortex#Other_clinical_conditions

[iv] https://www.nicabm.com/brain-how-anger-affects-your-brain-and-body-part-1/?del=5.18.23WednesdayBlogtoAll

How We See… And a Problem

Healing the Ties That Bind You