By Gonny 
We often like to think we’re pretty clever. We have five senses, we say proudly: sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. Five! As if we’re entering the world with a complete measurement tool.
But if we take an honest look, or rather, an honest perception, it turns out to be a bit disappointing. Or maybe amusing, really.
We can smell a rose, freshly baked bread, or…unfortunately…the trash bag on a Sunday night.
But a dog? A dog can smell if you walked through wet grass this morning, what you had for dinner yesterday, and who stood there before you. They can even smell your emotions.
Luckily, we humans can’t smell…footsteps!
Then there’s hearing.
We can hear music, raindrops on the roof, or a friendly “hello” on the street.
But a whale? A whale hears its family from thousands of kilometers away.
Imagine sitting at a little café in Italy, and your mother yells from the Netherlands:
“Are you eating healthy?”
Let’s not go there…
Sight?
We squint, scroll, blink, grab our glasses, and if we’re lucky, we see the headlines in the newspaper. The small print? That needs backup.
Meanwhile, an eagle is soaring a kilometer high and spots a mouse in the grass.
And yet, even though we may perceive 1%, maybe 2% of everything we see, hear, smell, feel and taste, we still think we know the Truth?
That’s kind of funny when you think about it.
But, on the other hand, thank goodness!
Because what we perceive has no meaning.
And that’s not just some philosophical musing, it’s Lesson 1 in A Course in Miracles: “Nothing I see means anything.”
And then comes the big, liberating reminder: “I am not a body. I am free.”
No senses needed to know the Truth.
It’s not found out there, in the scent of coffee or the noise of traffic.
It’s found within you, beyond everything the senses can touch.
A little practice (just for fun…but a little serious too)
Sit down.
Look ahead.
Feel your feet on the floor, your back on the chair.
And then softly say to yourself:
“I’m sitting in this body… but I am not this body.”
“I am Spirit, using this body …temporarily …like a kind of spacesuit.”
“I’m looking through Mind, not through eyes.”
Let that feeling settle in.
It’s like lifting your head out of the diving helmet and suddenly knowing:
I am the ocean, not the diver.
Breathe. Smile.
And look again.
But now as who you truly are: free, light, boundless.
Our senses are useful, sure, but they don’t tell us the Truth.
They show us a dream, adding scent and color to a world of forms.
But deep down, we know:
“There is another way of looking.”
A way in which Love is the only guide.
And that, dear friends, is true perception.
With light and love,
G.