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Show McBride Says: Stop to Smell the Roses by Dr. M. Ford McBride If you've seen one tree, you've seen them all. Most of us tend to look at a tree and classify it into the perceptual category of "trees in general" without really experiencing experien-cing the miracle standing stan-ding before us. Psychologist Abraham Maslow has studied the perceptual habits of people who are unusually aware, alive, open and mentaly healthy. He finds that these people are fully awake, that their perceptions are marked by; total concentration and immersion in the present; lack of self- consciousness; a sense of timelessness; in-nocense in-nocense of vision like that of an artist or child; and freedom from selecting, rejecting, criticizing, evaluating. The person is aware of everything at once. The kind of perception percep-tion Maslow is describing describ-ing is like that of a mother with her newborn infant, a child at Christmas, or two people in love. Heightened awareness at an advanced ad-vanced level may be difficult dif-ficult to attain, but a valuable increase in awareness can be achieved. How can awareness be improved? It is important to realize that many perceptual habits that limit awareness serve no useful function. They are habits and nothing more. In short, any change in perceptual habitu can make an experience "new" and fresh again, maybe we need to heed the advice of country singer Mac Davis and "take time to smell the roses." Attention is the second se-cond approach to heightened awareness. Attention can be volunarily directed to sensation that are normally nor-mally tuned out. Try letting your attention take a walk through your body. What feelings feel-ings are coming from your mouth, nose, shoulder, foot, scalp, palms, stomach, eyes and ears? Poet William Blake summed up the importance impor-tance of improved awareness when he said, if the doors of perception were cleansed, cleans-ed, man would see everything as it is, infinite. in-finite. Dr. McBride can be seen every Monday on Channel ll's Newsroom, at 6 p.m. If you have a question ques-tion or topic you would like Dr. McBride to discuss in his column, write; Dr. M. Ford McBride, 1161 East 300 North Provo, Utah 84601. |