Pedro J. Pérez
ESPT

Espiritualidad

The Illusions We Mistake for Reality: How Your Point of View Creates What You See

We live surrounded by illusions so convincing that we take them for absolute truths. This article invites you to recognize that much of what you attribute to others and to yourself actually belongs to the space between you, and it offers you a simple practice to open what seemed

By Pedro J. Pérez ·

When the Obvious Is Only a Point of View

There are experiences we take for granted with a certainty we never question. The ground beneath our feet seems motionless, even though we are moving at great speed on a rotating planet. The horizon line is drawn straight before our eyes, even though we know the Earth curves. Nothing we perceive is false in the sense of being a deliberate deception: it is simply a partial reading, taken from a specific position, that works well enough for daily life that we never revisit it.

That practical effectiveness is precisely what makes our perceptions so persuasive. An assumption that never fails is an assumption we never examine. And so, without realizing it, we turn reports about where we are standing into statements about how things are. The invitation here is not to distrust everything, but to recover a kind curiosity: to ask ourselves, from time to time, from where we are looking at what we believe to be so firm.

Apparent Motion and Real Motion

There is an astronomical phenomenon that illustrates this with extraordinary elegance. Seen from Earth, certain planets appear to stop and move backward in their orbit for a few weeks. For centuries, that apparent backward motion was interpreted as a message about human affairs. However, the planet never reverses its course: it is simply that, from our position in a slower, outer orbit, we see it move ahead and fall behind due to an effect of perspective. The backward motion is completely real as a visual experience and completely illusory as movement of the planet.

What is revealing is where that apparent motion resides: not in the planet or in the Earth, but in the relationship between the two. It belongs to the space that unites them, to the changing geometry of their relative positions. This idea, transferred to our daily life, has profound consequences. Many of the qualities we attribute to the people around us might not be properties of theirs, but effects of the distance, the angle, and the history from which we observe them.

The Labels We Put on Others

Think about the phrases we repeat about those who are difficult for us. That person is cold. My brother is impossible. That meeting is unbearable. Each of these statements describes something we genuinely feel, but it places it in the wrong location: inside the other, as if it were a fixed and immutable property of their character. In reality, much of that description belongs to the space between the two, to the concrete interaction that occurs when our stories, expectations, and moods meet.

This does not mean denying that genuinely complicated behaviors exist. The planet really does appear to move backward, and no good intention makes that appearance disappear. What changes is the understanding that the difficulty someone creates for you is something you both construct in relationship. And there an unexpected freedom appears: your position is always part of what you see, and it is the only part you can move.

From the Closed Sentence to the Open Question

Notice the difference between two ways of naming the same thing. Saying "it is difficult" is a closed sentence: it leaves nothing to do but endure. Saying "from where I am today, carrying what I carry, something between us seems to be moving backward" is an open phrase: we can go around it, look at it from another side, inhabit it with more air. The second is no less true than the first; it has simply stopped being a wall.

The same happens with the statements we make about ourselves, which are usually the most relentless. "I am anxious." "I am not one of those who can handle this." They are descriptions of a relationship disguised as facts about an identity, and they have been held for so long that we have stopped checking them. Recognizing their relational character does not make them false, but it does return them to the terrain of what can be revised, where movement is possible.

The Awareness That Sustains All Perspectives

If everything we perceive depends on our position, it is worth asking what is truly fundamental. It does not seem to be a physical object, because from the atom to the planet everything is known in changing relationships. Spiritual traditions point in another direction: that lucid presence in which all perception, all words, and all thought occur. It is not one more item on the list, alongside matter and mind; it is that in which the list itself happens.

This understanding does not take us out of the life we actually live. Knees ache in the morning, or they do not. Sooner or later we say goodbye to someone we love before we are ready. Recognizing the relational nature of our perceptions does not spare us the ups and downs of existence. It offers something kinder: the possibility of looking at everyday illusions with a smile, knowing that there is a serene awareness that sustains both the hand we touch and the love with which we touch it.

A Practice to Open What Seemed Closed

Choose someone who is genuinely difficult for you, someone close enough that it matters. Silently formulate the phrase you truly carry about that person, without softening it or arguing with it. Observe how it feels: closed, as if the matter had been settled long ago. Now say it again, including yourself in the scene: "from where I am today, with what I am carrying, something between us seems to move backward." Nothing is less true, and yet something has opened.

The other person has not changed at all; the phrase has changed, and it has stopped being a wall. Remain like this for three slow breaths and notice what is being aware of both phrases without being either one. This practice, repeated regularly, gradually loosens the habit of placing inside others what actually happens in the shared space. And in that space, broader and more honest, something new can finally fit.

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