The Percept Orientation

The Percept Orientation and Percept Language were originally developed by John and Joyce Weir. Much of the theory we work with, the descriptions we use, and the ideas we present come from the Weirs. We are adding to their work in ways that make it ours, but we want to acknowledge them as founders of this work.

The Percept Orientation is a philosophy for living based on the idea that we are not really interacting with a world "out there," but rather, with our inner world of perceptions, which we project and call "reality."

Perception is one version of reality. The following visual patterns on this page are examples of external stimulus that can be interpreted to mean different things to different people, or different things to one person, at different times. There is no right or wrong way to interpret these images. If you click on the images you will see a larger version.

As teachers of Percept, we believe that every person is unique in how they experience the events of life. An event occurs, some external stimulus, and it then gets moderated and filtered by influences that are mostly unconscious. The filtering process has to do with our genetics, history, age-stage, educations, values, and other factors. After all of our filtering we end up with our projection of reality, which in the world of Percept is called the Percept screen.

People then respond to their Percept screen with: thoughts, feelings, and actions. Although we each have some selective influence over our Percept screen, mostly it is unconsciously determined. We each build our Percepts to maintain our personal universe in a way that makes sense to us.

In this system, feelings follow Percepts. Therefore, any attempt to change feelings and behaviors is working at the level of effect, not cause. In Percept we don’t emphasize the goal of change as much as the process of integration. We think that an agenda of change stems from self-alienation and judgment. Implicit in this stance is the idea that we are not okay the way we are. Our natural response to such an idea is to defend ourselves, which causes resistance. And from our experience, we believe resistance inhibits the process of healing and well being.

However, there is a kind of organic change, an integration that occurs naturally as a result of a four-step process that we teach as part of the Percept model. These steps are:
        1. Aware
        2. Accept
        3. Await
        4. Act

(To learn more about these steps go to "What Is Percept Training")

Within the Percept Orientation we recognize that each person is unique and that we cannot truly know another person. No two people have exactly the same make-up. I can never be you and you can never be me. Therefore, in Percept, one person does not tell another person about that other person. Since we believe that our Percepts are truly unique to us, then I can never really know your Percepts and you can never really know mine. You can only speak from your Percepts and about the world as you create it. So when you speak about me, you are really speaking about the “me-in-you,” the me that you have created in your head. And when I speak about you, I am really speaking about the “you-in-me,” the you that I have created in my head. So I can’t tell you about you, only the way I have you be inside of me. And you can’t tell me about me, only the me that you have me be inside of you. This means that we are truly alone. Although this may frighten some people, we believe that it is our common experience of aloneness that actually connects us.

Percept offers people a way to step out of the original structure in which they create their problems. From outside of that structure, people have more freedom to grow themselves if that is what they want to do. If we accept that we are the only ones that make meaning for ourselves, then we give up power struggles, defending ourselves, attacking others, manipulating, and trying to get others to make us whole. We recognize that each of these responses is a reaction to thinking that someone else is trying to impose meaning on us. If we step outside of that illusory idea, we no longer will be reactive. By moving into Percept, we take responsibility for how we create meaning. This requires moving more deeply into ourselves, exploring and integrating what we find. As we explore our own frontiers, discovering more of who we are, we experience a revival of our innate health.

Next... The Percept Language