Rewiring Perception: Eastern Wisdom for Your Second Act
Girish Jha, Coach and Guide, Eastern Wisdom . Blog for Baby Boomers
When the Map No Longer Matches the Territory
Remember when you were certain about how life would unfold? Many of us who came of age during the cultural revolution of the 60s and 70s thought we had it all figured out. We’d challenge the system, build careers, raise families, save for retirement, and then enjoy our golden years.
But somewhere along the way—perhaps during a health scare, after children left home, through career changes, or while caring for aging parents—many of us discovered that our carefully constructed maps didn’t quite match the territory of our lives. The retirement we’d imagined seems different from the reality we’re living. The relationships we built have evolved or dissolved. The purpose that drove us for decades has shifted.
If you’re feeling this disconnect, you’re not alone. More importantly, you’re actually on the threshold of a profound opportunity for growth that ancient Eastern wisdom traditions have been illuminating for millennia.
The Mind's Mansion: Why We See What We Want to See
Eastern philosophy offers a powerful metaphor for understanding why our perceptions often fail us. As revealed in the teachings:
“Mind has many compartments. You can think that mind is a big mansion. It has one room for anxiety. Second room for fear. Third room for stress. Fourth room for pleasure. Fifth room for expectations. Sixth room for binding desire… But it has also the rooms for peace, happiness, love and wisdom.”
Each “room” we occupy colors how we see the world. When we’re in the anxiety room, even positive developments appear threatening. When we’re in the expectation room, reality rarely measures up. But when we access the rooms of peace and wisdom, the same external circumstances take on entirely different meanings.
As baby boomers navigating life’s second act, we’ve accumulated enough experience to know that our perception dramatically influences our reality. The question becomes: how do we consistently access those better rooms in our mental mansion?
The Five Levels of Perception: Going Beyond the Surface
According to Eastern wisdom, perception functions at five distinct levels:
- Raw Sensory Input – Unfiltered sensory data before labeling (rare in adults)
- Recognition and Labeling – Categorizing what we perceive (person, sunset, problem)
- Conceptual Understanding – Applying concepts to our perceptions (friend, beautiful, difficult)
- Value Judgment – Attaching emotional values based on personal history (threatening, desirable, unfair)
- Right Perception (Viveka) – Seeing beyond personal filters to recognize the underlying consciousness in everything
Most of us spend our lives operating at levels 2-4, which explains why two people can experience the same event completely differently. This difference in perception leads to most human conflict—including the inner conflicts that cause our suffering.
The Eastern teachings point to level 5—right perception—as the key to liberation from suffering. But what does this actually mean in practical terms?
Waves and Water: The Art of Seeing Beyond Form
One of the most powerful metaphors in Eastern philosophy is that of waves and water:
“Wave is water. All wave is water… Don’t you see the water in the wave? I see you for first four perception[s]. Good, bad, high, low age, men, women, citizenship, etc. Etc. Etc. Don’t I see consciousness also the way I see the water in the wave? I see the consciousness also.”
Every wave appears distinct—with its own size, shape, and movement—yet none exists separately from the water. Similarly, all the diverse forms we perceive (including our bodies, emotions, and thoughts) are expressions of the same underlying consciousness.
For baby boomers who witnessed the civil rights movement, women’s liberation, and numerous cultural shifts, this teaching offers profound insight: our focus on differences often blinds us to the underlying unity. The labels and categories we’ve used throughout life (liberal/conservative, success/failure, healthy/unhealthy) may have limited our perception of a deeper reality.
The Three Categories of Existence: What’s Real, What’s Not
To help us navigate perception more skillfully, Eastern tradition identifies three categories of existence:
- Real (Sat) – That which is eternal and unchanging (consciousness itself)
- Unreal (Asat) – That which does not exist (like a square circle)
- False (Mithya) – That which is experienced but is neither completely real nor completely unreal
This third category is crucial for our generation to understand. Our bodies, careers, roles as parents or grandparents, and even our identities fall into this category of “false”—they are experienced and have relative reality, but they are not our permanent, unchanging essence.
This doesn’t mean ignoring these aspects of life. Rather, it means seeing them for what they are: temporary expressions rather than our fundamental nature. As the teacher explains:
“The false will continue to be present… False will continue to appear. That is why we say, my friend, I have to separate myself from the false. I have not to destroy the false.”
Practical Application: Finding Peace Amid Life Transitions
How does this ancient wisdom apply to the unique challenges we face in our 60s and 70s? Let’s consider some common transitions and how these teachings can help us navigate them:
From Career Identity to Authentic Purpose
Many boomers struggle with the transition from a career-defined identity to retirement. The Eastern perspective suggests this struggle stems from confusing a temporary role (false) with our essential nature (real).
Practice: When feelings of loss or disorientation arise around career transitions, ask yourself: “Was I ever just my job title? Or was that simply one wave in the ocean of my consciousness?” This shift in perception doesn’t devalue your career but places it in a larger context of your ongoing evolution.
From Physical Youth to Embodied Wisdom
Our generation pioneered the fitness revolution and redefined aging. Yet many of us still struggle with the physical changes that come with time. Eastern wisdom offers a liberating perspective: your essential nature is not the changing body but the unchanging awareness that witnesses these changes.
Practice: When confronting physical limitations or changes, practice witnessing them from the perspective of unchanging consciousness. This doesn’t mean denying reality or avoiding medical care—quite the opposite. It means bringing a deeper awareness to your relationship with your body.
From External Achievement to Inner Discovery
Many of us spent decades pursuing external markers of success. Eastern wisdom suggests that our most important achievements may be internal:
“Every day you listen and learn all these principles. Not only listening and learning. You have to contemplate and reflect, and then you have to practice. Then you have to daily apply the practice and experience. You have to apply the wisdom daily in your life.”
Practice: Set aside 15-30 minutes daily for what Eastern traditions call Svadhyaya (self-study). This might include meditation, journaling, contemplative reading, or mindful walking. The key is consistent attention to your inner landscape.
The Triple Path: Learning, Reflecting, and Experiencing
Eastern wisdom offers a systematic approach to perception-shifting through three stages:
- Sravan (Learning) – Exposing yourself to wisdom teachings through reading, listening, or studying
- Manan (Contemplation) – Deeply reflecting on what you’ve learned until it becomes your own understanding
- Niddhyasana (Experience) – Directly experiencing the truth through practice until it transforms your perception
For baby boomers who value personal growth and self-determination, this three-step process offers a roadmap for transformation that honors your autonomy while providing clear guidance.
As the teacher explains: “We need a common sense intellect. Why? [To] have a subtle perception. [To] recognize all waves are simply an ocean.”
This process doesn’t require extraordinary intelligence or spiritual gifts—just consistent practice and the common sense wisdom our generation has accumulated through decades of life experience.
Jenny's Story: Finding Unity in Career Transition
Consider Jenny, a 68-year-old former marketing executive who built her identity around professional success. When she retired, she initially experienced what she called “identity vertigo”—a disorienting sense of no longer knowing who she was without her career.
Through studying Eastern wisdom, Jenny began to recognize how her mind had been occupying the “room” of achievement and external validation. She started a daily meditation practice where she observed her thoughts without attachment, gradually distinguishing between her changing thoughts (the waves) and her unchanging awareness (the water).
Six months into this practice, Jenny had a breakthrough during meditation: “I realized I was never actually my job title. That was just a convenient label. The ‘I’ that watched my career unfold is the same ‘I’ that’s watching retirement unfold now. Only the content has changed, not the consciousness.”
This shift in perception allowed Jenny to approach retirement not as the end of her identity but as an opportunity to explore dimensions of herself that had been overshadowed by career demands. She now mentors young professionals while pursuing creative interests she’d set aside decades ago—all with a newfound sense of purpose disconnected from external validation.
The Dissolution Experience: When Knower and Known Merge
The transcript describes a profound meditative experience where “both the image of Shiva and himself as observer eventually dissolve.” The teacher confirms this is correct: “When knower and known merge, nothing remains to be seen.”
For those in our generation who’ve explored meditation, creative flow states, or peak experiences, this description may resonate with moments when the usual sense of a separate self temporarily dissolves into something larger.
These experiences aren’t just pleasant states—they’re glimpses of what Eastern traditions call non-duality, where the artificial boundaries between self and other momentarily drop away. Such glimpses can be transformative, especially for baby boomers who spent decades defining themselves through achievement and social roles.
As the Upanishads tell us: “Where there is duality, one sees, perceives another. But where everything has become just one’s own self, then by what in whom would one seek?”
Reflection Questions: Your Personal Path to Perception Shifting
- Which “rooms” in your mental mansion do you most frequently occupy? How does each room color your perception of the same external reality?
- Think about a time when your perception of a situation dramatically shifted (perhaps a conflict that resolved or a problem that suddenly appeared as an opportunity). What allowed that shift to happen?
- In what areas of your life are you still confusing temporary forms (the waves) with enduring reality (the water)? How might recognizing this change your approach to challenges in these areas?
- Have you experienced moments when the boundary between observer and observed seemed to dissolve—perhaps in nature, creative pursuits, intimate connection, or meditation? What insights did these experiences offer?
Look through this article for practices that might help you cultivate more of these perception-shifting moments in your daily life.
The Second Act Revolution: From False Perception to True Vision
As baby boomers, we’ve witnessed and created tremendous cultural transformation. Now, in our second act, we have the opportunity for an equally powerful inner transformation—one that may constitute our greatest contribution yet.
By recognizing how our perceptions have limited us, we can begin to access a more expansive vision. This doesn’t mean abandoning the practical wisdom we’ve accumulated through decades of experience. Rather, it means allowing that wisdom to evolve into something deeper—what Eastern traditions call prajna, or true knowing.
The teacher reminds us: “Our goal is non-duality: recognizing oneness behind apparent diversity.”
In a world increasingly fragmented by artificial divisions, our generation has a unique opportunity to model a different kind of vision—one that sees beyond surface differences to the consciousness that unites us all. This shift in perception isn’t just personally liberating; it may be exactly what our families, communities, and world most need from us now.
As the waves of change continue to roll through our lives, we can learn to see and appreciate the unchanging water that forms every wave—including the wave we call “me.”
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