Interpretations that would result in a more satisfying experience

PERCEPTION AND LEARNING 
 
However, we must be careful not to equate storage capacity with learning capacity. Learning, and 
becoming aware of what is available to be learned, is not just a function of storage capacity. If it were, 
then what would stop us from knowing everything? And if we knew everything, then what would stop 
us from perceiving every possible characteristic, property, or trait of everything that is expressing itself 
in any given moment? What stops us now? These questions get to the very heart of why you have to 
understand that mental components like memories, distinctions, and beliefs exist as energy. Anything 
that is energy has the potential to act as a force expressing its form, and that is exactly what our 
memories, distinctions and beliefs do.
They act as a force on our senses from the inside, expressing their form and content, and, in the process 
of doing so, they have a profoundly limiting effect on the information we perceive in any given 
moment, making much of the information that is available from the environment's perspective, and the 
possibilities inherent within that information, literally invisible.
I am saying here that, in any given moment the environment is generating an enormous amount of 
information about its properties, characteristics, and traits. Some of that information is beyond the 
physiological range of our senses. For example, our eyes can't see every wavelength of light nor can 
our ears hear every frequency of sound the environment produces, so there's definitely a range of 
information that is beyond the physiological capabilities of our senses. What about the rest of the 

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information the environment is generating about itself? Do we see, hear, taste, smell, or feel through 
our senses every possible distinction, trait, and characteristic being senses? Absolutely not! The energy 
that's inside of us will categorically limit and block our awareness of much of this information by 
working through the same sensory mechanisms the external environment works through. Now, if you 
take a moment and think about it, some of what I just said should be self-evident. For example, there 
are many ways in which the external environment can express itself that we don't perceive simply 
because we haven't learned about them yet.
This is easy to illustrate. Think back to the first time you ever looked at a price chart. What did you 
see? Exactly what did you perceive? With no previous exposure, I'm sure, like everyone else, you saw 
a bunch of lines that had no meaning. Now if you're like most traders, when you look at a price chart 
you see characteristics, traits, and behavior patterns that represent the collective actions of all the 
traders who participated in those particular trades. Initially, the chart represented undifferentiated 
information. Undifferentiated information usually creates a state of confusion, and that's probably what 
you experienced when you first encountered a chart.
Gradually, however, you learned to make distinctions about that information, such as trends and trend 
lines, consolidations, support and resistance, retracements or significant relationships between volume, 
and open interest and price action, just to name a few. You learned that each of these distinctions in the 
market s behavior represented an opportunity to fulfill some personal need, goal, or desire. Each 
distinction now had a meaning and some relative degree of significance or importance attached to it. 
Now, I want you to use your imagination and pretend that I just set before you the very first price chart 
you ever saw. Would there be a difference between what you see now and what you saw then? 
Absolutely. Instead of a bunch of undifferentiated lines, you would see everything you've learned about 
those lines between then and now. In other words, you would see all the distinctions you've learned to 
make, as well as all the opportunities those distinctions represent.
Yet, everything you can see as you look at that chart now existed then, and, furthermore, was available 
to be perceived. What's the difference? The structured energy that's inside of you now—the knowledge 
you have gained—acts as a force on your eyes, causing you to recognize the various distinctions that 
you've learned about. Since that energy wasn't there the first time you looked at the chart, all the 
opportunities that you now see were there, but at the same time invisible to you. Furthermore, unless 
you've learned to make every possible distinction based on every possible relationship between the 
variables in that chart, what you haven't learned yet is still invisible. Most of us have no concept of the 
extent to which we are continually surrounded by the invisible opportunities inherent in the information 
we're exposed to.
More often than not, we never learn about these opportunities and, as a result, they remain invisible. 
The problem, of course, is that unless we're in a completely new or unique situation or we're operating 
out of an attitude of genuine openness, we won't perceive something that we haven't learned about yet. 
To learn about something, we have to be able to experience it in some way. So what we have here is a 

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closed loop that prevents us from learning. Perceptual closed loops exist in all of us, because they are 
natural functions of the way mental energy expresses itself on our senses. Eveiyone has heard the 
expression, "People see what they want to see."
I would put it a little differently: People see what they've learned to see, and everything else is invisible 
until they learn how to counteract the energy that blocks their awareness of whatever is unlearned and 
waiting to be discovered. To illustrate this concept and make it even clearer, I am going to give you 
another example, one that demonstrates how mental energy can affect how we perceive and experience 
the environment in a way that it actually reverses the cause-and-effect relationship. Let's look at a very 
young child's first encounter with a dog. Because it's a first-time experience, the child's mental 
environment is a clean slate, so to speak, with respect to dogs. He won't have any memories and 
certainly no distinctions about a dog's nature. Therefore, up to the moment of his first encounter, from 
the child's perspective, dogs don't exist. Of course, from the environment's perspective, dogs do exist 
and they have the potential to act as a force on the child's senses to create an experience. In other 
words, dogs expressing their nature can act as a cause to produce an effect inside the child's mental 
environment. What kind of effect are dogs capable of producing? Well, dogs have a range of 
expression. By range of expression I mean dogs can behave in a number of ways toward humans.
They can be friendly, loving, protective, and fun to play with; or they can be hostile, mean, and 
dangerous—just to name a few of the many behaviors they're capable of. All of these traits can be 
observed, experienced, and learned about. When the child sees the dog for the first time, there is 
absolutely nothing in his mental environment to tell him what he is dealing with. Unfamiliar, unknown, 
and unclassified environmental information can generate a sense of curiosity—when we want to find 
out more about what we're experiencing—or it can generate a state of confusion, which can easily turn 
to fear if we can't place the information into an understandable or meaningful organizational 
framework or context. In our example, the child's sense of curiosity kicks in and he rushes to the dog to 
get more sensory experience.
Notice how children are literally compelled to thrust themselves into a situation they know nothing 
about. However, in this example, the environmental forces at hand do not react favorably to the child's 
advances. The dog the child is interested in is either inherently mean or having a bad day. In any case, 
as soon as the child gets close enough, the dog bites him. The attack is so severe that the dog has to be 
pulled off the child. This kind of unfortunate experience is certainly not typical, but it's not that 
uncommon either. I chose it for two reasons: First, most people can relate to it in some way either from 
their own direct experience or through the experience of someone they know. Second, as we analyze 
the underlying dynamics of this experience from an energy perspective, we're going to learn about
1) how our minds are designed to think,
2) process information,
3) how these processes affect what we experience and
4) our ability to recognize new possibilities.

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I know this mav seem like a lot of insieht from iust one example, but the principles involved apply to 
the dynamics beneath virtually all learning. As a result of being physically and emotionally 
traumatized, the little boy in our example now has a memory and one distinction about the way dogs 
can express themselves.
If the boys ability to remember his experiences is normal, he can store this incident in a way that 
represents all of the senses the experience had an impact on: For example the attack can be stored as 
mental images based on what he saw, as well as mental sounds representing what he heard, and so on. 
Memories representing the other three senses will work the same way.
However, the kind of sensory data in his memory is not as important as the kind of energy the sensory 
data represents. We basically have two kinds of mental energy: positively charged energy, which we 
call love, confidence, happiness, joy, satisfaction, excitement, and enthusiasm, to name a few of the 
pleasant ways we can feel; and negatively charged energy, representing fear, terror, dissatisfaction, 
betrayal, regret, anger, confusion, anxiety, stress, and frustration, all representing what is commonly 
referred to as emotional pain. Because the boy's first experience with a dog was intensely painful, we 
can assume that regardless of what senses were affected, all of his memories of this experience will be 
in painful, unpleasantfeeling, negative energy.
Now, what effect will this negatively charged mental energy have on his perception and behavior if and 
when he encounters another dog? The answer is so obvious that it may seem ridiculous even to ask, but 
the underlying implications are not obvious, so bear with me. Clearly, the moment he comes into 
contact with another dog, he will experience fear. Notice that I used the word "another" to describe the 
next dog he has any contact with. What I want to point out is that 
any 
dog can cause the boy to feel 
fear, not just the one that actually attacked him. It won't make a bit of difference if the next dog he 
comes into contact with is the friendliest dog in the world, one whose nature is only to express 
playfulness and love. The child will still be afraid, and furthermore, his fear could quickly turn to 
unrestrained terror especially if the second dog (seeing a child and wanting to play) attempts to 
approach him. Each of us has at one time or another witnessed a situation in which someone was 
experiencing fear, when from our perspective there wasn't the least bit of danger or threat. Although we 
may not have said it, we probably thought to ourselves that this person was being irrational.