Distinctions

Distinctions make separations in environmental information where no previous separation existed. A child won't make a distinction between a spoon and pencil until someone teaches him the difference. Otherwise, he will instinctively put both in his mouth, until the information stored in his mental environment acts as a force on his perception to distinguish between the two. Environmental objects give off information about themselves, but the information that is perceived already exists inside of each individual, unless it is a first-time experience. The spoon and the information about what it is create an energy loop between the inside and the outside, where before the distinction was learned the spoon and he pencil would fall into the same category as something to put into the mouth. Anything we don't know, but exists in the environment as a possibility, is a distinction that we haven't learned to make yet. If we haven't learned to make the distinction, we won't perceive the various types of information the environment is giving off about itself.

Traders act as a force on the market to move prices. Since most traders don't plan their trades or want to take responsibility for their outcomes they are highly susceptible to acting out of any number of fears. Traders who are motivated to act out of fear generally aren't aware that their fear drastically reduces the choices they perceive as available, making their behavior very predictable to an objective observer (someone not caught in the same cycles of fear). So under certain market conditions large groups of traders will all be trying to do the same thing—because of what they fear will or won't happen—upsetting the equilibrium, forcing prices to move in one direction. If you haven't yet learned to identify these conditions, you naturally won't perceive them when they exist because there has to be an energy loop between the inner and outer environments for perception to occur.

How Our Perceptions Shape Our Experiences  

We experience the environment through our senses. At the most fundamental level the world gets transformed into electrical impulses of energy, energy that carries information, as well as feelings and emotions ranging from extreme happiness to rage, elation to despair, love to hate, and all the degrees of feelings and emotions in between. Each first-time encounter with the environment creates a memory, distinction, or association that didn't exist previously. A firsttime encounter is any experience that is completely unique, like learning the meaning of a word that we have never heard before, and there is nothing in our mental environment to relate it to. These new memories, distinctions, and associations build into a mental framework that constitute what we have learned about the nature of the outside environment. 

Once we learn something, mental energy will then act as a force on our senses to recognize in the environment what we have learned about it. So there is a twoway flow of energy; first, we learn something through some unique experience; then, we perceive what we have learned in the environment. Fear is a perfect example for illustrating this concept. We feel fear when we recognize in the environment anything that we have learned can cause us pain. We will feel this fear and consequently have a fearful experience because the negatively charged energy in our memories, distinctions, and associations will act as a force on our eyes, ears, nose, and sense of touch to recognize in the environment anything that is similar to what we have already learned can cause pain.

So when we perceive something (recognizing what we have already learned) in the environment, mental energy is acting as a force on our senses, instead of the environment acting as a force on our senses. In other words, the conditions are similar or identical to what we already know, and we can therefore attach some meaning to the information. The environment isn't creating the meaning as in a first-time encounter; the meaning is already inside of us, and in essence we create the experience by the way in which we perceive it, through our memories, distinctions, and associations.

The event was different for each individual because everyone experienced it differently. Their experience was a function of the structure of their mental environment. Each individual will make different associations with the same information and then experience the varying degrees of positive or negative energy connected with those associations.

Each individual will make different distinctions with the same information, in effect placing a different meaning on it. Each meaning will be composed of varying degrees of positive or negative energy, thereby creating a different experience relative to everyone else's. Each person will experience the amount of time the event took differently, depending on whether they are perceiving the experience with predominately positively charged energy (time speeds up) or negatively charged energy (time slows down). Without taking all these mental variables into consideration, it is little wonder why people get so frustrated with one another when they can't agree on what happened. Everybody's version of what happened was unique, because the way each of us experience the outside environment is determined by how we perceive it, and how we perceive it is a function of what is already inside of us unless we are in the process learning something new.

The implications are that much of what we experience of the outside environment is shaped from the inside, not from the outside as most people would assume. In other words, our first-time experiences shape the meaning, as well as determine the quality of energy connected with that meaning, and then once the meaning exists inside of us, it shapes our experience of the outside by the way we pick and choose information and how we feel about that information.