When you were a kid, you probably remember lying in bed, convinced there was something in the room with you.

A shape in the corner. Something under the bed. A figure in the shadows that felt real enough to make your heart race.

Nothing was actually there. But your senses picked up fragments in the dark, your mind filled in the gaps, and your body reacted as if the threat was real. That whole experience was built on misperception.

And although it’s obvious when you look back at it, the same process is still happening now, just in more subtle ways.

You see it in simple examples like optical illusions. A painted hole on the ground can make someone hesitate or jump back, and then they realise it’s just a flat painting. The reaction happens before the correction.

But it also shows up in everyday life. We misread situations, assume intent, react to something we think we’ve seen or understood, rather than what is actually there.

The issue isn’t just what we perceive. It’s how accurately we perceive it in the first place.

This is where most ideas about awareness start to fall short.

Awareness isn’t just about being calm or present. You can be completely steady and still misinterpret what’s in front of you. That’s because awareness develops in different ways, and most people are only strengthening one part of it.

As I explain in this article: How Different Practices Train Awareness Meditation, Drawing, and Energy Work, there are three distinct capacities involved:

Stability, which allows you to stay present without being pulled into reaction.

Precision, which allows you to see what is actually there rather than what you assume is there.

And sensitivity, which allows you to detect subtle internal signals that would otherwise go unnoticed.

The childhood fear in the dark is a good example of what happens when precision is low. The mind fills in the gaps and creates something that isn’t there.

Meditation can steady the mind, but it doesn’t automatically correct that distortion. Precision has to be trained directly.

And then there’s another layer. Even when perception becomes clearer externally, many people remain unaware of what’s happening internally. Subtle signals in the body, shifts in response, patterns that are already forming before they become obvious.

This is where sensitivity comes in, and where approaches that work directly with internal experience begin to develop something different. Not by adding anything new, but by making what’s already there more noticeable.

You can learn more about how to actually train your awareness properly here. Meditation on it’s own is not enough, nor is energy work, you need direct, unmediated engagement with the world too: How Different Practices Train Awareness.

It will give you a much clearer understanding of why things can feel inconsistent, and what’s actually developing depending on the approach you’re using.

The Abundant Mind

If you want to explore this further, the Abundant Mind Facebook group is where I go deeper into these ideas and how they apply in practice.

The Abundant Mind.

Upcoming Classes

If you’re interested in developing these different aspects of awareness more directly, here are the next workshops:

Reiki 3A
10th / 11th April

Buddho Level 1
17th / 18th April

Reiki Level 1
24th / 25th April

You can sign up for any of these workshops here on my Courses page. Or if you are in Egypt and want a discounted rate, contact me directly at [email protected], or via WhatsApp here: +44 7810016959

All the bestt,

Steve