The Main Difference Between a Billionaire and a Beggar

Perception dictates everything we see, the whole shape of our world, even to the everyday things we take for granted. To understand perception even more, take the following situations: You go to the cinema one evening to enjoy a good film, but what you actually see is the continuous projection of a series of still frames separated by periods of darkness. It is your perception of what you think you see that supplies what appears to you as the movement of an image or story line.

But what you think you see doesn’t really exist. It is your mind which connects the continuous sequence of single units in some sort of order because movies are an optical illusion. They are not capable of either movement or coherence until you, the viewer, supply both by connecting what is projected on screen to the thought processes in your own mind.

The same with pictures from your television picture tube, which is basically nothing more than a gun which fires electrons at a screen. Your mind connects the electron dots into the picture images you think you see, while it totally ignores the true reality of what actually appears. Television, as seen, is thus another illusion.

You may also go to a concert to hear good “music”, but in reality this is just a series of notes separated from each other by intervals of silence. An instrument or a voice can only produce single sounds, one at a time. What we hear as continuous sound is actually a creation within our own mind, music being an auditory illusion. Without the listener’s participation, and his or her perception of what is heard, sound would be incapable of its “flow”.

Therefore, reality, in the strictest sense, is not a ready-made environment waiting for us to enjoy, not an empty room we suddenly go into. It is actually a product of our own creation in every social situation, one maintained by our individual perception which gives it the validation it requires to be accepted as “truth”.

Different versions of truth

Because we are not prepared in advance to see through the illusions of perception, we readily accept what we perceive as the full “truth” of what is there. That is why every person has a different perception of “the truth”, until it is shared and validated by a number of people, which then helps it to be accepted as verifiable truth. That also explains why our perception of life is always bound to be at odds on a cultural level with that of others because they really cannot “see” the things we so readily take for granted. If they do, it will be affected by their cultural lens, in the first instance, before a shared perception is gradually negotiated.

Understanding how the mind works, and the power it has on the perception of our world, is acknowledging that we can create our realities and self-perceptions at a whim, if we wish, because the only difference between two worlds, for example between a billionaire and that of a beggar, is self-perception. Both people have conscious and unconscious elements operating in their lives which determine their differing existence.

One person’s self-belief has propelled him to the heights he desires while that of another will help him to stay deprived. Not because this deprived state is automatic, or has to be accepted, but because the beggar’s perception of success more likely depends on the direct intervention of another force (whether government, local authority, the public or winning the lottery) in order to change his situation for the better.

The beggar is likely to perceive himself as a victim, impotent to change his existence in any way and so remains in the same situation primarily through self-belief. The billionaire is likely to see himself as a creator, a person with power, in charge of his own destiny, fully capable of making things happen and changing his environment.

Thus the first step in acknowledging perception and its power is establishing what negative beliefs we carry around in our unconscious; to assess the extent to which we limit our achievements and what we desire just by wishing them away.

For example, like the way we block our thoughts through fear, or put unnecessary hurdles in our path. In essence, we have to assess how we put those fears on to our world every day of our lives which often come back to haunt us later on.