There’s this thought experiment called Mary’s Room. Mary’s a scientist who knows everything about color — the physics, the biology, the psychology. But she’s lived her whole life in a black-and-white room. When she finally steps out and sees red for the first time, does she actually learn something new? Of course she does. She learns what red feels like.
That’s the gap we live in all the time: perception blocking.
Sharks, Awe, and the Blindfold We Wear
I watched this video of a diver putting his hand on a shark’s snout. The shark’s eye membranes flick up, its senses short out, and suddenly this apex predator is spinning helplessly in the water — a trance called tonic immobility.
Here’s the crazy part: watching it didn’t just make the shark go still. It stunned me, too. I wasn’t in the water, but my perception got jolted out of its lazy autopilot.
That’s what awe does — it cracks the wall of blocking. You think you “know” sharks until you see something that changes what a shark is in your bones.
The Wallpaper Problem
The world is insane — in the best way — but we stop noticing.
- Dogs went from wolves to best friends.
- Cats are basically aliens we agreed to live with.
- Sharks have sensory hacks built into their faces.
- Galaxies wheel overhead every night.
But we scroll past it, overexposed and underwhelmed. Our brains paper the world over like wallpaper. Ordinary. Normal. Blah.
Perception blocking isn’t ignorance; it’s over-familiarity.
Where God Fits In
People say they don’t believe in God because they’ve decided He’s not there. But maybe the real issue is we’ve blocked perception of the extraordinary.
We’ve been trained to see a shark as “dangerous fish” and a galaxy as “pretty picture” — but in both cases, the awe is still there, waiting to rip through when the blocking cracks.
Whether you call that God, consciousness, or just the shock of reality — the point is, the sacred doesn’t disappear. We just stop noticing it.
How to Break the Block
There are three ways back:
- Disruption — something smashes the wall. A shark video. A lightning storm. Love. Death.
- Immersion — step into something new long enough that your filters fail. Travel, deep study, falling into music until it swallows you.
- Attunement — learning to see the ordinary as extraordinary. Watching your breath, staring at trees, listening to silence.
Closing the Loop
Mary’s room is our room. We read, scroll, consume — but until we step out, until we see, we don’t know.
Perception blocking keeps us numb. Awe unblocks us. And every time the membrane flicks open, even for a second, we get a glimpse of the real: teeth, galaxies, love, God — whatever word you want to use.
The trick isn’t to chase more knowledge. It’s to crack the blindfold.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/mxSKCRK7m9E