In yesterday's post, I mentioned finally seeing something that had always been there and discussed the idea of becoming more aware.
My friend, John Nieuwenburg, added the name of the gatekeeper that hold us back from seeing or hearing what's right in front of us, and I wanted to share that insight with you.
Every second, your nervous system processes something like eleven million bits of sensory information. What you're consciously aware of at any given moment is perhaps forty of them. The Reticular Activating System — a dense cluster of neurons at the base of the brain — is the gatekeeper. It decides, constantly and automatically, what matters enough to surface into your awareness. Everything else gets filtered out before you ever know it was there.
Here's what's fascinating: the filter isn't fixed, but it is holding you back.
The moment something becomes important to you, the RAS reclassifies it. Buy a red car and suddenly red cars are everywhere — they were always there, you simply weren't passing them through. Get interested in birds and your morning walk fills with species you never noticed. Have your first child and every stroller in the city materializes as if from thin air.
Nothing changed in the world except the filter.
I think about this in the context of listening. An experienced listener says, "pay attention to how the cymbal decays," or "notice what happens to the soundstage when the orchestra reaches full volume." The moment they say it, your brain creates a category. On the next listen, the RAS says this matters — and suddenly you can't not hear it.
The detail was always in the recording. What changed was the filter.
But the RAS mechanism isn't the only gatekeeper working to keep us in the dark. No, there's an even tougher guard we need to be aware of, one my friend Seth refers to all the time, and it too has a name: the Resistance: the ancient brain's preference for conserving energy.
When something new appears, your ancient brain whispers that you're already full, there's no room, what you have is enough. Taking on more means you're going to drown. That instinct served us well when we were scraping for berries or running from predators — conserve resources, stick to what you know.
We're not on the savanna anymore. That voice has nothing useful to offer and we need to work to defy it.
The way past both gatekeepers is the same: try something new. New music, new equipment, new listening techniques, new ways of paying attention. Each is a fresh instruction to the RAS and a small act of defiance against the Resistance.
It was all there waiting for you.
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