Episode 44: The Disco Ball Conundrum

The Heart of The Episode

       We so easily move through this world holding onto our perspective as the absolute, universal truth. But what if what we call "fact" is simply a divine projection—a unique tapestry woven from our brain's physical wiring, sensory filters, and lived human experiences? In this soul-nourishing solo episode, Elisha Light Angel invites us into the wondrous intersection of neuroscience, perception, and human connection. Through the shimmering metaphor of a disco ball, Elisha illuminates how conflict softens the moment we realize no two people are reflecting the exact same angle of the room. This conversation is a warm permission slip to lay down the weight of having to be "right" and step into the spacious, compassionate beauty of curiosity.

The Transmission

        Our biological senses are magical, biased filtering systems—constructing "controlled hallucinations" and neural highways that translate raw cosmic frequencies into our personal, everyday reality. When two souls stand in the exact same room or disagreement, they are simply occupying different facets of the same disco ball, gazing at entirely different walls from their own sacred angles. Real connection isn't about fighting to prove your own reflection; it’s about softening your heart, dropping your armor, and gently asking the person beside you, "What does the world look like from your mirror?"

The Invitation from Elisha

       Elisha lovingly invites you to step into the Disco Ball Check-In. The next time you feel the ego rising—wanting to state an opinion as an absolute law or feeling the urge to "win" a moment—pause. Take a breath and ask yourself: "What facet of the disco ball am I standing on right now, and what am I blind to from this angle?" Allow yourself to hold sacred, open space for another human's perceived reality without needing to fix it, correct it, or defend your own. Let curiosity lead the way back to unity.

Time Stamps:

00:00 – Introduction: Facts vs. Opinions and the nuances of internal reality

03:18 – The Biology of Perception: How the brain interprets frequencies and constructs "hallucinations"

06:57 – Biased Sensing: Why our physical senses don't give us the whole truth

08:50 – The Disco Ball Metaphor: Understanding different facets and angles of reflection

12:27 – Trading Certainty for Curiosity: How dropping the need to win deepens relationships

17:13 – The Tool: How to perform the "Disco Ball Check-In" in everyday life

19:13 – Closing: Holding space and being kind to your human self

Link to Transcript of Show:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/172uXCNADl2cK76989pYRzRosujU0TKQv/view?usp=sharing

Apply to be on the Show:

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Find Elisha Elsewhere on the web:

https://linktr.ee/elishalightangel

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

The truth is, a lot of times it's not a fact, or it's not enough information to know if it corroborates with the fact. There's so many nuances that go into what creates our own internal reality. So our perception is our reality. Hello and welcome to That's Just Human, a podcast that explores all aspects of being human, living in a human body, and dealing with life's obstacles. I'm your host, Elisha Light Angel. By day, I'm a massage therapist, currently a podcaster, but like you, I live in a human body and I have a plethora of life experiences that fall into being human. So here's a place where I like to talk about some of mine. I like to interview people and just share some of the wisdom that I've acquired over the years. And today I am doing a solo episode and gonna talk about a few things that have been on my mind lately. And I've really been mulling over this concept about the way people state things when they're speaking as if they are fact, when it could be an opinion or a belief or something that they heard through the grapevine. And the truth is a lot of times it's not a fact, or it's not enough information to know if it corroborates with the fact. Like if you heard something through the grapevine, for instance, that's what they call hearsay in a court of law, and that's not acceptable because you have to have more of a proof in order to state something as a fact. Well, in real life, it's a little bit more complicated, not that law isn't real life for some people, but I just mean our daily lives. You get me. There's so many nuances that go into what creates our own internal reality. So this is what I'm gonna deep dive into and talk about because I have been watching different videos, learning different science behind our brains and the way it develops and the way it thinks, and it just trips me out, and that's what kind of got me on this tangent. So our perception is our reality. That's why when you're having a conflict with somebody and you have two different perceptions, this is where the conflict is coming in because you're not seeking to understand the other perception, but instead you're trying to force your perception on the other person as if only your perception is the fact, except they can both be facts. It's kind of akin to that phrase that says there's when there's an argument, there's your side, my side, and then a third side. But I feel there could be even more because if you had several witnesses to an argument, people are still going to have different perceptions based on things that they believe, the ways that their brain has pieced together different experiences and how they've learned to navigate life, and it really filters into that. So going on to how trippy this is, just the actual biology of the way that our brains develop from a time that we pop out of our moms and come into this world, our brains are now having to start learning all about our environment, and everything is basically just a frequency that's moving. And our brain is interpreting these frequencies to create what we see, to create what we hear, what we taste, what we smell, what we feel. All of that is our brain putting those together to give our own perception. So this is going to naturally develop as far as your senses in your body are concerned. And every little biological thing your brain is learning how to navigate. So it's creating files when new information is coming in, and then when more comes in, it creates more files to compare it to, and then it becomes throwing stuff out, trying to predict what is accurate. I can't explain all of the science. I've just watched videos and I'm telling you it's really trippy, and if it's down your rabbit hole of interest, I highly recommend finding some videos on the neuroscience and how that develops over time and how really everything in our life is pretty much a hallucination. It takes our auditory senses. So we measure everything in Hertz. And if you're really low on the hertz, one, two, three, four, it just sounds like a thumping or a rhythm, and as you go higher, the rhythm gets higher. Well, I think it's at 24 or 25 hertz. I can't remember the exact number, but our brain can no longer keep up with the rhythm of the Hertz and then assigns a tone to that Hertz. And so our brain is hallucinating a tone, and this tone can change depending on the vessel that it's coming out of. So if I was creating a tone, it sounds different than when you create the tone at the same hurts. Or if a bear is creating a tone, or a dog, or a cat, uh, they're different. And so our brain is basically making up how that sounds. And so if you think about it, you're in a room full of people and you all agree about how it looks or you know, certain aspects of it, but the way that your brain is filtering all of that information and putting it together is slightly different for each and every one of you. And therefore, your reality might be slightly different than somebody else's reality just alone on this biological perspective of the way that our brain, neurology, and neurons form patterns and highways inside of our head to communicate, to get our thoughts across and do all the bodily functions that it does without us even thinking about it. So basically, our physical senses are like these biased filtering systems. And if they're doing this and we're experiencing something different, then it brings up the question, you know, how can we be so certain that our opinion might be the right opinion, or that it's the best one, or that it is actually a fact, or that the way that we interpret something is the way that it should be, instead of listening to all, because is that really making it a fact just because it's coming from you, or is there more nuance and more layers to it? That's part of the question, right? So beyond just that biology, then you have your entire life full of all sorts of experiences. And this is just learning how to human, right? Uh basic stuff like walking and talking when you're young and getting older and learning how to socialize, the rules of society, how things are operating, where you live, like and realizing that things operate different, maybe from a family unit to being in school or being at church or being at a public event, things are being put together to figure out the world, but also to keep us safe. So depending on the environment and the experiences that we had in that environment depends on how our brain determines the best ways for us to be safe, and it determines the way that our thinking and brain patterns are developed over the course of our life. And a lot of this happens really young as it's putting all this together. And by the time we're adults, we already have this biological perspective, this environmental perspective coming together at play within our brains and then affecting the way that we see the world. So I have always thought of people's perspectives of being like those little tiny mirrors on a disco ball, because if you look up close, that's what they are, just these teeny tiny little mirrors, and they are all over the ball. Well, imagine if each person were to be a mirror on this disco ball, they have a slightly different perspective. So even though there's a mirror next to it, because it's on a sphere, even though they're looking at the same thing, it's a slightly different angle, therefore a slightly different perspective. But what about that mirror that is on the other side of that disco ball? It's looking at a completely different wall. It's not looking at a different room, just a different wall in the room. But you don't see that from your perspective of the wall that you're looking at. And so when they describe what they're seeing, and you're like, nah, nah man, that's not right. That's not a reality. How can you know what their reality is? Because we're making this up in our heads. So for me, I have really had to learn this skill over my life. Don't think that I just have been doing this all the time. I used to be really stubborn. I used to be one of those people that I was stating everything is fact or what I believed is what everybody should believe. And the more life experiences I've had, the more I have softened into listening to different people and different perspectives. And part of that's like this podcast. I get to listen to different people with different life experiences who have formed different perspectives on life and just hear how that is for them. And some things I can relate to, some things are completely outside of that. So they're, you know, maybe on the other side of that disco ball. And I don't think anything is just one particular fact. I think there is room for both perspectives, multiple perspectives, really, in any kind of a situation, and that by listening to multiple perspectives, then it gives a broader picture of what is being looked at. Because if you have back to the disco ball metaphor and analogy, we're looking at a wall and you only see it from yours and I, your perspective, me from mine, and the next person from theirs, but we're all describing from our slightly different perspectives this wall, that wall becomes even more vast and even more detailed in what we're able to observe through that. So it's interesting though. I think there's something within our humanness that has the desire to be certain, to be right about whatever it is that we think that we know or we know that we know, or something that we've learned somewhere, instead of thinking that we could possibly know, but also allowing for a different perspective to be there. It's the art of learning how to be curious, not just curious about what's around you, but curious about why is it that somebody is seeing this situation so differently from me? What is it about that? Can we explore that a little bit deeper? Can we try to understand what it is and explore? That's that's it. There's there can be a huge curiosity. So that could bring into having better communication with others, which could deepen a relationship because I feel at the end of the day, too, one of the things that we all want is to have somebody to be able to hear us. And that could mean just being heard, sometimes it means being understood, and sometimes it means having somebody that you can relate to, and depending on what you need at any given moment. But I feel that communication could really deepen when we learn how to appreciate other people's perspectives for what they are, and once you start really understanding how different the brains operate on so many different levels, it's well, at least for me anyway, it's hard not to just be compassionate or to be empathetic for somebody else because I don't know what it's like to be them, and so I'm also trying to be considerate and learn the way that they think so we can better communicate, so we can better do whatever it is that we're doing together, whether that's a friendship or a work endeavor or um creating something, who knows? So when it comes to communicating within relationships with other people with different perspectives that are happening, what if instead of trying to prove your angle, and this is something that you can put into practice next time you come into a scenario, that instead of trying to prove your angle and your reflection, ask the other person what it is that they are seeing. So you're asking, what is your mirror reflection telling you? And so it's a different way to approach a situation than maybe you've done before, and so you might have a different outcome. Instead of having an argument, maybe there's just like this really cool open discussion. It's learning how to drop the need to be right or the need to win in an argument, and instead coming to an understanding. I think that would be better as having any kind of a disagreement is to learn how to come to an understanding as opposed for one person to be winning or being in the right for something. And I feel that's part of our human ego wants to be right. It wants to be the one, the one up, the the one that's winning or the right perspective when there is an argument with somebody. I think, especially when it's people that you're dealing with that you really love, you know, as opposed to an argument you might be having with somebody at work that they're they're not somebody in your life that you're going to be caring about for years and years and years to come. Uh that that's my difference here. So in this communication, it's trying to understand what happened within their realm of life and experiences that caused them to have this particular line of thinking, to see things from this perspective. It opens up your own door of curiosity. So it's dropping your own guards to become curious, to let down that desire to be on top. And especially again in these really deep bonded relationships that you cherish, learning how to have empathy for the other person and where they are, and the reality that they have concocted inside of their mind helps to understand their reality. Maybe you can compare it to your reality and know that even though you might be experiencing some of the same things because you're going through different things internally, it will be a different experience for each of you. So here is an exercise you can do to start learning how to embrace some empathy in these situations, and we're going to call it your disco ball check-in since that's been my analogy for today. So whenever you're in a situation and you catch yourself stating an opinion or a belief as a fact or something that you've just heard about, and that could be saying the fact is, or simply noticing that you're trying to make whatever it is that you're saying come across as if it is the only truth that exists. Try to pause. Ask yourself what facet of the disco ball am I standing on right now? And what am I blind to from this angle? Right? Because there's always going to be something that we're blind to, and learning how to admit that to yourself will help to ease the communication that you can be having with this other person. And then when they have a difference of opinion or an opposing point of view, just hold space for them to allow them to share what is their perceived reality, and don't feel the need to correct it or to fix it or to be right or to challenge it. It is okay for somebody else's perceived reality to be different from your perceived reality because all I don't know how many people there are, eight billion, nine billion people living on this planet. That's how many different perceptions of reality there are. Wild. So that's your disco ball check-in, and it just takes practice. The more you start practicing observing yourself in real time, the easier it gets to begin navigating situations differently than your past self or in healthier ways or ways that are more communicative and insightful and help you come to an understanding and even form deeper bonds with people that you desire to have deeper bonds with and cherish and love. If this episode resonates with you and you think a friend would also resonate, please feel free to share. Help get my podcast out there to listening. Please feel free to give me reviews, go like and subscribe on YouTube, and I just embrace your humanness. Be kind, be human. And remember, everything is part of the journey.