Pistol Grand Master Brian Enos defines Perception as “a constant state of inquiry without comparison and without conclusion.” In this context, you are acting on real time input from all of your senses. You are seeing, feeling and hearing and more importantly processing everything in your environment. Once you make a conclusion, perception stops. Once this happens, you must reacquire, reassess, and react to the changes. This takes time that you may not have. Brian also defines mediation as “simply a state of total awareness of your own function as your senses perceive it.” He recommends mediation WHILE you shoot instead of before. If we were able to follow this, when necessary, we conduct our daily tasks with total awareness in real time and are able to act on things before they were apparent to others.
Processing
We all understand by now that data processing and storage for a video is significantly higher than a simple picture. The video is ½ the quality and twice the data. This applies to our brains as well. By balancing hard and soft focus we regulate how much data we are attempting to process. We also reduce processing needs by using perception, as we are not attempting to conclude what is happening. Studies tell us under stress we can only truly process 3-4 things at once. But as we know, if you concentrate, you focus on 1. So it is fairly easy to accept Brian’s ideas and I trust you are all with me at this point.
Awareness
Depending on what you do for a living, your Situational Awareness could be something of vital importance to you. We all must maintain some level of it every day. Driving, going to the mall, and work are some examples of it. For those Gunfighter out there, being ahead of the enemy and not allowing him to force you to REACT, is truly a matter of life and death. We say the lack of normal, or the presence of abnormal. Some refer to this as being “Switched On”
I write this to try and get you to think on how you operate. Are you “switched on” or do you find yourself caught by surprise on a regular basis, even if you are focused on the task at hand.
Ash