How Do Experiences Confirm Our Definitions?
Based on our current knowledge, our will arises according to the evaluations contained within that knowledge. These evaluations give rise to expectations about the future. If the future that unfolds corresponds to what we expected, then the experience supports our knowledge. If it does not, the experience refutes it by revealing the errors within our knowledge.
Reality is manifested in the material world according to the laws of Heaven, and we become capable of perceiving more and more of it because we evaluate the reality that appears.
Evaluation creates contrast, and this contrast makes the laws of Heaven perceptible. We devalue and reject one aspect of the reality that appears, while we value the opposing aspect positively and focus our attention on it. In this way, one part of reality stands out and becomes separated within our perception, making it possible to come to know it.
We then formulate and define this newly perceptible aspect of reality. At this stage, however, our definitions always contain evaluation as well. Therefore, our definitions are, in fact, incomplete, because they describe only one aspect of the reality that appears. The rejected aspect is absent from the definition, and later experiences reveal that other aspect as well — the part that had previously been rejected.
Evaluation, however, is not part of reality itself. It is necessary only because it enables us to perceive reality. Therefore, subsequent experiences reveal that the aspect of reality we have become capable of perceiving corresponds to the experiences that appear only when understood without evaluation.
In this way, experiences continually refute our previous conceptions, and through repetition we gradually become capable of formulating the experiences we have come to perceive without attaching evaluations to them.
Only when no evaluation arises within us during an experience are we able to define accurately that which we became capable of perceiving through our earlier evaluations.
Experiences continue to repeat as long as any evaluation arises within us concerning the reality that appears, so that we may come to understand precisely what we are experiencing.
Through the process of knowing, we come to know more and more details of the reality that appears. The greater our knowledge becomes, the more laws we become capable of perceiving, because the network of relationships between the laws allows every new piece of knowledge to make the recognition of further laws possible.
Whenever we become capable of recognizing a new law, we begin evaluating that law once again so that contrast may arise, enabling us to perceive the different forms in which the new law is manifested.