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So, if we build reality out of our already existing store of memories, emotions and association, how do we ever perceive anything new?
The key is new knowledge. By expanding our paradigm, our model of what is real and what is possible, we create knowledge that was not a reality before because of experience. If you want someone to know what it is like to eat a peach, you can give them information like it's juicy and sweet and smooth, but they'll never really know until they bit into one. When was the last time you blew your own mind? The last time you did something so outrageously "not you" that you stood with your mouth open saying, "I cant believe I did that." It's back to the old question: If you perceive only what you know, how do you ever perceive anything new? If you create you, how do you ever create any new you? What is the real world?

Hopefully, whatever box one is thinking inside of has windows, so that new input can enter. Then it's a matter of choosing (consciously or otherwise) what one does with that new input: toss it back out the window, or use it to modify / improve / expand the box you're in, with a central aim of getting a clearer picture of the box itself.

Ideally, at some point, it would be nice to step outside the box altogether, but I don't know if that's possible. Or if it is, that's what we call 'enlightenment': knowing Reality as Such.

We form cognitive schemata of things and actions.

As new things are encountered, exemplars, we add them to schemata that they are the most congruent with and the concept of the schema, which is really just the "average" of the exemplars, changes to include that example.

Its why we know so many different shapes and arrangements as "cakes". and how if we see a cake in a design that we have never seen before, we can tell that it is a cake very quickly.

Basically, nothing is entirely "new" unless you are talking about initial neuro development. These not new things can be arranged into new forms, but at the bottom of it all are common properties to all things of that category.