I've been talking about perception a lot, so maybe we could have a brief look at that one. What you perceive is what you become aware of, which is what you have to work with in the course of analysis.
Your state of being matters to your perception. If you're afraid you notice certain things related to that fear, and you're much more motivated to pursue or avoid those things, and they take up more space in your consciousness and you are sensing them more thoroughly and thinking about them more thoroughly - which is what we've been exploring with paranoid perception in particular.
The same goes if you are hungry or have some sort of appetite for something, or angry and wrathful towards something. Or on the sunnier side, you are satisfied or joyous. There are differences of perception even in your level of engagement towards something, whether you are intensely interested in something or whether your attention is diffused and your mind is emptier.
Meditation and ritual changes your perception and what you are noticing and what is moving and motivating you. And eating certain foods and ingesting certain stimulating plant matter like teas or coffee, or intoxicating substances; these things too can radically alter your state of mind and your perception and therefore what you are motivated to think about and do, which builds additional structures through memory, analysis, and experience.
Part of what makes perception what it is, is that it is a sort of pivotal point of mediation between what is happening in the world and in you, and what you are thinking and feeling and experiencing.
