Personal bias suppression
Removal of cultural filter can be described as the suppression of a geographically determined bias that human beings look through in their every day life. This bias affects our ability to evaluate the world around us in ways that are much more powerful than most people are willing to admit.
It seems that a human being's perspective on the world is built up out of a complex set of filters which are based upon pre-existing beliefs, past experiences, fears, prejudices, stereotypes, and cultural symbols. This gives us a powerfully consistent and unconscious tendency to notice and assign significance to observations that confirm existing cultural beliefs while filtering out and rationalizing observations that do not confirm existing cultural beliefs. The cultural filter forces us to look at the world, not as a human being, but as a false version of our true selves-- be it a conservative Christian mother, a Muslim housewife, an aboriginal tribesman, or a materialistic cynical white middle-class male with a European Christian heritage and atheistic beliefs.
It’s said that we don’t look at things as they are, but instead look at things as we are. The experience of this component, however, seems to completely obliterate this geographically determined bias and shows people that culture is merely a subjective and often delusional perspective-- not an objective reality. This experience can create profound changes in perspective that can last a lifetime by making people become who they really are and not what they were raised to be.