Reality is a hot topic that is debated extensively in spiritual, religious, psychological and philosophical circles. Keep in mind that just like the concept of truth, people have dedicated their entire lives to the study of just the concept of reality. Therefore, a video like this one could never do justice to the entire truth about reality. That being said, that has never deterred me from the challenge of un-packing a complex concept, so lets dive into reality and into why it is so important to have a grasp on reality.
Reality is defined as the universe or the state of things as they actually exist, as opposed to an idealistic or notional idea of them. Something that is real is something that actually exists as a thing or occurring in fact, not imagined or supposed. Here we run into several roadblocks already. The people who agreed upon the definition of ‘real’ were heavily locked into the perception of the world as separate to them and also the difference between thought and what is real. They were also under the impression that the only thing that truly exists is the physical dimension of existence. If reality exists both at the physical and non-physical level of existence, then thoughts are real and therefore one cannot define reality as being a thing separate from thoughts or notions.
We would love to think that our senses of perception such as sight, sense of smell, hearing and felt perception can perceive objective reality. But actually, this couldn’t be further fro the truth. Radio waves, X-rays and gamma rays are passing through your bodies all the time, but you are not aware of this reality. And take touch for example. Particles are attracted to particles with an opposite charge. They repel other similarly charged particles. This prevents electrons from ever coming in direct contact with each other. You are made of particles. When you pick up a pen, the electrons within your body are repelling the electrons that make up the pen. Because of your nerve cells, when you feel this repulsion in the electro magnetic field, you perceive yourself to be touching it, but actually, you aren’t. Unless an organism is doing a lot of philosophical exploration, it does not stop to imagine that there is more to reality than it can perceive. I will never forget an interaction I had with a little crayfish in a stream in the desert. I watched him explore my leg for a half an hour. With no notion of a world outside the stream, I was an extraterrestrial to him. It may have been the closest a crustacean has ever come to an existential crisis. People love to believe that they are the ones with their finger on the pulse of reality. But so did that crayfish before I got into the water with it. We must stop to consider that relative to objective reality, we are that crayfish!
Objective reality is the amalgamation of every subjective reality, which added together forms the objective reality relative to any given subject. It is not possible to be able therefore to grasp objective reality unless you are #1 dis-identified and #2 can expand your perception to accommodate for all perspectives involved in the truth of a subject. This is what “source mind” ultimately is, assuming the definition of Source is all energy and therefore consciousness in existence. Even though every subjective perspective is a part of it, this objective reality exists independently from subjective perspective of it. When one is identified, perceiving objective reality is impossible because if you are identified, you will still be observing something through your individual and subjective perspective.
Subjective reality is something being perceived as real that is the direct result of one’s own perspective, including individual experiences, feelings, thoughts, needs, desires, preferences and opinions. If you are identified, the only reality you can perceive is subjective reality. You have to transcend “I” and accommodate for other perspectives (by recognizing the other as part of you, not separate to you) in order to perceive beyond subjective reality. As identified human beings, we have the ability to perceive just enough to get by in our limited physical environments, but not the capacity to perceive the full picture. A consensus reality is actually a subjective reality, not an objective one. It just means that a group of beings agrees upon a subjective reality. Religion is a good example of a subjective consensus reality. When someone says you have to accept reality, what they are saying is that you are operating from your own subjective reality and are therefore not perceiving objective reality because you are not accommodating their subjective reality.
The first thing that we must address when it comes to reality is whether or not it exists. There are many people that teach that there is no such thing as reality or that reality is in the eyes of the perceiver. People who support the idea of non-reality, including many quantum scientists, argue that there is no such thing as objective reality because every possible observation or interpretation is tainted by subjectivity and therefore does not constitute truth. Many of them teach that nothing is real, because nothing exists until it is observed or measured. This concept is supported by things like the double slit experiment. To simplify this concept insanely, until we observe reality, it exists as a wave of potentials and probabilities. The funny thing is that even these non-reality concepts prove the existence of an objective reality. Even the concept that nothing exists because it exists as potentials would constitute in and of itself as an objective reality.
An objective reality exists, regardless of whether an individual that is a part of that reality perceives that reality or not. There are many constraints when it comes to perceiving objective reality, constraints like biology, awareness, belief patterns, coping mechanisms etc. We must consider whether or not it is even possible to conceive of objective reality as a singularity. To understand more about these concepts, I urge you to watch my video titled: Objective Truth (Do We Create Our Own Reality?). It is critical to decide if we are talking about subjective reality or objective reality when we are discussing reality with someone because both are valid and extremely important. For example, a person’s personal truth, which is critical for them to get in touch with, relates to subjective reality. A truth that can set someone free from his or her own limited perceptions, which is also critical, could relate to objective reality.
To say “I create my own reality” is true in terms of subjective reality. However, relative to objective reality, it is ignorance. It is to use the spiritual truth of creation and perception to deny objective reality for the sake of individual preferences.
Reality also accommodates contradictory truths because it includes multiple dimensions. Because all things in existence are part of Source and therefore are imbued with the innate capacity to create, you can create reality. So can everyone else. Because Source is currently fragmented, objective reality is therefore a co-creation. This means you are not the only one creating objective reality.
The main goal of awakening is to become more and more aware… In other words, to become more and more able to expand so as to perceive objective reality. In fact, free will is only possible with true awareness. This means your perception must become more and more accommodating and you must always consider that you don’t know what you don’t know. But perceiving both subjective and objective reality, just like perceiving objective truth, is one of the most important practices you can dedicate your life to.
On a much more practical level, a shadow that many people in the world and even spiritual community have and that many people in the world unfortunately enable, is the denial of reality. If we have grown up in particularly powerless situations as a child, we may have the tendency of not wanting to face reality if it is painful because we don’t think we can do anything about it. We begin to engage in the creation of overlays. To understand overlays in depth, watch my video titled: Overlay, What Prevents You From Having a Real Relationship.
Reality, as it applies to this practical level, is in fact your only axis of power. Many of the spiritual practices people engage in today are a mechanism of reality avoidance instead of practices that create an expansion of subjective reality. For example, if one cannot face the fact that they are in a bad marriage, it feels much better to avoid that reality by attaching to the idea that twin flame relationships should feel that way because they are ‘intense growth relationships’. It is only by seeing the reality that the gas gauge on your car is empty that you can take the step to fill the tank up again. It is only by seeing the reality of how someone else feels that we can say and do the right thing to create repair in the relationship.
Imagine that you are in love with a person who has died. But you will not accept that the reality is that they have died. Instead, you decide that you create your own reality and so, despite rigamortis, you prop them up at the dinner table and keep talking to them and set a dinner plate in front of them. It is easy to see that this is not going to work well for you. Perhaps you stay in denial of reality because you want to avoid the pain of accepting that they are dead and being powerless to bring them to life again. The thing is, ALL of your power to do anything that can be done is within reality. It is only by accepting the reality that they are dead that you can do something about it. If it were possible in reality to bring people back from the dead, you would have to accept the reality that they are dead first. If it were not, the only way to make the next most empowered choice for yourself would be to actually accept they are dead and plan your next best move according to that truth.
For another analogy, imagine that you are in a boat in a river headed towards a waterfall. It is obvious that your only access to power is to accept the reality that you are headed towards a waterfall and to act accordingly by getting your boat out of the water. If you refuse to see this reality, you’re going over! This is part of why it is so important to get closer to objective reality by accommodating other people’s subjective realities. If the reality of how a person thinks and feels is a certain way, refusing to accept that it is their reality means you are in fact not in objective reality and therefore cannot respond accordingly. You can only make a genuine change from inside reality. Therefore, as opposed to rejecting the idea of reality in general, we should commit ourselves to the perceiving of it… Both our subjective reality and objective reality.
As far as subjective reality is concerned, different perceptions lead to completely different experiences of the reality that we individually interpret and accept as truth. Thankfully, subjective reality is mutable as hell. It is constantly amending and evolving and should be. A single change in a belief or experience can cause a complete shift to subjective reality. This is good because the current aim that the universe has relative to becoming conscious itself is to expand each subjective consciousness split within itself wide enough to accommodate all realities within itself, which allows the objective truth of the universe at large (itself) to be perceived. It is a bit like consciously putting puzzle pieces together to see the overall picture. Creating your subjective reality consciously is super healthy as long as it is not done to the exclusion of other subjective perspectives, which is the exact opposite of awareness.
To expand your grasp of reality, you must expand your perception as much as you can and even if it sucks to do sometimes, because you have absolutely no personal power from outside reality. It just so happens that in a universe with multiple dimensions and therefore layers of truth, reality is often multi layered. At one level of reality, since everything in existence is created, all reality is as much of an illusion as it is real. At one level of reality, since everything is just energy and beyond that atoms, it isn’t very dangerous for atoms to swim around with other atoms. At another level of reality, perceiving that you are swimming with fish, because it feels scary to admit to the reality that you are swimming with sharks, is a really bad idea if you are in fact swimming with sharks.
