Mindful Monday - Reality Check

“Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.” – John Lennon

Reality: The quality or state of being real.

Unreal: Imaginary.

Your thoughts create your reality. Your reality is real because you think it is. It is unreal.

Your beliefs create a lens through which the events of your world are interpreted, and this lens serves as a selective filter through which you sift and sort the evidence that matches up with what you believe to be true.

One of the biggest mysteries in quantum mechanics is whether physical reality exists independent of its observer.

Reality Check

The Five Senses

Sight, smell, taste, touch, and sound seem to be simple enough tools for evaluating reality. Proceed With Caution. These sensory faculties often merely affirm pre-conceived notions suggesting that you don’t really see, smell, taste, touch and hear what you see, smell, taste, touch, and hear, but rather that you see, smell, taste, touch and hear what you believe you are going to see, smell, taste, touch, and hear. The pumpkin latte you are sipping likely contains no pumpkin nor does it taste even remotely like a real pumpkin.

Fear

Fear replaces the unknown with the unbearable. While it feels real, it is the very definition of unreal in that it is a psychological and physical reaction to the unknown and thus cannot be trusted as a purveyor of reality.

Consensus - Beware

Certainly, it is reality if everyone else believes it, correct? Not so fast. The Mandela effect refers to a situation in which a large mass of people believe that an event occurred when it did not. The term was coined in 2009 after it was discovered that there was a large contingent of people across the world who believed that Nelson Mandela had died in the 180s (he died in 2013). Masses of people (the collective) remembered seeing news coverage of his death as well as a speech by his widow in such vivid detail, even though it had not yet happened.

Your one-of-a-kind reality is constructed by your one-of-a-kind brain. Your reality is your brain's interpretation of the signals it receives, heavily shaped by senses, fears, and consensus. The highly cognitive nature of reality suggests that it is quite unreal.

“There's no reality except the one contained within us. That's why so many people live an unreal life. They take images outside them for reality and never allow the world within them to assert itself.” - Hermann Hesse