No One Lives in Reality

No One Lives in Reality

No one lives in reality. We live in the thinking we have about reality. We live in what we make reality mean.

So for instance, reality right now for me is that the town is doing a major construction project in the park (which is literally behind my backyard). Practically that means that at 7am the rock drilling begins and at 5pm it ends (with short respites in between).

There are moments it drives me crazy and there are moments that I don’t even notice it. Sort of like my personal thinking. Sometimes the track in my mind is so loud it could feel like someone drilling in my head and at other times I don’t notice it because I’m involved in life.

I don’t live in the reality of the drilling. I live in the thinking I have about the drilling. Sometimes I hate it and sometimes it’s background noise. My own personal experience of reality shifts as my thinking about life shifts.

This goes for anyone’s reality. Reality may be that I am single or divorced, in physical pain or emotional pain, in debt or financially strapped, heavy or thin, etc. But that is not where my experience comes from.

My experience comes from what I make it mean to be single, in pain, in debt or heavy. As my state of mind and thinking shifts around my reality, the meaning I make about it shifts as well, leading to a change in my experience.

When I think “I want it my way, in my time, it shouldn’t be like this, this is a problem” I feel the discomfort that thinking brings and innocently blame it on what I call reality.

As I allow thought to flow and insightfully see that it is personal and not worth taking too seriously, my mind naturally settles allowing perspective to alter the way I experience what is without making up too much meaning about it. This is psychological health and freedom.