Relying on Feel
to Decide What is Real
May Have It's Appeal But Be Folly --
It's a Simpler Ride
But It Seals You Inside
And Makes It Quite Tough To Stay Jolly
Recognizing the subjective, limited and often counter-productive ways that we decide what is "real" can give you a much greater degree of control over your life, your emotions, the amount of fun versus suffering in your life and your general experience.
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The perception of reality is an experience that many people never think to question.
Not realizing that there are serious potential flaws in anyone's ability to perceive reality -- and not realizing that reality actually changes as you change your perspective -- leaves you stuck with reality as you happen to be experiencing it.
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Reality, it turns out -- like beauty -- is in the eye of the beholder. Ask any psychologist. Then ask any physicist. |
A psychologist will tell you that your mind is making things up all the time as it does it's best to interpret the various sound and light and touch sensations into some sort of meaning or fact of your life. If you believe someone will almost certainly tell you a bad thing about yourself, it happens very clearly and can happen even if no one is around. If you believe that no one will tell you a bad thing about yourself, you will probably not hear anything, even if it is said right into your ear.
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We perceive reality from inside a biological box with sensors on the outside which send information inside to where we are "conscious" and "aware." The sensory machinery misses all sorts of stuff, makes things up, fills in blanks, distorts and edits, depending on fears, wishes, attitudes and expectations.
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A psychologist -- this psychologist, writing this, for example -- will tell you that you cannot be certain of what you see, what you remember, what you feel -- nothing. Everyone is basically wrapped in a box, fully padded, and reliant on bio-electric sensory input devices and bioelectric sensory input interpretation devices that are amazingly good but far from flawless. The idea that you can actually trust these input and sensory interpretation devices to be accurate is a delusion that many rely on to make the day go more smoothly. It is true that they are largely reliable, mostly reliable, usually reliable. And they are basically the best we have. But relying on memory or awareness without realizing that it could be very flawed is about the same as relying on advertisements on television to inform you about the pros and the cons of products.
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Many people assert that they can only accept what they can see, feel and touch. But they are naively missing one of the most important, potentially powerful and, to some, frightening aspects of the human experience -- that sight, feel and touch are amazingly unreliable and limited.
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People say they can only accept what they can see, feel and touch. But this misses one of the most important and potentially frightening aspects of the human experience. It misses noting that sight, touch, smell, sense of movement and motion and sound are not experienced through reliable sensory machinery.
It misses noting that sight, touch, smell, sense of movement and motion and sound are not experienced through reliable sensory machinery. If by "real" you mean what you can touch, smell, feel or see, then you mean that you are going to accept as "real" whatever the bioelectric mechanisms of your brain indicate. These mechanisms are often unquestioningly accepted without any realization that they routinely -- CONSTANTLY -- misjudge, make things up, edit and distort informantion.
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Attitude is especially important in the perception of reality. Attitude dictates what we compare things to. In the classic glass-half-full-half-empty situation, one can decide that it is wonderfully lucky and good that the glass is not empty (comparing it to having half to having none) OR one can decide that it is terrible luck and bad that the glass is not full (comparing it to having a glassfull.) This is not a silly thing. It is the hard-boiled truth of things. You decide whether things are good or bad, right or wrong, lucky or disasterous this way. This dictates whether you feel like you have a good, lucky life or a disasterous one.
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Further, and even more disconcerting, few people recognize the fact that there is actually no way to verify anything beyond the fact that you think. (I think, therefore I am.)
This was discussed briefly in the movie, The Matrix. Our sensory information systems are so feable that they are not able to reliably tell even whether we are asleep dreaming, captured in some mechanized bathtub that keeps us asleep and generating electricity (as in The Matrix), or generating our lives as we go along, making up memories of experiences.
One of the little secrets science seldom mentions is that feeling, touching, seeing and smelling are part imagination AT LEAST. And, actually, there is no way of verifying whether we're awake or asleep and dreaming our bodies and our lives.
How does it help to be more confused about reality and what is known? Ah, here is the punchline. If reality is so subjective and impossible to accurately assess then a person has a much greater lattitude with respect to what he or she is going to decide is happening -- leaving open a number of positive interpretations to almost anything. Further, this puts into question the argument against believing in anything that is not fully and directly obvious. It makes it easier to believe that there may in fact be much more to life -- much more under the surface of things -- when one realizes that everything assumed to be real is just assumed, believed, guessed to be real.
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Recognizing that reality is based on attitude more than touch or sight or feeling, gives one an amazing degree of power over one's experience.
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The Bhuddist parable of the blind men and the elephant -- where several blind men are arguing about their perception of what it is blocking their path -- a bolder suspended in the air, a pillar, etc. -- demonstrates one of the most important "realities" of reality: that one's reality depends on perspective. From one position (feeling the elephant's leg blocking the path), the elephant seems like a pillar. From another position (feeling the elephant's chest and belly suspended over the path), the elephant seems to be a great bolder blocking the path. In either case, reality is reality -- both are equally "real." But there may be advantages to one versus the other.
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Though attitude dictates how we look at things -- and, therefore, our reality -- being mindful of this allows one to develop the habit of asking one's self what alternative ways there might be to look at things. This, in turn, allows one to decide which reality serves best to make life maximally functional, productive, happy and hopeful. Recognizing that reality is based on attitude more than touch or sight or feeling, gives one an amazing degree of power over one's experience.
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I do not mean to suggest that it is easy to either a) get in the habit of asking yourself if you could look at things differently or b) push yourself to look at things differently. It isn't. It isn't easy but it is possible.
Awareness of all this allows one to navigate and maneuver through "reality" -- picking and choosing to see and experience things in whatever might be the most productive, practical manner.
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