the nature of 'reality'

I'm so excited to recently have come across two attempts to describe the nature of reality that really resonate with me. (goes without saying that words won't ever really capture it, right? The Tao that can be spoken is not the Tao...)

The first is an excerpt from Michael Neill's book, Supercoach, which he included in his email newsletter this week. It's his copyrighted material, and you can visit his website here: http://www.geniuscatalyst.com/:

... we each live in our own separate reality. This is not some kind of an esoteric theory, but a physiological fact. Our brains filter information through the five senses then make representations of that information inside our minds. We then experience these representations, first as thoughts and then as emotions. But as we re-present the information in our mind, certain bits of the data are inevitably deleted, distorted and generalized. And since we all delete, distort and generalize that information slightly differently, we all have slightly (or sometimes completely) different perceptions of what is going on around us.

In other words, the way we think determines what we see, hear and feel, regardless of what is actually going on around us in the world. Or, to put it slightly differently, there's what happens and there's what we think about what happens. And what makes this important is that the lion's share of our decisions, feelings and actions in life will be based on our thoughts, not the objective facts.

This is neither a new idea nor one associated with any one particular field of study. In quantum physics, the uncertainty principle says that we can never study anything objectively because 'the observer always influences the observed'. Psychologists talk about 'the Pygmalion effect' and linguists say, 'The map is not the territory.' Shakespeare wrote, 'There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so,' and in the Christian Bible, Jesus says, 'As you think, so shall you become.'

Perhaps my favourite way of thinking about this secret comes from one of my early mentors, author and supercoach Serge Kahili King. He describes the principle of thought like this:

The world is what you think it is.

While at first glance this may seem an innocuous idea, its implications are far-reaching. If the world is what you think it is, then life becomes one giant self-fulfilling prophecy. Your expectations create your experience, and if anything happens that confounds your expectations, you will most likely find a way of explaining it away or fitting it into your existing worldview. And any attempt you might make to 'prove' your theories about the world objectively will never gain universal acceptance, because you're creating that world through your thinking in one way and other people are creating it through their thinking in another way.

The second is a transcription of a speech given by Deepak Chopra.
http://www.ascension-research.org/reality.html :

There was an experiment done at Harvard Medical School about 20 years ago. A group of scientists took some kittens and brought them up in a room that had only horizontal stripes. All the visual stimuli in the room were horizontal. Another group of kittens was brought up in a room that had only vertical stripes. And when these kittens grew up to be wise old cats, it turns out that one group of cats could see only a horizontal world. The other group of cats could see only a vertical world. And this had nothing to do with the belief system of these cats.

It's a phenomenon that psychologists call Premature Cognitive Commitment. Premature, because we make it at a very early stage of our development. Cognitive, because that's how they cognize or see the world. And commitment, because it fixes us to a particular reality, it imprisons us in a fixed mode of perception.
...

All these experiments, and there are many variations of these, are pointing to a very crucial fact as far as the mechanics of perception is concerned. And that is that our initial sensory experiences and how we interpret them or how they are interpreted for us actually structure the very anatomy and physiology of our nervous system in such a way that ultimately the nervous system serves only one function: to keep reinforcing the initial interpretation. Anything that doesn't reinforce the initial interpretation doesn't even get into the nervous system. So if you don't have a concept or a notion or an idea that something exists, then your nervous system won't even take it in.
...

I was surprised to learn that some people interpret these findings to mean that there is an Objective Reality out there which we simply cannot perceive. My surprise is, of course, evidence of my own blind spot. I thought science had proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that nothing exists independent of the observer -- that the reality which each of us individually perceives/creates is all there is.

I thought it was common knowledge that reality is just a soup of pure potential until a perceiver comes along and makes something actual via a completely private act of perception. In essence, sort of like a rainbow, reality is an interaction of perception; a relationship, rather than a separate thing.

So I thought everyone knew this, but maybe the news just hasn't trickled down into the mainstream yet. Most people have other (and better) things to do than study research about the nature of consciousness! (not me, though. LOL.) So for the cliff notes, here's Deepak again:

Sir John Eckles who won the Nobel prize in physiology and medicine several years ago made the statement, "I want you to understand that there are no colors in the real world. That there are no textures in the real world. There are no fragrances in the real world. There is no beauty, there is no ugliness. Nothing of the sort. Out there is a chaos of energy soup and energy fields. Literally. We take that and somewhere inside ourselves we create a world. Somewhere inside ourselves it all happens."

Why does it matter whether there's an objective reality or not? If we agree that we can't perceive it, isn't that good enough? Excellent question! My answer is Maybe. Maybe it is good enough. It might be good enough if we can truly agree to give each other the freedom to see things differently.

Yet how much pain, suffering, and persecution have humans historically inflicted on others who disagree with their notion of objective reality? How much effort have our chosen leaders invested into snuffing out those who see and interpret things differently?

I wonder ... if we all were to acknowledge that there is no Objective Reality, then maybe we'd realize that no one is more right or wrong than anyone else. And perhaps we could get busy figuring out our individual realities instead. We could focus our energy on fine-tuning our own filters to enable us to perceive that which inspires feelings of love and joy, rather than manhandling the filters of others so that they can suffer right alongside of us.

I also wonder ... if you believe something objective exists, and you try hard to see it as clearly as you can because you want to be accurate (or because you see yourself as a realist), then aren't you sort of missing the opportunity to get your hands in the clay and create? Are you so busy digging to uncover 'reality' that you pile the clay into a big lump behind you and leave it alone while you keep digging? Could you be missing the journey while seeking the destination? I think it was Neale Donald Walsch who said, "Life is a creation, not a discovery." I like that a lot. No doubt not everyone finds that as exciting as I do ... I betcha some people just love to dig. That's cool.

It seems to me that the folks I know who have left notions of Objective Reality behind are already busy doing their individual creative projects just for the fun of it. And I suspect at some point, critical mass might be reached, and the collective concern with polarizing into positions such as right and wrong will dissolve into a different orientation instead. It might be one that consults other criteria when making decisions; not "Is this right or wrong?" but, "Does this behavior/attitude/perception feel expansive, joyful, and authentic to me at a core level? "

It's hard to write that without sounding like a 'bleeding heart liberal' as my dad used to say. I'm not sure how to convey my vision of the question or decision bubbling up from within, like a natural spring, rather than guidance being sourced in a replacement dogma that is imposed by some external authority.

It feels like it won't even really be a question - more like an inner leaning that will become harder and harder to violate. Rules won't need to be imposed externally, and no council will be necessary enforce them. Hurting others will hurt ourselves, and we won't want to do it. Making others wrong will make ourselves wrong, and we won't want to go there. That's all. It's kinda simple, really. We will connect in creation, rather than opposition.

It will be interesting to see what happens in my lifetime, that's for sure. It's such a privilege to be alive right now. We are witnessing so much profound transformation!