REALITY IS MERELY AN

ILLUSION, ALBEIT A VERY

PERSISTENT ONE –A.
EINSTEIN
Life is a presentation of choices. Wherever you are now exactly represents
the sum of your previous decisions, actions and inactions. At any given
time the number choices available to us is limited not by our capabilities
but by our assumptions and awareness.  The greater our awareness the
greater the possibilities our lives can entertain.  A limited awareness puts
limits on the the possibilities and futures we could hope to achieve.

Often we take a course of action and believe we don’t have a choice,

when indeed we do. Remove the element of randomness (getting hit by a
bus, asteroid, or terminal illness) and everything you are today is the
result of a decision you’ve made in the past.

I believe that where we go in life and who we become is falsely attributed

to the life situation we arrive at. At funerals family and friends gather to
celebrate the lives of the dead. We tell tales of exploits and
accomplishments – then the family divides the estate and moves on with
life.  I want you to think of your closest of friends. You
may recognize them by physical features – the car they drive, or the
cologne they wear – but you know them by who they are. When you
think of the people closest to you, you think of how they are internally –
their way of being.  You know them by the expression of their character,
you can imagine how they would respond in situations, you muse at quirks
in their personality and idiosyncrasies found in their humor and speech.
We identify people by their features, possessions, status, career, and
social associations – but these are merely the people, props, and
plotlines of our lives, they are not what’s important; what’s important
is our being.  What’s important is who we are on the inside. Life is not
about becoming smarter, richer, or more powerful – it’s about improving
the quality of your character; your way of being.  In this context a superior
way of being is a happier, more joyful, more loving way of being – with a
potency that is experienced by those around you.  An inferior way of
being is a selfish, arrogant, deluded, unhappy, negative way of being.
Superior or inferior there is no hiding to content of your character for long.
No matter what defines you externally, you cannot fake your being to
other people for long. People you interact with regularly don’t just see
who you are, they feel it – they know it.
My friend Amy – one of the sweetest girls I know – waited tables through
college. Over a glass of wine she shared one of her experiences as
waitress. She vented frustrations with people and difficulties working in
the service industry.  She had seated two couples for dinner during the
busiest hours of the restaurant. The kitchen was backed up and both
couples had to wait over an hour for their meals.

Couple #1
“… finally some service around here”

“Is the food coming? This is really ridiculous we’ve had to wait this long”

“Excuse me I asked for my steak medium, this is medium-rare. Take it

back and make me a new one, there’s no way I’m going to eat this”

“I hope you don’t expect me to pay for my steak, you’ve ruined my

evening this was a terrible meal. I’m never going to come back”

[Leaves no tip]
 

Couple #2
“Hi, wow you guys really are busy tonight. What’s your name
sweetheart?”

“Oh the kitchen is slow today you say? No problems Amy, I guess we’ll
just have another glass of wine!”

“Food is fantastic, you’ll have to thank the kitchen staff for us”

“Amy you’ve been a wonderful waitress, thank you for serving us. Enjoy
your weekend and goodluck with your last semester!”

[leaves $20 tip]

 

Amy’s story shows two people experiencing their subjective realities in a

very different way – the selfish vs. the selfless.  It makes clear that what
we experience is not derived from facts of the matter but our
interpretation of those facts.  It leads to suggest that a higher quality
being – a more selfless loving way of being – is not only one of our most
noble pursuits in life but an achievement experienced by those all
around us.  In this sense we see that fulfillment lies in your evolution
towards a more loving caring person. Growing up towards maturity and
awareness.  Departing from a self-centered, arrogant, envious, jealous,
petty reality is growing up.
We endlessly compare ourselves to others; a practice that leaves us
feeling a gradient of worthlessness or delusional self-importance.  Our
mechanism of comparison – our ego – is the cause of all relative suffering. 
Without it we’d lose the ability to compare and we’d no longer
comprehend emotions of greed, envy, and pride. In fact our identities,
which rely on the relative comparison to others, would dissolve
completely.

Free from the mechanism of comparison – free from our egos – feelings of
inadequacy could not exist.  They could not exist because free from
comparison you are inadequate to nothing.  By definition, fear of
judgment and a need for validation become logical impossibilities.

Improving our quality is dissolving the separateness that exists between

ourselves and other people.  Free from comparisons we lose identification
with the external attributes of our existence.  They can’t exist because
they can’t be judged.  What remains is our present being – and free from
our egos interpretations we accept everything that is by default.

These words exist on a page, but the experience of reading them can only
exist within your mind.  Any significance these words hold can only be
determined by you.  The reality you see, hear, feel, and touch with your
eyes, ears, heart, and hands is not an experience of the body – it is a
creation within the mind.  It follows that everything you experience cannot
exist objectively because it happens within your mind.  This is what
Einstein meant when he said reality is an illusion.  Your interaction with
the world is experienced within the mind and filtered through your
subjective interpretations; a subjective filter that is comprised of all our
beliefs, expectations, understandings, fears, desires, wants and needs.  It
follows that we are the creators of our own individual realities, weather or
not the influences of their construction are conscious or unconscious
mechanisms.  Ummm… wait, what?

PAUSE!!!
Alright I realize I just went completely off the wall there.  Some of this stuff
is impossible to wrap your head around, believe me I know.  Why don’t we
just chill out for a second and look at some photos and quotes from
histories geniuses.
 
 

 
 

Levels of Thought
I’m highly interested in the mechanics of productivity, fulfillment, and
success.  In high school I was told a metaphor of a sports car and a driver.
A jalopy with a nascar driver could outrace a sports car driven by
an amateur. High IQ does not ensure, concise, profound or effective
thought. A slow individual who’s learned the right lessons will be far more
successful than a more intelligent person with a lesser understanding
(intelligence ≠ understanding). The metaphor contrasts the power of a
car’s engine to the skill of the driver behind the wheel.  When you include
the route and roads driven and metaphor becomes profound.

Cognition (Vehicle Horsepower)

Your ability to think. You’re ability to understand things intuitively or
logically. Your ability to read, do math, interpret a map, and understand a
conversation. People with superior cognitive abilities make excellent
logicians.  Math comes easily to them, they score highly on IQ tests. But
that’s not the whole picture. These people may still lead unfulfilled or
unproductive lives.

Meta Cognition (Skill of the Driver)

Your ability to think about your own cognition. At this level you take a step
back. You evaluate your own comprehension as you read, time is running
out on an academic test your ability to judge time and then allocate the
remainder is meta cognition. Cognition is the power of the engine, meta
cognition is the skill of the driver. People who routinely engage in this kind
of thinking make war generals, great managers, engineers and architects.

Meta-Meta Cognition (The Route Driven: Dirt Roads vs. Highways)

This is the process of thinking about your process of thinking. Cognition is
the engines horsepower. Meta cognition is the skill of the driver. Meta-
meta cognition is the roads you drive on and the route you take.

You must think about the very values through which you live your life by,
this is meta-meta cognition. Failing to engage in this kind of thinking is
equivalent to driving across the country with your eyes closed. Your
decisions actions and inactions are the freeways, roundabouts, and side
roads you take along your journey.  This is what I mean when I say where
you are right now is a result of all your previous decisions, actions and
inaction.  People make no systematic progress, they backtrack, stagnate
and stall.  They are on a journey across the country and they have no
map. This unconscious behavior is how most people operate throughout
their entire lives.

Fortunately we can awaken. We can start to make decisions within a

bigger picture. We can navigate out, and progress to a better life
situation. You can go wherever you want, you just need to define where
that is. It takes courage to face uncertainty. It takes humility to accept
personal shortcomings, negligence, irresponsibility, and poor decisions.

What do I really believe?

Beliefs should always be evolving. Try to recognize stagnate beliefs that
have remained unchanged for years; assumed understandings you’ve
never thought to challenge. When you spot these, perhaps its time to re-
evaluate. Humans are vindictive and are often so convinced of their
beliefs absolute truth that they fail to entertain alternatives – and often
violently oppose them.

Metaphor your belief system to science and its attempts to understand

the world. Science is always evolving as new realizations and data explain
a deeper understanding of the truth. Humans collective scientific
understandings have been broken down and rebuilt so many times that
only a fool would assume we have reached a 100% understanding. Think
of times when science was not updating; times when it rejected and
oppressed contradictory evidence (The Catholic church putting a ‘ban’ on
the idea of a heliocentric solar system)  Our tendency is to point the finger
– we might say, ‘The church repressed human advancement, they killed
and robbed people!  They are responsible for so much suffering!’  But
consider this: Are histories baffling slaughters, genocides, and repressions
faults of the ‘evil’ parties involved or do they represent a fault of our
entire species and our tendencies in positions of power?

If you constantly seek out new experiences with an open mind then static
beliefs are difficult to maintain.  Our journeys often give us experiences so
powerful that our beliefs shift radically (an epiphany).  When you have
new experiences and update your world schema you are progressing
towards an understanding of truth. When you find yourself violently
opposed to people who see things differently consider that you could be
wrong. Look at the history of science and you realize we are almost
always wrong – we just get a little less wrong with every new piece of
evidence (experience)
-Clayton Ross Ferguson