Hi to all of you visitors of my dear friend Lekatt’s website. My name is Britney. I wrote this essay, originally inspired by a post I wrote about “The Greater Reality.” I decided to expand it and write about something that I can relate to and have a lot of experience about. I learned about reality in Philosophy but I personally like my definition better! I hope you learn that there truly is one reality that we can have no doubt in our minds about and that is that God is love and he loves us unconditionally!
What is reality anyway? According to the dictionary, it is the quality or state of being actual or true. Reality can be a person, an entity, or an event, that is actual. It can also be the totality of all things possessing actuality, existence, or essence or something which exists objectively and in fact. Reality is not black and white. Reality is different for every person and their experiences, it is an open definition, open to interpretation.
First, for some people reality isn’t based on the real world such as a schizophrenic like myself. A schizophrenic can’t tell the difference between the inside and outside world. We can become so attached to our imaginary world that we won’t even consider it as a figment of our imagination. We just can’t be convinced otherwise. A social worker might say to me, “Even if your imaginary world were real what would that mean?” I might say, “That I am not crazy.” People may think me a freak. In Gnarls Barkley’s song, he says, “I remember when I lost my mind. Does that make me crazy?”
People who have auditory or visual hallucinations are confused because no one else can hear or see what they do. They wonder how come no one can hear what they are hearing. It’s a very lonely disease. It may be even as bad as losing your memory. There is a saying, “The mind is a dangerous neighborhood. Don’t go there alone.”
Next, some of us live inside our heads. We live in fantasy. If we don’t like the world we live in, we turn to books, movies, or music. The list goes on and on. It’s easy to do this, especially, in our American culture. Natalie Bedingfield said, “Take me away, to a secret place, a great escape, take me away.” We want to feed our imagination and daydream all day in hopes that just by wishing for our dream house or dream person that it will come true. It’s nice to get lost in a book or lost in our lover’s eyes, but in the end we can’t escape life. Sooner or later the hype will go away and we will be back with our problems again. Someone said, “The feeling of being on top of the world is fleeting.” Douglas Everett said, “There are some people who live in a dream world, and there are some who face reality; and then there are those who turn one into the other.”
Also, some of us lie to ourselves so much we believe it. So our reality becomes twisted. We might tell ourselves that we are happy even though below the surface we are not. We might tell ourselves that harming others is ok as long as no one knows. After a while, lying about everything will eventually push everyone away from you. You may lie to yourself so much that no one can hit the buzzer to tell you to stop. There is a story about a man that kept lying to others that he needed help when he really didn’t; when he actually was in a situation where he was serious, no one believed him anymore. Earl Nightingale said, “Whatever we plant in our subconscious mind and nourish with repetition and emotion will one day become a reality.”
Next, for some their reality is limited because it’s all they know. There’s a verse in the Bible: “My people perish for lack of knowledge.” Someone might not know that they should have good hygiene to prevent diseases if they grew up in the jungle. A homeless man might not know there is a job opening somewhere close because no one bothers to help him. People who are Amish don’t know what the modern world is like until they leave home. People who commit crimes, but don’t understand it is a crime should be helped to understand what they have done. Someone told a story about a man who just got out of college, and had an accident; he had to go to a nursing home and has been there 30 years. While, if a person was disabled their whole life, it wouldn’t be as hard on them.
The more we know, the more we are expected to help others. It’s wrong to hoard everything for yourself. People with loads of money should consider using it to help others. There is a saying, “With great power, comes great responsibility.” People with creative minds and are inventors should use that knowledge for the good of mankind instead of making bombs or nukes.There’s a double side to power. Wouldn’t you want to leave a better reality for others?
Also, someone may have grown up in an abusive home, or grown up in extreme poverty so they never get the chance to live fully or reach what some call self-actualization. If you are abused you might see no way out. Your reality could be the four walls in your room. You might see the world as hopeless or unkind, unless someone were to show you a better way of life. You might just focus on having food, clothes, and shelter. “The perfecting of one’s self is the fundamental base of all progress and all moral development,” Confucius .
Lastly, you may feel like you are in a whole different world than your family when what you think about, believe in, and experience isn’t the same, even though you live in the same house! For instance, if you believe in Universalism, while your family don’t, but you never tell your family. If you have experienced a lot of mental illness and the rest of your family has not, you may discover that sometimes they will have no idea of what you are talking about or can even begin to understand. Reality is different to every person, so those psychiatrists should literally get a taste of their own medicine! Whoever sets the standard for what’s real, or not real, needs to get their eyes checked. Did they read the fine print that says, “What’s real is up to you to decide.”
I think the spirit world and mental world overlap. Where do you draw the line? Where does the spirit and mental world come together? We may never know and science can only tell us so much. We should let people come to their own conclusions. Reality is an open-ended subject and experienced in different forms and ways for different people. Reality is a gray area. Some people may truly hear spirits, talk to them or see them. Thomas in the Bible wouldn’t believe that Jesus appeared before the disciples unless he saw with his own eyes. There are a lot of doubting Thomas’s out there — I hope I am not one of them. There is one reality I believe is true: that God is love and he loves me unconditionally. Brian Tracy said, “Whatever you believe with feeling becomes your reality.”
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