It may seem that we know what’s going on, that we’re in control of things, but examine that idea closely and it falls apart. A good friend of mine spent a lot of time interrogating this idea and it drove him slightly mad, although fortunately nothing lasting.
Loosening our grip on reality sounds like a terrifying thing. Yet what we call reality is merely a construction.
External events happen. A very tiny moment later, our brain receives and interprets them according to pre-defined processes.
And a tiny moment after that, we create a story about them to give ourselves a sense of meaning. This is how we might see a collection of light and sound waves (shapes, colours and sounds), decide that it is what we call a ‘dog’, perceive it to be ‘friendly’ and feel what we know as ‘happiness’.
All of this is constructed.
There is no such thing as a ‘dog’, this is just a label we’ve applied and the emotion we might feel in relation to a ‘dog’ is based on a story or collection of associations. It is our version of reality.
If, therefore, we can loosen our grip on this just a little, we’re becoming less attached to what is both external and internal. Less attached to stories, including the ones we tell ourselves about ourselves and other people. Less attached to physical things. Less attached even to our own emotions. They might not even be ours anyway.
Being less attached to what we think of as reality might seem a bit scary or lonely. It is in fact, liberating. We can begin to perceive in a different way, one that is not truly objective but certainly less subjective.
Taken to an extreme idea, yet also grounded in physics, it is possible that actually nothing is happening in the outside world, it is all an elaborate hallucination. There is merely energy moving around. Or matter doing nothing until it interacts with something else.
This is perhaps too mind bending (and not something I fully understand)*.
*this fascinating book explores this and other mindbending things…
[image by Federico Giampieri on Unsplash]
