Shifting Realities
I was in a coffee conversation with a friend last week that helped me to realise something.
We all live and create our own individual reality. When our differing views on reality emerge in public, they can cause friction between ourselves and other people.
From politics and religion, to nations and tribes - the world is subject to huge collective gaps in mutual understanding. We all hold dearly onto our own view on the world, as if it is the only version of reality that exists. We have this hugely strong attachment to ‘what is,’ when ‘what is’ can never be the only version of reality in existence. Other people have other beliefs of what is ‘true’ or ‘real’ for them. And as we experience new things - or ‘new realities’ - our beliefs and our current realities change, too.
Thinking about when I was growing up; who I was, then, and to which version of reality I attached myself in those days; my worldview now is massively different from what it was, then. If my younger self and I had a conversation, I am not sure how far we would agree with each other.
With every experience, I have had to unpick the realities I once held to be true, and notice how they have shifted to new realities, as a result. A lot of the time, moving from one reality to the other has been a painful and torturous transition. Sometimes we are so entrenched in our beliefs - about our ‘reality’ - that they prevent us from experiencing new beliefs and new realities - many of which are more beneficial to us. They can also prevent us from empathising and understanding other people, whose reality is different to our own.
These days, I just assume that everything I see and believe will be thrown on its head at some later stage. I anticipate that everything is transitory, that the reality I see and feel does not actually exist. I am living in a simulation that is the sum total of my experiences and beliefs up to that point.
Whatever I spend my time doing, in events and in conversations, it is about helping people shift their reality - hopefully in a kind and gentle way.
The world needs to become very good at this - more than anything. To find a collective peace, we need to find a collective shared reality.
In doing so, we need to find a way to leave the realities we currently inhabit. Every belief system, every way of doing things, every lens on the world will be somehow disrupted in the years ahead. For me, chaos in the world comes from us all sharing the same space whilst living in a mixed reality. The super skills we all need to learn, to create a shared reality are twofold:
- To hold someone’s hand and help them to move gently on, from where they are
- To allow someone else to hold our hand to gently move us on, from where we are
If we spend our time and energy on developing these skills, we might find it a lot easier to get along.
Marc