What's Your Reality ?

• How often while reading a book did we have to go over one particular paragraph again and again because our attention was drifting to some other subject? We wanted to read, but our selection process directed our attention towards something entirely different. Certainly, - the words reached our eyes, but they didn't get through to our awareness. Something was closing the book to our attention, even though we didn't want to.
  
  

• How often are we driving a car with our thoughts here, there, anywhere, but definitely not on the road? Did we ever ask ourselves who actually is steering the car?
  
  

• How often did we attend lectures - just remember school, - and our awareness wandered far from what the speaker was presenting? - Who or what made us leave the speaker's words and let us drift into a different world? It certainly wasn't something we controlled.

    And these are only rather trivial examples. How often did we reject our intuition though it was yelling at us and later proved it was dead right? How often did we follow our intuition? But who or what made that pro or con decision in each single instance?

    What makes us draw back from risk, - or go for it? What motivates us to do things we do not want to do? What makes us say a glass is half full as do the optimists, or half empty, as do the pessimists? Who or what made all these myriad decisions that brought us to our present state? - Was it really the 'I' we seem so familiar with?

    But what about those two, three important decisions in our life where we knowingly chose one particular path over so many others, - did we really have as much control as we thought we did? Let's just look at the motive that really moved us at our time of decision, the real motive we wouldn't dare tell others, the real motive that was the true emotional cause for our determination to go for a career, an adventure, a partner, for security, responsibility, for challenge or for boredom.

    Let's just once - briefly - forget all those nice official reasons that so perfectly rationalize our decisions and let's look a little deeper than might be comfortable.

    Was it the desire to impress the father - to gain his attention, his love, his respect, his admiration? Or was it the mother, the elder brother, the friend, or the old enemy? Was it the fear of poverty, destruction, of loneliness, of losing something? Was it the hope to meet girls, boys, others, because we had little opportunity for that before? Was it the enthusiasm for a particular goal - but who or what had caused this enthusiasm? Or did we only want to show others how brave we could be? -

    Were we really aware of all this when we made our crucial decisions? Were we really aware what really went on beneath the polished surface?

    No, let's not fool ourselves, - it's not us who select what reality to live in, it's the selection process that controls us. Some unknown mechanism makes thoughts, meanings, emotions and impulses for actions appear in our awareness. And we can only follow. We have no alternative, no concept how life could be without this automatic mechanism, can not observe this process from any outside point of view. - We have no idea what sometimes presents us time and again the ever same painful events that tear up our insides.

    None of the modern material concepts of the world gives us a key to this mechanism. Our personal reality - that what we vividly experience within ourselves and in our environment - is influenced by more than mere laws of matter.

    So - if we want to free ourselves from troubling conditions and random events, if we intend to steer our life on our own, then it is worth the effort to find what really WORKS in our life, - to find out what controls our selection process and how to take full charge of our fate.

    And if we feel hemmed in by our present reality, then it's high time to ask how to break from these limits, - and where to find new, broader dimensions that fascinate us again.

    Because of all these practical reasons, - never for mere theoretical pondering - we need to find out what kind of reality we currently experience, and how it truly works.

• That what gives us motivation, drive and the energy to carry through with our ideas

• what selects what we perceive, think and feel - and thus influences all our activities and our life's happiness

• that what again and again confronts us with themes of life we are so tired of

• Matter - is well known to us. It is the substance of all kinds of bodies, constantly moving because of its inherent qualities of attraction and repulsion and composed of energy-elements of extremely small dimensions.
  
  
  

• Space - enables material representation, expansion and contraction of the other elements.
  
  
  
  
• Time - enables the experience of consecutive events.
  
      In the West we picture time as a uniform line that comes from an infinite past to run into an equally infinite future. In these gigantic masses of past and future the present appears to play such minute part, it seems almost a miracle that we perceive it at all.
  
      Sure, it's easy to fix appointments with this time-line model, yet the time we encounter in our very personal life is far more elastic and has little to do with rigid, constant intervals: -
  
      The minutes we wait for a root-canal treatment at the dentist's appear to us like hours, and hours spent with a person we deeply love seem mere minutes in the end.
      
      For our very personal life we judge time by the mood and intensity of what we experience, not by what watches count.
  
      We undertake enormous efforts to avoid times considered uncomfortable; - and even greater efforts to extend or bring about times we deem exciting.
  
      We base countless important decisions on this entirely personal, intuitive valuation what mood time triggers in us and how lively we feel while experiencing it.
  
      The conventional 'time-line' idea completely ignores this inner valuation and its enormous effect on us. Yet - even if it seems hard to picture a different model - the current 'line-of-time-concept' is not a law of nature; - it's only one of many possible ways to interpret what we experience.
  
  
  So - How Do We Really Interact With Time ?
  
  Everything we do, all we experience, all we ever confront happens only in the PRESENT.
  
  
  
  • We take what we currently (want to) remember and define it as 'THE PAST' -
    
            - yet what fraction of this 'PAST' appears accessible to us at any given moment, and whether we see it in a positive or negative light, depends entirely on our current mood
    
    
    
  • We take our expectations, hopes and dreads and define this as 'THE FUTURE' -
    
            - yet what we deem possible for our 'FUTURE' may also change with every one of our moods.
    
    
    
  • What remains we either interpret as 'PRESENT', - or discard it because we don't know where to put it.
  
  
      Practically seen our life is only what we feel and experience NOW. - Even when we think of 'the past' or plan 'the future', we do this only in the present.
  
      Thus - if we want to change reality - to alter what we experience, - only what we do NOW - in the present - has an effect. Dreaming of better futures only, or waiting for some starting signal, or reminiscing bygone triumphs never moves anything.
  
  
  
  The  PRESENT  is  THE ONLY TIME
  in which we access reality.
  
  
  
      As trivial as this may sound, few people are aware how much they ignore this fact. Most like to dream how they would like the world to be, without doing much to make this happen, and without ever trying something genuinely new and unknown.
  
  
  Time-Slices
  Certainly, we experience time in small consecutive slices,
  - but not always.
  
      When we are learning something, - a sequence of movements, a new task, handling an unfamiliar emotion, facing a new challenge, - time presents us the respective events like in slow motion. We experience such episodes as sequences of outdrawn, lingering moments, as if we see them through a magnifying glass.
  
      This 'extending' of events - to show us a broader range of details, - is the main function of time.
  
      Once the learning is done, we automatically condense the newly acquired skills into one holistic experience, which we - from then onwards - do not experience as time-slices any more.
  
      One example: As a toddler we needed all our concentration to place our feet in such a way as to move forward without falling over. As a grown up we never even think of the complex mind-body coordination required to walk along a floor, run after a ball, or just to fill a glass of water without spilling.
  
      Another example: While learning how to drive a car, each single function, every single lever of the machine requires our deliberate conscious attention to operate. Yet once we got used to this process, we only think of our destination, of the road, of the task ahead, of a person we love etc. without being much aware that we are steering heavy machinery at considerable speed through often quite unpredictable surroundings.
  
      The fact that we keep on experiencing time-slices just means that we still are in the process of learning, only that our attention shifted to more complex tasks. We might not be aware that we are learning something, yet this doesn't mean that we don't. - It pays to identify what major themes engage our attention so intensely that time seems to expand while we experience them.
  
  

• how matter, space and time manage to dominate us - our awareness - as intensely as we experience it now

• why we get so attached to matter, space and time that we can't even conceive of an alternative state

• how we dissolve and control this overpowering association between our consciousness and the three other elements, and

• what we experience once our awareness becomes independent of matter, space and time
  
  
  
  

It is not difficult to fundamentally free ourselves from unpleasant events and influences. We only need to neutralize our - negative or positive - emotional attachment to such themes. This is the only effective mechanism.

    Changing only the material circumstances never removes the very cause of a problem. As long as our emotions remain attached to a certain theme of life, we'll always feel drawn towards situations that make us experience this particular theme until we learned what we intended to learn by it.

    Rejecting a problem has exactly the same attaching effect as desiring a certain situation.

    Examples: If we want to escape our problems by moving to a far-away country, we always take the inner, emotional cause of our problems with us. We'll inevitably meet our problems there again, - only in different guises.

    Similarly we cannot escape fear by avoiding situations we believe will produce fear. This merely directs this negative emotion towards other situations, persons or objects. Only by courageously confronting our fears and thus realizing how unnecessary they are, will we be free of them.

How to Get Rid of Unwanted Events

Again this is easier than most people think.

    The key moment is the very moment our attention confronts an event or a stimulus for the first time. This is the brief initial period where we become aware of the stimulus, but our emotions are not yet triggered.

    At this particular point in time we often can freely decide how to respond to a stimulation.

    As long as we feel no emotional reaction to the event, we are not yet bound to its theme.

    If we now decide to follow a different (positive) line of impulses or thoughts, or refrain from reinforcing a negative emotional reaction, we detach ourselves from this type of situation.

    During this brief period when everything is still open, we have the power to end unwanted events for good.

    One practical example: We persistently feel irritated in the presence of a particular person. Yet at the very start of each meeting with him or her, there always is that brief initial period during which we are not irritated yet. If we - at this point in time - decide to maintain distance and equanimity, chances are great that our irritation will either not rise at all, or at least be significantly less intense.

    For future encounters we then have established a new pattern of behavior that will eventually free us completely from our previous involuntary reaction.
  
    Certainly, this conscious steering takes energy, - more energy than falling into familiar irritation, - but this is only a small price to pay for freeing us from an automatic reaction that in the long run will cost us far more energy.

This new picture of reality sets YOUR consciousness, YOUR perception into its center - as you experience it all the time. Yet this description can only convey a first impression.

    If you desire a practical alternative to current materialistic ideas, - if you want real know-how that empowers you to truly steer your life, - then -

 TEST the new concept !

    Access it through your own personal experience. This is the central key to really comprehending it.

    Do not try to fit the new consciousness-concept into the old matter-based model. First of all - it doesn't fit in there, and second - you'll miss the core of the new model.

    Take it as as a plan of what lies ahead, - as a roadmap to hidden regions of your mind. Direct attention towards flash-insights that make you briefly experience higher levels already now. Experiment with new ways of action and break up entrenched emotional reactions.

    YOU can experience all abilities and inner dimensions mentioned in this book.

    Yet there's no point in theoretically discussing it as long as practical experience is lacking.

    And - don't be afraid to uphold both models for a while - the world won't come to a standstill.

Next: - A Roadmap to Unknown Regions of Your Mind


Author:  Hermann Kuhn
Book-Title:  'Unlimited Horizons'

ISBN:  978-3-9811466-9-1
Copyright 2008 Crosswind Publishing, Wunstorf, Germany

Available in pdf-format at DOWNLOADS

www.unlimited-horizons.de