Have you ever wondered what the statement “You create your own reality” means?

Some people feel empowered when they hear this statement. Others think it’s ridiculous BS. Those who feel empowered by it sometimes lose empathy and compassion. They can go around challenging people: “Why do you think you developed this cancer that you have?” make the people who buy into that idea feel horrible about themselves.

But there is a healthy middle ground here. Let’s take a deeper look:

1. We live in a world of activity that is constantly happening both internally and externally. And all of that activity is governed by laws of cause and effect that we did NOT create. In this sense we do not create “our” reality. Stay with me now…
2. Everything we experience through our senses, let’s call it perceptual data, is raw data that means NOTHING until we assign meaning to it. This may sound strange, but it is very simple. If perceptual data were capable of embodying and conveying its own meaning and value, we would never disagree about anything! We would all like (or equally dislike) chocolate cake and broccoli because they would convey their meaning and value to us directly and irrefutably. Those foods would be intrinsically likeable or distasteful to everyone, there’s no arguing, but not EVERYONE likes chocolate cake and broccoli! We see, smell and taste their qualities, but we give them our own individual meaning and value. Cake: “yum!” Broccoli: “yuck!” And based on the meaning and value we give them, we create our emotional responses and arguments that we then consider as our “experience of the world”. However, what we are really experiencing is only what we think and feel about the world, not the world itself. This is how we are constantly creating our “reality”.

What do we do with this understanding, once we have it?

Understanding these points, when someone with cancer is ruthlessly told that they created their own disease, how can they face the challenge of being blamed for their suffering? They can understand that ALL activity, including the development of a disease such as cancer, arises from causes and conditions governed by the law of cause and effect.

For example, choose to live in a place that has beautiful weather and great job opportunities. Unbeknownst to you, that place may also have high levels of ingestible contaminants, which will give you cancer or some other disease. You didn’t move there because you wanted to manifest the cancer in your body. So you didn’t “create” your cancer.

So the idea of ​​”creating our reality” is not a justification for blaming others, or blaming ourselves. Instead, it is an opportunity to have compassion for one another as we grow in awareness that what we call our “life experience” is NOT direct contact with a given “outside world.” Our experience is the hodgepodge we experience AFTER data from the outside world is filtered through all of our mind’s habitual beliefs, memories, and thought patterns!

Once we recognize that the real challenges come not from the world, but from what we make of the world in our minds, we can begin to appreciate a very important fact: that if we want to know what’s really going on, we’re going to need to look harder. deeply and think more deeply about our experience and our emotional states.

Does this mean that you are supposed to be happy all the time?

No. It is no use pretending that real pain and suffering do not occur. Obviously it does, and often. But you could go even further and think, “How can I even consider being happy in a world like this?” And to that I would say that joy is naturally present as part of our humanity: feeling joy does not equate to a selfish and indifferent attitude towards the world: “I have mine, that’s all that matters. Look at me, I’m so happy.” We all know that this is not joy.

So you don’t have to pretend to be happy or joyful about your situation or the terrible things that are happening in the world. You also don’t have to pretend to be happy or cheerful with everything you say or do. But you CAN remain “happy” (kind and encouraging, and be “joyful” (loving yourself) with yourself in the midst of such challenges.

Kindness and encouragement are flavors of joy. When you are kind and encouraging to yourself, you can relate to the negativity of the world primarily with genuine human feelings of kindness, compassion, empathy, and encouragement, rather than confused emotional states of resentment, anxiety, hopelessness, and despair.

Being kind and encouraging to yourself keeps your mind, heart, and body in a healthy, joyful, and creative state. When you are in that kind of state, you can meet challenges in the most resourceful way.

It is a deep, secret and priceless gem to know and maintain an unwavering inner environment of kindness and encouragement towards oneself, regardless of chaotic internal or external circumstances. This is true wisdom and strength, and it allows you to contribute to the world in beneficial ways.

You can do it! Good luck!

#kindness #mindfulness

“Everything we do flows and is colored by our inner state of relationship with ourselves. Be kind to yourself.”

The scandalous guide to being fully alive