Fighting Reality

[Pat McCotter]

Fighting Reality
by teresabondora on March 7, 2010

You know, there are so many realities, yours, mine and ours. Then there are those realities that we all agree on and then they change. These are all things that cause society so much pain, stress, time and money. There's an accident and witnesses. There's her side, his side and all the witnesses sides. Then in the middle somewhere there's what really happened. Why? Because we know the brain puts spin on what it takes in. It isn't an inanimate video camera. What we see is seen from the point of view of a victim or abuser, happy or angry person and those attitudes affect how we see what happened. To make it worse we also ascribe an intent or reason for each action we witness and that reason is also based on who we are and what we've experienced. Once we decide why someone did something we then start making judgments. Once we make judgments, we have stopped being a transcriber and started being a personality.

And when all of this happens in a moment of intensity, it is inscribed, along with all the biases, quickly, deeply and permanently. The key here, is that it's inscribed with all that bias. Ask a witness, they would swear that the telephone pole was brown and had nothing on it. Yet when shown a picture of the scene we see lots of papers and ads stapled to it. There are so many studies that show eyewitness testimony is so faulty that it is effectively being fought down in court.

Then there's that reality that we all agree on. We are taught that the economy always has ups and downs, that the big economy is being run by very smart people who know what they're doing. We are taught that if there's a storm or disaster there will always be soemone there like FEMA and the Red Cross to help you out. The insurance company will take care of everything. Our savings and service to our company and health insurance will protect us. But what happens when all that comes tumbling down around you? What if your home owner's insurance took every loophole it could find and actually left you with a check for only 25% of your damages? What if FEMA and the Red Cross never show up? What if you get laid off and then learn that yes, you can still have health insurance called COBRA but you now have to pay the full premium to keep it, now, when you have just lost your job. Your health insurance will go from $300 a month to $800 a month. And what if you have to cash in your 401K because you can't find a job? Then you get that wonderful notice from the IRS that it's income and now you actually have to write out a check to the IRS when you are unemployed.

These are social agreements that, now that I've experienced most of this first hand, I wonder, why when and where did I learn to believe these falsities? How are we being led to believe that these things are real? And when you realize how faulty your own brain is in recording information, then you realize how faulty the system is that is  your economy, you begin to wonder what else you take for granted that perhaps is not so.

I'm not a conspiracy theorist. But I certainly see how one could become so. Because when the only things we hold as sacred like our own perceptions, or basic beliefs about our safety and financial security and our percieved control over our own situation, become not only, NOT sacred but false, what's left?

What's the moral of this story? To be bitter? To be afraid? To never believe anything? To prepare for disaster? To blame? to Ignore?

No, no and no.

The moral is to grow up. The moral is to wake up and wipe our eyes and be grateful for open eyes. Be grateful for the truth and the reality shift. Because really, fighting it won't make it become whatever you need it to be. Fighting it will cause you to delay making that shift. Fighting it is why we wind up in therapists offices with panic attacks and wondering how we will ever survive if nothing is real.

The only solution is to get bigger. Get so big that you don't need a safety net. Get so big that you don't need to depend on what you see or hear around you. Get big and get strong. Become adaptable, be a chameleon. Let go of need. Embrace right now. And if right now changes, well, you move right along with it and say..."next?" Embrace what's in front of you because that is real. That hug is real. That cake is real. This moment is real. The earth under your feet, well... it may be real but it may be gone if the earth shakes. If so, well, next...

And then you reach this place of freedom. Peace. Lightness. Immortality. Because life/death, it's all just one big transition anyway. And one moment is just as good as another, right? So the freedom, once you stop fighting and grow big to learn how great you are, how strong you are and how resilient you are, you have no more demons. Who are they?  What do you have left to fear?

If I lose the ability to live where I live and we became homeless, I certainly wouldn't be homeless in the city. I'd take my tent and become on vacation.

[Tunga]

Become so.