Reality Check!

Hmmm..... I read this post, immediately below, on Linkedin, today. It felt jarring and it got me thinking.

'NO AUTHORITY IS HIGHER THAN REALITY. Truth isn't a matter of your personal viewpoint. Learn to see things as they really are, not as you imagine they are. Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or who says it. No matter what you believe, it never changes the facts. If they are there, the facts always speak for themselves. The truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of people. If sixty million people say a foolish thing, it's still a foolish thing. The sky is no less blue because the blind man does not see it.'

Here was my written comment. now, added to, with further personal insight...

Interesting point of view! The pre-supposition, here, is that 'reality' IS the existing authority. Whose reality? Your's, mine or the collective's? I hold that each person must decide that - meaning define reality - for herself, if she is to live a meaningful and self-sustaining life, joyously, on her own terms. Cultural conditioning assumes certain defaults to collective thinking, intended - like it or not, agree with me or not - to keep us captive to the expectations of status quo thinking. Status quo thinking is what fuels compliance and coma; this means looking outside of ourselves for answers that are rarely relevant to our uniquely, one-of-a-kind lives. Compliance to external dictates has become collectively habitual and expected to majority mind-share; fear is the big stick that drives it. Lots of judgement, conditioning and conclusion; psychological entrapment. Compliance to collective mind-share kills creativity; it renders us powerless to dream beyond our unconscious limitations that, in truth, are only ours because we have mindlessly defaulted to conclusions of others, who have done the same, ad nauseam, through aeons of history, habit and habituation. Both literally and metaphorically, we have forgotten how to breathe on our own. I think that we are in dire need of a pattern interrupt. Breathing IS good!

In summary, the one thing I know is that no one can be 'right' for me about what I hold as 'right' and true for myself. In the same way, neither can I be 'right' for another about what she holds as 'right' and true for herself. My reality is MY reality. Yours is YOURS. In my experience, most of us have metaphorically died, time and time again, to be 'right' about others, so they cannot be 'right' for themselves. We live polarized lives. It is exhausting and it is sad. Still, dying to be 'right' about 'it' all, we still go there, attempting to bring some order to that which we do not understand. So, I ask you, What is there to understand? 

How could our lives be different, if we were to simply take a breath, let go and let god? Your willing choice to become your own next moment for the big exhale in/of your life, will become your next expansive inspiration, oxygenating an an already emerging future; it can't not be that way; metaphorically - and, indeed, in the most literal of terms - THAT, biochemically, is how we breathe ourselves; the exhale invites the next inhale. THAT is how we create our personal realities.  

It takes courage to interrupt what we think we know for certain, without question. It takes practice, too.... sustained practice to STOP capitulating to cultural expectation as the default and  prescription for how we 'should' be living. Collective reality need not know traction in our lives, unless we consciously choose that. Truth is, I know that I AM living in this world; I also know that I AM not of it. I have chosen to live this way, awake and aware. I also know that you can choose that, too. 

STOP and take a breath, remembering to fully exhale. It really IS that simple.

Thanks for reading!

Till next time...