Your Thoughts About Reality
Lately I have been recognizing more fully how it is your thoughts about reality, not reality itself which is the cause of emotional pain.
Reality is reality. Reality is a kind of enduring substrate, a foundation. Reality is like a huge slab of concrete. Reality is something that you have little or no control over. Reality:
- Is everything outside you
- Includes other people
- Aspects of your own body
- Aspects of your own mind
What are we to make of reality? How should we think about reality?
Our thoughts about reality are like shadows cast on the concrete slab of reality. Our thoughts change constantly and are fleeting. We might think negatively about an element of reality, for instance death, but have no ability to change that element.
We might feel hatred for a person, yet not have any control over how that person acts; he may be far away. We can’t get into that persons mind and make him change his behavior. It is hopeless.
There are many elements of reality that we think SHOULD be different, but we have no power to change them.
What if we did have the power to change these elements? If for instance, we were God, for example, would we really change them? I, for one, can see that there is at least one positive aspect to every element of reality which is generally deemed negatively.
This is a slippery slope, just as God changes one thing, other things, previously considered benign elements might be considered bothersome and worthy of change.
In a sense, reality is perfect. We need not meddle in the workings of reality. We can sit back and enjoy the movie.
