“The real poetry and beauty in life comes
from an intense relationship with reality in all its aspects.
Realism is in fact the ideal we must aspire to,
the highest point of human rationality.”
– Robert Greene, Author
You're built for reality. Literally… biologically… by definition. The fact that you're reading this article means that you come from an unbroken line of hundreds of thousands of generations of people who survived to an age where they were able to breed and have children. You're optimized for reality, so in this article we’re going to examine why that’s such great news.
There's a built in “quality check” that nature has performed on every single one of your ancestors going back millions of years: were they adapted enough, wily enough, fit enough, wise enough and strong enough to get safely to breeding age so they could have their children and pass on their genetic material all the way down the line to you? You’re here, which means the answer to that question was “yes”, hundreds of thousands of times in succession. Which means that the hardware, software, wet-ware and spirit-ware that comprises you has been through hundreds of thousands of iterations, beautifully tuned, adapted and adjusted to live in this world called “reality”.
Now what do I mean by reality? I mean a world of actual stuff; jumping and hunting and picking things up. Bananas and rocks and great ideas and relating to other people and growing and all the things that we do as human beings. That's the world that we're built for, and as human beings, we actually function brilliantly in reality. Here are two examples: walking and talking. Your ability to walk and talk is built on a rich matrix of embodied understanding; they’re reliant on your understanding of gravity, sounds, movement, your mouth and tongue, language, terrain and hundreds of other things. Yet most of the time, you’re able to do them automatically, without thinking consciously about them. When you’re hanging out in reality, you do very well.
Where we don’t do so well is in a made up fantasy world; a world where a person believes they can feel something other than Thought in the moment. We're always living in the feeling of the principle of Thought taking form, moment to moment. That's how our perception is generated, that's how our experience of reality is created. Our feelings are an absolutely trustworthy signalling mechanism for letting us know about the principle of Thought taking form in this moment. Thought is like a pair of glasses that colours everything we're looking at. If I'm in a bad mood, then I'm wearing bad mood glasses and everything I look at seems like it’s causing that bad mood, but they’re not. In reality, your mood is the pair of glasses you’re looking through, but the glasses don't mention themselves.
It seems to us like we can feel something other than Thought in the moment, but that's not possible. When we’re believing this, we’ve slipped out of reality and into la-la-land. In my experience this is the number one challenge that my clients have and this is the number one challenge that I have. I get tricked by my thinking into believing that life works in a way other than how it actually works. This is not new. Throughout history, people have believed that the world worked in ways that it never actually worked. For example, people used to believe that the earth was flat. But the earth was never flat. It never worked that way. Reality was always a spherical earth, but we believed we lived on a flat earth. The flat earth was la-la-land. Narnia. It never existed. We weren’t built for a flat earth; we were built for reality. But because we believed in the flat earth la-la-land, we had all kinds of concerns about falling off the edge. Sailors had huge anchors to throw over the side of their boat if they came close to the edge of the world because they were concerned that they'd be swept off. The whole notion that it was a flat earth led to all kinds of thinking and behavior that was not grounded in reality. It was grounded in misinformation; a misunderstanding.
Behaviours and beliefs that are grounded in a misunderstanding are the result of “misinformation”. Misinformation adds no value to people's lives, and often detracts from people’s quality of life precisely because the misinformation is out of touch with reality. For instance, as recently as the 1800's people had numerous theories about what caused illness and disease, but germs and bacteria weren't on their list. They had all kinds of misinformed theories (misinformation, la-la-land) about illness and health, but were oblivious to the true causes of illness and infection (reality). They hung out in la-la-land instead of reality, and it brought death and suffering to millions of people’s lives.
Every single one of us have been innocently conditioned to believe that life works in a way that it doesn't actually work. We've been conditioned to believe that we live in an “outside in” world; a world where we can feel something other than Thought in the moment. When I say something other than Thought in the moment, the list of what that could be is endless. We can believe that we’re feeling the future. We can believe that we’re feeling the past. We can believe that we’re feeling our jobs, our bank balances or our results. We can believe that we’re feeling someone's insults or their kind words. We can even believe we’re feeling our own qualities, our value as a person or our ability-levels. But all of that is an illusion, misinformation, la-la-land. None of that is possible. In terms of how it actually works, 100% of our feeling is a reflection of Thought taking form in the moment.
Here's why this is important. You're built for reality, so you do extremely well when you’re hanging out in reality. The fact that you understand the reality of germs and bacteria means that you do things like washing your hands and cleaning food and wiping down surfaces. These behaviours are grounded in a better understanding of reality than people who lived 200 years ago had. You get to prosper and thrive and be healthy as a result, purely by virtue of the fact that you have a better understanding of how life works. Which means that you're not caught up in the superstitions that people who lived 200 years ago were caught up in. Your understanding is aligned more closely with reality.
And here's the thing: When you're hanging out in reality, you do very well. You get intuitions about what to do, about when to rest, about when to take action. You have all kinds of great internal resources, that are available to you when you're hanging out in reality, living in the present moment. You have a natural capacity to connect with other people. You have a natural capacity to have insight and great ideas. You have a natural capacity to take action on things that matter to you. All of that and more is available to you when you're hanging out in reality. All of that is a little harder to come by when you're hanging out in la-la-land. The moment a person believes that they're feeling something other than Thought in the moment, they've stepped into an illusory non-reality. They've stepped into a world that doesn't exist. Our instincts, our intuitions, our natural capacities, they just don't work quite as well when we believe we're hanging out in a world that doesn't actually exist. In fact, when we're hanging out in a world that doesn't exist, our natural capacities get utilized to try and bring us back to reality.
But here’s the best bit. You already live in reality and you always have done. The outside-in non-reality is a dream, an illusion, a fantasy-world. The only place la-la-land exists is in our heads. In reality, all is well, and you have everything you need to respond powerfully in this moment. So how do you get a better understanding of the nature of Thought, and come back to reality more quickly, easily and reliably? Explore the audios, articles and videos on this website and stay in the conversation.
To your increasing clarity,
Big love
Jamie
P.S. Following the success of the beta-tests, I’m looking for a small group of very specific people for my final 'Project Glasswing' programme of 2015, launching in October. Here’s what I’m looking for:
- You are a coach, therapist or change-worker (Eg. Sports coach, psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, business coach, bodyworker etc)
- You have at least one year’s experience of working with clients (either paid, pro-bono or both)
- You probably charge by the hour, but want to use a “coaching package” model to increase your income & make it more consistent
- You have space in your practice to work with at least one longer term contract client, starting in November
- You’re an enthusiastic, friendly people-person
- You have a coachable spirit, and are willing to step out of your comfort zone if necessary, and
- You can keep a secret
If that’s you, then just email me at info@jamiesmart.com, and let me know where you’re located and a little about yourself (if you don’t know what to tell me about, look at the list above for inspiration). Make the subject line “Project Glasswing”. I’ll be choosing people in the next couple of weeks. Talk to you soon! J