Our emotional reality
When we wake up each morning, and we shift from the world of dreams, where our subconscious mind is the director, we enter the conscious existence of our reality. I’ve explored the concept of existence in an earlier blog about consciousness, and this was a deep analysis of what “being” is all about.
What inspired this blog was the idea that our emotional state has a massive impact on our perception of reality. To be more specific, we might wake up one day, in the same room of the same house, around the same people, with the same routine ahead of us, but everything “feels” different.
Have you ever started the day, and your mood seems to hang in the air like smoke, dulling the colours around you, and making everything feel just out of reach? The air feels heavy, and you can’t escape the sensation of doom, no matter where you go or what you do.
There have been no changes in the external world around you. The furniture is the same. Your house is still standing, the sounds of your children, a hair dryer, a toilet flushing or husband farting are all confirmation of just another day. Even the birds take their vocal spotlight, tweeting the same morning song.
What has shifted lies within. You are experiencing the world around you, but someone has changed the lens. That “someone” is your mind. We see the world from so many perspectives, all different, depending on the circumstances. The circumstances are not tangible. They are the experiences, communications, decisions, and interactions that influence our state of mind.
Perception is shaped by the state of mind, meaning that reality is subjective because each person has their own mind. Two people might have an identical experience, for example, sharing the same five minutes, sitting on a park bench, with the view of a river ahead of them. They each had the warm sun on their faces, the same sound of birds, and the buzzing of insects.
Imagine, though, those two people sitting on that bench, and one has recently received some bad news, a loss of a family member. The other has just become pregnant and has been trying for years. How they see the view in front of them will differ greatly. One might be so absorbed in her grief that she misses the sensation of the gentle breeze. The other may be so euphoric that all the sounds around her feel like music.
Perception is so much more than the five senses. If it isn’t, how can we explain the different experiences of two people, momentarily sitting in the same place? Could it be that we live in a simulation? There are certainly conspiracy theories about this, and if you have watched The Matrix, you might have an understanding.
It got me to thinking, just how much of reality might we miss, or misunderstand, because of the emotional glasses we wear? Take yourself back to a time in life when you were overwhelmed with sadness. Where were you? What was the date, the year, the time? Can you separate the memory from the emotion and the reality?
For example, if you were on a holiday abroad, and you were sitting on a balcony, nursing a broken heart because your boyfriend or partner had just ended the relationship, can you remember how the sun lit up the sky, or how the smell of the ocean drifted up to your balcony or how the sound of the waves crashed rhythmically below? Or can you only remember the heavy cement of dread, the lump in your throat as the tears burned your face?
That’s why when we invest our happiness in the external world, and ignore or neglect the internal world, our inner reality, we miss out on creating the rare gift of harmony and peace. The examples I described show that it matters not where you are, or the beauty that surrounds you. It doesn’t reach you if your heart is filled with sadness or pain. There isn’t room.
If we start to understand that the world around us is simply a projection of our internal experience, we can start taking the power back. But how can we prevent heartbreak, sadness, or depression? Sometimes it doesn’t feel like we have any control over how we feel, and despair and hopelessness become our uninvited guests.
I have woken up many times this last year, and before I have even stepped out of bed, despair has greeted me, whispering in my ear as I pull back the curtains, embracing me in its icy claws. I have to draw on every fibre of strength to face the day, each time, confused and uncertain. Why is my heart heavy? Why does it feel like I’ve lost my place in the world?
The experience of pain and suffering is intrinsically linked to the human condition, and so often, it stems from resisting what is. I don’t mean to underplay the reality of tragedy, loss, bereavement, or abuse. I write many blogs about these experiences. But if we accept reality, as it appears to us, and allow it to “be”, can we escape the suffering?
I’ll give you an example from the recent suffering I have experienced, after a loss. For the last twelve months, I have existed in a constant state of pain. Some days it has hung like a heavy winter coat, pressing down on my shoulders, smothering my chest. Other days it just floats just above me, whispering its presence but giving me room to breathe. I am grieving a loss.
Can I change my perception about the loss, shift the pain, and give way to healing? What if I let go of the attachment and the emotional bonds that connected me to these people? Can I do that? If I process the losses and work through the bereavement without resistance, will this heal me? How can I avoid the pain?
I don’t think we can ever avoid pain. When we give up resistance to what is, we accept our experiences instead of denying, delaying, avoiding, or ignoring. How many times have you suffered a loss, where you use any number of methods to soothe the pain? In the past, I used alcohol to anaesthetise past trauma, but I resisted the pain. I pushed down and denied the experiences. I resisted what is and what was.
Over the last year, I have let go of that resistance and accepted the pain. It has been horrific and frightening, and you might ask, how does this align with peace and harmony? Well, I must process a lot of decades of resistance! I am evolving now, but for many years, I was stuck. I was unable to move forward because I hadn’t processed the past. I had frozen it, resisted it, moved it, and buried it. We cannot resist life. We cannot hide from the horror, the pain, the trauma that life can bring.
The human brain will do whatever is necessary for survival, so unfortunately, we have an innate ability to momentarily freeze and store horrific events. Think of the fight/flight/freeze/fawn survival responses, which are also seen in animals. The problem is when we don’t revisit the events that triggered those responses, and, as my website is dedicated to, conditions like PTSD and Complex-PTSD can manifest.
I have regular counselling to help me manage and process decades of trauma, and I may always need this help. However, I am also learning to accept what is. I am still new at this; all the new reading I am doing helps, but living it is the only way to shift my perspective. I stand in this moment, as I write now. I have my family, my home, my work, my health, and my writing. This is enough. I don’t have tomorrow, and I have let go of yesterday. Right now, it is who and what I am. My mind is free from what-ifs and what-was. And as Streisand and Diamond so harmoniously described it:
“…the used to be’s, just lay on the floor ‘til we sweep them away”
Get your brush out.
