Psychological reality vs True reality
What do we mean by psychological reality, and is it the source of all suffering?
Psychological reality
Psychological reality is your human experience via the mechanism of thought. It is your individual subjective reality that exists in your head, your unique map of the world. You create your psychological reality with words. Often it is negative due to the negativity bias of your mind. You are removed from the essential nearness of true reality by your narration of it.
You experience true reality when you fall back from your myopic focus on your thought-constructed reality, and become fully conscious to both your inner and outer world – present to all that is.
True reality
True reality (or as close as we can hope to come to it) is experienced as a heightened awareness of your sensory experience – colours appear brighter, sounds more fully-formed, smells and tastes enhanced, you are alive to the energy and sensations arising in your body, and at the same time present to your thinking mind – but your thoughts don’t mean anything, they’re just there in the background, or not. Experience just arises and falls away effortlessly. To coin a phrase by Dr Amy Johnson, you are “swimming in experience”.
Awakening from suffering
The shift from psychological to true reality is at once subtle and profound. You can move between these worlds in a moment. In one sense, everything is the same – your laptop is still a laptop, the people around you in the cafe continue to chatter. Yet at the same time, it’s as if the earth has tilted on its axis, sliding everything into view in a new way.
As I sat on my sofa last night trying to focus my mind on a novel, there was an uneasiness in my being. A low hum that I did not want to put my attention on. I felt tight, constricted and kept catching myself having read a few paragraphs without talking anything in. I was vaguely aware that I had a ‘busy mind’, but equally I couldn’t have told you the content of the thoughts, I just knew I was being drawn away from my book, and couldn’t focus. It didn’t feel good.
This is suffering.
Eventually I chose to be with reality. I turned towards the sensations in my body, to the fluttering in my stomach, the humming energy in my chest. I looked towards my thoughts: Familiar, circular, negative chatter. It was saying: “I’m such a loser being in on a Friday night. I bet everyone’s out having a great time. I wish I was out. I can’t ever have what I want!”
You will have your own unique favour of chatter.
Yours might go like this:
They should do what I think they should!
I’m too old/unqualified/shy to…
When I’m smarter/thinner/more confident, then I’ll…
Am I getting sick/dying?
What if I loose my job/house/spouse/etc.
I need food/drink/a person/etc. to feel ok.
It was all my fault things went wrong.
Why did I say that?
Things were so much better back then, I’ll never be that happy again
I won’t be able to handle it if…
etc.
Present to all that is
Rather than trying to change the experience or positively think my way out, I sank fully into the energy of that experience. I went right to its core. Using the incredible tool of EFT, I entered into my experience safely and confidently. Rather than fearing my experience, I became curious. I noticed energy moving from my stomach and chest up into my throat, and tears began rolling down my cheeks. But I didn’t attach any meaning to this experience, it didn’t mean that what I was thinking was true, it just was what it was, and it lasted no more than 5 minutes.
With that release, my surroundings came into sharper focus. I noticed the luminous green velour of the armchair, shimmering. I enjoyed the slow rumble of a car passing. I caught sight of the lustrous gold leaves adorning the cover of a book, and the spine of another with mirrored lettering, almost like a hologram. Simultaneously, my mind was still talking – “I want to hang onto this, I’ve got it, I’ve arrived! Oh no, hang on, what’s that feeling? Is the unease returning?” But there was no attachment to the thinking, and it fell away effortlessly on its own.
Being now in true reality (not my psychological reality), I saw the words on the page with greater clarity. It was as if I had taken off a pair of glasses with the incorrect prescription and suddenly I could see clearly. I sank into the sofa, experiencing the softness of my body, and absorbed the words of my book, enjoying the story, alongside ambient sounds, smells and sensations. Thinking arose but was inconsequential, backgrounded. In true reality, everything was perfect.
You can’t solve a problem with the same thinking that created it ~ Albert Einstein
What if your unease is an alarm for you to wake up to reality? Dive into your felt experience and open the door to your true reality.
Freya is an accredited EFT and NLP practitioner and qualified transformative coach. For expert accompaniment on your journey back to yourself, see the services page.
