Outer Is Inner / Inner is Outer : How All Is Related, & Esoterically Creating Your Reality

[A Voice from the Mountains]

“If you look in a mirror and see your reflection is frowning, you don't go over to the mirror and try to make the reflection smile – you know that the only way to get the reflection to smile is to decide to smile first… Physical Reality is not outer, it is inner, it's just a reflection of you at every given moment, individually and collectively. So if you wish to change your outer physical reality, all you really need to do is to change something about yourself and you will see that change take place unerringly and effortlessly.” – BSHR

Inner Is Outer; Outer Is Inner
A Primer on Changing Reality

The “external,” physical, mundane world is not really external as you perceive it, because you can only experience it with your consciousness, likely somewhere “in” your body (ie. in your brain). So everything that you experience in the world “outside” of your body, is really just images and sounds and other sensations being processed inside of your brain right now (including these words – you are looking at them inside of your brain).

There are spectrums of light well beyond the relatively narrow band of light our eyes can pick up on and send to the brain for processing. So this is one example of the fact that what we experience is not the full, “real” universe out there, but only a small slice of it that we experience as sounds, images and sensations inside of our brains.

People sometimes ask questions like, “How do I know that the color red I perceive looks the same as the color red that you perceive? Maybe what my eyes and brain see as red, your eyes and brain see as orange or blue.” And it's a good question. Not everyone perceives colors in the same way because some people are colorblind to certain colors and aren't able to distinguish them from each other. But in general, not only with colors but with everything in life, what you see, hear, smell, touch, taste and think are experiences that your consciousness has, and there's no way to prove that they have anything at all to do with an “external” reality or if they would even exist in any form at all if not for you.

Who's to say you're not just dreaming all of this, anyway? Can you prove that you're not dreaming right now? Maybe you think you can, until you wake up later. This exact thing has happened to me more than once, where I am dreaming, I stop and ask myself if I am dreaming because of something bizarre which has just taken place, and then I decide: No, this reality, not a dream. And then a little while later I wake up and realize that I've missed an opportunity to have a lucid dream.

So when you look at an object, whether the words on this page or the Sun or anything, you may naturally and instinctually think that you are perceiving something outside of yourself as it “really is.” But you're not. Even scientifically, you're only experiencing, inside your brain, a representation that your brain has created from signals carried by your nervous system, only using light from within a relatively narrow frequency band of all possible light frequencies in the case of sight, etc.

What is “really” “out there,” outside of your personal consciousness, existing independently of the ability of your bodily senses to perceive it, is unknowable, if there is anything “out there” there at all. So if we ultimately have no way to tell what's really “outside” of us, can we at least know what's going on with our consciousness inside of us? I can't imagine anything more intimate to me, than my own thoughts, feelings, and conscious experiences. If I can really be sure of anything, it must be something along the lines of “I think, therefore I am!”

Renés Descartes also used an argument involving dreams to show that we cannot fully trust what our senses tell us about what we think is “real” around us. Plato and Aristotle wondered the same thing: How do we know that we aren't always dreaming? The dream can be a very convincing simulation of waking reality, including sights, sounds, smells, tastes and tactile sensations that can appear as real, sometimes more real, than in waking reality.

In various esoteric traditions, the question is approached in a more practical way. Instead of getting lost in “how do I know what is real?,” initiates into these traditions learn to work with this mystery directly, regardless of how “real” it is, by discipline with their own consciousness.

This discipline is based around the working theory that “outer is inner,” and “inner is outer,” or there is ultimately no objective distinction between what you are as an individual, and what is perceived as being “outside” of you. This particularly applies to your inner experiences, your beliefs, thoughts, feelings and emotions. These inner experiences, instead of being seen as separate and unrelated to the “outside” world, are seen as intimately connected to it and even as a direct cause of the way it happens to manifest around you.

This principle of “inner is outer” or “as above, so below” is the exact same principle used to control lucid dreams. If you are familiar with lucid dreams, then think about it: what do you use to control your dreams, while you are dreaming? Nothing but your own consciousness. Imagine how you do this. It doesn't require “physical” action. To simply form a belief, summon an emotion or enter a state of being immediately and radically transforms the dream.

If you are not familiar with lucid dreaming, or if you have always had difficulty manipulating the dream environment once you become lucid (as everyone experiences at some time), then beginning to practice the dream path may help to access or better grasp this more general discipline of interacting with reality through consciousness.

The only difference between dreams and physical reality is that the effect upon your surroundings when you alter your consciousness during a dream is nearly instantaneous, and often much more dramatic, including things that are considered physically impossible. In the physical realm changes happen more slowly and there are collectively agreed-upon “rules” (since there is more than one person dreaming here) that manifest as “laws of physics,” etc. But the basic mechanism is still the exact same: the change that you manifest “outwardly” must first come from “within” you (as within, so without). These words are in quotation marks because it's questionable if space even exists within the dream state, to contrast “inner” from “outer” (do you even have a body in a dream?), and this question also carries over into the physical realm. In a dream, it appears that everything is made of consciousness, including the perception of space itself.

This is the secret of esoteric teachings: the “inner” and the “outer” are really the same, and everything is consciousness, and everything is one, and you are an intrinsic part of it all and a co-creator of reality. This is the meaning of “as above, so below,” as well as a “self-fulfilling prophecy,” the “placebo effect,” and many other phenomena: you manifest your own reality, from the inside out. You believe it, you think it, you perceive it, you experience it, and you reinforce that original belief.

A simplistic example of this can be given using the question: is the glass half empty or half full? Say that an individual has been convinced through various life events that they have gone through half-unconsciously that the glass is half empty. Then they see such a glass, and lo and behold, it's half empty, exactly as they thought it would be. Now they don't just think it's half empty, they know it's half empty because they've seen it for themselves. To try to suggest to them that the same glass may also be half full could be futile, since they have already seen and experienced their own reality and they know exactly what it consists of.

I say this is a simplistic example because we are dealing with a single shared reality, a single item, and only two ways of looking at that single item (either half empty or half full). But it's possible that in the wider reality we could be shifting between or splitting off from various “parallel” versions of reality in some way that better organize the various ways of experiencing reality that humans can create for themselves, and of course there are many ways of looking at the world that arise from experiencing complex sets of events that we link together in some sort of narrative, and for which many more complex shades of meaning can be derived than the two simple positions in our example.

Nevertheless, the same mechanism can be applied over much more complicated sets of beliefs than simply whether a glass is half empty or full, and it is every bit as relevant. We tend to perceive what we decide to believe. And once we have decided to believe something, and then see it proven in the world (or at least convince ourselves that we've seen it proven – not so hard to do when the given belief was already believed it to begin with!), then that belief is reinforced and takes priority for us, overshadowing other beliefs that we could have had, that would be equally valid and just as easy to validate for ourselves.

Then end result of this process, over time, is that we shape our reality with our own beliefs. We not only decide what we believe intellectually, but our beliefs come out in our sense of place in the world, our self-esteem, how we interact with others, what we like to talk about, what kind of people we surround ourselves with, what kind of occupation we find, how we think to spend our spare time. So, really, the end result is that our entire reality is formed, shaped and colored by what we believe and therefore perceive in the world.

We could have chosen to believe many different things or to see the world in many different ways, but we tend to place certain limits on ourselves and set everything else aside as “unrealistic,” or impossible, or not desirable, or not worth the effort, etc.

We have the power to take conscious control of what we believe and disbelieve, or to even go back to the “blank slate” that Zen Buddhism teaches, and neither accept nor reject anything. A Zen koan asks, what was your original face before your mother was born? Though these koans generally don't call for any kind of logical or reasonable answer, the face in this koan is your original blank slate of simply being in the present moment and finding the realization that you don't really know what in the hell is going on around you at any given point in time. Aside from the guesses of various “authorities” for which we often have no real reason to believe in the first place, we don't ultimately know where we came from, what we're doing here, where we go after we die, what death even is, or what is the point of anything existing in the first place. If we can't figure out these kinds of basic questions about existence then how in the hell are we supposed to know how to form sensible opinions about anything else in life?

True though it may be that we really don't know what we're doing here in the first place, or much of anything else for certain, the fact appears to be that our beliefs nonetheless can become very useful tools during the course of our lives to achieve various things. Or, conversely, they can severely limit and handicap us, even make us miserable. We have the ability to choose our beliefs, consciously, with this knowledge.

If someone does not choose their beliefs with their conscious mind, then they will be chosen unconsciously by the unconscious. We can define the unconscious as everything that one is literally not conscious of, from subliminal thoughts, to the signals from your brain to your heart and other organs, to anything else that appears external to your conscious thoughts. Only the contents of your conscious thoughts and feelings in this precise moment are of your conscious mind. Everything else in existence is unconscious in relation to you. So you can either consciously choose your own beliefs or you can follow the unconscious guidance of any and every unconscious thing that may influence you, and just go along for the ride and be victim to whatever the results may be (whether for better or worse).

Because you can determine your consciousness,
you can determine the objects of your consciousness.

If you begin to observe your internal thoughts, feelings and self-dialogues, as in meditation, things from your life will come up that you may want to change in some way. It is not a matter of changing something in the “external” world; it is a matter of changing the way these internal thoughts and feelings arise in you, and how you respond to them. The “external” world, as you experience it, is already connected to this exact same process, and changing the contents of what is “inside” of you will immediately begin to work a change upon what appears “outside” of you. As various esoteric traditions suggest, you may find that ultimately there is no real difference between what appears inside and what appears outside, since what seems to be happening inside of you creates what seems to be happening outside of you.

Even if someone chooses not to believe this, then that person simply chooses to live in a reality where they do not consciously manifest their own reality. And, a result of this belief, they won't! They will believe that they cannot consciously create their own reality, and this belief will become their reality just the same as the reality of the person who says that the glass is half empty. If one believes that they can't profoundly and fundamentally change their life this way, then that belief comes from within that person and manifests outwardly, dis-empowering them and limiting many options that might have otherwise been made available to them.

Yet, at the same time, many people who take a sugar pill while believing that it's “real medicine” derive real medical benefit from it via the placebo effect, simply because they believed that the sugar pill was real medicine. So, it became real medicine, that simply! If it's “only” a sugar pill, then why does the placebo effect work? Because the people who have taken the sugar pill have believed that it was something else, and so the sugar pill became something else – to them. To someone else, especially someone who was already told beforehand that it was just a sugar pill, it may do nothing at all aside from what sugar normally does to the body.

The placebo effect is really a very mundane example of what is actually possible for consciousness to accomplish. It's easy to reference because it's fairly well-known, even if its mechanism is not as well understood. Those who fully understand that they do transform their experience of the external world by their internal state of consciousness empower themselves enormously.

If someone essentially has the power to create their own reality, even if only as they personally choose experience it, then doesn't that make them like God in some sense, or even exactly like God as far as they are personally concerned?

A lot could be said about this idea coming from different philosophical or religious backgrounds. I bring this idea up only to say two few brief things.

First, if we define God to be whatever existence comes from, and everything that exists within this existence, then we are at least part of this God, and so is everything that we see, hear, taste, smell or touch. Not just from God, but still a part. Within the framework of creating and experiencing everything that is possible to create and experience, God apparently enjoys disguising itself as beings which do not remember that they are in fact God. The disguises are not only very convincing but are apparently also enforced by other parts of God which are very effective at making the disguises hard to forget about. And if other beings exist apart from our current disguises in the physical realm, then they must be part of God too.

Secondly, though everything we believe, think and experience is inside of us, and the “external” reality is only a reflection of what's inside of us, and we have ultimate authority over how we allow our lives to unfold, there still appear to be other beings and other aspects of our own being that are every bit as real as we are, though we are not consciously aware of them. And there seem to be things in the universe that can “reach out and touch us,” no matter what our conscious beliefs are, and in this way bring us awareness of something new.

Given that the physical realm exists, and all physical beings exist, for some ultimate spiritual purpose that we may not even be consciously aware of, it might be assumed that we can experience events in our personal lives that occur in relation to this ultimate purpose that we may not consciously understand.

And so despite the optimism I have for this idea of using conscious to create our own realities, there is a still a mystery which we all seem to be subject to, which has a consciousness of its own, and may have its own plans for us.

And with that thought this article concludes.

-------------

This is from a(n) (e)book summarizing on various esoteric traditions that I'm working on and I don't particularly care what anyone does with it. Any feedback is welcome.

[Spiral of Light]

Well-done, bsbray! I especially appreciate this reminder:

"True though it may be that we really don't know what we're doing here in the first place, or much of anything else for certain, the fact appears to be that our beliefs nonetheless can become very useful tools during the course of our lives to achieve various things. Or, conversely, they can severely limit and handicap us, even make us miserable. We have the ability to choose our beliefs, consciously, with this knowledge."

"If someone does not choose their beliefs with their conscious mind, then they will be chosen unconsciously by the unconscious. We can define the unconscious as everything that one is literally not conscious of, from subliminal thoughts, to the signals from your brain to your heart and other organs, to anything else that appears external to your conscious thoughts. Only the contents of your conscious thoughts and feelings in this precise moment are of your conscious mind. Everything else in existence is unconscious in relation to you. So you can either consciously choose your own beliefs or you can follow the unconscious guidance of any and every unconscious thing that may influence you, and just go along for the ride and be victim to whatever the results may be (whether for better or worse)."

Personally, I wish I could have been aware of this truth much earlier in my life. Having stumbled upon it in my later years has made all the difference in my own self-determination since I'm no longer the victim, going 'along for the ride'.

[Milneman]

Given that the physical realm exists, and all physical beings exist, for some ultimate spiritual purpose that we may not even be consciously aware of, it might be assumed that we can experience events in our personal lives that occur in relation to this ultimate purpose that we may not consciously understand.

is in direct conflict with

So when you look at an object, whether the words on this page or the Sun or anything, you may naturally and instinctually think that you are perceiving something outside of yourself as it “really is.” But you're not. Even scientifically, you're only experiencing, inside your brain, a representation that your brain has created from signals carried by your nervous system, only using light from within a relatively narrow frequency band of all possible light frequencies in the case of sight, etc.

I'll unpack deeper when I get home from work just because I think this needs a deeper unpacking to demonstrate how flawed it is.

[A Voice from the Mountains]

I'll wait for your next response before I say too much but I'll try to give a better idea of where I'm coming from.

So everything we see, hear, taste, smell and touch are stimuli on certain narrow ranges of reality that go into our brains, and it's inside of our brains that we experience all of these things. So theoretically we could be in exactly the kind of situation that "The Matrix" proposes, ie that our brains are hooked to a computer that runs a simulation and delivers stimuli to the brain exactly as our bodily senses would, and I'm not sure that we'd be able to tell any difference without some kind of intervention from "elsewhere."

And this is the other issue. Even though everything we experience externally is really just an internal recreation inside of our brains of what our senses have delivered, we could still have a "higher self," or there still could be something "behind" our consciousness besides what we are physically oriented towards by our physical senses. And if it's there, and even part of us already on some level, but we can't physically sense it, then that opens up a realm of things to us besides what is already contained in our consciousness. And that can be called a mystery or "the universe" or whatever.

[Jake]

Couldn't click 'thank you' twice!!! Please continue...

Jake.

[Milneman]

Sorry guys...slow to respond here. I will get to this when I get in tonight....cluster bombs are abounding in life right now.

[GoodETxSG]

Thank you OP,
Great Thread
Some very interesting audio video presentations to add to this rich conversation...



Inner Worlds, Outer Worlds - Part 1 - Akasha

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=aXuTt7c3Jkg

THIS SECOND VIDEO IMHO IS ONE THAT EVERY AVALON MEMBER SHOULD MAKE TIME TO WATCH!!!

Mind Science Kept Hidden Documentary. WE ARE VIBRATIONAL BEINGS!

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=VjpCKZ7cEoY

[A Voice from the Mountains]

Posted by Milneman (here)
Sorry guys...slow to respond here. I will get to this when I get in tonight....cluster bombs are abounding in life right now.

It's no problem. Whatever points you raise, it gives me an opportunity to either go back and revise or clarify my ideas.

I'm also working on some ideas for a second article or whatever you'd call this, which is somewhat related but different, about trying to apply abilities learned from transforming dream environments into the physical realm. I've had some interesting experiences with this type of thing and I think it may be an important area of investigation/study in terms of our evolution.

[Milneman]

OK let's unpack this!

“If you look in a mirror and see your reflection is frowning, you don't go over to the mirror and try to make the reflection smile – you know that the only way to get the reflection to smile is to decide to smile first… Physical Reality is not outer, it is inner, it's just a reflection of you at every given moment, individually and collectively. So if you wish to change your outer physical reality, all you really need to do is to change something about yourself and you will see that change take place unerringly and effortlessly.” – BSHR

Which sounds like a really good common sense proposition! Or is it?

What is “really” “out there,” outside of your personal consciousness, existing independently of the ability of your bodily senses to perceive it, is unknowable, if there is anything “out there” there at all. So if we ultimately have no way to tell what's really “outside” of us, can we at least know what's going on with our consciousness inside of us? I can't imagine anything more intimate to me, than my own thoughts, feelings, and conscious experiences. If I can really be sure of anything, it must be something along the lines of “I think, therefore I am!”

But outside of that, are you suggesting we can't know anything else?

And if that is the case, how can we know anything outside of the cogito for certain?

Renés Descartes also used an argument involving dreams to show that we cannot fully trust what our senses tell us about what we think is “real” around us. Plato and Aristotle wondered the same thing: How do we know that we aren't always dreaming? The dream can be a very convincing simulation of waking reality, including sights, sounds, smells, tastes and tactile sensations that can appear as real, sometimes more real, than in waking reality.


This is poignant for me because in one of the classes I'm taking we're actually beginning to look at the problems with Meditations on First Philosophy, where it goes wrong, and where it produces problems that simply don't have answers. Here's one that I personally really enjoy because...well it's a fun problem. If the cogito is true, if we are because we perceive, we think, then do we cease to exist when we sleep? If that's the case, then it would follow that manipulation of the realities of our world by our minds would depend upon the true perception of mind as seen in:

This discipline is based around the working theory that “outer is inner,” and “inner is outer,” or there is ultimately no objective distinction between what you are as an individual, and what is perceived as being “outside” of you. This particularly applies to your inner experiences, your beliefs, thoughts, feelings and emotions. These inner experiences, instead of being seen as separate and unrelated to the “outside” world, are seen as intimately connected to it and even as a direct cause of the way it happens to manifest around you.

So I take this to mean that our perceptions, our emotions, the contents of our minds in a way reflect the way we perceive the world outside of our minds, outside of our 'self'. There is this radical theory that I'm becoming acquainted with () that states the reason we can have this variation in how we perceive the outside world is because an outside world actually exists independently of our minds. Regardless of how our minds behave, this world acts and exists as a brute fact. It is, or to do a latin, 'Sum ergo Sum."

Did I write that correctly? Mental note, take latin.

This principle of “inner is outer” or “as above, so below” is the exact same principle used to control lucid dreams. If you are familiar with lucid dreams, then think about it: what do you use to control your dreams, while you are dreaming? Nothing but your own consciousness. Imagine how you do this. It doesn't require “physical” action. To simply form a belief, summon an emotion or enter a state of being immediately and radically transforms the dream.

I would disagree here. (But then again, in disagreeing and finding clarity, we might actually be saying the same thing just using different terminology, so let's play with this! ) Lucid dreaming is an exercise in conscious control of the unconscious mind. I believe it is possible with training (emphasis on with training) to become aware of what the unconscious mind is doing, suggesting, and in fact controlling what our conscious is doing. The big dog running the show so to speak. But the trick is to assimilate the subconscious mind with the conscious, and this takes a lifetime for many people (I'm one of them, who continually bangs my head against the brick wall of 'DOH! I did it again!'). However, I think one can dream lucidly and still be subconsciously under the control of the subconscious (and I hope I never write another sentence as vague as that ever again!). You can be blind, and yet have characteristics of sighted people, in some cases behave as if you were sighted. A classic example is with people who are blind sighted, have a light directed into their eyes, and then be asked to reach towards the light. Strangely enough, most people in this situation claim to see the light even though it is impossible for them to physically see the light, and they reach towards it almost every time.

The only difference between dreams and physical reality is that the effect upon your surroundings when you alter your consciousness during a dream is nearly instantaneous, and often much more dramatic, including things that are considered physically impossible. In the physical realm changes happen more slowly and there are collectively agreed-upon “rules” (since there is more than one person dreaming here) that manifest as “laws of physics,” etc. But the basic mechanism is still the exact same: the change that you manifest “outwardly” must first come from “within” you (as within, so without). These words are in quotation marks because it's questionable if space even exists within the dream state, to contrast “inner” from “outer” (do you even have a body in a dream?), and this question also carries over into the physical realm. In a dream, it appears that everything is made of consciousness, including the perception of space itself.


This is merely one interpretation of what a dream is, and what the real world is. It isn't the only one. What about dreams that veterans who suffer from post traumatic stress disorder have, where they actually lash out at their partners in the same bed?

The proposition that we manifest the laws of physics because there are more people dreaming here is also controversial. Mainly, how do you prove that? If there is no one around to observe gravity, is there no gravity? Are you suggesting that if we all agree that gravity is a bad law that people will begin to float away? It seems to be. I like the general idea about the change manifesting from without having to start from within.

But here is the flaw I think I find in the idea. I'm not so certain that there are very many people who are able to do this without getting involved.

Here's a far out thought experiment to illustrate. Suppose one person has managed to break through the law of gravity, and is able to fly. This person has figured out that the trick is to master the subconscious with the conscious and thereby negate gravity by manipulating something on a quantum level. This is no stupid person, nor an undisciplined person. In fact they are probably one over a very, very, very few who have managed to reach this level of intellectual, mental, physical, and spiritual discipline. Let's put the odds of this person being existent at something reasonable. How about 1 in 1 billion. The odds might even be greater than that. Say 1 in ten billion. Big odds here because this is, after all, the law of gravity. It's a big law!

What then, would you suppose, would be the chances of finding someone who could authentically teach a means of manipulating physics at a quantum level to defy the law of gravity? They'd be relatively the same, no? Otherwise we'd have all kinds of people flying around all over the place, TWA would be out of business .... (is TWA still around?)

So let's take something less radical than defying the law of gravity. Let's call it mastering the mind. That's way easier than manipulating gravity right? I submit that it may in fact almost be as difficult as defying the law of gravity. If that's the case, then someone who can stand behind the statement:

This is the secret of esoteric teachings: the “inner” and the “outer” are really the same, and everything is consciousness, and everything is one, and you are an intrinsic part of it all and a co-creator of reality. This is the meaning of “as above, so below,” as well as a “self-fulfilling prophecy,” the “placebo effect,” and many other phenomena: you manifest your own reality, from the inside out. You believe it, you think it, you perceive it, you experience it, and you reinforce that original belief.


is about as difficult to find as someone who has mastered flying by flapping their arms. I submit that finding an individual who can say this without having mastered it provides us with a far smaller set of odds. 1:100 I'd guess, maybe even lower. 1:10.

But then this begs addressing the argument that will pop up to counter this assertion:

A simplistic example of this can be given using the question: is the glass half empty or half full? Say that an individual has been convinced through various life events that they have gone through half-unconsciously that the glass is half empty. Then they see such a glass, and lo and behold, it's half empty, exactly as they thought it would be. Now they don't just think it's half empty, they know it's half empty because they've seen it for themselves. To try to suggest to them that the same glass may also be half full could be futile, since they have already seen and experienced their own reality and they know exactly what it consists of.



Relative experience is not a proof for the manipulation of the external world.

I say this is a simplistic example because we are dealing with a single shared reality, a single item, and only two ways of looking at that single item (either half empty or half full). But it's possible that in the wider reality we could be shifting between or splitting off from various “parallel” versions of reality in some way that better organize the various ways of experiencing reality that humans can create for themselves, and of course there are many ways of looking at the world that arise from experiencing complex sets of events that we link together in some sort of narrative, and for which many more complex shades of meaning can be derived than the two simple positions in our example.



Here's the paradox I find with this theory. Suppose these possible multiple worlds do in fact exist. Suppose in these multiple worlds, one world exists where it is possible, in fact it is a realty, where no other possible worlds exist.

Which world in that case would we live in?

And once we have decided to believe something, and then see it proven in the world (or at least convince ourselves that we've seen it proven – not so hard to do when the given belief was already believed it to begin with!), then that belief is reinforced and takes priority for us, overshadowing other beliefs that we could have had, that would be equally valid and just as easy to validate for ourselves.

And we could believe all these things and still be mistaken, could we not?

The world is flat.
The world is the centre of the universe.
The sun revolves around the world.

I can give more examples if you'd like.

Then end result of this process, over time, is that we shape our reality with our own beliefs. We not only decide what we believe intellectually, but our beliefs come out in our sense of place in the world, our self-esteem, how we interact with others, what we like to talk about, what kind of people we surround ourselves with, what kind of occupation we find, how we think to spend our spare time. So, really, the end result is that our entire reality is formed, shaped and colored by what we believe and therefore perceive in the world.

I think it's actually a lot more complicated than that. I think that at some point we recognize that there is an external reality, a moral reality, that isn't flexible. It exists, and we tent to bend or distort our views around it, kind of like a carnival mirror. When things don't work out for us because we're approaching the world from this bent perspective, we lash out at the external world. We become victims, it's the fault of someone out there. The reality is it's our own bent perceptions of the world that create this conflict, not the world around us.

Our job is not to create the reality we want but to recognize the reality that already exists, and recognize that at the heart of who we are we actually have a relationship that is synonymous with that order and structure.

Sounds illuminati doesn't it?

That's the problem. The alt community is looking at the world with that bent mirror. The spiritual community to a great degree is also. Some of the greatest minds in the preschool of our planet are recognized as great precisely because they hold the mirrors just the right way.


We could have chosen to believe many different things or to see the world in many different ways, but we tend to place certain limits on ourselves and set everything else aside as “unrealistic,” or impossible, or not desirable, or not worth the effort, etc.

I really like this paragraph because it encapsulates the idea I've been talking about. We do what we do because it's easier than doing the right thing.

We have the power to take conscious control of what we believe and disbelieve, or to even go back to the “blank slate” that Zen Buddhism teaches, and neither accept nor reject anything. A Zen koan asks, what was your original face before your mother was born? Though these koans generally don't call for any kind of logical or reasonable answer, the face in this koan is your original blank slate of simply being in the present moment and finding the realization that you don't really know what in the hell is going on around you at any given point in time. Aside from the guesses of various “authorities” for which we often have no real reason to believe in the first place, we don't ultimately know where we came from, what we're doing here, where we go after we die, what death even is, or what is the point of anything existing in the first place. If we can't figure out these kinds of basic questions about existence then how in the hell are we supposed to know how to form sensible opinions about anything else in life?


Because, Blanche....Because y'are in that chair.



If you're going to play monopoly, don't be surprised if sometimes you must go to jail. You must go directly to jail. You must not pass go, you must not collect $200.


If someone does not choose their beliefs with their conscious mind, then they will be chosen unconsciously by the unconscious. We can define the unconscious as everything that one is literally not conscious of, from subliminal thoughts, to the signals from your brain to your heart and other organs, to anything else that appears external to your conscious thoughts.

I submit we are aware of the subconscious. We've simply become really good at ignoring it.

Only the contents of your conscious thoughts and feelings in this precise moment are of your conscious mind. Everything else in existence is unconscious in relation to you. So you can either consciously choose your own beliefs or you can follow the unconscious guidance of any and every unconscious thing that may influence you, and just go along for the ride and be victim to whatever the results may be (whether for better or worse).

Are they? How can you be certain of that if you can't be certain what your subconscious is doing? You see what I'm saying? You're suggesting we are victims of our subconscious if we aren't consciously choosing how we think/feel/behave. I'm suggesting that because we are innately aware of our subconscious, and because we choose to go along with it, no matter what we do/say/feel/act upon we will be driven by our subconscious until the subconscious is in fact integrated with the conscious self.

Because you can determine your consciousness,
you can determine the objects of your consciousness.

False. Until you can determine your subconscious, you can't know your conscious self.


I'm going to stop there because my dog is begging me to go for a walk. And my subconscious mind is suggesting I need to go.

[778 neighbour of some guy]

Posted by Milneman (here)
OK let's unpack this!

“If you look in a mirror and see your reflection is frowning, you don't go over to the mirror and try to make the reflection smile – you know that the only way to get the reflection to smile is to decide to smile first… Physical Reality is not outer, it is inner, it's just a reflection of you at every given moment, individually and collectively. So if you wish to change your outer physical reality, all you really need to do is to change something about yourself and you will see that change take place unerringly and effortlessly.” – BSHR

Which sounds like a really good common sense proposition! Or is it?

What is “really” “out there,” outside of your personal consciousness, existing independently of the ability of your bodily senses to perceive it, is unknowable, if there is anything “out there” there at all. So if we ultimately have no way to tell what's really “outside” of us, can we at least know what's going on with our consciousness inside of us? I can't imagine anything more intimate to me, than my own thoughts, feelings, and conscious experiences. If I can really be sure of anything, it must be something along the lines of “I think, therefore I am!”

But outside of that, are you suggesting we can't know anything else?

And if that is the case, how can we know anything outside of the cogito for certain?

Renés Descartes also used an argument involving dreams to show that we cannot fully trust what our senses tell us about what we think is “real” around us. Plato and Aristotle wondered the same thing: How do we know that we aren't always dreaming? The dream can be a very convincing simulation of waking reality, including sights, sounds, smells, tastes and tactile sensations that can appear as real, sometimes more real, than in waking reality.


This is poignant for me because in one of the classes I'm taking we're actually beginning to look at the problems with Meditations on First Philosophy, where it goes wrong, and where it produces problems that simply don't have answers. Here's one that I personally really enjoy because...well it's a fun problem. If the cogito is true, if we are because we perceive, we think, then do we cease to exist when we sleep? If that's the case, then it would follow that manipulation of the realities of our world by our minds would depend upon the true perception of mind as seen in:

This discipline is based around the working theory that “outer is inner,” and “inner is outer,” or there is ultimately no objective distinction between what you are as an individual, and what is perceived as being “outside” of you. This particularly applies to your inner experiences, your beliefs, thoughts, feelings and emotions. These inner experiences, instead of being seen as separate and unrelated to the “outside” world, are seen as intimately connected to it and even as a direct cause of the way it happens to manifest around you.

So I take this to mean that our perceptions, our emotions, the contents of our minds in a way reflect the way we perceive the world outside of our minds, outside of our 'self'. There is this radical theory that I'm becoming acquainted with () that states the reason we can have this variation in how we perceive the outside world is because an outside world actually exists independently of our minds. Regardless of how our minds behave, this world acts and exists as a brute fact. It is, or to do a latin, 'Sum ergo Sum."

Did I write that correctly? Mental note, take latin.

This principle of “inner is outer” or “as above, so below” is the exact same principle used to control lucid dreams. If you are familiar with lucid dreams, then think about it: what do you use to control your dreams, while you are dreaming? Nothing but your own consciousness. Imagine how you do this. It doesn't require “physical” action. To simply form a belief, summon an emotion or enter a state of being immediately and radically transforms the dream.

I would disagree here. (But then again, in disagreeing and finding clarity, we might actually be saying the same thing just using different terminology, so let's play with this! ) Lucid dreaming is an exercise in conscious control of the unconscious mind. I believe it is possible with training (emphasis on with training) to become aware of what the unconscious mind is doing, suggesting, and in fact controlling what our conscious is doing. The big dog running the show so to speak. But the trick is to assimilate the subconscious mind with the conscious, and this takes a lifetime for many people (I'm one of them, who continually bangs my head against the brick wall of 'DOH! I did it again!'). However, I think one can dream lucidly and still be subconsciously under the control of the subconscious (and I hope I never write another sentence as vague as that ever again!). You can be blind, and yet have characteristics of sighted people, in some cases behave as if you were sighted. A classic example is with people who are blind sighted, have a light directed into their eyes, and then be asked to reach towards the light. Strangely enough, most people in this situation claim to see the light even though it is impossible for them to physically see the light, and they reach towards it almost every time.

The only difference between dreams and physical reality is that the effect upon your surroundings when you alter your consciousness during a dream is nearly instantaneous, and often much more dramatic, including things that are considered physically impossible. In the physical realm changes happen more slowly and there are collectively agreed-upon “rules” (since there is more than one person dreaming here) that manifest as “laws of physics,” etc. But the basic mechanism is still the exact same: the change that you manifest “outwardly” must first come from “within” you (as within, so without). These words are in quotation marks because it's questionable if space even exists within the dream state, to contrast “inner” from “outer” (do you even have a body in a dream?), and this question also carries over into the physical realm. In a dream, it appears that everything is made of consciousness, including the perception of space itself.


This is merely one interpretation of what a dream is, and what the real world is. It isn't the only one. What about dreams that veterans who suffer from post traumatic stress disorder have, where they actually lash out at their partners in the same bed?

The proposition that we manifest the laws of physics because there are more people dreaming here is also controversial. Mainly, how do you prove that? If there is no one around to observe gravity, is there no gravity? Are you suggesting that if we all agree that gravity is a bad law that people will begin to float away? It seems to be. I like the general idea about the change manifesting from without having to start from within.

But here is the flaw I think I find in the idea. I'm not so certain that there are very many people who are able to do this without getting involved.

Here's a far out thought experiment to illustrate. Suppose one person has managed to break through the law of gravity, and is able to fly. This person has figured out that the trick is to master the subconscious with the conscious and thereby negate gravity by manipulating something on a quantum level. This is no stupid person, nor an undisciplined person. In fact they are probably one over a very, very, very few who have managed to reach this level of intellectual, mental, physical, and spiritual discipline. Let's put the odds of this person being existent at something reasonable. How about 1 in 1 billion. The odds might even be greater than that. Say 1 in ten billion. Big odds here because this is, after all, the law of gravity. It's a big law!

What then, would you suppose, would be the chances of finding someone who could authentically teach a means of manipulating physics at a quantum level to defy the law of gravity? They'd be relatively the same, no? Otherwise we'd have all kinds of people flying around all over the place, TWA would be out of business .... (is TWA still around?)

So let's take something less radical than defying the law of gravity. Let's call it mastering the mind. That's way easier than manipulating gravity right? I submit that it may in fact almost be as difficult as defying the law of gravity. If that's the case, then someone who can stand behind the statement:

This is the secret of esoteric teachings: the “inner” and the “outer” are really the same, and everything is consciousness, and everything is one, and you are an intrinsic part of it all and a co-creator of reality. This is the meaning of “as above, so below,” as well as a “self-fulfilling prophecy,” the “placebo effect,” and many other phenomena: you manifest your own reality, from the inside out. You believe it, you think it, you perceive it, you experience it, and you reinforce that original belief.


is about as difficult to find as someone who has mastered flying by flapping their arms. I submit that finding an individual who can say this without having mastered it provides us with a far smaller set of odds. 1:100 I'd guess, maybe even lower. 1:10.

But then this begs addressing the argument that will pop up to counter this assertion:

A simplistic example of this can be given using the question: is the glass half empty or half full? Say that an individual has been convinced through various life events that they have gone through half-unconsciously that the glass is half empty. Then they see such a glass, and lo and behold, it's half empty, exactly as they thought it would be. Now they don't just think it's half empty, they know it's half empty because they've seen it for themselves. To try to suggest to them that the same glass may also be half full could be futile, since they have already seen and experienced their own reality and they know exactly what it consists of.



Relative experience is not a proof for the manipulation of the external world.

I say this is a simplistic example because we are dealing with a single shared reality, a single item, and only two ways of looking at that single item (either half empty or half full). But it's possible that in the wider reality we could be shifting between or splitting off from various “parallel” versions of reality in some way that better organize the various ways of experiencing reality that humans can create for themselves, and of course there are many ways of looking at the world that arise from experiencing complex sets of events that we link together in some sort of narrative, and for which many more complex shades of meaning can be derived than the two simple positions in our example.



Here's the paradox I find with this theory. Suppose these possible multiple worlds do in fact exist. Suppose in these multiple worlds, one world exists where it is possible, in fact it is a realty, where no other possible worlds exist.

Which world in that case would we live in?

And once we have decided to believe something, and then see it proven in the world (or at least convince ourselves that we've seen it proven – not so hard to do when the given belief was already believed it to begin with!), then that belief is reinforced and takes priority for us, overshadowing other beliefs that we could have had, that would be equally valid and just as easy to validate for ourselves.

And we could believe all these things and still be mistaken, could we not?

The world is flat.
The world is the centre of the universe.
The sun revolves around the world.

I can give more examples if you'd like.

Then end result of this process, over time, is that we shape our reality with our own beliefs. We not only decide what we believe intellectually, but our beliefs come out in our sense of place in the world, our self-esteem, how we interact with others, what we like to talk about, what kind of people we surround ourselves with, what kind of occupation we find, how we think to spend our spare time. So, really, the end result is that our entire reality is formed, shaped and colored by what we believe and therefore perceive in the world.

I think it's actually a lot more complicated than that. I think that at some point we recognize that there is an external reality, a moral reality, that isn't flexible. It exists, and we tent to bend or distort our views around it, kind of like a carnival mirror. When things don't work out for us because we're approaching the world from this bent perspective, we lash out at the external world. We become victims, it's the fault of someone out there. The reality is it's our own bent perceptions of the world that create this conflict, not the world around us.

Our job is not to create the reality we want but to recognize the reality that already exists, and recognize that at the heart of who we are we actually have a relationship that is synonymous with that order and structure.

Sounds illuminati doesn't it?

That's the problem. The alt community is looking at the world with that bent mirror. The spiritual community to a great degree is also. Some of the greatest minds in the preschool of our planet are recognized as great precisely because they hold the mirrors just the right way.


We could have chosen to believe many different things or to see the world in many different ways, but we tend to place certain limits on ourselves and set everything else aside as “unrealistic,” or impossible, or not desirable, or not worth the effort, etc.

I really like this paragraph because it encapsulates the idea I've been talking about. We do what we do because it's easier than doing the right thing.

We have the power to take conscious control of what we believe and disbelieve, or to even go back to the “blank slate” that Zen Buddhism teaches, and neither accept nor reject anything. A Zen koan asks, what was your original face before your mother was born? Though these koans generally don't call for any kind of logical or reasonable answer, the face in this koan is your original blank slate of simply being in the present moment and finding the realization that you don't really know what in the hell is going on around you at any given point in time. Aside from the guesses of various “authorities” for which we often have no real reason to believe in the first place, we don't ultimately know where we came from, what we're doing here, where we go after we die, what death even is, or what is the point of anything existing in the first place. If we can't figure out these kinds of basic questions about existence then how in the hell are we supposed to know how to form sensible opinions about anything else in life?


Because, Blanche....Because y'are in that chair.



If you're going to play monopoly, don't be surprised if sometimes you must go to jail. You must go directly to jail. You must not pass go, you must not collect $200.


If someone does not choose their beliefs with their conscious mind, then they will be chosen unconsciously by the unconscious. We can define the unconscious as everything that one is literally not conscious of, from subliminal thoughts, to the signals from your brain to your heart and other organs, to anything else that appears external to your conscious thoughts.

I submit we are aware of the subconscious. We've simply become really good at ignoring it.

Only the contents of your conscious thoughts and feelings in this precise moment are of your conscious mind. Everything else in existence is unconscious in relation to you. So you can either consciously choose your own beliefs or you can follow the unconscious guidance of any and every unconscious thing that may influence you, and just go along for the ride and be victim to whatever the results may be (whether for better or worse).

Are they? How can you be certain of that if you can't be certain what your subconscious is doing? You see what I'm saying? You're suggesting we are victims of our subconscious if we aren't consciously choosing how we think/feel/behave. I'm suggesting that because we are innately aware of our subconscious, and because we choose to go along with it, no matter what we do/say/feel/act upon we will be driven by our subconscious until the subconscious is in fact integrated with the conscious self.

Because you can determine your consciousness,
you can determine the objects of your consciousness.

False. Until you can determine your subconscious, you can't know your conscious self.


I'm going to stop there because my dog is begging me to go for a walk. And my subconscious mind is suggesting I need to go.

Haven't read a damn word of that, I was choking on the chicken, roflmao, I hope there is a ms Heimlich around to abuse me flexually.

[A Voice from the Mountains]

Milneman, this is exactly the kind of exchange I need to have in order to bounce around ideas here.

This principle of “inner is outer” or “as above, so below” is the exact same principle used to control lucid dreams. If you are familiar with lucid dreams, then think about it: what do you use to control your dreams, while you are dreaming? Nothing but your own consciousness. Imagine how you do this. It doesn't require “physical” action. To simply form a belief, summon an emotion or enter a state of being immediately and radically transforms the dream.

I would disagree here. (But then again, in disagreeing and finding clarity, we might actually be saying the same thing just using different terminology, so let's play with this! ) Lucid dreaming is an exercise in conscious control of the unconscious mind. I believe it is possible with training (emphasis on with training) to become aware of what the unconscious mind is doing, suggesting, and in fact controlling what our conscious is doing. The big dog running the show so to speak. But the trick is to assimilate the subconscious mind with the conscious, and this takes a lifetime for many people (I'm one of them, who continually bangs my head against the brick wall of 'DOH! I did it again!'). However, I think one can dream lucidly and still be subconsciously under the control of the subconscious (and I hope I never write another sentence as vague as that ever again!). You can be blind, and yet have characteristics of sighted people, in some cases behave as if you were sighted. A classic example is with people who are blind sighted, have a light directed into their eyes, and then be asked to reach towards the light. Strangely enough, most people in this situation claim to see the light even though it is impossible for them to physically see the light, and they reach towards it almost every time.

I can't tell much of a difference here between what you think about it and what I think about it, unless it's that we're standing near each other and looking in different directions, so to speak.

If you mean that the unconscious/subconscious is normally the "big dog running the show" in a dream, I agree with that. All the environments, people, plants, animals, weather, events, all of this stuff in a dream seems to be generated "automatically" by the unconscious/subconscious, but when the conscious mind becomes involved in the dream then the unconscious begins to act more and more like a mirror of what the conscious mind is doing. There is a trick to this that's hard to explain, but yes, I believe they do have to merge with one another for real control of the dream. It's not simply commanding the dream to behave in a certain way, but I would say more akin to expanding the sense of self until this conscious experience encompasses more of the dreamscape. Then you can almost feel things happening as if they were inside of your body, but they appear externally to your body (dream body, that is ).

This is exactly what I'm trying to bring over into a practice into the physical realm. I believe there is a parallel skill that can be developed here, it's just not 100% the same, for reasons we can discuss if you want. These exact reasons have been hard for me to pinpoint so far.

I mentioned in my last post in this thread that I'm trying to work on a follow-up article to this that has to do with bringing over lucid dreaming abilities as far as manipulating experiences, into physical usage. When I try to do this (and I've talked with others on another forum who say they've had similar experiences), physical reality seems to respond in an immediately synchronistic way that implies (1) I'm on the right track to actually discovering a way to do something like this, (2) this common, mysterious "external" reality (nature, the physical universe, etc.) that seems to keep us here even while we sleep seems to have some intelligence to it, even if it's a created program or system, and will seemingly respond intelligently when someone tries to change its status quo, and (3) the "rules" to manipulate lucid dreaming environments don't quite translate 100% to the physical realm because of this "program," but because of the universality of consciousness as a medium for creation I do believe there is still a relation.

In the East (such as in India or Tibet) there are lots of anecdotes and histories/legends of people doing things that would be impossible by western standards, such as what the Indians call the siddhis. The people over in those parts of the world take these things seriously and so do I. They seem to have found a way to do some of the things possible for us only in lucid dreams, in the physical reality. We can get to all that next if you like....

The only difference between dreams and physical reality is that the effect upon your surroundings when you alter your consciousness during a dream is nearly instantaneous, and often much more dramatic, including things that are considered physically impossible. In the physical realm changes happen more slowly and there are collectively agreed-upon “rules” (since there is more than one person dreaming here) that manifest as “laws of physics,” etc. But the basic mechanism is still the exact same: the change that you manifest “outwardly” must first come from “within” you (as within, so without). These words are in quotation marks because it's questionable if space even exists within the dream state, to contrast “inner” from “outer” (do you even have a body in a dream?), and this question also carries over into the physical realm. In a dream, it appears that everything is made of consciousness, including the perception of space itself.

This is merely one interpretation of what a dream is, and what the real world is. It isn't the only one. What about dreams that veterans who suffer from post traumatic stress disorder have, where they actually lash out at their partners in the same bed?

Well these probably aren't lucid dreams that they've having, and there's probably some explanation as to why they are still engaged in physical movements corresponding to what they're dreaming too. Both the contents of the dream and their movements sound like they'd be in the domain of the subconscious in this case.

I noticed an inconsistency in what I wrote here. So far I've been talking about how everything that appears to be external is all in our minds and is not necessarily (most likely isn't at all) an accurate representation of what is "really" out there in the fullest sense. But now all of a sudden I'm talking about how physical reality doesn't respond in the same way as a lucid dream does because of the influence of other people. So this relates to one of the fundamental problems I'm trying to figure out here and also relates to this lucid dream/physical reality relationship.

So let's take something less radical than defying the law of gravity. Let's call it mastering the mind. That's way easier than manipulating gravity right? I submit that it may in fact almost be as difficult as defying the law of gravity. If that's the case, then someone who can stand behind the statement:

This is the secret of esoteric teachings: the “inner” and the “outer” are really the same, and everything is consciousness, and everything is one, and you are an intrinsic part of it all and a co-creator of reality. This is the meaning of “as above, so below,” as well as a “self-fulfilling prophecy,” the “placebo effect,” and many other phenomena: you manifest your own reality, from the inside out. You believe it, you think it, you perceive it, you experience it, and you reinforce that original belief.

is about as difficult to find as someone who has mastered flying by flapping their arms. I submit that finding an individual who can say this without having mastered it provides us with a far smaller set of odds. 1:100 I'd guess, maybe even lower. 1:10.

I think the difficulty lies in the relative impossibility of what someone is trying to accomplish. As a rule though I think everyone essentially lives like this, whether they realize it or not: they have beliefs (whether consciously or unconsciously formed), and the way they see the world is filtered through that. So it becomes that what they experience is dependent upon what they believe.

My grandma is thoroughly convinced that everything today is worse than in the 1950's. That's her reality and she filters everything through that, and so she thinks that virtually everything that happens today is bad. I look at the same events and I feel much more optimistic because my belief is that bad things happened in the 1950's too, but now we are further into the information age where we have to face them and heal them in a more direct way. Both of our realities, I assume, seem equally real to us. So this is a very mundane slice of how of beliefs can determine how reality appears for anybody.

To take this and begin to apply it to performing extraordinary feats is where this idea starts to become very interesting, at least to me. But in a much more mundane way I think this idea proves itself out on a daily basis. Then again, maybe I only see this so much on a daily basis because these are my beliefs that I filter reality through. So then would this also prove my idea, or only prove its relativeness, or both at the same time?

Relative experience is not a proof for the manipulation of the external world.

This depends on what you mean. For me, to realize the way that the experience of reality changes from person to person is the beginning of how beliefs affect reality, because I can see how these beliefs cause different people to live their lives in very different ways.

Since I never excluded being able to use the physical body and physical actions to achieve manipulation of the physical world, just imagine how much beliefs have manipulated reality in this way. Millions of civilians people have been murdered in various wars simply because someone else believed that they were a threat in some way. Someone more compassionate in a similar situation probably wouldn't make the same decision. I know this sounds trivial to the point I'm trying to make but I use this just as a starting point. We could think of more subtle examples, maybe like what Gandhi did, or some nameless eastern mystic who spread a revolutionary philosophy at just the right point in some nation's history, and changed its course from a militaristic future into a peaceful and prosperous one. These are rooted completely in physical possibilities without having to consider anything more unusual.

Here's the paradox I find with this theory. Suppose these possible multiple worlds do in fact exist. Suppose in these multiple worlds, one world exists where it is possible, in fact it is a realty, where no other possible worlds exist.

Which world in that case would we live in?

That would be easy to experience. Here on Earth right now we have lots of people who believe that intelligent life only exists on Earth. Regardless of whether or not that's true, there could be intelligent life on trillions of other planets in remote parts of our same universe right now, and to people who don't believe in these things, it would make absolutely no difference. So I guess where I'm coming from this, is to imagine the perspective of a creator who allows for intelligent life to hold many contradictory beliefs about reality between themselves all at once, and not only that, but to even live amongst each other as they do so.

And once we have decided to believe something, and then see it proven in the world (or at least convince ourselves that we've seen it proven – not so hard to do when the given belief was already believed it to begin with!), then that belief is reinforced and takes priority for us, overshadowing other beliefs that we could have had, that would be equally valid and just as easy to validate for ourselves.

And we could believe all these things and still be mistaken, could we not?

The world is flat.
The world is the centre of the universe.
The sun revolves around the world.

I can give more examples if you'd like.

Yes, this is exactly what I'm talking about.

These beliefs were undoubtedly true for many people, and if you could ask them about these believes, you'd find that they were totally convinced and that these were also very basic beliefs to how they thought of the entire world in which they lived. When it was first proposed that the Earth revolved around the Sun, it wasn't just a trivial idea, but the church even saw it as a huge threat to their authority, it was so basic to how humans on Earth thought of themselves.

I'm not trying trying to say these beliefs are true (for me), but neither am I going to negate that these beliefs were true for lots of other people, and were very important for them. That's my point about how we form beliefs and then we don't question them, and we think they are self-obvious because during the course of living with these beliefs we find many (non-)reasons for supporting them and our brains even adapt to thinking with them.

Then end result of this process, over time, is that we shape our reality with our own beliefs. We not only decide what we believe intellectually, but our beliefs come out in our sense of place in the world, our self-esteem, how we interact with others, what we like to talk about, what kind of people we surround ourselves with, what kind of occupation we find, how we think to spend our spare time. So, really, the end result is that our entire reality is formed, shaped and colored by what we believe and therefore perceive in the world.

I think it's actually a lot more complicated than that. I think that at some point we recognize that there is an external reality, a moral reality, that isn't flexible. It exists, and we tent to bend or distort our views around it, kind of like a carnival mirror. When things don't work out for us because we're approaching the world from this bent perspective, we lash out at the external world. We become victims, it's the fault of someone out there. The reality is it's our own bent perceptions of the world that create this conflict, not the world around us.

As you might predict based on what I posted above, I tend to think that I am an integral part of the reason for everything that happens to me. So it sounds like you also believe that this may be a more empowering way of looking at things, since it's not the "external world" that deserves our lashing.

Our job is not to create the reality we want but to recognize the reality that already exists, and recognize that at the heart of who we are we actually have a relationship that is synonymous with that order and structure.

Sounds illuminati doesn't it?

Well, if the reality you mean is the one "they" have established, then yes, I suppose it does.

If I am equally a part of creation as anything else (which I believe I am), then that same source of everything is in me too, and I can find my own order within it based on that, without having to look to the other pieces of everything which also come from the source. I may willingly conform to an idea that seems to appear from somewhere else, but I won't conform with something I don't agree with. It isn't hard for me to find things that I enjoy conforming too, though. I see lots of things in this world that I like and agree with, and willingly cooperate with. Project Avalon is one of these kinds of things.

How can you be certain of that if you can't be certain what your subconscious is doing? You see what I'm saying? You're suggesting we are victims of our subconscious if we aren't consciously choosing how we think/feel/behave. I'm suggesting that because we are innately aware of our subconscious, and because we choose to go along with it, no matter what we do/say/feel/act upon we will be driven by our subconscious until the subconscious is in fact integrated with the conscious self.

Of course you have to be aware of what your subconscious is doing, as much as possible. This is how you make these things more conscious and integrate them. I choose to go along with whatever seems to be working at the moment, but when something isn't working, then we need to be able to pinpoint where in our beliefs this issue is coming from, and try to resolve it by becoming more aware of the unconscious processes and how we can change them. NLP is good for that kind of thing.

Because you can determine your consciousness,
you can determine the objects of your consciousness.

False. Until you can determine your subconscious, you can't know your conscious self.

Once you consciously understand the kinds of things you think and do subconsciously, and you become aware of how this works, you can take a step beyond this. That's when you can determine (as in, specify) the objects of your own consciousness, consciously. If your subconscious does something and you notice this, you either accept it and let it stand, or you don't like it and know how to go about changing it to a new thought or pattern. That's where the determination comes into play.

So these aren't mutually exclusive statements that we've made, but one is a prerequisite to the other. If you aren't acquainted with your subconscious processes then you're not going to be able to consciously determine the contents of your own consciousness in a really effective way.



I think we've meandered a bit but I'll keep working along these lines and see if I can't reduce some of the ideas we're playing with into more simple and clear "laws." Just like all the "laws" of physics, I know these won't really be laws per se and they'll be subject to a million changes, but I believe that they can be useful for the time and place in which they're relevant, and hopefully can lead to something better.

[Philaletheian]

all truth was the the truth untl roman politics jumped n and spoiled the party, but we are slowly realising the truth.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=hBMc9s8oDWE