What is reality? The straightforward answer is that it means everything that appears to our five senses, everything we can see, taste, smell, touch and hear. But it takes time to process sensory information and so in reality we live in the past.
I woke this morning with the vivid recollection of a dream I had during the night. In my dream I was on a balcony looking out onto the Grand Canal in Venice enjoying a cup of tea with Sir Paul McCartney and my long departed grandfather. The three of us were happily exchanging pleasantries when Sir Paul declared his love for me. I rejected his advances, apologised profusely, jumped onto a passing inflatable banana and bobbed off into the sunset. It seemed so real, but then, what is reality?
We all dream. We may not always remember our dreams but the one thing we can rely on is that when we wake up in the morning, we find the world pretty much as we left it. You are still you, the room in which you woke was the same one you went to sleep in, the world had not been reordered, history remained unchanged and the future yet to be told. In other words, you woke up to reality. YOUR reality.
Our brain shapes our reality using the data that it gathers via our five senses and from that data it tells us a story about our world, our reality. Is it therefore possible that every brain tells a different story?
There are some 7 billion humans with whom we share our planet. This of course equates then to 7 billion brains. Then there are trillions of animals, all with brains. Each brain carries its own unique model of the world around it and this is what we experience. So perhaps reality is whatever our brains tell us it is. Our reality could be what is created inside our own heads.
What if our senses are deceiving us, what if existence is an illusion, and reality isn’t real? After all, our perceptual system can be tricked quite easily with an optical illusion or a magician’s sleight of hand, not to mention the media, politicians and propaganda influencing and warping our sense of reality.
And then there is the mysterious world hidden from our senses from the far reaches of the cosmos. Could we be part of a cosmic hologram projected from the edge of the universe or exist in an infinity of parallel worlds?
Albert Einstein once said “Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a persistent one.”
How do we know this is real life? The short answer is, we don’t. We can never prove that we’re not all hallucinating, or simply living in a computer simulation like The Matrix.
So here lies the quandary; if we create our own reality, surely we should all be creating the best life possible right?
Hypnosis can help expand your perception of reality, allowing you to experience a little more of the ‘reality’ of what’s around you. Hypnosis can challenge your existing views by offering your subconscious mind alternative viewpoints. This can have the effect of opening the mind to other more positive and productive realities, helping you to move closer to the real you.
Your reality may never look quite the same again.
