To Find Freedom We Must First Choose Reality

“… So let us not talk falsely now, the hour’s getting late” ~ Bob Dylan/Jimi Hendrix – All Along The Watchtower

Travel back through the centuries to the Oak woods of France’s Brittany or the kraals of ancient Great Zimbabwe and the people one encounters would be less surprised by our dress, our electronics, our speech than they would by our sense of who we are.

Our modern, communal sense of reality is one that is defined by a limiting time frame of about 70 years. When viewed through such a focusing lens, Earth’s rising temperature, truly appears alarming. When viewed through more prosaic millennia, the rise and fall of Earth’s surface temperature is analogous to the circadian rhythms of all life.

Not for one moment do I doubt anthropological global warming, but to truly understand the reality of Earth and the challenges it faces we must use a frame of reference relative to the life span of Earth, not of humankind. Because the warming of Earth’s atmosphere is a story about Earth and not about humankind.

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Those travelling in awareness will often hear it claimed that there is more than one reality. But how can this be so? ‘Reality’ is a noun. It refers to that which is real rather than which is imagined. When talking of the realities of life we’re still only talking about the one reality. The plural here only refers to the many facets of life combining to create the singular ‘reality’. The use of the plural does not allow for the coalescing around multiple points of that which we wish to conjure into being.

My reality is your reality; the reality of others is, whether we are comfortable with it or not, our reality too. The only problem being that we all struggle to recognise or accept reality for what it is. Why this is so is captured most dramatically in the polarised positions taken by all sides of the anthropological global warming (AGW) debate.

Those taking the ‘Earth’s side’ choose not to see the argument of those taking ‘industry’s’ side. It’s not that each side is incapable of understanding the other’s arguments, facts and position. It is simply that each side is operating from a different ‘reality’. But if reality is a singularity, as laid out above, how can that be so?

Simple, each side has set aside reality for a chosen cloak of deception. Each side chooses its own most compelling metrics, be it average temperature, loss of year round polar ice, desertification etc. Each side chooses its most compelling time frame, 100 years brings averages in to stark focus, while a 1,000,000 year time frame flat-lines the averages into background noise.

Deception is the primary nom de guerre of that which would falsely claim to be reality. It is joined by distraction. We are increasingly aware that governments, businesses and organisations around the world choose times of significant distraction to release bad news.

Both deception and distraction have a powerful, alien persona on their team; our ego. Our egos work every hour of every day keeping us in pursuit of small jolts of instant gratification to stall or prevent us identifying reality.

Our egos tell us to fear reality because our egos know that it is singular and it is the truth, and our egos cannot survive coming face-to-face with the truth. But if we cannot face the truth then we will never be able to face each other. And so love, trust and happiness will always remain illusionary.

An essential part of a journey in awareness is to curtail the power of the ego, and that is achieved only when we accept reality. Doing so may be unpleasant, may cause difficulties, may even force a change of direction. But not doing so will have a far greater impact; we live life in a lie. Should we accept to do so, all the books, the workshops, the practice we put into our journeys towards awareness will be for nought. The awareness we seek, and the freedom which we hope will spring from it, will only come when we accept the one, true reality. And that reality is, that we are perfect as we are. The imperfections, fault-lines and flaws we think exist are just our ego keeping us creating deceptions and seeking distractions.

Bob Dylan may or may not have faced reality. But in his poetry he reached deeper than many celebrated poets.

Do not talk falsely; do not accept a life lived in anything other than reality.

Time is getting late; we can never regain the time we live outside a life lived in awareness.

Previous articles by Fox Chandler:

About the author:

Fox is the pen name of Steve Chandler, chosen for the ability of this iconic animal to adapt and thrive wherever it makes its home. UK-based Fox left London in 2000 to pursue a more balanced life and explore the path to self-realisation. Currently living in Manchester his path has involved many twists and turns, many false starts and a few blind alleys. But his journey continues. He writes partly out of self-expression but most importantly to explore the nature and meaning of awareness.

When not writing, cycling or working in his local community allotment Steve works as a marketing and communications consultant and is currently working towards a BSc in Natural Sciences.

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