Mistaken Identity

 You probably think that you, as a human being, are a flesh and blood creature with a highly developed brain.  Maybe you think you have a soul.  Maybe you think you don’t.  You think you are your body.  I bet you think that your body, the Earth and the rest of the universe are made of solid matter ruled by objective reality which is pretty much explained by science.  You probably think: Most of the universe is made of inanimate objects ruled by natural laws.  Living things function in ways that are well understood.  Just like the rest of the animals, we are born, we live and we die.  Sometimes things just happen in an accidental way and some of us think that the entire Universe may have developed by chance.  Humans have very little control over what happens to them or to the world they live in.  Their lives are the effect of a cause they cannot comprehend or of no cause at all.  Life is a crapshoot.  It’s all a matter of luck.  If you think these things, you have a lot of company.  Most sane people that live in the “developed” world accept these ideas as facts.  We all know that this is how it is.  It hardly bears mentioning.

There is one minor problem with this bare bones world view, though.  It’s wrong.

Physics has shown us that solid matter is almost entirely made up of space.  That’s right, it’s over 99.99 percent space.  The tiny fraction that isn’t space is, what?  Well, it’s tiny particles, or is it waves?  Of what?  Energy!  Whatever that is.  Yes, patterns of energy.  Well, patterns, anyway.  Patterns of vibration of different frequencies, that’s what it is, maybe like vibrating strings.  Sure, that’s it.  Physical reality, the whole universe, is made up of patterns of vibration.  One thing is certain: it isn’t solid.

On the macro level, Newton’s clockwork universe runs just fine, thank you. The planets move in their predictable orbits.  All’s well with our familiar universe.  But on that pesky micro level it all falls apart.  That’s where matter stops being matter and turns out to be energized space.  Trouble is, that’s not what our senses tell us.  Our senses tell us that we live in solid bodies in a solid world.  No mistake about it.  Our perceptions are very convincing.  If I kick that rock, I’ll hurt my toe.  That seems pretty real to me.

Perception IS reality.  Any salesman will tell you that.  So, what is true is what we think is true.  Period.  As a matter of fact, we will always find abundant proof in our experience, in our world, to support our beliefs about reality.  We can easily prove that we are right.  We just look around and the proof is everywhere.  Just open your eyes and look, we tell a skeptic.  It’s as clear as the nose on your face.

Problem is that different people have different ideas about what is real.  And every different belief about the nature of reality is fully supported by experience.  It is equally real.  We are all right.  All of our beliefs about what is true are completely validated, yet we have different beliefs.  How can this be?  What about objective reality?  How can mutually contradictory beliefs about the nature of reality be equally validated in the minds of their believers.  How can we argue right and wrong in this situation when all beliefs, even contradictory ones, are equally validated by personal experience?  Obviously I am right in my conviction about what is true.  I wonder; how can those that believe otherwise be so blind and stupid and persistent in their error?  Of course, those others think exactly the same thing about me.  They wonder how can I be so blind and stupid and how I can hold onto my mistaken beliefs so stubbornly?  They wonder about me as I wonder about their intelligence and sincerity.  Apparently we live in different worlds.  But, we think there is just one world that we all share.  How can this conundrum be sorted out?  What is the answer?

First of all, let’s remember that the physical world exists in our senses and only in our senses.  To put it baldly, we are making it all up.  It’s real alright but not in the way that we thought.  My world is my world.  It’s personal and unique to me.  Your world is your world.  It’s personal and unique to you.  They are different worlds.  We meet each other and agree on certain assumptions about the nature of reality so we can relate to each other and feel that we share a common footing.  We have agreed on an idea of objective reality that we think is not personal.  Objective reality exists through agreement.  Having made this agreement, we think that we live in the one real world.  This belief is shaped by the culture that we grew up in and our acceptance of it happens on the subconscious level while we are very young.  Different cultures live in different worlds exactly in the way that human individuals live in different worlds.

We have to look inside ourselves to begin to unravel this puzzle.  We need to start with who we think we are.  I started out by laying out the materialistic view of who we are.  We think we are creatures with souls or not with souls.  Those souls are our grasp at transcendence, the hole card that gets us out of the box of oblivion, the inevitable endgame of death.  Some believe it, some don’t.  Some believe in an afterlife, some don’t.  I’m here to tell you that we have gotten it all backwards.  We are not animals with spirits or without spirits.  We are all spirits who have taken bodies.

Spirits are conscious energy.  They are part of the conscious energy that is the universe.  They have emerged from this energy but it cannot be said that they are born or that they die.  Spirits are drops of the ocean.  They are the ocean itself and yet they have independent experiences as drops.  The ocean is eternal.  So are the drops.

The “I” that resides behind your eyes and witnesses your life is your spirit.  That is who is driving.  That is who you are.  Your body is the suit of clothes that it has put on for the time being.  This “I” is conscious energy.  It constantly emits a vibration.  It is a vibration.  It is a vibration that is tuned by its own thoughts.  We could say that it takes a shape.  This shape attracts shapes that are like it or fit with it like puzzle pieces.  It attracts more similar shapes, which are vibrations, until their combined energy becomes great enough to be noticed by the senses of the emerging being.  Then they are perceived as physical reality.  They have manifested.  The physical world of the emerging being has popped into being.  The game of life on Earth is on.  The shape of that life depends on the vibration that is emitted.  The vibration that is emitted depends on the thoughts that are held in consciousness.  Personal reality starts with thought.  Personal reality is a mirror of the thoughts that created it.  As thoughts change, the world changes in exactly the same way.

Rather than being a random product of forces beyond our control, our lives are the product of our own thoughts.  Rather than being small, weak and subject to unknown forces, we are the creators of our own worlds.  As such, we are immensely powerful.  And yet, we cannot create the reality of another being because that fellow being is a powerful creator exactly like ourselves.  There are no aggressors as there are no victims.  There are only co-creators.  We are not who we thought we were.  We are something far different.  Our mistake has been a case of mistaken identity.