Shifting Realities

I heard a young man talking about his understanding of "reality" the other day, and he was very specific and determined in his speech. When other people expressed different understandings he decreed that they were "in denial."

In my own experience, my understanding of "reality" has changed as I accrued various life experiences.

Each time, I thought I had all the answers and "finally understood it all," and then later I changed my mind when my understandings deepened.

The same was true for the above-referenced young man, by the way. He, too, said that he had held a specific world-view, but then he had experienced some shifts in his understandings, and now he really understood it all.

"Every age, every generation has its built-in assumptions - that the world is flat, that the world is round. There are hundreds of hidden assumptions, things we take for granted that may or may not be true. In the vast majority of cases, these conceptions about reality - which belong to the prevailing paradigm or worldview - aren't accurate. So if history's any guide, much that we take for granted about the world today simply isn't true".
John Hagelin, Ph.D.

This all came to mind because of a book about psychic development that had been written in the 1980's that I recently ran across. In the book, the author had constructed this vast, intricate system of exercises and insights that the book promised would deliver amazing psychic experiences.

And it was all true, from a certain perspective. But there have been many, many books written since that time, with other and broader insights, and I understood how people could grow beyond that author's system, and gain even deeper psychic and spiritual awareness.

"There is often a big disparity between the way in which we perceive things and the way things really are."
Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama

So, as Dr. Hagelin notes in his quote, if history's any guide, then quite probably the insights and awarenesses that we ooh and aah over today won't be such wonders in 10 or 20 years time, and may even have been debunked and discredited.

But we can't let this impede us from our journey - in fact, it may actually be the point of the journey: to explore, learn and discover today's truths on our way to tomorrow's truths, different though they may be.

As Heraclitus noted around 2500 years ago: "Change is the only constant."

Don't be afraid of it; rather, embrace it.

Your openness to change, that what you experience as "reality" today may be very different from what you experience it as tomorrow, is the key to your being able to move to a higher plane, and deepen and broaden your understandings of the spiritual world.