The fact that I create my own reality is undeniable. My sense inputs drive decision processes which lead me to the place I live, the family relations I have, the work I’ve done, and the rewards they’ve created for me. Most importantly, I’m able to interpret what happens to me however I choose. I’m the story teller of my own stories, of my own reality. Bliss is a state of mind and mind controls mind. From a more esoteric point of view, The ALL is Mind; The Universe is Mental. The “stuff” of reality isn’t physical, it’s an expression of a field of consciousness.
There is no “I” just as there is no physical “stuff”. There is just the field or what some call the absolute unbounded oneness or the abiding non-duality. It is me, and I am it. If you perceive yourself to exist, then you are me and I am you and we are it, etc. so there is only “this”, no object, no observer.
If any of that is “true”, then my experience of reality as an individuated unit of consciousness is something “I” created for myself to experience or to put it another way, this experience is the one I chose to be conscious of instead of the billions of other options across space and time. Any lessons to learn to more closely align with the desires and preferences of this awareness, are here to learn.
I experience much of what I believe to be blissful, joyful, ideal life. How do I know? How would I now if the life I have and love is actually a hell? How would I know if this life is actually the best possible utopian existence available to me? Much of this is mostly known through differentiation across a spectrum of possibility. There is no “hot” or “cold”, there’s just a gradient of temperature and the act of comparison. Can I know what peace and joy is without a comparison to suffering and pain?
This seems to be the answer that comes to mind when I consider myself the creator of my experienced universe who seemingly also created the knowledge of unspeakable horrific suffering. Why does my reality have war? Why does my reality have famine, abuse, torture, betrayal, pain, and the like? It’s not currently directly experienced in my life, but knowledge of it is there. These bad things happen “out there” in war zones on the other side of the world. I could choose to go there, enlist as a warrior or train as a humanitarian worker, etc. to make it all more “real” to my reality and take on the suffering and pain directly, but I haven’t done that. In the past I’ve had internal motivation to “save the world” in some respects, though I now view many of that striving as projections of internal lessons to be learned, as all is correspondent and fractally connected.
So my world has tragedy. I’ve experienced versions of it directly (losing our home while in high school, parents passing away in 2007, etc), but mostly (as I’ve learned the lessons I came here to learn according to the stories I tell myself) I experience joy and love.
And how do I know that? Because my comparison engine, my mind, shows me the alternative. I respond with gratitude and enjoy. But what if the next lesson to learn is how to create a reality, a utopia even, where suffering and pain are not needed to bring knowledge as a contrast to what is experienced? Polarity is everywhere and denying it, avoiding it, or pretending we can exist without it may be a fool’s errand.
Maybe I exist to be that fool. I’m not alone. Other perceived conscious entities have this same idea, utopia, free of suffering and full of loving joy. Some are practicing it and indulging in it as I am. Do they have to shut themselves off from the knowledge of the horrors of the world to truly experience their bliss or do they just redefine those things as another part of perfect, experienced by those with more intense lessons to learn, something we’ve already gone through previously to find ourselves here now?
Is the end of suffering essentially the heat death of the universe, the end of polarity and life and movement and potential for “other”ness? Does my reality have knowledge of and allowance for suffering because the alternative would be static oneness with no individuated experience at all? Am I choosing dissociated separation for the joyful experiences it includes and thus requiring the existence of suffering as the counter balance?
Just some thoughts for a Saturday morning. If you exist and read them, my intention is that they serve you on your journey also and I experience you as adding to its flavor with your own thoughts.