I've been here for a little while but I've already seen too many threads started by people who claim to know what's going on. Not only with their lives, but with ours, the whole planet, the universe and some even say they know what god´s plan is. And the people reply saying stuff like "Yeah, you're right!" or "Yeah, I know that's the truth!".It borders the absurd, or rather, transborders it...

Attempting to teach someone about reality is like sending a kiss through a messenger. In other words, even if you did know all there is to know about reality - which you don't -, you wouldn't be able to describe it to someone else and through that description make that someone come to the same level of understading as yours. Reality has to be experienced.

Pick the best romance novelist in the world and put him/her to write in the best of their hability the description of a first kiss and it wouldn't come close to the experience of actually having your first kiss. What about having sex? Or giving birth to a child? A man can read all he wants about giving birth and talk to a lot of women about that experience, but he will never truly understand the sensation, the pain, and whatever else comes with that experience, before, during and after.

Ever had a great experience in your life and tried to describe it to your friends and family and while you were explaining you realised that words were not enough to describe such experience? It's a bit frustrating.

One sunday morning I was watching a brazilian TV show focused on rural subjects. They took this poor farmer to see the ocean for the first time. Can you imagine that? Someone who has never seen the sea? Never witnessed the strength of that never stopping huge body of water?

I have lived once in Japan, as a guest of the Tanaka family in Kanazawa. My host mother there, Mrs Tanaka, told me one day a story about a trip she made to Africa with her daughter and while in Africa, her daughter, who was 14 by that time, asked her mom why there were people asking them for money and food. Her mom then explained to her that those were poor people. Her daughter didn't know, till then, that poor people existed, or at least she never witnessed it first hand. I found that incredible, since I am from Brazil and poverty is everywhere. Truth be told, all the time I spent in kanazawa, I didn't find one homeless person, or poor people wandering the streets.

How much of our own world have you seen? How much of the knowledge we have discovered and developed do you understand? How many places have you visited? Have you ever been to a desert, forest, tundra, ocean, river, mountain, etc?

What range of emotions have you experienced? Have you ever broken a bone in your body? Have you ever been punched in the face? have you even punched someone in the face? Have you forgiven someone who caused you great pain? Have you caused great pain to someone and asked for forgiveness? Have you loved? Have you been loved back?

I will give you an example form my own life. I am 32 years old and I have always been proud of the fact that I was able of self-analysing my life, identify my mistakes and correct my actions. I have never smoked anything nor used any drugs, except drinking beer. And that's the only thing I drink that has alcohol and rarely do so. Never felt the need or the will to use drugs, to smoke pot or cigarretes. Just never really crossed my mind. So I didn't understand why people did it. I mean, I could rationalise it, but I have never FELT the feeling they must feel when they think about using drugs. Another feeling that I never understood is depression. I used to be so arrogant about it that I would say that people who had depression were weak and unstable.

Then, one day, for the first and only time in my life, I got depressed. I couldn't sleep, kept walking in circles in the living room, then I would watch the sky from the balcony and ask for whatever it was up there to help me. For the first and only time in my life I thought about using drugs. I thought about suicide. You name it. I hit rock bottom, or at least that was as low as I have ever hit in my whole life. It affected my family drastically, almost splitting it in half. I eventually got over it.

Anyways, now I know. I have experienced it.

Now, if you describe it to me, I will know what you are talking about. Before that, I wouldn't know. I could rationalise it, but rationalising it wouldn't come close to the understandment I now have, after experiencing depression.

Although we can try to describe to others what we have learned in our lives, the best we can do is offering clues, leads, so others could hunt the truth on their own and experience it on their own.

Now, don't get me wrong. I am not saying through my analogies that we should feel and experience everything, be it good or bad, so we understand reality. Every analogy is flawed and so were the analogies I have presented here, but I did so to get the point across that the understanding of reality is something dynamic, constantly changing throughout our daily lives, since life is also dynamic and we are constantly changing, evolving, learning and experiencing more by the day. My experiences will never be the same as your experiences and maybe we are all unable to understand what reality is in its fullness.

So, I wrote all that to leave one simple message. Beware of those telling you they know the truth. You can't and shouldn't depend on the words of someone else to experience reality. There is no receipe or system that could be used in that way. The most people could do is offer you clues to identify, by yourself, something you should look for yourself. Anyone offering you more than that, don't trust them.

Reality can't be explained. It has to be experienced.

[edit on 11-1-2010 by henriquefd]

I agree 100% with your assessment.

The only way to "know" something is to experience it yourself. Anything else is simply memorization and carries no knowledge or understanding with it.

Two perfect examples of this are Aliens and Ghosts.

The only way to actually know if they are real, is to see them with your own eyes in real life.



[edit on 11-1-2010 by muzzleflash]

Yes, I agree also. I think that is the true purpose of human life though, to Experience. Think of it this way. If that which we call God, the Creator of us all, is a vast intelligence with know way of experiencing anything in present form, then we the creations live out and have these experiences, and through that we learn all there is to know about life, in a collective manner, rather than an individual one. My take anyway.

There are an infinite # of illusions and only 1 true reality, the True Supreme Being. The highest state of purity, love, intensity, consciousness possible. Nothing here is "Real" in that nothing here is permanent. Every understanding and situation is constantly changing to meet the karmic needs.

Wow! I have never seen a better explanation of why we should not judge each other. Thank you.

Thanks for stopping by and taking the time to read it. I'm glad you all liked it.

Originally posted by muzzleflash

The only way to "know" something is to experience it yourself. Anything else is simply memorization and carries no knowledge or understanding with it.

Is reality freedom or punishment?

[edit on 13-1-2010 by In nothing we trust]

Hmm Great post much truth in this post i try to imagine things i have never experienced and it is nearly impossible tho it does make me feel slightly euphoric! life is a MASSIVE mystery everyone really knows nothing!! haha

This thread I thank the OP for, so much arrogance and superiority we all harbour in our ignorant souls.
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
If we could all just ask and listen to others instead of hating via judgement.
Iam ashamed utterly of myself for one day driving through an anti war rally in Australia and not honking my horn in support, as a young earnest woman requested on a placard.
Why didnt I honk the horn?
It was prior to the invasion of Iraq, because I thought I knew the world needed to put the evil Irqis in their place and the world would be safer.
I have learned that near 500,000 civilians died horrible deaths due to this invasion,many women and children, I can never take back that day, where I stared into the young womens eyes and refused to honk in support,never.
But all I can say now is treat all as yourself, those poor Iraqis ,were just like me, flawed, but human.

Reality is really just an information system by which we as an individual conscious being must gather incoherent sensory information through our physical senses so our physical brain can render a coherent model of this limited view.

This limited view of reality; now subjective is something that each of us right now are creating and rendering so that we can take part in a bigger reality.

It is this personal reality however; that is the most real to us as individuals. When it's gone; we are gone. In essence, we are reality; or we are what makes reality real through the act of observation and re-creating a limited world view.

Reality is more then just physical matter and atoms, it is conscious experience. It is you.

[edit on 10-2-2010 by YouAreDreaming]

If you really believed reality can't be explained, you should have just stopped at the beginning of your post. The very fact that you felt the urge to explain why reality can't be explained is pure irony.

That being said, who's to say we can even experience "reality". "Reality" the way you've described it in examples is just subjective personal experience, which is not "reality".

So your post should really be titled "Our subjective personal experiences can't be communicated to the point of the recipient undergoing the same exact experience".

Well, duh. That's why they call it experience, and not a story.

[edit on 10-2-2010 by harrytuttle]

Perhaps many of us can explain, ... and agree on reality because we have done just that ...... experienced it !!! Perhaps we have seen beyond the Illusion of our personal reality's to grasp a larger view of the whole.

and if so many people are experiencing the same thing as "reality", .... does that not give it more probability of being the truth ???

Yet it would be easy for someone who has not experienced "reality" to sit back and say, ...... " well thats all nonsense". because to you it is.

but many of us can explain the same thing..... simply because we are experiencing just that. Some may put their own little spin on it, or share their " individual reality". but you can't really judge something you don't understand.

[edit on 10-2-2010 by IntastellaBurst]

I couldn't disagree more. Reality is truth. Believing your perceptions have any bearing on it is delusional. Your senses can lie and your mind can fail to grasp. Example:



Whether you perceive the image to be moving is irrelevant. Whether you believe the image to be moving is irrelevant. Reality is it's a static image. It's not moving. That's the truth. The illusion only exists in your mind, not in the real world.