Life Beyond the War of "Realities"

How does it feel when someone begins a sentence with: "THE REALITY IS... [Fill in the blank].
You nailed it, it feels ugly, intrusive, domineering, delusional.
So why do we often feel so insecure outside and inside ourselves that we begin to dictate the "reality"?
Bart ten Berge explores the weaponization of the concept of "reality" and unveils the deeper, nondual sense of reality in the here and now which underlies the field of all direct experience.

Transcript

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So today we are going to talk a little bit about reality. Boy, that's a tricky one. Whose reality are we going to talk about? So often we talk about the reality. And when a person talks about the reality this is the reality so what does he mean? The facts, the truth, according to who? We tend to put a lot of authority on the reality is that you're sitting in a Zoom room with me and I'm going to tell all kind of things for half an hour and if I would ask you to write down the essence of what I'm telling you and you would send it to me, don't worry I will not ask that from you. But then I get a lot of different stories because you all perceive what's touching you, what's sitting in you, your sense of reality, we all have a sense of reality fits in our beliefs, our personal experience and that's basically very much coloring how we perceive reality, how we experience reality. Of course there's very simple things, you know, it's raining and everybody will agree that it's raining. But how do you experience the rain? How would you describe the rain? What are your thoughts, your ideas around the rain? And that's what we take as reality. Not so much the facts, but the impact of the facts on us. And that's showing our own uniqueness. That's not something which is wrong. The idea is that there is a reality and we should all be aware of the reality and it should be the same reality. But the same reality doesn't exist. It's not real. You know we have some facts we can agree on but when we move a little bit more deeply how we experience reality, what reality means to us, it's different from person to person. You know if you have siblings and you look back in the history and you ask your siblings you know how was our childhood, how did you experience our childhood. You can fight forever because everybody experienced it in a different way according to his or her sense of reality. Of course we will agree, you know, we had one parent or two parents and maybe two moms, two dads or maybe a dad and a mom. These are the facts we can agree on. But how we experienced them, how we experienced our education, how we felt loved or not loved, if we are lonely in the family or not, if the holiday was really fun or it was horrible, it will differ from person to person, from sibling to sibling. We all have our own view and again colored by our personal experience and our beliefs. So to talk about the reality is not so worthwhile, that's a bit boring. But to talk about this non-dual quality, the sense of reality, that's something else. So we talk to a person and there is a lot of talk and then at once there is a kind of a waking up because something comes forward which feels so real. It really matters, it's essential. And again this is personal. This feels real to us and of course things which are closer to us are more connected with the real experience in the moment will trigger more a sense of reality as that we kind of you know have a story which is we are not really connected to. So the sense of reality, realization. We realize something and realizing something means that something kind of comes through. We realize, we see the truth in something, we see the reality in something. And often when we come to a realization or an awakening that means that we are able to look at something in a totally different way as we were looking at it before. Wow! That is how it works! That is how it is! Now I understand! Now I know! But it's not the end point, because if we look into it, then what we kind of become aware of is, you know, that we can have a realization and maybe two years, ten years later around the same subject, we have another realization. We look at it in a different way again. We understand it different again. So when you look to the sense of reality, it's working in the here and now. But it's not absolute. It's something which developed. It develops from moment to moment. It moves from maybe realization to realization. Now that's real, that's more real and that's even more real. It's not something which is dead. You know, most facts are basically dead. There's not much to say about it. It becomes alive the moment that we move it to the area of experience. It rains is a fact and the moment we set it, it's dead. But if we start to talk about how we experience the rain, which is much closer to the reality of the rain for us, then it becomes more alive. And then if you are curious, what is the experience of the rain for you? How do you experience the rain? Then we can feel the reality of the experience in the other person, if the experience is giving and that is not necessarily the same experience we have and of course coming back to the authority you know when we experience the rain in a certain way so often what we try to do is to dictate our experience from others because it has to be the the same reality. Why? So what is the effect if you talk about the rain and the experience, how you experience the rain and other people are experienced in a different way? So we start to doubt ourselves a little bit. Is my experience real? Does it really exist. Because it seems that we can only give existence to something if everybody agrees on it. And that brings us in a whole other kind of way because you know when we So it moves through existence and sometimes through non-existence. Does it exist or doesn't it exist? So say that you had a difficult childhood, painful experiences, a few traumas here and there. And because of circumstances you kind of, you know, forgot about it. You push it away. It better not be there. It better doesn't exist. It never happened. Then when we look back on our childhood, how our childhood is colored is a totally different reality. That's the reality from our brother, you know, who is working hard on himself and going to a psychologist and talking about all the difficulties in the childhood and actualizing it and working with the pain which it brought forth and the insecurity. And that can be the difference between siblings. So for one person, whatever happened, exists. And it doesn't exist a little bit, because if we start to work on ourselves and we look at the pain of our childhood and the rejections maybe we got and the pain of rejections and the influence on our life and you know, it is a big thing, it colors the whole horizon. At that moment, the moments of togetherness, the moments of love, fade a little, are fading a little bit away. Doesn't mean that it wasn't there. But in our process, our sense of reality is bringing forth this part of our experience as the most important. That's how it was, that's what existed. That's how we experienced it. That's the reality. For our brother or for ourselves, because the brother was working on himself, you know, we had a happy childhood. Our parents were loving, they were caring, they dressed us, they fed us and of course they had their problems but my god you know, don't do so difficult. Basically it was good and all these other things didn't really happen, So we all do this in a way. We pull things into existence or into our reality. They exist. It's the reality. And we push things into non-existence. This never happened. It's not like that. And that's kind of painful. It's kind of painful because in this kind of split between realities we are creating, it's very difficult to be open to the reality of the other. If we are in a mindset that only our reality is right and only our reality exists. And this we see so often in the battlefield of our communication in daily life, a good friend or your partner is in pain, hurt by something you did or something you said. And you didn't mean to say it and you didn't mean it in the way you did it, you didn't mean to hurt your friend or your partner. And of course your friend or your partner will reach out with blame. How could you do this? This is, you know, you're not there. What did you do? How could you do this? And we feel guilt. And what do we do? Do we say I regret that you're in pain? Or do we try to change the reality of our friend? You shouldn't be so upset about that. Nobody is upset about things like that. You take it much too personal. My God! So, there is a battlefield between realities or between experiences. And of course the effect is that both of you or both of us don't really feel seen, don't really feel appreciated. So one of the realities is not real, shouldn't exist. And it's not only, you know, in the battlefield of our communication that things are happening like this, but also in our inner battlefield. Some feelings are allowed to be there, and they are good, like love, most of the times is good, or care, most of the times is good. But rage and fear, we rather don't take too real. We rather don't want them to exist too much. So when we really get upset and we really get angry, you know, we rather don't want this into our existence or into our reality. This is not our reality. You know, I'm not getting angry so easily. I'm getting angry because you, you did this and that and that and that and that and that and you. So there is the blame. And there is basically also trying to put our own anger, the trigger, the pain, which is behind the anger, where we were touched, our sensitivity, on the certain area where we were triggered. We put it into the whole area of non-existence. And in this we are not really seeing ourselves. we kind of push part of ourselves into non-existence. We split this is allowed to exist and this is not allowed to exist. This is real, this is the real me, this is the reality and this is not a reality. And of course you know when we look to this behavior towards ourselves, towards others, that means that the deeper sense of reality, which is so much connected with realization, this deeper sense of reality, we lost connection with it. We create an alternate reality, not a reality which is the depth of realization which is there from moment to moment. It's the root of being awake. Every moment is an experience and every experience is a realization. And when we lose connection with this sense of reality then we try to put things into structures. This can exist and this cannot exist. This is allowed and this is not allowed. And then we move into what you could say a corruption of reality, a created reality, not a reality which brings us to a realization from moment to moment, but a reality as how it has to be. And we lose connection with this beautiful, beautiful quality. This quality which brings realizations, awakenings. We lose the connection with the center of ourselves, with the depth of ourselves. So how do we come back to this awakeness? which is there in every child. Every child who takes life as it is. In which the mind of the child is following the experience. Different from when we grow up. When our mind is dictating experience, creating experience, telling us how we have to think about things, what is right, what is wrong, how we should experience something. So we look around, you know, in certain situations. How are you experiencing it? How are you? So I should experience it in the same way. And then we create the experience. When you're on holiday, you should be happy. So we create happiness. How was your holiday? Oh, it was fine. It was great. It was beautiful, even if it was awful. But it has to be like that, because if it's not like that, it's not right, it's not real. If we lose somebody, we should be sad. It cannot feel as a liberation. But then, when we kind of move into the sense of reality, it's not an either or. It's an and-and. And there were beautiful moments on our holiday and we were quite bored. And we were missing our house, our home, our country. miss somebody and there is pain and there is grief and there is a feeling of liberation. It's the mind, in this case the adult mind, starting to follow the experience, to follow Because this is our link with reality. How do we see a color? How do we hear a sound? All of this is experience. And we can agree, you know, that a jacket is red. All of us can. But how we experience the red again is different, is unique, is ours. And that's the only reality which counts. Because through this we realize things and we come to realizations. So when the mind is following the experience instead of creating the experience, it brings us into here and now. It brings us into being. And in this being, in this here and now, there is an awakening. in all the senses. There is an awakening of the true nature. There is an awakening of all the different qualities of true nature. And our sense of reality is very important in this. Because our sense of reality in the end will lead us back what feels real, what feels more real, what is real if we move with it inside to our true nature, to what is essential to us. When we are aware of what is essential to us we are open to what is essential to others. If we lost ourselves in what is allowed to exist and what cannot exist, we lose ourselves in the world of illusion. We lose ourselves in a world where our reality, our created reality, can be the only reality and needs to be affirmed all the time. We lose ourselves in a world where our reality, our created reality, can be the only reality and needs to be affirmed all the time. Okay, I think I talked enough.