Bending Me

“What is real? How do you define real? If you're talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then real is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain.” Morpheus to Neo in the Matrix movie


Life as simulation? Feels real enough when you are caught up in the emotions and sensual stimuli you perceive all around you. The voices you hear. The things you smell, touch, taste.

Curiously, so it is in my dreams. Yet, I rarely fully buy into the events, objects, and people I encounter in them as being real, or do I?

In the moments that I’m “dreaming,” it is, it feels real. Scarily so sometimes. When I am under threat in my dreams, physically or emotionally, I react the same as when I'm awake. My body though lying still on the bed reacts. My heart rate increases, my muscles tense, my breathing becomes labored. Heck, sometimes I even sweat. Just last week, in the moments immediately after awaking from sleep, I could still feel as real and solid in my hand the object I had been holding onto during the dream. When I fully opened my eyes, I was surprised and confused to find nothing in my hand.

Now, I’m awake, but am I really? How do I know?

“Do not try to bend the spoon, that's impossible. Instead only try to realize the truth. Then you'll see, it is not the spoons that bends it is only yourself.” From the Matrix movie

There are those within spiritual circles and even some scientists, such as Nick Bostrom and Dean Radin, who suggest all that we behold is merely information our brains are processing. But where is the information coming from? Who or what is responsible for creating the information, the data that I behold or think myself to be beholding or experiencing?

And if my mind is merely interpreting information "out there" and creating within it a picture that I perceive as being an external world, what's to stop it, or me as awakened consciousness, from creating or choosing what data/information I desire to perceive?

If I could allow myself even for a brief moment to completely suspend disbelief, what would I be capable of experiencing in this moment now? And in the next one? And the next one? What wonders might await me?

What wonders might await you?