What is really real?

People go through their lives interacting with one another and calling each other out for one reason or another. This thing was good or that person was bad. All are convinced that they know the truth of what did or didn't happen and that they are right and others are wrong.

There is all this stuff that goes on in a person's head. Thoughts, feelings and emotions. Judgements on our experiences. Beliefs on how a thing should have happened. There is the spinning of the tale to make us look like the hero, or the victim.

None of that stuff is real. It is all what we make up about what happened. Everything that happens inside our head is imaginary, literally created from our imagination. Even our interpretation of what happens is not real.

Only what happens in the world, outside of our mind, is real. Our understanding of it is not real and neither is our memory or feelings based on it.

Any given thing is neither good nor bad. It is simply a thing. What is is. It is what you make up about that thing that is either good or bad. You personally, subconsciously, apply a value judgement tag to each thing that you see, think, hear or feel. Then you use thousands of these tags together to make up a framework about how life should or should not be. Once this has been done you compare your life with the way life "should" be and become either happy or discontented with things based on how closely things match your vision of what should be.

What you think remember or feel about your neighbor's dog is not actually the reality of the dog. It is only what you think remember or feel. The dog is the dog. Just as your value judgement of a person is not the person. Is is merely your judgement. And it is completely unfair to hold either a dog or any person to your feeling,thought, belief or memory of them.

We are not our neighbor's dog so we cannot truly know it. Our experience of the dog limits our understanding of it. With greater experience we can make more accurate predictions about how it will behave in a given circumstance, but never with absolute certainty. And just as we are not the dog, we are not any other person but ourselves. We cannot know or even properly understand any other being.

Nearly everything that we think, feel, and remember is, to some degree, incorrect. Because these things are based on our interpretation of what we experience.

Everything that we think, feel and remember is made up. It is something that we made up, based on something that happened in the real world. Everything is a story. It is all part of our story. The tale of who and what we are. The filter that we choose to apply to everything that we experience determines whether a thing is good or bad. Let me say that again. We choose the filter. It is a choice.

If this is so why not make your story beautiful and positive instead of negative and nightmarish?

Am I human pt2

Awhile back I wrote about part of an experience that happened when I was two years old. This is the other part of what I remember. And yes I am aware that what you are about to read seems like some crazy made up fantasy.  But I believe every bit of it to be true and those that really know me know that I would not make something like this up, especially considering my beliefs on the judeo-christian myth.

So the child forty feet or so below me ceases its cries for help. Suddenly, I feel an urge to be elsewhere. And suddenly I am. At first it seems dark, but as my eyes adjust, the darkness slowly falls away, peeling off bit by bit. Until at last, there is  brightness is everywhere. It is as if the ground the sky and everything around me are made of white light.

At first, this is disorienting and I stumble around blindly, not knowing where I am and having trouble differentiating between the ground and the air and things lodged within one or the other.  As the eyes tend to shy away from bright lights automatically, at first, it is difficult to look anywhere and focus on any one thing. Gradually my perception shifts and I begin to see each thing as its own light and to sense the places where one ends and another begins.

Yet somehow, even while stumbling around, I was heading in the right direction or maybe every direction lead to the same place. At some point though I feel the urge to stop moving forward. I do so and looking up from the ground in front of me, I see what looks to be the oddest shaped mountain in existence. The first thing that I notice is that this one immeasurably tall thing is a white gold in color as far as the eye can see. It is the only thing in this place that is not a plain white. It is also far brighter than all the white that I have seen so far. The intensity is such that another period of adjustment is required for me to be able to look upon this mountain without pain. Oddly enough, I find that I can not look away from it.

And then, a great sound, from too far away to possibly imagine, reaches my ears. The volume is such that I am certain anyone for easily ten thousand miles can hear the words, but I know they are meant solely for me. The air and everything around me literally vibrates with the deep, powerful, yet gentle rumbling of this voice. It soothes and caresses while also querying.

Suddenly, in my mind's eye, I see this enormous mountain that I have been straining to see all of. It is impossibly large. In my mind I see the whole of it and I realize that it is a brilliant gold being seated upon a throne of white.  As far up as I could possibly see before it got lost to my field of vision, the part that I perceived to be a mountain, was merely this being's right sandal and a couple of toes.
While taking all this in, I realize that I still have not answered this immense being. In fact, though the words completely surrounded me and massaged my very being, I had not yet considered them.

They came yet a second time.

Would you like to stay here?

All around me was at peace. There were others in the surrounding area. All were happy. There was no fear, worry, sadness, loss or pain. In fact now that I was really thinking about it I knew I was surrounded on all sides and in all ways by love in its purest form.

It truly would be pure bliss to stay here I thought. But I can not.
"No", I replied "there will be people that need me"

...and then a child woke from a coma in a hospital somewhere in south Florida. And I was once again that child.

The power of the memory of that experience is still enough to bring tears to my eyes to this day. Whether dream or out of body experience it somewhat blows my mind that at not even three years old I had the presence of mind to give up that wondrous possibility for even a brief time to choose being in service to others. It hits me that I felt I could not accept the peace and tranquility yet, because I had a duty to perform first.

Yet, every time I think about it, my belief that I am here to make the world a better place becomes stronger and stronger.

Despite what others may think of this tale, I honestly believe that my spirit directly interacted with the being that the Christians worship. But I am not a Christian, just a good Samaritan.