The real you

So let's start with the conceptual reality.

Conceptual reality

Let's start with your name. It's a concept. Your gender identity. Another concept. Your childhood. Another concept. Your past. A concept. Your education. This is another concept. Your nationality and citizenship. This is another concept. Time is another concept. Money is another concept. God is a concept. the United Kingdom is another concept. The Government is a concept. Your political beliefs? Another concept. The town where you live is another concept. The language you speak is another concept. Even every single word you speak is a concept. Every thought is a concept. Every emotion and feeling is a concept.

You do realize that I can go on and on and on here, don't you? Your job is a concept. Your interests and hobbies are concepts. The economy is a concept. In fact anything and everything which is permanent and unchanging - it's a concept.

All these concepts come from the process of socialization you were put through from early childhood onwards through your upbringing, education, social and mental conditioning, and so on. You probably understand that throughout much of your life you've had different people all busy telling you who and what you are, what to think, what to believe, what you should know, how to behave, and so on and so forth. Out of this of course you develop your Ego, sense of self, sense of identity, who you are, how you live your life, what you know and so on.

Now I want to get into actual reality and how it's different from conceptual reality. But also I want to make you aware of some false illusions which you think make up reality, but they actually don't have anything to do with actual reality at all. So let me give you a definition of actual reality against conceptual reality, and add some tabs for some of the major illusions which can really skew your perception and your thinking.

Now please keep in mind that reality - actual reality - is coming at you in a multidimensional continuum of sensation and experience. This means that everything is happening everywhere all the time. Humans can only think in terms of concepts - because language is the central human reference point for life, existence, and living existence. You can only ever be as consciously aware as you can put into words and express through language.

Actual reality: Actual reality is also known as ultimate reality. This is the reality of the universe, nature, this planet, the solar system, your physical body, brain, and so on. This is the kind of reality that none of us can understand, explain, define, or know completely, simply because it's infinite and goes on and on and on and on.; Actual reality is consciousness, energy and space coming at you constantly in a vast multidimensional continuum of sensation and experience. This means that everything is happening everywhere all the time as I stated previously.
Conceptual reality: Conceptual reality is any reality which can be created from human conception, i.e. human imagination, human thinking, human feelings and expressed some way through language - words, gestures, symbols, rituals, numbers, and so on.; Here I often pose people with a question - is a tree made of wood, or is a tree actually wood? If the tree is made of wood, then who or what is making the wood which lies at the core of the tree? I use this example to differentiate between actual reality and conceptual reality. Can you make a tree with your bare hands? Of course not. But a tree is somehow created, isn't it? This is actual reality. Then you have all the other things made from wood, chairs, tables, furniture, paper, and even the word 'wood' itself. This is conceptual reality.
Space: Space is consciousness. Space is the consciousness which lies beyond your ability to perceive it and translate it into some kind of physical form. Think of it this way.. You can perceive a wall, a floor, a ceiling, because these have physical forms. Consciousness has no physical form. It's formless. But it has the ability to change into physical form, hence consciousness is information, because 'IN-formation' means 'going into physical form'. If you are conscious of something you can transform it into a physical form, either concrete or abstract.; Now understanding that I might have thrown you a mental curve ball here, and to make everything a great deal simpler, just assume that space is the same as reality. Space contains everything, so therefore space can only be the reality in which something exists. If something exists in space, then it is real, right?; But also please keep somewhere in the back of your mind that consciousness and space are the same and form the basis of existence.
Separateness: So now we come to the first major illusion - and that is the false sense of separateness between you and your environment and also between you and other people. You're conditioned to believe that space is emptiness and contains nothing, just as you've always been conditioned to believe that your mind is a ball of consciousness somewhere inside your head and somehow wrapped up in your physical body.; Believing something like this is bound to skew your perception and mess up your thinking. This is how you end up with a feeling of isolation, a sense of alienation, loneliness even, and a perception that you've been born into a hostile environment and planet and that other people are somehow different from you.
Continuity: So we come to the next major illusion - that of continuity and permanence. This is more commonly known as cause and effect. This is what distorts your perception and skews your thinking processes just as much as the other false illusion of separateness.; Where you get a false sense of isolation, alienation and loneliness from separateness, from continuity and permanence you get caught up constantly in various attachments, fears, anxieties, expectations and hang ups. Your life is coming at you constantly as a never ending stream or sequence of random, unexpected events, happenings, contradictions, conflicts, mysteries, and stuff which can't be easily explained.; Here you can easily get trapped into believing that something is real when it isn't. This also leaves you wide open to deception, either from yourself or other people, because we are all conditioned to believe in these illusions and it takes a bit of effort to learn how they affect you and your life and how to liberate yourself from such illusions.

In life perspective is everything. Take for example the image above which is taken from Montmartre, a large grassy hill in Paris which is near the Sacre Coeur church. From the perspective of Montmartre, a nearby building looks as if it is sinking into the ground. But this is only possible from a distorted perspective.

You have a similar distorted perspective on life which is as a result of all the social and mental conditioning you have been put through throughout your life.

Through your social and mental conditioning you have been taught various things as truth when they're not, and you're also led to believe that certain things are possible when they're not. As a result, just like the impossible triangle illustrated above, The triangle above is known as the Penrose Triangle, and it illustrates the fact that while something might seem possible in terms of a concept, in reality it is not possible.

These distortions from your skewed perspective affect pretty much all aspects of your life - the way you think, the choices you make, how you feel about things, what language you use, and so on and so forth.

Liberation from Ego

When things go wrong in life, or don't turn out as expected, most people (and you might be among these people) look to their environment as to the reasons why. It's often the case that this person did this, or that person did that, or it's the Government, or someone is to blame, or it's someone else's fault, or some reason based on a meta-physical illusion - it's God's will, it's fate, it's destiny, and so on and so forth.

Even when you look towards yourself and look inward, you still often think you made a mistake, you got something wrong, or you misunderstood. It's this way because in being conditioned to believe that there's certain societal rules which are sacrosanct and always right, we make the assumption that who we are is based on our Ego, our sense of self, our sense of identity, and we never really call this into question.

This is important because the Ego is all based on assumption and is nothing more than an illusion. The Ego is a concept, an image of who you think you are and believe yourself to be. It's a social construct. Please keep in mind that the Ego is based on the assumption that there is some permanent, unchanging 'you' that exists in reality. You cannot believe in 'self' without also believing that 'you' are separate from everything else, everyone else, and that you are somehow permanent and unchanging in some form.

Consciousness has no physical form

I'm going to give you here a third (and final) optical illusion. This one is called Rubin's Vase. What do you see in the above image? Do you see the black Rubin's Vase, or do you see two white faces in profile facing each other? It's possible to see both. The first thing you saw was what your focus of conscious attention connected to - the consciousness in the image, through which you created a physical form. What you didn't see was the background, which you also created.

So if you saw, for example, the two white faces, seeing the white faces was only possible by discounting the black Rubin's Vase in the centre and discounting it as space. If the black Rubin's vase was white you would see nothing. The exact same thing is true if you saw the black Rubin vase first and discounted the two white faces as space or emptiness. Likewise if everything is black you would see nothing.

I'm just showing you this to illustrate just how important your individual conscious perspective is. You understand that consciousness exists I'm sure just as you understand that space exists. Your life is your individual experience of existence. You create that experience through your individual conscious perspective and what is known as the Felt Sense of Immediate Experience.

It's not important to understand what consciousness is and isn't, just as it's not important to understand everything about space and reality. Both consciousness and space are infinite, and they change much faster than you are able to perceive. Let's be very clear here what I'm saying - neither existence nor reality can ever be fully understood, known, explained or defined. Forget it. All you have to go by is physical form, or energy, but see energy and physical forms constantly change. Your body is constantly changing, your environment is constantly changing.

But if you're going through life with a distorted perspective not understanding who you really are, and not understanding how things work in reality, then you leave yourself wide open and vulnerable to all sorts of illusions and false beliefs. This is going to inevitably affect the nature and quality of your life experience.

The Principle and the Process

So let's take existence - all existence - and strip it down to the basic, most fundamental principles. The 'how' and 'what' of existence. Existence is a principle. Creativity and interaction is a process. That is all there is to both life and existence - the principle and the process. What something is and how something exists.

The universe has a principle and a process. This planet has a principle and a process. Everything in nature has a principle and process. You have a principle and process. I have a principle and process. Everyone else has a principle and process.

Now if you can accept that reincarnation means a great deal more than some swirly life after death belief in the Afterlife, and you can understand that everything that is real about you has no physical form then you can begin to understand the truth about your existence.

Qultura is a system through which you can learn about the basic, fundamental mystical principles of existence. These mystical principles are arranged into a relatively simple methodology which has been made freely accessible to you. If you are prepared to explore, experiment, learn and discover with nothing more than an open mind, then you will learn the secrets of the mystical principles, develop mystical insight, and be able to find your way back to a natural state of mindfulness without needing to make much effort.