Developing Maturity Around How You and People Interpret Reality

[Thought Art]

--- Open Contemplation

It's pretty amazing how many interpretations there are of say, a single public figure, event, business, product, etc... Or even just a thing like.. What is a road, or a city, or a tree, or a toothbrush...?

I think it's important to come to realize that everyone on this forum, and in society in general is filtering reality through their own unique matrix of understanding and their ego mind. This means that though we have access to the same raw 'external' data... How we perceive it is totally different. Our egos, education, brain and nervous system, genes etc all play a role in how we see reality. I also wonder how the 'observer effect' comes into play with how people interpret reality. I also wonder what the implications of solipsism would be to this contemplation. 

When we are using this forum, watching youtube videos, and other social media platforms I think it's important to begin to simply observe all the different types of responses and interpretations there are on things. It is sort of humbling. It also makes me think more and more just how little I care about other peoples opinions on these subjects. Because instead of taking a single persons opinion and allowing that to influence me I realize that there are billions of humans who could feel very differently. I also have to become increasingly sovereign in my way of thinking. 

I also come to realize that peoples opinions on things are always changing, peoples don't really know how they feel about something, there are many unconscious factors that come into play with regards to peoples interpretations and reasoning processes.

Have you ever watched a movie and thought it was about something? But, upon watching it again you realize a different interpretation? 

Have you ever been raised to think a certain way but then come to realize that you were indoctrinated into a way of seeing and thinking?

It's especially difficult to gauge the value of other peoples opinions, expertise, and ideas on subjects when we ourselves have yet to become well educated, experienced and to have gathered adequate requisite variety in life to be able to navigate at a high level. 

So, we generally don't know very much about the world as it is very complex, we have a lot of unconscious programming that filters our perspectives, we generally don't contemplate or self reflect very deeply, we generally don't have deep emotional mastery, nor we do have solid understanding of our self deception mechanisms. Our opinions are always changing... most people don't watch high quality media sources, read books, or high quality podcasts. Most people are lazy, reactionary, short sighted, myopic, uneducated, afraid, closed minded, oriented toward what is easy, entertaining and instantly gratifying. People are also oriented towards judgement, fear, shame, and other various toxic ways of seeing the world. People enjoy to judge, catastrophes and cast stones at others. 99% of humanity is not concerned with Truth. And most of those who claim are are concerned with Truth, really are just full of shit. We have many assumptions and ideas about the world which remain unquestioned and we have yet to go through the critical thinking processes and direct experiences to really know...

Most of humanity operates at relatively low states of consciousness as well and has no reference experience for things such as infinite love, death, God, Absolute Truth, and state the bring forth a sense of total lack of bias and unity with all things. Therefore, because people are essentially sponges and currents in the ocean of human consciousness they do not know anything. They are just reacting, surviving and moving through life like sheep.

People want to remain in their ideas about their religion whether it be Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, etc. They can't really interface with radically different sorts of spiritual schools. Though, they share many similarities... Even within these symbolic categories what a Christian is, or more specifically what a good Christian is, is different to each individual. How people inside, and outside of Christianity see Christianity is different. Every Christian likely has a different idea of what Christianity is. Though, I am sure there is enough similarities throughout those who are a part of this collective ego structure. 

So what really is a thing? What really is a religion? What really is a public figure? What really is a piece of art? What really is a tree, a rock, a goat, a plane, what really is morality? What really is good and evil? What really is science or truth, or God? This is incredibly difficult to really grasp. Reality is so deep and open ended. Are things just what we think they are? How does my language and my cultures reference experience limit my ability to interpret reality? What about my education? My experiences? My preferences and biases?

If things are just what we think or feel they are.... Then things are mind stuff. Constantly changing with each new news cycle, scientific paper, or interaction. I my view of myself or my friends changes so regularly... Then, what are we but a temporal flow as time continues.

In this contemplation we are swimming in the deepest waters. 

I am now thinking about the implications of Godel's incompleteness theorem, the word of Jacque Derrida, heavy metal and toxic material exposure to people bodies, trauma, genes, science, mysticism, relative and absolute truth... There is so much going on here with how we interpret reality and what we can or can understand or know for certain. 

Each source of information comes with nuggets of relative truth, and relative noise. 

We have to be able to understand the mental health, education and orientations of the social matrix as we go about developing maturity and mastery on understanding how interpretation of reality works. Contemplating how interpretation works is a very deep subject.

I am only beginning to just see the tip of the surface. I won't be able to conclude this post in this opening. Stay posted for follow up posts as I share some powerful questions and contemplations around the idea of interpretation. 

Edited February 6, 2023 by Thought Art