Is it possible we are actually only actors on someone else’s virtual movie set, unconsciously playing out a script designed by someone or something completely outside our experience.?
Anyone with a love of science fiction or having a surreal kind of mind set has watched the famous movie The Matrix, starring Kuneau Reeves. The premise of the movie was a world in which the inhabitants are living in an illusory virtual reality presented to their brains with such verisimilitude that it was identical to reality, until spoons start bending and people begin flying.
The movie led to a huge outburst of cultural energy examining whether we are in fact now living in a computer simulation and how could we possibly know if we were? Perhaps, goes this line of thought, it may be an inevitable outgrowth of technology that this will come to pass, or that it already has to come to pass and you and I are in it now. Or maybe it’s just you and this story was typed up by a strangely verbose bit of software.
The answer is no, we are not living in the Matrix, and this is not a computer simulation. The easiest way to know this is to understand the incredible complexity of the known universe and its infinite interactions. To simulate that complexity you would need a technological device able to model the entire universe to such a degree it would be vastly more complex than the universe itself. Therefore, it cannot be so. This is all real and there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch (TANSTAAFL!)
Yet the thought remains in the back of our minds, could this be true? Why do life seem a bit unreal at times or why do events appear to have a synchronistic and sometimes miraculous quality?
We might look instead to the behavior of the brain for some answers. Our brain lie entirely encased in its shell with no sensory organs or nerves. It’s the one organ that cannot sense or generate pain, it can only organize, respond to and synthesize information that is provided to it via the nervous system, hormones and blood stream.
The brain maps this constant flow of input so efficiently to our awareness that we live in a ‘real’ world which is a tiny subset of what is actually happening to us in terms of sensory data. The brain receives input milliseconds after the event so in a very real way our map of reality is always just a bit out of kilter with reality. We’re behind the curve on everything we experience.
In spite of this, our brains do such a magnificent job of creating a living world that we experience everything as a seamless whole. We breathe, move, speak, type, and behave as if it were all happening in real time, which insofar as our brains are concerned, it is.
Yet, it’s also a simulacrum of reality we experience, one that is malleable depending on mood, focus, attention and other factors. Our maps of reality can change moment, day to day, year to year.
And that is the essence of our internal matrix, our map of reality. The plasticity of the mind and brain has been confirmed by science. Our beliefs about a subject can morph drastically in the course of a single conversation. Our self-image can be transformed in an instant of insight.
Knowing this, you can begin to imagine a life where you are building your internal virtual map according to the way you want to live and experience the world. Want to feel more confident, do something a confident person would do. Fake it till you make it and your brain will build new circuitry, a new internal map to support that.
To put it another way, your internal map of reality, the one you unconsciously use to guide every aspect of your behavior, can be systematically altered by you over time into a new life, a new behavior, a new outcome. All it takes is perseverance, building new habits and a vision of where you want to go.
You’re probably not going to bend spoons or fly without wings or an airplane, but you may extend your potential in ways you never thought possible simply by imagining it to be so and acting as if it were.
Thinking of your brain and awareness in these terms can be empowering. After all, you are the awareness that runs your reality. Only you can take responsibility for how that system operates.
If you have a way to alter your reality towards greater success, happiness and well being, leave it in the comments below.
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