A growing number of people within the matrix believe that we create our own reality. But is this true? In some ways it can be a tempting idea, but what are the implications?

It is not a belief held by everyone, and not even by the majority within the Matrix. Supporters are most often ‘new age’ modern mystics as opposed to adherents of the conventional religions. And significantly, many of these advocates consider themselves more conscious or awake than the average person. But it is important to remind ourselves that to be a mystic means to accept ideas without evidence, proof or demonstration, and even in contradiction to evidence or rational proof!

I propose that we do not create our own reality in a literal sense, it is an objective absolute that exists independently of any consciousness – individual or divine. However, we do have some control over our experience of reality. This may seem like splitting hairs but this distinction is a very important one because it lies at the very foundation of our mental map of reality, and the implications of our beliefs on this issue need to be brought into our conscious awareness.

Assumptions

We all make assumptions every day. They are built in to our accumulated knowledge and help us avoid the need to rethink everything from the ground up again and again every day. The danger is that these assumptions can be wrong. Any thinking or reasoning based on incorrect assumptions or premises cannot deliver a useful conclusion that correlates with reality – i.e. that is true!

There are scores of common assumptions in what I refer to as the Matrix that are untrue. This website is dedicated to identifying them. There are also many popular beliefs that are just plain wrong. Anyone can identify them, simply by relentlessly asking the questions ‘Why?’ and ‘How?’ and seeking answers to them. If we keep doing this until until we get satisfactory rational causal explanations, the truth reveals itself to us in proportion to our desire to know and understand.

So, do we create our own reality?

We must observe up front that any idea, belief or conviction can be held implicitly or explicitly. This means we can base our choices and behaviour on its acceptance even if we do not consciously claim to believe it. The belief that we create our own reality is no exception.

This is one of the major reasons why it pays huge dividends to think consciously about issues and determine what we believe and what we do not. It helps enormously to decide ‘out loud’ as it were, exactly what we believe. In fact, this speaks to another of the great myths within the Matrix – that talking to one’s self is a sign of madness. On the contrary it is a significant path to sanity, to knowing what we think and believe in, and to knowing what we are talking about!

Firstly there is only one other possible alternative. Either we do create our own reality or we do not. Either things ‘are what they are’ independent of our consciousness, or, we have the power to affect reality, to change it, to shape it, to create it using our consciousness. Philosophically these two opposing ideas are known as the primacy of existence and the primacy of consciousness, and together they exhaust the possibilities.

The primacy of existence holds that reality is an objective absolute independent of any consciousness – individual or divine. The primacy of consciousness holds that consciousness creates reality and that therefore reality is subjective, and is whatever one thinks or believes it to be. Thus, the basic philosophical fork in the road is: Objectivism or Subjectivism

So why do we need to address this belief?

Reason 1 – Efficiency of thinking

Although these two ideas are fundamentally contradictory, meaning you cannot consciously hold them both at the same time. It is one or the other.