We Create Our Own Reality

If I am standing alone in a room with a gold bar in the center of the room and I turn off all light, is that gold bar still there? I can assume from experience that if I find the gold bar then I will feel that it is there, but does it exist when nothing is interacting with it and there is nothing to perceive it? Atoms are just energy and I see the gold bar because photons excite the atoms and absorb photons specific to the gold element, reflecting the rest back to our eyes to be perceived as what we know to be gold. When I turn on the light and look at the gold bar, I create the conditions that allow it to have visual form.

We are coming to understand more and more that what we perceive as reality is extremely limited by our senses. For example, take a look at the electromagnetic radiation spectrum illustrated below: 

The color on this spectrum represents visible light that we can see. The majority of the spectrum represents frequencies that we know about but cannot perceive directly with our senses. What about frequencies that we don't know about? And it's not just our sight that is limited. Our ears can only hear sounds between about 20 - 20,000 Hz. Each of our senses are limited in what they are capable of perceiving. Consider the following quote from The Ego Tunnel by Thomas Metzinger:

"What we see and hear, or what we feel and smell and taste, is only a small fraction of what actually exists out there. Our conscious model of reality is a low-dimensional projection of the inconceivably richer physical reality surrounding us and sustaining us. Our sensory organs are limited: They evolved for reasons of survival, not for depicting the enormous wealth and richness of reality in all its unfathomable depth. Therefore, the ongoing process of conscious experience is not so much an image of reality as a tunnel through reality.”

Having established our sensual limitations, we must also consider that our senses are merely receivers that send an electrochemical nerve impulse to the brain for perception. In other words, we may receive the same energy but see a different picture. This idea is a very large part of the foundation of external world skepticism.

If there were not an observer to perceive, would anything really be? If there were no consciousness, could the universe exist? If your mind creates the image and color of the object based on a chemical reaction caused by photons, does the object exist or does it only exist in your mind? Remember, everything that we know about the world around us is based on a sensual interpretation of a continuum of ever changing events. 

Consider for a moment; if the world around us is determined by how our minds interpret the culmination of events that allows us to perceive, then wouldn't that suggest the only reality that there is would be the one that we create within ourselves? If our thoughts always tell our brain (that which is responsible for our perception) that we are ugly, what do you think that we will see when we look at a reflection of ourselves? Without conscious awareness of the power of thought, we give in to emotion and distort our world.
Norman Vincent Peale once said: “Change your thoughts and you change your world.” You are the author of your story, and your thoughts are your pen.

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