I really try my best not to ever come up with a concrete and final answer for anything... because besides the fact that such a thing doesn't really exist, it also ends the fun of exploring thoughts and potential answers with people. There are always deeper levels to explore.... of all the multitude of discoveries throughout the centuries, that one certainty remains... that no matter how much complexity we think something has we will always find further levels to it. This has been the tenet of the greatest minds throughout history - Socrates, Galileo, Einstein, Jesus - that only because they discarded the consensus and explored with their imagination did they break the mold... and lo and behold, reality saw fit to back up their deepest perceptions.
Why shouldn't this be? The mind is the most complex mechanism in the known universe, in fact a living record, testament, and exactment in human terms of the history of time itself! In every one of your nerves flows electricity, the same energy that we know upholds the apparent barriers of 'reality', the electron clouds of the atoms. Take what you can from the fact that according to our most period-pertinent 'reality experts', quantum physicists, this traditionally most 'solid' part of reality, the atoms, is actually 99.999999% vaccuum surrounded by a cloud of not just electrons, but possible electron placements moving so fast they can't be identified individually. (So even the part upholding the apparent 'solidity' is mostly empty space.) In other words, the two most recognizable forces holding together what we consider to be 'real' are electromagnetism and possibility - which happen to be two of the main agents behind our thoughts.. Most people don't get this, or at least haven't applied it yet to their living waking reality, because we're raised in a society full of textbooks, social displinarianism, a well-established reality doctrine, and teachers that tell us things are 'wrong' or 'right' and that's it, end of story. Obama recently said in a speech that there "is no absolute truth". I contend that there is at least one absolute truth, and that is neverending mystery. And as such, only by absolute acknowledgement and pursuit of the mystery can any relative truths be found. Relative to our point in space and time, that is.
Earth, 2009.. a very fascinating time to be alive to be sure. As the speed with which we share information has increased, so have the borders between those atoms become thinner. A swap of some sort seems to many imminent, but I think such a thing has happened magnetically a few times and it's about ripe for a fusion of opposites. And yes, that does have sexual connotations. How we love each other is very important.. because it has to do with the act and intent of conception, something which is very delicate and within our easy biological power to control but which is alltoooften casually thrown to the wind mostly because our society tells us not to believe in such things as selfbodily intuition when we have a perfectly-relative reality thought field of 'science' to provide us with a clear-cut view of reality.... right?
Ask a leprechaun someday.. 'are you real?'.. and he might answer 'just about as real as you.. whatever you think that is.' There are two sides to this reality, with two different types of information - diametrically opposed to each other as to what one accepts from the other. We're recieving information from data and cues in the world around us from the top down, but also from the Universal umbilical cord that whispers into our subconscious constantly. Western civilization for the most part only recognizes the former and that's where it has put all its effort. The 'other side' has its closest relationship in that world to organized religion, but of course that has its drawbacks, and it's also obsessed with the details and information filters of huge tomes and vast power structures - mostly unaware of the allencompassing nectar-info-energy-milk tap. The closest thing I've found to what I'm talking about in any religious volume (outside of the East that is..) is the bible's reference to manna. Ironically, quantum physics has the best bag in town, and even more ironically they're mostly unaware of it. Science is providing a handy vocabulary for spirituality, and such seems to be the greatest underlying point of that exercise so far... concepts like zero point, entanglement, and string theory are SO much better than obscure sanskrit religious references, and most people know what you're talking about..
Reality is literally what you make it - all the pieces are there to form whatever idea or opinion you want from the inspiration at hand, but how you do so is entirely up to you. The 'reality' we live in when our eyes are open is only half the story.. the other half lives in your dreams. I believe that field is constantly percieved literally from the ground up by all plants, and it would seem the animals with the exception of human beings that have favored the small section of their cerebrum to 'thought' and discarded the MASSIVE remnant, 98% percent of the human brain that reaches back into time beyond.
How does the human learn his own brain? Well, trust is a good start. Einstein didn't have a bigger brain or any extra development in either hemisphere, but he did have a *huge* corpus colossum (lol), the part of the brain that bridges the hemispheres - in most individuals in society, relatively puny. This basically means that the rational part of his mind trusted the creative enough to dare to imagine and create a practical reality with it, which is in truth the vision of the human condition. In brains, societies, even animal populations, trust occurs first - then growth. In today's social understanding, understanding is chaotically fragmented - as the Hopi called it in their prophecies, koyaanisquatsi - a 'crazy world'. Indeed, a mind, and the mind of the world in refraction, is crazy, unable to function, if it is fragemented with self-distrust. Ironically, this society considers individuals that trust the visions of their own mind, the infinite recollections of that 98% of beyond, to be schizophrenic... ironically, by the logic that founded their disciplines of study, some of the brightest minds throughout history. There, we already have an example. I personally can't take anything they say, and I hope you can see what they are doing to the world and the human soul to understand why. You can't depend on the collective mind to form your own understanding of your self and the Universe.. reality is literally what you make it. That's why I'm telling you about the informational tools at hand within the framework of what you already consider 'reality' that are direct evidence of the part of reality that you might not have brought yourself to fully believe yet... and then you can put together something that is metaphysical *and* physical, spiritual and logical, mystic and mathematical.. make what you will with it, but make sure to enjoy yourself!!
I've spent most of my life in a forest. It has many many trees, but they may not be the kind you might think of. In my forest, the trees are massive, sometimes reaching for miles, and all manner of creatures live and thrive in their lofty boughs. The people there live in harmony, and they spend their days sowing their gardens and hunting and fishing. They pray over whatever they bring back to their hearths. They live their nights warm around fires stoked with joy, and dance and drum and sing as twilight passes into starlit wonder. Sometimes, the stars take to the dance, as spirits and beings of ancient worlds are drawn to the thoughts and joy at play, like dolphins to waves.
The people of the greenwood don't often stray from the shelter of the trees, because beyond their paradise there throbs and teems a monster of many. A dark hive has encompassed the planet, buzzing with anger, competition, destruction, and malice. Worse yet, the teeming malice has ensnared most of the peoples of this world, and pitted them against each other to the tune of the incentive of illusory power. This monster has yet to stray into the forest, for the trees that stand sentinel over the spirits they host strike fear into Its many dark hearts. But with each beat, it grows bolder. The time draws nigh when the havens will be breached, and when that happens the swords of ancients will draw black blood. Great trumpets will herald from the seas and winds, and beast and bird from all corners and elements will gather to play their lines into fate of All..
Occasionally I will sit at the edge of the world, and watch madness unfold under a carpet of false stars. As each one is lit by the forced volleys of malice, I watch a star fall from the sky. Another campfire, another tribe, another world, until they are all extinguished, and the language of darkness is spoken across the heavens. I've never spoken this language, nor quite understood those that do, but I love watching the stars emerge again in the eyes of another illuminated soul - and thus the heavens are replenished on Earth. In the eyes of awareness, I speak a more ancient language, and hear a more ancient song - that of the winds and rocks and trees, and of the water that flows within all - and that clarity lives in every human being, every mote of matter in fact, at the place where all becomes One.
I know of your trinkets, the rations with which the hive supplies you to keep you climbing over each other for a ray of light or accomplishment amidst the madness. They sparkle and beep and see across the great spider's web, but I know that some among you must recognize the illusion cast by the eyes of the snake that stares back when you gaze into their false light. Not all that glitters is gold, and gold doesn't always necessarily glitter. In a universe run on the alchemy of the Mind, gold can be an understanding or an emotion. What is the color of Love? What does a thought look like? (I would imagine something like a nebula or a galaxy.. but that's just me.)
Once you see the fabric of the mask that's been cast over your eyes, perhaps you can tear it asunder and see the stars beyond. I'll be waiting on the infinite shores of abundant worlds.