Do We Create Our Own Reality?

The mechanics of human experience.

Do we create our own reality? To begin, we must establish a crucial distinction: we do not create reality itself. There is an objective reality, and it functions entirely independent of anything we do, think, or believe.

For example, if it rains today in Silverthorne, Colorado, where I live, that occurrence is completely indifferent to my preferences, my beliefs, my thoughts, and my personal history. It happens solely as a function of a specific set of natural phenomena and physical laws. Scientists have written about the Butterfly Effect—the idea that a butterfly flapping its wings somewhere can initiate a chain of events that naturally unfold across the globe. No one is causing these events.

It is fairly easy to see that an external reality exists. But our original question was more precise. It wasn’t “Is there a reality?” or “Do we create reality?” It was: “Do we create our own reality?”

To answer this question, we will explore some of the factors that affect our experience of reality. Our experience of reality is the only “reality” that we have access to.

The Lens of Experience

What are the factors that shape our unique experience of reality? The question implies that we often do not experience reality as it is.

Let’s start with a simple contrast. If I am driving down the road and there is a dashed white line down the middle, I probably see and experience that line in pretty much the same way you do, that is, you and I experience it as it is.

But imagine a different scenario: a blue Mercedes passes me on the left. You and I might have the same experience of that passing car. However, if I was recently in a relationship that ended very painfully, and that person drove that exact model of blue Mercedes, my reality will be quite different from yours.

The difference between the neutral white line and the blue Mercedes comes down to whether or not we have something “going” with the event. Is it connected to our unfinished business?

Unfinished Business and Energy Blocks

A primary determinant of our personal reality is our energy blocks. Energy blocks are a way of discussing the result of unprocessed emotions that we have stored deep within ourselves.

When we carry these blocks, they sit waiting to be triggered. They can be sparked by seeing a specific car, hearing a certain song, something someone says to us, or something they don’t say.

The Analogy of the Sore Finger

Carrying unprocessed, stored emotion is exactly like having a sore finger. Life doesn’t actively intend to hit your finger. But if your finger is already sore, everyday occurrences will bump into it and cause pain.

It is the same with our energy blocks. An event that might be insignificant to someone else can trigger an intense disturbance in us simply because the stored emotion was reactivated.

For example, if I am carrying unprocessed abandonment, I am inevitably going to feel abandoned by the people in my life. Someone needing to cancel dinner plans might trigger a traumatic experience. Events that someone else wouldn’t think twice about will spark my stored history of abandonment.

The Tyranny of Desires and Fears

The second major category that alters our reality consists of our desires and fears. They cloud our ability to simply see what is.

Consider a workplace scenario: you strongly desire a promotion, but you know there are several candidates and only one position. Your attention becomes hyper-fixated on your boss and on analyzing what your competitors are doing. You interpret every small look or email through this single lens. Your desire dictates what you pay attention to and how you interpret what you perceive.

The exact same distortion happens with fear. If there is an outcome we dread, we attend to our environment in skewed ways. Little neutral events may be seen as clues to the impending feared event. We fail to see things as they truly are; instead, we see them entirely through the lens of what we want or what we are afraid of. (See Why We All Deal with Anxiety, and How to Work with It.)

Preferences vs. Attachment

Does this mean we must completely rid ourselves of all human desire? Of course not. We naturally want things. When we turn on the television, we prefer to watch something we enjoy rather than something we don’t. If we go out for the evening, we want to spend it with someone we like and appreciate. We will always have preferences.

The spiritual trap does not lie in choosing an ice cream flavor or picking a music concert. The key is whether we can release the specific, high-stakes mandates from our minds that state: “I need this specific outcome to happen in order to be okay and to be happy.”

Those are the rigid attachments that distort our view and warp our personal reality.

Can We Alter Our Misperceptions of Reality?

Yes, the lenses that have colored our experience of reality can be removed.

First, our energy blocks–our stored, unprocessed emotions–can be released. I describe in detail how to do this in a prior Substack article, Releasing Emotions.

Second, we can witness the mind’s claims about what we need to be okay and let them pass. We do not need to buy into them. Another prior post is relevant here, Missing the Greatest Movie Ever.

If we release our unprocessed emotions and free ourselves from the mind’s agenda about what we need and need to avoid, we are able to be present with reality. Instead of being disturbed by life, we get to be curious about and marvel at the magnificence of life.