Ignorance and Reality, on Being Awake

Ignorance: root. Ignore__  1. To ignore reality in favor of ones own perceptions. 2. A basic failure to see reality as it really is.   When I was young I thought being ignorant meant you were dumb, or stupid.  In a sense that is true.  But only in that Ignorance is a choice, one we make from fear or laziness.  Usually, from Fear.  Sometimes however it is a choice made because deep down we know reality is not as we wish it to be, and refuse to see it as it really is.

All my life I sensed there was something better, more knowledge and wisdom out there waiting to be found if only I could get better, smarter, wiser…etc..  I read constantly, self-improvement, fiction, biographies, but the main thing i discovered was, there existed a whole world beyond my ’self’, the little picture that was all of my experience.

I discovered there were things I didn’t want to know!  And gradually I began to understand that what I called ‘Reality’ was simply a system of belief that allowed me to interact with the world around me.

Compare it to a video game.  The character you move around in the game, your avatar if you will, togather with your computer and it’s software, all forms a ’system’ that allows you interaction with the ‘gaming world’ where the action is taking place.

So how is that different from ‘real life’?  Real life is much the same, the bandwidth is a lot bigger!   Your real life system allows a much wider range of user interface in areas like physical sensations, (touch, taste, feel, smell, vision) and things such as data processing.

In other words, your body is like an avatar, or game piece, your physical sensations are the little programs that hard wire you into this ‘virtual reality’ we call life, and your conciousness is the software that completes the interface between your soul, and reality.

What does all this have to do with Depression?

Suppose one little piece of code in your gaming software were to become corrupted.  You would have certain segments of the game that didn’t work as they were supposed to, your program might ‘freeze’, or the whole computer may lock up and have to be rebooted!

Your perception of reality is much like your ‘code’ when it comes to interfacing with Life.  If one little snippet of your perception is incorrect, you can, and probably will, need to be rebooted!  Go back to the beginning and rewrite!  Analyze and review.  You may have to totally rethink some of your perceptions, but depression is mainly about incorrect perception.  If you realize good times come and go, you can no longer say “Why does this always happen to me?”  The sun shines, and the rain falls on both the good and bad alike.

Overcoming depression without drugs takes a lot of:

• analyzing your mental state
• checking the validation of your assumptions
• choosing your thought patterns

To escape the destructive effects of depression, you have to be honest with yourself.  Things are not always as bad as they seem!  In truth, ‘bad’ is based totally on our perceptions!