Does Reality Exist? Or Is It All In Our Minds?

A common saying that is spoken as a bit of a brain teaser is…

If a tree falls in the forest, and no-one is around to hear it, does it still make a sound?

There is a more contemporary similar question I have heard recently on the same lines of thinking…

If a man speaks in the forest, and there is no woman around to hear him, is he still wrong?

While the answer to the second query is obviously easier to answer than the first(!), questions such as these always draw me into thinking about reality, and whether reality exists if we’re not there to experience it.

While we are not omnipotent and events and activities occur around the world without us individually knowing about them, I often query as to whether they actually happen until I receive some sort of proof. I mean, I understand people are living their day-to-day lives without their experiences having any influence on me, but this is my point… do they exist prior to their experience touching or impacting me in any way? Or, do their experiences have influence on me?

This is the wonder of quantum mechanics, and without going into too much detail, quantum theory suggests that matter exists in all states and possibilities until it is observed. The moment it is observed, the atom or part thereof becomes recognised as being in a particular state. All other possible states disappear.

If we take this to a larger scale, in my reality, everything else – everything else, exists in every possible state, and it is only when my attention comes to it, that it becomes ‘something’ and everything else it could have been disappears. With the tree falling in the forest example – who is to say the tree fell, or even existed, or even that it didn’t fall up and disappear rather than falling down. It is not until our reality, what most of us deem to be our five senses (even though I believe there are many more we have not yet defined !), until our reality is influenced by an event or activity or a thought that it becomes known and takes on a particular state!

While this is all very ‘abstract’, the reason I’m mentioning it is because I had an experience this week where a client and myself experienced a particular event in the same place, at the same time. Our senses were within one metre of each other, and we were both looking at the same thing at the same time. The interesting thing about this is that for me the event was quite banal, it was something that I experienced and let it pass just like we all let the seconds of the day tick by.

My client on the other hand had a very, very different experience. They reacted in a way that meant they were shaking, their body rolled into a ball for protection and tears started falling down their face. I was surprised by such a strong reaction. Nonetheless, it was what it was, and for this person sitting next to me, their reality became a traumatic and heightened emotional response.

I’m not going to go into any further detail as there is enough information laid out for my point to be made.

Our reality is ours and ours alone. The way we react, process, or respond to any stimulus is completely within us. The great thing about this is that once we truly and wholeheartedly recognise and accept this absolute, the only logical conclusion is that we, each of us, completely and utterly control the way we experience life. The way we respond to anything and everything is irrefutably up to us.

The tree falling in the forest does not need to affect us, because we don’t need to focus on it – worries and concerns that don’t (or at best, might) exist, exist only in our thoughts until our reality is touched. We do not need to let ourselves be influenced in any way.

Our thinking is vapour – we create it from thin air, and until there is concrete influence into one of our other five senses, it is a tree, forever away, with no-one there to listen.

If YOU spend your time thinking about trees – let it go.

Next post, I’m going to flip this around the other way and show how what we focus on can bring things into reality. Gotta love quantum theory.

For now though, know your thoughts are completely controlled by you – what you focus on is what you’ll get, even if it is a tree somewhere someone will never see or hear.

“Live Your Ultimate Life”

I ask that if you like what you’ve read, please help me out by spreading the word. Whether by social media or suggesting people visit this website, your support is welcomed and appreciated.