Many people opperate under the assumption that they accurately perceive "reality". They think that what they see, touch, hear, smell, and taste are "real". In addition, they think that the things they perceive are somehow separate from what they think, feel, and believe "internally". As if there is a world "out there" and a separate world "in here". But, what if they are in fact the same thing. What if the world "out there" IS actually the world "in here".

Let's think about this for a moment. I have already talked about in past posts how everything we perceive with our senses is filtered, and only the most important information is actually revealed to our consciousness. Furthermore, WE choose the things that are most important, the things that pass through our mental filter. The more we focus on something, the more likely it is to pass through the mental filter, and the more likely we are to filter out everything else.

Deepak Chopra uses a terrific example. Have you ever been at a party where you are involved in a conversation with someone, and you are so focused on what that person is saying that the rest of the party is "tuned out", buzzing in the background? In that moment your focus is on the person you are talking to, and so your brain filters out the rest of the party. Now, what if a person behind you says your name. More often than not the sound of your name breaks through the filtered buzz of the party and you actually hear your name. All of the sudden, you tune out the person you were talking to and focus on the person who has said your name.

What happened in this example? Your name is so engrained in your thoughts as the verbal representation of you, that you are trained to respond to it. When you first call a baby or an animal by it's name, it probably won't respond to you. However over time it becomes trained to respond to the name. In other words we eventually attach importance to our name and thus it passes through our mental filter as something we should pay attention to. The same is true with any thought that we attach importance to, such as our beliefs. How are our beliefs created? Through repeated thought.

So, if we can agree that we do in fact filter out a lot of our world, and in addition, WE create the filter through our repeated thoughts, then it should be easy to see how changing our thoughts will actually change the world around us. If we change our thoughts, and over time, change our filters, we will start perceiving the world in a different way. We will notice things that were previously filtered out, like the background chatter at the party. Specifically, we will notice the things that we think about repeatedly, the things we place importance on. This change in our perception has the potential to completely change how we interact with the world. Things we once thought of as "bad" could now be perceived as "good". Things we once thought were "impossible", could now seem very "possible". And most importantly, we could begin to see opportunities that we once filtered out, because we failed to put our attention on them.

And so, there is a very clear correlation between the things we think, the things we perceive, our actions, and consequently the entire world "outside" of us. The world that I experience, is different from the world you experience, which is different from the world someone else experiences, so what is "reality"? Ultimately what creates "reality" is our thoughts - when you change your thoughts, you will literally change the world!