“Self-observation is the first step of inner unfolding.”
― Amit Ray
In Part 1: Using Quantum Physics to Manipulate Reality, we explored how science could be used as a metaphorical guide for realizing your godlike power of manipulating external reality. But as conscious-beings full of emotions, we know that reality doesn’t just exist outside of our forms, but inside as well. Luckily, we can use the same aforementioned ideas to decide what mental aspects of reality exist inside yourself, thus creating your personality, your consciousness–thus creating You.
God Creates Self: Observing the Formation of Consciousness
“You don’t look out there for God… you look in you.”
–Alan Watts
A crucial requirement for being able to manipulate reality and “become a god” is the ability to see as many of the quantum possibilities as you can manage and with as much clarity as you can muster, so that you’re able to truly understand and find which choices resonate with you in the most honest and uplifting way.
This requires taking You time. And that means using some of your alone time to observe Self, rather than always playing the escapist inside books, smartphones, drugs or other distractions. Without these external simulations drawing us outward, it’s the internal landscape of our thoughts that becomes the focus of our gaze. And during this rumination and contemplation we’re able to explore our past actions, evaluate and relive memories, process new revelations and make plans for the future. This time allows us to decide what’s been important to us, what lessons we’ve learned, and how we can use that information to dictate the direction we want to send our lives.
Just like you have to understand your physical surroundings if you wish to navigate through them, this alone time is crucial in strengthening your ability to understand your internal landscape and which path is the best one that You can personally take through it.
Pulling from an ancient Chinese concept, let’s call that best possible path through your mental map your Tao ( literally translated to ‘way’ or ‘path’). Now consider the Tao as a pristine and calm river that’s peacefully streaming its way through a rugged and difficult mountain valley. Surrounding the river infinitely on both sides is an increasingly difficult terrain with an abundance of sharp rocks, dangerous animals (people), and chasms that fall away into darkness. Now, let’s also add a fog to this scenery, fog that gets more and more dense as you get further and further away from the river, hovering above the land just high enough to cover your vision.
Now the Tao–our river–represents harmony, the natural flow of your subjective consciousness within the universal consciousness. Not having to climb and struggle through the dangerous hazards on land, the Tao is the place you will feel the most peace of mind, where time and space will flow naturally without force and resistance. It is here that honesty to self exist. It is where contentment, bliss, and appreciation flow on the currents of acceptance. It is the You that is void of the attachment to the part of your ego that makes you think you need to be somebody you’re not due to the fear of failure or due to the fear of not receiving acceptance and validation by society.
At birth we start at the head of the river Tao, directly in the center. But every moment that comes henceforth moves us forward along the valley stream, closer and closer toward the horizon, and our every decision moves us sideways: either one step closer to the river (towards harmony and love), or one step away from the river and thus deeper into the capricious and dangerous land of foggy chaos (towards fear and deceit).
Even now, you’re still playing this game every moment of everyday: choosing between love and fear. But this choice can become muddied very quickly, as the further away you get from the river the more difficult it becomes to see your options through the foggy and obstacle-ridden landscape, even potentially to the point where you don’t even know where the river is at all. Let’s look at a few choices of fear that will lead you away from your River of Taoist Self.
Examples of Choosing Fear and Getting Lost on Land
Hiding your passion and creativity because you’re afraid you may not be good enough, such as:
not doing art because someone said you were bad at it.
not pursuing a passion because someone told you it was a silly pastime that would never make you money.
agreeing to plans you don’t really want to be a part of.
going to a party and drinking even though you hate alcohol and just want to read.
traveling abroad because travel is popular and you want the pictures that make you look cultured, but really you couldn’t care less about immersion into the culture.
staying in a job or relationship that doesn’t fulfill you.
Not taking the time to look for other jobs for fear of switching to something new.
Not going after jobs that would make you happier but may not be as financially stable.
Staying in relationships that you know aren’t healthy because you don’t want to be alone.
Staying in jobs or relationships that bring you down because you’re not sure if you’ll find better.
The more you make these kind of decisions (or allow them to perpetuate unchecked), the deeper on land you go and the more lost you become, and therefore the harder it becomes to find the River of Taoist Self. And at a certain point you’ll get so far away that you’ll become far more likely to turn to drugs and further escapism and distraction to cope with the dread of how lost you’ve become, and as such you’ll lose even more of your ability to navigate your thoughts with enough clarity to return to the river of joy.
This, my dear friends, is why it is so important that you learn your mental map, that you take time daily to understand your options with clarity. That you simply sit with Self and reflect. Daily mindfulness empowers you with the tools and intuition that expand and relax your consciousness enough to objectively hold in your mind all the quantum paths and routes you could take. And the more you practice this observation of self, the less you give into the emotion and ego that hinders your ability to see the easiest and most joyful option to take along your river.
Without this You time free of distraction, you are stumbling in a treacherous fog, blind to the appreciation of the valley’s beauty, forcing you to become callous as you build up a thick skin in order to better survive, but which ultimately only creates a barrier against fulfilling relationships with those you pass along the way.
This is where the principles of quantum physics and the metaphorical notion of ‘observation becoming reality’ return with drastic importance. If your vision is obstructed by fog and sporadic landscape, your ability to observe the beauty and bliss of your Tao becomes incredibly difficult, leaving you only to observe the fog that lacks substance and the land that impoverishes you, exhausts you, and at times even cripples you.
Now real quickly, before finishing with the Tao, I must add a caveat. It’s very important that you use your gained mindfulness to avoid becoming so addicted to the introspection that you forget to enjoy and share life. I know many who have fallen down the rabbit hole and have become just as lost as if they had wandered deep into the foggy jungle. I believe resonating with others is crucial to our growth and happiness, for others help awaken parts of ourselves we have hidden in nooks along the shores and can even help bring us directly back to the river. And laughter and vulnerability with another can be one of the quickest ways to gain the clarity to see a path straight back to love and Self.
Decide who you are, or others will do it for you.
In closing, I’d like to return the idea of the couch in Part 1. Imagine that you never left your couch, that instead you simply stayed seated forever, your body atrophying as you waited for the external world–storms, hunger, the landlord, bulldozers, police, decomposition, etc–to forcefully move you.
Well, the same thing will happen to your consciousness if you don’t take upon this practice of observing Self often enough; without such time, you will have your Self observed for you, painted by the projected opinions of your peers and your culture ( thus becoming what most call a sheep rather than a freethinker). You will be so without a personal compass and the strength of willpower that you will let external reality toss you in its chaotic and capricious whims, forcing you into the fog so that you cannot understand reality enough to fight for Self; you will let your society dictate who you are because its presence is so constantly overwhelming to your weakly structured self.
And in this overstimulated world we live in, without a continued practice of honing self, you will become incredibly malleable, easily influenced by advertisements and social norms that will mold the parts of your Self that you haven’t taken time to shape through your own observations. And because these parts of your personality haven’t been crafted by you, you will feel disconnected and incomplete by their presence; they will weigh on you, dragging you down with reluctance and bitterness and sorrow because some part of you will know you’re lying to yourself. And the longer you allow this, the greater the discontent will grow; rather than being a sleek form that flows happily in the river of honest choice, you will become a rigid and jaded form that finds painful friction bumbling along the chasms of fear, insecurity, and self-deceit–a path where ego-attachment makes you ugly in your lust for validation, or weak to the charms of malicious people who are ready to take advantage of your desire to be accepted. You will struggle to find fulfillment, and thus happiness, because you will not be making the decisions that truly resonate with you, but rather you will be following the dictates of others as they lead you blindly into the soul-crushing wilderness.
And if we all do this, we will be left with a society full of the weak-willed looking for someone to tell them who they are, letting themselves be manipulated into the horrible position we’re in now where we destroy our planet and each other in the greedy lust for attention and power that makes us feel temporarily complete although we are utterly lost, broken, and rigid.
