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You’ve probably heard it. It may be a fiction story, or someone just talking about changing the reality around them when someone says something along the lines of “Yes, but how far can you bend reality before it starts bending you back?” While I don’t believe that there is a bad question, if I did then this would be it.
What is reality, anyway?
When we are talking about reality, we have to lay out a couple of ground rules. First, we have to give up the idea that reality is totally objective. I know, that it’s safe to say that it is, because any objective test you can use will point towards reality being totally objective. However, as anyone who has had a major shift in their lives knows, the world becomes a different place.
Have you ever had that happen to you? Something big happens in your life, you change as a person, and the world changes around you. One classic example of this is that you are just re-interpreting what is there through a new mental filter. I’ll buy that, as far as it goes. The problem is that if you experiment with it enough, there are too many co-incidences to make such a change merely “chance”.
Occam would be confused
In case you aren’t familiar, “Occam’s razor” is a term used in logic. Basically, the idea is that the fewer assumptions one has to make, the better. This is a tricky tool to use correctly, but it’s pretty useful.
Deductive logic is tautological; there is no way to get a new truth out of it, and it manipulates false statements as readily as true ones. If you fail to remember this, it can trip you — with perfect logic. The designers of the earliest computers called this the ‘Gigo Law,’ i.e., ‘Garbage in, garbage out.’
“Inductive logic is much more difficult — but can produce new truths.”
–Robert Heinlein
If, for example, your reality includes the fact that synchronicities happen - that you meet the right people at the right place and time for a reason, then you will have them. Time for Occam’s razor: On the one hand we have the assumption that the nature of reality is not completely objective and that synchronicities exist and that this is one such. Two assumptions. On the other hand, we can assume that reality is entirely objective, and that this person just happened to show up. The time and place are entirely random. Three assumptions. Two, if you’re feeling generous. Occam’s razor is tilting in favor of the synchronicity theory in this example.
However, this is not objective proof. The very nature of the question is a personal one each of us has to answer. I speak for myself and my reality that synchronicities happen all the time, but that will not be true for you unless you decide it so.
So how far can you push?
We have arrived at the answer to that already. If you subscribe to the idea of objective reality, you can’t bend or push or affect reality at all. If, however, it turns out that reality is at least partially subjective, then you cannot separate the two. To change one is to change the other and vice-versa. Those who are accustomed to energy work, or prayer, or magick, already know that one of the most powerful things you can do to to reshape your reality is to first reshape yourself. And that is what you are already doing whether you realize it or not. Fun, huh?
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