When I ask a crowd, “Are you familiar with the voice in the head?” I always get knowing nods. Everyone knows what I am talking about. There are perhaps thousands of different “pet names” for it, most of them not pretty.
The near-constant thinking stream harps on the past and fears for the future, and is often limiting, negative, nagging—and sometimes even nasty. We call it ego, and it is what most people are trying to overcome with spiritual effort.
But did you know that it’s not just a voice? I mean—it’s made of more than thoughts. There are photos, sounds, moving pictures, smells, feelings, and even tastes—it’s a full-blown, experiential 4-D movie! I call it the “Movie in the Mind™”
We suffer the movie itself, and when we take the movie to be the reality and act on it, that is called being unconscious. It doesn’t work very well, and we often do and say things we later regret. When we think the story of us IS us, or the story of another IS the other, then we are “living in the head.”
If you’ve ever “had an argument with someone in your head,” you know exactly what I am talking about. Of course, the reality is you can’t live in the head—because you are not in the head—but when you are unconscious to the here and now due to being absorbed and identified with the movie in the head, then you are out of synch with reality, now.
Being unconscious is to be out of touch with reality because you are believing the movie instead, and super-imposing it over your actual direct experience, appearing to eliminate all the other possibilities within this moment for yourself and others.
We generally don’t even know that we are mistaking the mind for reality. That is the meaning of being unconscious. And that’s because we think the movie is real. We are literally not knowing the difference.
Movies are personal, and the personal differs, conflicts, and clashes. This collective unconscious experience is the reason we misunderstand, are hurt, angry, selfish, argue, fight, steal, and have crime and wars. We are not hurt by anything real, but by the movie. We are not lashing out at anything real, but at the movie.
The real is universal and is the root of unity, peace, and harmony. We can and really must wake up. What is needed first is to recognize the difference between the movie and the reality. To do this we must value reality above all else—we must become a Reality Lover. I hope you join the revolution.