Yesterday for some reason my head was all over the place and suddenly I was recalling a visual scene ‘memory’ from a TV show or a movie, so I watched it vividly replay in my mind; then I stopped and thought, “No, wait…that wasn’t a show or a movie that I saw that in, it was from a scenario in a fiction book I read Tuesday.”
That was when I fully realized how alive my mind was making the stories that were created only in black and white on a sheet of paper before me. I wasn’t just reading about the characters and their interacting situations in these tall tales—I was actively visualizing them happening as I read through the pages; so a day or more later I didn’t just recall ‘words’ phrased a certain way by the author—I saw the actors and complete scenes that those words had suggested as they appeared in my mind while I was reading the book.
When an author can so completely immerse you in their imagery and phrasing that you witness the imaginary scene as you read it, THAT is the skill of a great writer.
That is also a good reason to question what we think we remember about the lives we actually do live.
Psychologists and therapists have long known that their clients have their own ‘interpretations’ of what has happened to them in their lives—especially when those clients were children with limited comprehension and assessment abilities.
But as adults, we also are making ‘reality’ interpretations every day of our lives; and we base those interpretations on many criteria, but particularly we base them on how safe or how threatened we felt when we experienced the situation remembered.
That’s why trauma has such a paralyzing affect on people. It can taint every other future experience with the same inner terror felt when the initial trauma occurred. And when we begin to question our reality for REAL-ness, we begin to question ourselves for knowing what REAL actually is. Not a good state of mind in which to stew.
As someone who has some pretty broad personal interpretations of what constitutes REALITY, I’m not a good choice to define it a specific way for others; but a good counselor or therapist can help you in that regard if you are having difficulties interpreting what is happening in your life. Even my psychologist friend from that group shaman apprenticeship of years ago used to say that “everyone experiences their own reality” and she only tries to help her clients find their true version of it.
So don’t be too hard on yourself if you flake out once in awhile and think you’ve been to the moon and back and are standing here now with a rock in your hand to show it.
You should see my rock collection.
FINDING YOUR TRUTH 