I was an eighteen-year-old college student in 1999 when Keanu Reeves appeared in The Matrix and made questioning the nature of your reality seem cool and not just stuff for stoned Philosophy 101 students. Hard as it is to imagine, Facebook wouldn’t be launched for another five years; it would be eleven before Instagram appeared on the scene. We were still living mostly in the “real” world, with occasional visits to AOL chatrooms for novelty and what felt, at the time, like another opportunity to connect. The idea of a technologically-manufactured reality indistinguishable from Real Life seemed pretty far-out: a fun idea to play with during late-night dorm room conversations, but way more unlikely than the threat of all the world’s computers shutting down at midnight on December 31st.
In the twenty-six years since, it has slowly, and then much more rapidly, become more difficult to distinguish between “real” and “virtual.” As technology advances, it is becoming increasingly skilled at semi-autonomously presenting words and images that seem familiar, real. In turn, many of us find ourselves becoming skeptical about even things that we’re pretty sure do exist. How can we be certain? What metric can we use to test whether something is fact or fiction?
Even on this platform, I’ve noticed that we’re routinely giving each other the side-eye, scrutinizing posts for em-dashes, repetitive phrasing, suspiciously-sophisticated prose, vague statements. An account that frequently appears on my feed has 935 subscribers – that’s 910 more than I have – and just one post. A bot, or just someone who’s highly skilled at the Notes algorithm? It’s getting harder to tell. Hey, new Substack bestie: please choose five photos with motorcycles in them. This summer, at a retreat, one of my participants texted a photo of the sunrise to her teenage son. He texted back: “Is that AI?” Our laughter was less amused than anxious.
I’ll spare you the tour of ideas about reality from Plato’s Cave through HBO’s Westworld, instead turning to the children’s classic “The Velveteen Rabbit”, which I think gets the formula for figuring out what is real just about right:
“What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day […]
“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”
This understanding – that a person or thing’s reality is determined by the interplay between that being and the attention, or love, directed to it, is consistent with an explanation of reality given in the Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 13 Verse 26 (Stephen Mitchell translation):
“Whatever exists […], animate or inanimate, has come into existence from the union of field [body] and Knower.”
As a thought experiment: what would it be like if everything in the world is or has the potential to be, real?
Sunsets. Stuffed animals. Software programs: Real.
Those Sims you locked in their house before removing all the windows and doors: Real.
The AI-generated video of you doing something…let’s just say, silly: Real.
The person (or stuffed rabbit) in front of you? All I can say is, you’d better love them until their ears fall off.
If there were no sandbox in which to test behavior outside of “real”, if every video game and novel story-line and flight of politically-inflamed rhetoric was real, how might we behave? What if we truly believed that reality is determined by what we pay attention to? What might we notice more? What might we choose to withdraw our attention from?
Let’s practice believing that the world is real by noticing it.
You may be familiar with a “five things I can see” grounding exercise, intended to help connect you to the present moment. The idea is simple, asking the participant to look around and identify five things they can see, four they can touch, three they can hear, two they can smell, one they can taste.
Today’s practice is a variation of this. We’ll focus just on five things we can see, touch, hear, smell, or taste, and spend some time meditating on their qualities – their “realness.” You can keep your eyes open for this one – it’s even fine to do this while driving!
Look around you. What is one thing you see? Say to yourself: “I see a [fill in the blank], and it is real.” Make some observations about this object or item. What color is it? Is it interacting with anything else in its environment? What or who is it used by, and for what purpose? What feelings does looking at this thing bring up for you? What thoughts arise in connection with this thing? What do you appreciate about this object or item?
What about something you can touch? Say to yourself: “I am touching [fill in the blank], and it is real.” Make some observations about this object or item. What is its texture? How does it feel under your hand or fingers? What is its purpose? What feelings does the sensation of touching this object bring up for you? What thoughts arise in connection with it? What do you appreciate about it?
Let’s turn our attention to something you can hear. Say to yourself: “I hear [fill in the blank], and it is real.” If you don’t hear anything, it could just be “I hear silence”, but see if you can hear something. Make some observations about the sound. What is its quality – faint? Loud? High? Low? What is it connected to? Are there other sounds around it? What feelings does this sound, or lack of sound, bring up for you? What thoughts arise in connection with this sound? What do you appreciate about it?
Now, how about something you can smell? Or, it could be the memory, or even the absence of, a smell. Say to yourself: “I smell [fill in the blank]”, and it is real.” Is the odor faint, pungent? What is it connected to? What feelings or memories does it bring up for you? What do you appreciate – or dislike – about this smell?”
Finally, let’s try something you can taste. It could be food in front of you, or the lingering taste of something you ate, or even the memory of a taste. Say: “I can taste [fill in the blank], and it is real.” Is the taste sharp, sweet, bitter? What is it connected to? What feelings does it bring up for you? What thoughts? What do you appreciate, or dislike, about this taste?”
Finally, simply look at the world around you. Say to yourself: “the world is around me, and it is real.” What thoughts, feelings, and emotions arise when you devote this kind of attention to what is in front of you? Is it easy, or hard? Boring? Exciting? What do you love about what you see, hear, taste, touch, and smell? What brings up more difficult feelings?
Simply notice.
Now take a nice deep inhale, and a long exhale. This concludes our practice for today.
Below: 6-minute meditation recording and audio version of this post.
Post audio:
Meditation: