Life is reality filtered
We’re all filters.
Whatever ‘true’ reality is we experience it through the filter of ourselves.
The unfiltered world cannot be comprehended because reality is simply too massive for us to fathom. Our senses and our brains pare down this reality to make experience possible. Reality goes in one end, experience comes out another. It is the latter that makes up what we call life.
The metaphor of a filter has other powerful lessons.
For one, to filter is to focus. We don’t have the capacity to do everything we want. We either have to choose what we would do or have the choice made for us. Either way, a filter will be applied.
When we find ourselves unable to focus it means we are unwilling to accept our limits. To accept your limits is to filter your options. When you can’t filter, you can’t decide what’s important. That’s the doorway to insanity.
Secondly, power flows from knowledge and knowledge is about grasping the essence of something. True power is exercised not indiscriminately but with leverage. The fulcrum of this lever lies in the essence, the crux of the issue.
Finally, emotions like anxiety and restlessness are the result of causes left unfiltered. Something that is not completely up there in consciousness is causing discomfort which is further amplified by the lack of any obvious cause.
This is where we must filter these emotions down to their essence, to separate out the harmless debris from what is causing us pain. We’re often at a loss in the face of these emotions because we haven’t yet reached that essence.
The process of filtering is not just meant to fix things. It can also help us rediscover values that we once held dear. Are you bored and dissatisfied in your career but you have no idea what to do about it? The answer, fortunately, is within reach. It is the essence that lies buried under the personality you have created for yourself.
The essence has not emerged because the work to filter it has not been done yet. Once you filter down to that essence, which is your core value, you have a new powerful filter with which to evaluate your life.
Filtering, then, is the core of existence.
To filter is to decide upon a response to life.
What is your response?
