What is real?

First there was darkness, and then there was light.

Or maybe, you just opened your eyes?

Regardless, you suddenly find your awareness filled with things! You have a screen in your hand, you feel the chair, your clothes, the smell of the air - the feel of it against your skin.

You are observing the world around you through your senses, in your conscious awareness.

In this space of observation, the time is always now. It feels real. Things have substance.

Let's call this the 3D world.

Your brain is constantly taking snapshots of the 3D world and comparing them with each other. And so you notice in your consciousness that some things seem to be moving and changing in the 3D world.

The wind is coming in soft gusts against your skin, smells are fading in and out, there's a ton of activity in your peripheral vision.

In the 3D world, the only constant is change.

Some things change quickly, others take eons, but nothing in this world lasts forever.

But the changes aren't random. They happen for reasons. If you swipe up, the screen scrolls, if you push against the chair, it moves. There are many things that you have no idea how it works, and yet you don't believe in magic right? You could understand it, if you wanted to.

In the 3D world, there is cause and effect.

But this is not all there is...what about you - your conscious awareness? This is where the story started after all. You've seen illusions before. You know that you cannot always trust your senses, but you cannot deny that you are experiencing something!

And there is more than just your sense impressions in your awareness. There are things that look/sound/feel/smell/taste almost like real things, but when you compare these to 'real' things, you know that there is a difference. These thoughts sometime seem to arise all on their own, and at other times you can control them.

Subjective experience is the one thing you can be sure of!

You are definitely experiencing things - your sense impressions are telling you about a seemingly real world 'out there', and your thoughts are giving you info about a world 'inside'.

Now you feel something. This is felt in your body - a thing in 3D space, but the feeling is inside? Weird...you know this feeling. It feels like hunger.

Suddenly thoughts arise in your awareness: you are eating an ice cream cone. And wouldn't you know it, there is a vendor just across the street from where you are now! You have time, you have money, you could have this now!

Before you know it, you've gotten up from your seat and you are walking toward the ice cream vendor - a short, older lady with a cap on. She sees you coming up and smiles at you.

In the back of your mind, you register something - that this is another person like yourself. She is also experiencing something.

You take out a piece of paper and hand it to her. She smiles and gives you an ice-cream.

The fact that you could communicate and trade with the ice-cream lady means that there is also an intersubjective reality to all of this.

You don't know for sure that any of this is real, except for your own experience. However, you are a pragmatist, and there seems to be a lot of data to suggest that there are real things outside of your awareness as well.

Your thoughts and feelings don't seem to affect the outside world directly, and yet without them there would be nothing to compare the 3D world with.

In-fact you are able to compare what is happening now, (inside/outside/both) with an idea of how things could be different.

You are able to hold in your awareness both the present state and your desired state at the same time.

You were giddy with anticipation as you approached the ice-cream lady. Your mouth was literally watering, each step bringing you closer to your goal.

You are driven to reduce discrepancies between our perception of your present and desired states.

Your awareness was focused solely on the taste and feel of the ice cream, for a short while, and now your awareness is scanning through your body and the environment.

Something jumps out at you - a familiar face in crowd. It's your friend!

There is literally an infinite amount of things you could be focused on, but your attention was magnetically drawn to your friend.

Clearly there is a deeper reality at play here...

Some of the things you notice, feel, think about and act on is because of your nature. As a human you are primed for social queues biologically.

Some of the things you notice, feel, think about and act on is because of learning (nurture).

All of it is programming of some kind that is allowing you to navigate through a very complex reality, with the same biologically constrained awareness as you had when you were a caveman. And the programming is not just affecting you, it is also operating on a societal level!