By Jeanne Fiorini
“What you think is real.” That’s the tag line at the end of my email messages. The phrase is as much as a reminder to me as to those with whom I’m corresponding, of how powerfully our thoughts inform our reality.
Thoughts are much more than flitting images in the mind. They spin and weave themselves into a worldview which inevitably guides our choices, decisions, and actions… far-reaching consequences from something invisible to the human eye.
Let’s play a simple game of perception. Put the tag line in the first person, and give some thought to the sentence: “What I think is real.” Read it five times, putting the emphasis on a different word each time. Look at what happens:
“What I think is real.”
Implies that the content of my thoughts creates my reality.
Example: Thinking about things that are worrisome makes me fearful about what might happen.
“Where there is no vision, the people perish.” Proverbs 29:18
“What I think is real.”
Underscores the importance of the fact that as the viewer, I have a very specific and unique filter through which reality is perceived.
Example: "Joe was unkind in saying that he didn’t like my new dress."
“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.” Anais Nin
“What I think is real.”
Here, thinking becomes the supreme function; i.e. if my logical brain says that a thing is so, then it must be so.
Example: "I’m not sure I like my new car, but Consumer’s Digest says it’s the best on the market and that’s good enough for me."
“The universe is not only stranger than we think, it is stranger than we can think.” Deepak Chopra
“What I think is real.”
Confers fact and truth on what is perceived intellectually and literally; that once fully rationalized, a certain reality is concretized for the viewer.
Example: The twelfth century scientist states unequivocally that the sun revolves around the earth.
“I think therefore I am.” Descartes
“What I think is real.”
Separates the true from the untrue, the real from the imagined, implying that the thinking function provides the thing we can count on.
Example: “I realize I had that dream last night, but I can’t base a big decision on what it said; that would be crazy.”
“Meaning makes a great many things bearable.” C.G. Jung
What I think is real. Five little words, many different interpretations. There is no one “right” way to read the above sentence and each person may have a different sense of their own “truth” in regard to it. Notice how important it is to be aware of where we hold the emphasis - and therefore the meaning. Life experiences are no different: we each hold a different emphasis and will likely confer differing meaning upon similar events.
We live in a culture, however, that suggests that there is one correct solution to every problem and that if we persevere logically and deliberately and eventually discover that single solution, we will be all set. I wish I had a dollar for every time I sat with a client who was looking for, not their answer, but the right answer. We become bound by the “shoulds,” the “can’ts,” the “won’t,” and the “never,” and succeed very well in becoming confused.
Doing this exercise might have brought the Eight of Swords to mind. I call this “the most common card” since it has shown up in nearly every Tarot card reading I’ve ever done. (OK, that’s an exaggeration, but you get the point.) The person depicted in the RWS Eight of Swords is wrapped, blindfolded, and surrounded by eight swords. She steps gingerly along the marshy landscape. Where is she headed? Can she see where she is going? Is she moving at all?
Because we are in the suit of Swords, and are dealing with the element of Air, we must consider all the ways our thoughts and communications are enacted. The person in the card is literally penned in, figuratively imprisoned by her own thoughts. She can’t seem to escape her particular perceptions. While she wears a red garment, implying that she is willful and ready to create movement, her personal viewpoints, opinions, and judgments restrict her actions.
The card depicts someone who, at best, has “chosen not to choose.” Otherwise we’re looking at a person unable to make a decision, who cannot see their way clear of a situation, or who hasn’t acknowledged all of their options. The beauty in the Eight of Swords is that it also tells one how to become unbound.
The problem isn’t intrinsic to the situation itself; the problem is in how you are looking at it. Change your mind and you change the problem. Thinking got you into this quandary, let thinking come up with a way to get you out. Use that bounded willfulness and determination to come up with a new solution. While one may have painted themselves into a corner in terms of options, the Eight of Swords indicates that the key to freedom can be in thinking differently.
Of course this is easier said than done. It can seem nearly impossible to see things that we aren’t used to seeing. It is difficult work to look at the ways that the “shoulds,” the “can’ts,” the “won’t,” and the “never” keep us stuck in patterns that no longer serve us. It can be a Herculean task to change long-held beliefs and perceptions. As a fellow scientist remarked to Apollo astronaut Edgar Mitchell, “I wouldn’t believe [a radical new concept of physics] even if it was proven to be true.”
That last statement drives home the point regarding the degree to which we are attached to our thoughts and belief systems. Let us be aware, then, of what we hold in our mind, and come to our worldview consciously and deliberately. It is the fabric for the world we create and is the pattern from which our future emerges. What you think is real. Let it be a blessing and not a curse.