Beyond the Illusion: how we shape the world every day
Most people move through life assuming the world is already there—that reality is fixed, unfolding around them, independent of their perception. But what if that’s an illusion? What if the life you experience is not something happening to you, but something being generated through you? This shift—from unconscious repetition to conscious creation—is the difference between fate and destiny. But seeing it once is not enough—it must be chosen, again and again.
So let me remind you: there is no world already there. We are the ones who bring it into form every single day, in two distinct ways. The first is unconscious and habitual, and it is the past in the present, mapped onto the here and now, which we then call ‘reality’. The mind is essentially a pattern recognition device1, so we don’t see what is there, we see an appearing, generated by the context we are seeing from, which can only ever be the blueprint of our past experience.
This context we carry (for example, ‘I am an outsider’) is so normal to us it’s unseen, so painful that it must not be felt, and so certain we have to work hard to unfix it from the field of our entire being. This context is there for a legitimate reason—a point of trauma we once suffered, found a way to survive and manage, and then became identified with. In other words, we were unable to deal with it at a young age (understandably), it became lodged in our BodyMind, and is now the filter through which we ‘see’ everything. Its power lies in the fact that is a filter that is completely hidden from our conscious awareness.
If we were really looking and listening, fresh as a child2, we might just realise that we have no idea what is coming next, or who we are when we wake up, and that perhaps this unfolding called Life isn’t happening to us, but through us. That’s the paradigm shift, and it’s where our idea of the world becomes a little less stable, and a lot more malleable.
Which leads to the second way we bring the world into form, through a very different kind of participation, one where we are active co-creators in the live encounter of now, and where our internal world and our external world are more than inextricably linked, they are one and the same. On this path, we are less in control (having given up the safety of our past pictures) and more in a kind of improvised dance. We realise that if there is no world already there, we are in fact responsible for our lives, with more choice and agency than ever before. It’s the ultimate wake up.
Coming to terms with the gift that we are the creators of our world is no small perceptual shift, and helps to explain why human beings retreat into the comfort of boxes and fixed ideas of ‘how things are’; a mode where there is always someone else to blame, where we can project our pain, fear, disgust, or vulnerability on to some other person, and where we can be angry and disappointed with the world, without having to own that we are authoring it.
We might call the first way, Fate: the past playing out as an unconscious, mechanical repeat, and the second, Destiny: the conscious choice to inhabit our flawed humanity and author our unique path nonetheless. It contains a kind of surrender, a willingness to be with it all, and trust that in being WITH our history (personal and collective), we are no longer IN it and led by it, but instead have the chance to build something new.
Self-help beware, the path of Destiny is not the chasing of a better version of ourselves, it is the bigger work of waking up to who we are BEING, behind closed doors as well as in our public lives, with all of our weirdness in our pocket, while at the same time choosing to outgrow the fixed idea of who we think we are. Because if there is no world already there, there is no knowing, only discovering. And the world does not need more of the same, it needs us wide awake to a new kind of Vision for who we might be.
This shift—from unconscious repetition to conscious creation—isn’t just an idea, it’s a practice. And like any practice, it must be lived, felt, and embodied. This is the work of BodyMind Maturation Coaching, and the unique space that I offer—integrating psychotherapy expertise with ontological intelligence, powered by the physical practice of Elemental Chi Kung.
I have one space available for a one-year Maturation Coaching journey, and this Spring, I am offering three 1:1 Vision Quest Days—held in person in London.
The Vision Quest is not about self-improvement. It is a full-body, full-presence immersion into the unknown—where the old stories loosen their grip, and something new can begin. If you are ready to step into this work, not as an idea but as a lived experience, reach out. Some things cannot be figured out alone.
https://www.sciencefocus.com/the-human-body/the-mind-blowing-science-behind-how-our-brains-shape-reality
Love this Emma.