![](https://images.ecency.com/DQmVopEhYKaptrmYTXryJbBK34uMAuJVEk3UPxK6ntS5zyH/reality.jpg)



We can never really experience Reality. I'll use a capital R there to distinguish true Reality from what we think of as reality. There is a certain delay between when the eyes see something in Reality and when that information makes it to the brain. This delay is amplified because sound travels slower than light and our brains hold back the visual information until it can be synced up with the audio information. Those old kung fu movies that told us we could react faster and fight better if we closed our eyes may have been on to something.


<center>![](https://images.ecency.com/DQmc79iVWHPUzJzmX6RBcWGoLYCTsJYizvyDrAbWHk5ZZds/starwarsquotes1_600x468.jpg)
<sup>Or as old Obi Wan told us...</sup></center>

This delay between when our body takes in Reality and when we see reality in might be small, but it is there. Not only does this mean we never actually experience Reality, but it also means we never actually experience the present moment. This is point one. 

In addition to a delay, our senses are limited and give us an incomplete picture of Reality. Our eyes can only see a very small portion of the light spectrum. There could be all kinds of stuff happening around us that we simply don't have the ability to see because it's happening in a wavelength our eyes can't show us. 

We also only can hear a small portion of all sound. Kids are always fascinated by dog whistles and that fact that they drive dogs wild but we can't hear them at all. As we age the sound spectrum we can hear also decreases. Famously some convenience stores play a loud sound that older folks can't hear, but yet annoys teenagers and prevents them from loitering. 

When Reality enters our senses it is reduced down in the same way that a jpeg reduces a raw file. This is point two. 

Even this limited picture of Reality is overwhelming, containing far too much information for us to consciously process, so our brain filters it down even more before it hands it to our conscious mind and we become aware of it. There have been countless experiments to show that we tend to only notice what we expect to notice and all the rest is painted in to fit this expectation. This is one of the reasons there are so many motorcycle accidents. "I just didn't see him until he hit me." "He came out of nowhere!". Those sometimes sound like excuses from a person not paying attention, but experiments have shown us that we really just don't see something if we don't expect it. I'm sure all of you did that trick in school of holding your hands in a certain way so that you can "see" the blind spot in each eye. There is a large circle there that has no visual information at all, but the brain copies and pastes from the surrounding image like a badly photoshopped image in order to fool us. It does this same copy and paste over things that we aren't expecting and therefore have been judged by our brain to be unimportant. 

<center>![](https://images.ecency.com/DQmdg1RHQUpBNFGZFmYZFFj6awXFTZSQPqgaKp3Z18C3NRt/woman_g4f47f59e5_1280.jpg)
<sup>Image by <a href="https://pixabay.com/users/jupilu-9196359/?utm_source=link-attribution&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=image&amp;utm_content=6559905" class="keychainify-checked">Jupi Lu</a> from <a href="https://pixabay.com//?utm_source=link-attribution&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=image&amp;utm_content=6559905" class="keychainify-checked">Pixabay</a></sup></center>

In effect, the brain filters to keep from overwhelming us and it lies to us. It filtering out things it thinks are unimportant because we don't expect them and replacing those things with things we do expect to see. This is why it's so hard to find a four leaf clover, for example, even though they aren't actually *that* rare. This is point three. 

So what do we have. There is a time delay between Reality and reality in our mind. It is filtered down because our senses are not perfect and it is further filtered down because the brain tries to make things as simple for us as possible. 

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So why do I bring this all up? None of this is all that surprising, after all, and we can all arrive at these conclusions just by paying attention. Many old religions and belief systems figured all of this stuff out long ago and wrote about it. *The  tao that can be spoken of is not the eternal Tao* after all. Old Lao Tzu, or whoever wrote that book, was teaching us about it 2500 years ago. 

People often ask me why I meditate for at least twenty minutes everyday. There are many reasons, but one of them is that when we meditate we are *here now*. Or, you know, as close to *now* as it is possible for us to get. 

That's important, because most of us are not here now. In addition to those three physical limitations I mentioned above that we have no control over, most people make it worse. We don't directly perceive that reality that our brain finally present to us. Flawed as it may be, we never actually even process it directly. Instead we talk to ourselves in our head, explaining or giving labels to everything we see. We end up paying attention to *our description of reality* and not with the *actual reality that we see*. In this way we further filter reality with whatever language we speak and think in. 

<center>![](https://images.ecency.com/DQmVHHBqD37UQoBLPm1ATZNxBsvRseNbiP55g56gJoqWpew/tao_g4ebc0a02d_1280.jpg)
<sup>Image by <a href="https://pixabay.com/users/patrizioyoga-8445646/?utm_source=link-attribution&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=image&amp;utm_content=4911954" class="keychainify-checked">Patrizio</a> from <a href="https://pixabay.com//?utm_source=link-attribution&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=image&amp;utm_content=4911954" class="keychainify-checked">Pixabay</a></sup></center>

As if all this filtering isn't bad enough, it gets worse. This effect is worsened *even more* because most of the time the voice in our head isn't even talking about the reality we perceive and is instead talking about events from the past or hopes and fears for the future. We find ourselves reliving events from our school years or rehearsing conversations we think we might have in the future. As a result, we don't even see the seriously filtered picture of Reality our brain has given us because we are too busy being lost in fantasy or memory. 

Do you remember the old Kung Fu show staring David Carradine as a half-Chinese guy wandering the American West? I don't either. I was too young. But I did watch all three seasons of it when they were released on DVD following Carradine's renewed popularity due to *Kill Bill*. 

There was one episode where at the beginning Carradine wanders into town just in time to see the end of a bank robbery. The crook comes out shooting, gets into a coach, and rides away. When the sheriff arrives, he rounds up all the witnesses and asks them what they saw. Everyone has just a few often contradicting details, but then he asked Carradine and is told a super in detail account. What everyone wore, what they looked like, how they acted, etc. His report is so detailed in fact that it throws suspicion on him and he ends up getting arrested. 

That may seem like pure fantasy, but I've been in Zen circles for 25 years—I've seen people do this kind of incredible recall. Are all Zen monks born with photographic memories? Hardly. It is an ability gained from learning to actually look at the present moment and see the reality we are given as directly as we can, not through the filter of the voice in our head that wants to describe it in words. Many people who meditate on a regular basis find their memory improves. It's not so much that their memory has improved, but that they have learned to focus on the small slice of reality we can actually see instead of other things. Not being distracted, they actually *see* it. Remembering better naturally follows. We can all do this.

<center>![](https://images.ecency.com/DQmQtt7Z8HyN7pp21Fg5GSxK2SasDSWFxdJ99aB38rjTCtr/monkey_gcd5005ea0_1280.jpg)
<sup>Image by <a href="https://pixabay.com/users/a_m_o_u_t_o_n-9408103/?utm_source=link-attribution&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=image&amp;utm_content=4788331" class="keychainify-checked">Andre Mouton</a> from <a href="https://pixabay.com//?utm_source=link-attribution&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=image&amp;utm_content=4788331" class="keychainify-checked">Pixabay</a></sup></center>

It certainly doesn't happen overnight, but one effect of meditation is teaching us to ignore the voice in our head. You can never really get rid of it, but you can learn to ignore it so well that you barely notice it chattering away. We call this voice *Monkey Mind*, by the way, in Buddhism and it we often say that regular meditation helps us tame the monkey. 

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Now I'm not telling you all to go and start meditating. It's too boring, I know, and too hard. Something only Asian people can do. And so on. I've heard it all before. And that's ok. But I think all of us can benefit from not only understanding that the reality we see and experience isn't Reality, and that we make this even worse by talking to ourselves and living in the past or future. Knowledge is power, after all. 

<center>![](https://images.ecency.com/DQmUXPZYppU9sRGcXqzBYvtMk6ZqH4Wk3s4jpuLXjLzAN4U/nbc_the_more_you_know_logo_1996_dwayne.jpg)</center>

If you do find yourself nodding as you read this and want to try to do something about it but don't think you are quite ready for meditation, you could instead try practicing mindfulness. This is when keep our mind on what we are doing now. As you brush your teeth, just pay attention to brushing your teeth. If you think anything, think "I am brushing my teeth". Mindfulness practices may seem silly at first, but do them for awhile and may think otherwise. I'm half convinced part of this ASMR fad is due to the forced mindfulness it makes the viewer do. 

Anyway, that is all. If you have any questions, let me know below and I'll answer as soon as I see them. 

(title graphic made from this photo by <a href="https://pixabay.com/users/noname_13-2364555/?utm_source=link-attribution&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=image&amp;utm_content=3358468" class="keychainify-checked">NoName_13</a> from <a href="https://pixabay.com//?utm_source=link-attribution&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=image&amp;utm_content=3358468" class="keychainify-checked">Pixabay</a>)


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<td><img src="http://68.media.tumblr.com/9ed59bcbc3d0c81b382b0df883f91773/tumblr_inline_ni2uuza1ku1qz4uph.jpg" alt="Hi there!"></td>
<td><a href="https://hive.blog/about/@dbooster/about-david-laspina-v1-2">David LaSpina</a> is an American photographer and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku.</td>
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