The Characteristics Of Reality

You’ve got to understand that a seagull is an unlimited idea of freedom, an image of the Great Gull, and your whole body, from wingtip to wingtip, is nothing more than your thought itself.

Richard Bach, in his 1970 international best seller, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, writes about physical life using the words of a seagull. We are much more than we think we are; the ego is only a specialized portion of the self that is concerned with the material part of our experiences. The ego and what we call the conscious mind are two different aspects of the self. The ego is a composition of various elements of the personality; it is a combination of ever-changing characteristics that act in a uniformed fashion. The ego part of the personality deals directly with the world.

The conscious mind is turned outward to perceive world events. It is part of our inner awareness and the soul looks outward within the individualistic portion of the mind. Left alone if perceives perfectly. In a sense the ego is the eye through which the conscious mind perceives reality. But, the conscious mind constantly changes it focus as we travel through time. If the conscious mind’s direction becomes stiff, and the ego is allowed to take over some of the functions of the conscious mind, narrow-minded perceptions develop. When that happens, the ego only allows the conscious mind to function in a certain fashion and awareness is blocked in other directions.

In order to expand objective awareness we must clear the conscious mind of our self-created egotistical roadblocks so we can experience the greater part of our physical identity. The Fabric of our experiences is woven by our expectations and beliefs. Our personal ideas about the self and the nature of our individual reality have an impact on our thoughts and emotions. We consider our beliefs about our reality true so we don’t question them. They are characteristics of reality itself. They become invisible assumptions and they color our personal experiences. Most of us are spiritually blind; we have allowed our ego to block our conscious mind with physical foolishness. When we take our limited perceptions as gospel, especially when it comes to beliefs about politics and religion, we stymy our psyche expansion. We don’t stop that expansion, but we do limit it. Our feeling-tone vibrates in a closed-end belief system and the characteristics of that sort of thinking becomes reality itself.