I can remember back when I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts, “Hyper Nonsense” with Shawno and Jen. It was a weekly (approximately) podcast that’s was just plain fun. Anyway. Shawno said something that just wowed me in an episode. “I denounce your reality and replace it with my own.” I completely broke down laughing at this. It was so hilariously self centered and aggressive, that I thought I have to use it.
As soon as I got to a computer, I typed the phrase into Twitter, giving Shawno full credit of course, but claiming the phrase as mine now. Shawno tweeted (twitter term) back that he actually stole the phrase from the TV series “Mythbusters” and wasn’t quite sure he got it right. Either way, I still think it’s hilarious, I subjected my coworkers to it rather liberally.
In general, the more we repeat something, be it verbally, or physically, or whatever, the more familiar we get with it. So I thought about this phrase quite a bit as I searched for places where I could throw it in when dealing with co-workers. I discovered that, even though it was meant completely in jest, there is actually some real truth in this little phrase if we look deep down.
Our days are filled with incidents and people who either re-enforce our ego or push and pull at it in an effort to change it. OK…OK…work with me here, folks. Any thought or idea that you have that you verbalize, most people will either agree with you (support your ego) or disagree with you (diminish your ego). For instance, if you say I think Dennis Kucinich is the best candidate for President, someone will either support you (“Yea…me too…I like his approach to education”) or not (“Are you nuts? Kucinich is waaay too liberal. There’s no way he can be a leader on the world stage!”). OK…maybe that one was too controversial. Let’s try another one. “Whoa! This jambalaya is WAAAY to spicy! (If you’re living in Louisiana, this may be more controversial than politics) Someone may agree with you or disagree with you.
So in our reality, the food is too spicy, but someone else is negating our reality and replacing it with their own. “Stop being such a wuss. It’s not that hot!” In their reality, the food isn’t spicy at all. So which one is right? Once again we have come back to our ego painting our perceptions of true reality. It’s those damn adjectives again. And when we look close, we can see that at the root, they are trying to negate our reality and replace it with their own. So what do we do in return? We try to do the same thing. They are wrong, we are right. “It is, in fact, too spicy. Your taste buds are just dead.” Now we are negating their reality.
So I can hear you now. “Lans, you’re kinda making a mountain out of a mole hill here. It’s just different taste, not some philosophical negating of reality junk.” Well, is it? Remember that from our, un-enlightened point of view, our perceptions are what we believe to be true reality. But to our friend Joe, his perceptions are true reality. As long as our perceptions mesh, all is well for both our egos, but when our perceptions differ, egos have to defend themselves. Sometimes it’s not really worth our effort, we just subconsciously tell ourselves that our reality is correct, the other party’s reality is a misperception, and let it drop. But sometimes, our egos step into the cage for the no holds barred slug fest. We can’t let it drop. We must force someone else’s ego to bend to ours. Our perception must be accepted as correct. We have to use every trick in the book to force our opponent concede defeat.
“So what you’re saying is that people disagree? Big news flash there, Buddha Boy. “ Ok…Ok…I may be taking too long getting to the point. But in almost every situation, nobody’s PERCEPTION of reality is TRUE reality. We’ve talked many times on this podcast about what enlightenment is. It’s seeing things as they truly are. Well, since most of us aren’t enlightened, we AREN’T seeing things as they truly are. Looking at the simple food example before, one ego says something is too hot, while another says that it’s not. But the food is the food. It’s not too hot or not hot enough or whatever. It’s just the food. Everything else is ego assigning those perceptions again.
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