Spirituality: Co-Creating Reality
Spirituality is one’s belief system or mental construction of reality.
The human brain organizes information drawn from internal and external stimuli into a neural network of understandings. Associations are made between sensory signals that construct the way in which we subsequently interpret and respond to those signals when they are re-introduced to us. This is seen as consciousness in many organisms, they learn about their environment and adapt to it, in the short term by responding effectively to stimuli, and in the long term mutating evolutionarily to be better equipped as a species to handle certain stimuli.
While some animals can create auditory signals to communicate with one another, they don’t have complex language systems that allow for advanced innovation and collaboration as humans do. Human language allows us to attribute meanings to the universe around us, so we can more easily explore concepts from hypothetical/theoretical, imaginary, and transcendental perspectives in science/mathematics, art, and storytelling. Not only can we think about concepts like trees and gravity in great detail, but we can communicate them in many ways to others, as long as both the communicator and recipient have at least one language in common. Thus, language has allowed consciousness to reach a level of complexity unrivaled, as far as we know, on Earth.
How we use language determines which meanings we associate with certain stimuli as well as in what way we interpret and respond to such stimuli. Language has a direct connection with our perceptions of reality and the lenses through which we see the world. Language impacts our neural pathways in the form of associating stimuli with ideas, meanings, and inductions/deductions based on our understandings and past observations of that particular stimuli.
For example, to someone who knows the English language, the word “apple” will spark a plethora of associations to the various ways in which the concept, image, or real three-dimensional object has crossed paths with the individual. They would have specific ways in which they expect an apple to look like and behave if tossed or cut or bitten. If they had pleasant experiences of apples or was taught that apples are delicious and nutritious, they would be more inclined to eat one than someone who had had a bad apple or was taught apples were disgusting or poisonous.
As “apple” is a concept and a made-up string of symbols and sounds, the unique mental construction of “apple” in each English speaker’s mind would have no real impact on the nature of any particular real apple, but it would greatly impact their behavior and experience when exposed to either the concept or the real thing as they go about their lives.
Apples aren’t something we typically think about, however. What we are preoccupied with more regularly is a direct result of the greater neural structure we have subconsciously built over our lifetimes based on our unique experiences and the meanings they were attributed, either by ourselves or by others. In other words, the language we have attributed to stimuli has determined what stimuli we do and do not typically pay attention to as well as how we interpret and respond to those different stimuli.
According to psychologist and hypnotherapist Melissa Tiers, memories, for example, are malleable. They change every time they are recalled. In a process of memory reconsolidation, Tiers takes her clients through connecting positive emotional states to difficult memories, neutralizing the emotional experience attributed to those memories. This gives the patient the space to be able to relate to the experience in a more empowering way and have the space to attribute more beneficial meaning to the memory. As the neural pathways shift during this exercise, the patient often sees lasting results not only in just that memory but also with how they anticipate or experience similar circumstances in the future or present, respectively. There are many ways in addition to Tiers’ method to begin becoming aware of and shifting neural constructs to co-create one’s lived experience.
In neurologist Viktor Emil Frankl’s book, Man’s Search For Meaning, Frankl observed that fellow survivors of the holocaust were only able to survive and thrive during and after the harrowing events by creating empowering meaning for themselves surrounding those events. When we look at highly spiritual people, we see higher levels of health and overall well-being, whether they are using religion, spiritual practices, or positive psychology to do so. In each method, empowering belief systems are utilized to bring about healthier coping mechanisms and greater general satisfaction, success, connection, and purpose in life, just to name a few benefits.
Disempowering belief systems, regardless of origin, have detrimental effects on the individual, group, community, or culture in possession of them. Whether a belief or belief system was learned from experience or adopted secondhand from others, they can be shifted through many spiritual methods such as therapy, journaling, meditation, breath-work, conscious movement, hypnosis, psychedelic plant medicine, and learning new perspectives from religions, science, art, spirituality, and psychology.
By consciously and intentionally shifting our mental constructions of reality through spiritual practices, we become powerful co-creators of the way in which we see, experience, and respond to reality. Spirituality is the key to freedom and well-being especially when the circumstances are difficult. Spiritual practices are a pathway to awareness, clarity, peace, and so much more.
Your imagination is the limit of your experience.
