Recently one of my kids asked me, “What is reality? How do we know what is really true about the universe and the world? Is it possible that I’m dreaming my entire existence?”
This is how I replied.
For all we know life is just one big dream, and your real self is lying in a cosmic bed somewhere dreaming of this life that you are experiencing.
For all we know, we are characters in someone else’s dream. Maybe God (Source) is having a dream and we’re just characters floating around in it. Maybe Source will wake up one day and we’ll poof out of existence.
For all we know, we’re living in a simulation. We’re not atoms, just lines of code in someone’s video game. Maybe reality is just a program someone is running on a cosmic scale.
For all we know, we are souls having a human experience, enjoying physicality for a relatively brief period of time before we return to being just conscious energy.
For all we know, we live once and die and that’s it. Oblivion.
For all we know, we live many times, experiencing many different lives one right after another, or perhaps they are all happening at the same time.
For all we know, you are the only person with a consciousness and everyone else are players in your dream.
For all we know, you are every person on the planet right now, and you experience one consciousness at a time and then get zapped back into someone else’s experience, and repeat that for eons.
For all we know, we are all gods in training, someday meant to run our own universe, and Earth is a school to teach us how to do that.
For all we know, Earth is hell and this is our designated afterlife.
For all we know, we are just actors in a play, with lines to read, and actions to conduct and we have no free will whatsoever.
For all we know, the life you think you are experiencing right now may be just an illusion or a bad acid trip.
My child said, “How do we know which one it is though?”
I replied, “I’ve given that a lot of thought over the years and I have come to the conclusion that it is impossible to ever know the full truth of reality because no matter what you think is real, it could be an illusion. Or you might be programmed to believe in a certain reality when another reality is actually the case.”
Child asked, “How are we supposed to conduct ourselves if we never know the truth?”
I replied, “I’ve given that a lot of thought as well. I’ve decided that no matter what the truth is, my goal in life is to experience as much joy and happiness as possible. Then it doesn’t matter if this is an illusion or not, or if we are dream characters or not, or if life continues on after we die, for I shall have made the most of my experience while I’m in it, whatever the truth of it may turn out to be.”
In the absence of any objective evidence of what life really is, the only choice we have is how we decide to live the experience we are having. Joy and happiness feel a lot better than hopelessness and despair. So I will choose joy, and seek happiness for my entire existence.
What will you choose?
