Making the leap to Subjective Reality

[Jason McIsaac]

When I was about 10 years old, I experienced pockets of solipsism, sort of a non-empowering form of subjective reality
(my take on Solipsism is this: you're the only person in the world, but you're just passively watching it, not creating it.)
I've been trying to get myself to make the leap to subjective reality for the past couple of months, but without success. I've listened to
Steve's podcast on 'the true nature of reality' several times, it's outstanding. I believe I understand what Steve's saying but I still can't make that 'leap of faith' after so many years of hardened belief in objective reality. BTW, I find Steve's podcast on eliminating fear has many of the same ideas and is easier to grasp.
There are two ways that I've been trying to eliminate my objective beliefs: 1- Follow Steve's path: shaking up the objective beliefs with multiple,
profound I-M experiences and then realizing that I-M can't really work in an objective reality because you'd get too many conflicting intentions.
OR 2- Follow my own path by trying to put myself in my own 10 year-old shoes: Get myself to adopt Solipsism, then make the short leap to subjective reality.
I tried to remember what caused me to believe that I was the only person in the world. And I recall thinking this: The belief that my mind was complex and powerful thing. I was amazed at the power of my own mind. I believed my mind was so complex and amazing that I could not grasp how there could be billions of others like it.
(Now that I think of it, it seems that belief in the power of your own mind has to be a prerequisite to subjective reality. How could you create
an entire universe with a clouded, inconsistent mind?)
It was easier to believe that I was watching a play presented for my benefit than to believe in billions of other conciousnesses. I don't really recall thinking about who was in control of this 'play', perhaps I believed it was me creating it, but I never believed I was 'controlling' it.

So I've been trying to get to subjective reality through both of these paths but I still can't shake objective reality.
Maybe Steve can help!? Steve, (or anyone else who's followed the path) can you give us some more detail on your journey to subjective reality.
1- How long did it take you to adopt subjective reality after making the realization about the problem of 'conflicting intentions'?
2- Was there an 'aha' moment?
3- Was there a particularly profound I-M experience that made you take notice in the first place?
I would never have tried this but for Steve's genuineness, consistency, intelligence and believability. Steve, thanks for doing what you do.
Jason

[Triprong]

I stumbled into I-M through HunaTrainer.com - Rediscover Ancient Wisdom. At the time, I was interested in the idea of reality creation and stumbled onto the hunatrainer podcasts. In the first podcast there was an exercise to "create" a blue feather. I thought "what the hell?" and gave it a try. I found a blue feather about 5 seconds later.

The blue feather I found was actually in a painting on my wall with a blue bird I had never consciously noticed before. Could I accept this as a "creation"? I decided I would, but I still wanted to get an actual real blue feather.

The next day, I was walking on a path I walk almost every day and in the middle of the path was a blue feather. It was quite a jolting "aha" moment. In the span of a few months I went on to find a whole box full (I kept each feather I found) from every place I went - at the time I was travelling a lot. I even found one in Brooklyn, NY of all places.

After finding so many in such a short time, I began to wonder if I had just been oblivious to all of the blue feathers I used to pass. So I decided to "create" a real red feather, because I had never in my life seen a red feather and that should prove something. Within a few days I found 4 of the most brilliant and striking red feathers while walking around doing my normal routine.

Since then I have been successfully using this in my life.

Who knows if this is real or not. In my experience it is a highly effective and mentally sound framework for living.

[Jason McIsaac]

I've had I-M and even some borderline 'psychic' experiences. I'm sold on I-M, but I still look at it through my objective lens.

I really like Steve's "experiential" method of trying things out. It doesn't seem fair to judge a thing from the outside. When you immerse yourself in something, you really do get a whole new perspective.

But I'm having trouble immersing myself in subjective reality. It's just such a very different viewpoint from everything most of us have believed most of our lives.

From Steve's 'The True Nature of Reality' podcast, he says he got to subjective reality like this: [oversimplified]

1- Had many I-M experiences. So there is something strange with the universe. I-M is real, but how does it fit in to objective reality??

2- Insight that person A and person B can have contradictory intentions. So whose intention wins in an objective universe?

3- Subjective reality solves the problem.

To paraphrase my first post: how can Steve 'download' the software for somthing like subjective reality and just give it a try? How can you just set aside your objective beliefs? I can do it for simpler things, but to set aside a world view, it's hard. The 'contradictory intention' argument just isn't enough for me, as much as I want it to be.

Jason

[Level1]

Jason,

I too am having the same problem with subjective reality, however coming from a different place. I finally have arrived at the conclusion that my major problem is my use of skepticisim and doubt to control my perception of reality. I had first thought my problem was "self doubt", but now that seems to be rooted in my overly critical way of thinking about everything.

I searched Steve's blog archives and found two that hit the nail on the head. "Skepticism May Be Harmful or Fatal if Swallowed" http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/200...-if-swallowed/ and "The Death of Skepticism" http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/200...of-skepticism/ .

In these blogs he posits that skepticism "means to use doubt and disbelief as tools for understanding reality" and when you then use these "tools" upon yourself, you create self doubt.

Now heres my problem. I have used this analytical/critical/scientific/objective way of viewing reality and the universe for my entire life and it is very difficult for me to change my way of thinking towards the subjective. I am now wondering how to begin, but at least I feel as though I have identified the key issue that has been holding me back.

Steve does talk about a skeptics need to "test" reality and states that he himself "was a hardened skeptic" a "math and science guy". But I think when talks about "testing for subjectivity", an oxymoron in his words, he really gets to the heart of the matter.

In subjective reality you don't "test" anything. You experience it. And the very act of "testing for subjectivity" requires you to suspend all of your doubts and limiting beliefs in order to truly experience subjectivity. I may be butchering this concept but you can read for yourself what he's going for.

I'm still trying like you to work this out in my head and trying to find a method for suspending disbelief. The posts did give me my new mantra though,

"EXPERIENCE THE UNFOLDING MANIFESTATION"

Good luck on your quest

[Andrew Brunelle]

I think Steve said he used some sort of NLP method to immerse his beliefs in, as he says in many of his articles regarding belief systems.

[Jason McIsaac]

Some good ideas guys, thanks. I guess I was trying to eat the elephant all at once. NLP-ing each individual skeptical barrier-belief should do the trick. I should have thought of that myself; I know Steve talks about something similar in his 'beliefs' podcast.

Level1, I'll share any future insights I may have if I actually succeed in this project.
Wish me luck! Jason

[thawk1]

See From Form to Formlessness at From Form to Formlessness and scroll down to the experiments dialogs. Play with it. They are increadably similar to what Steve talks of related to Subjective Reality, especially the dialogs towards the end on consiousness. Joel uses the words FORM and FORMLESS but you will see the similarity, i.e. Form = Objective Reality. You can actually follow along in your own mind or use something in your immediate environment as you read through and do the experiments yourself.

It would be neat if Steve could/would do something similar but over the web.