Delusion and Reality

Reality is this very moment.

There are many people who think they have a challenge with another because "they can't get out of their delusion!" Yet they have this experience because they are constantly asking others to join them in their own delusion.

Few people can resist the actual here and now, when I pleasantly and persistently hang out there and invite them to join me.

For example, they say an opinion about biological gender as though it is a fact, and I stay in reality. My delusion is my own opinions about biology and gender, and it's SO COMPELLING to want them to join me in it, so that they can also have the right opinion, and we can get along. But we are not scientists examining a range of chromosomal anomalies.

In reality, someone is sharing with me an earnest belief they hold. Someone in front of me is speaking with the charge of emotion and passion, they are demonstrating great care! Someone here has a stake in how social order shakes out, someone wants me to agree with them. That person is their own person, and here I am, capable of choosing whether and exactly how *I* show up to the conversation with them. What they believe and want is their very own business, it is not mine to know or shape or evaluate.

When I step into reality, I see EVERYTHING available to me here. My delusion insists there is one VERY IMPORTANT point to make. My body's reaction to their emotional intensity and our diversity of opinion may have my mind insist it is a THREAT that this person is missing what they're missing.

When I drop back in reality, I am overwhelmed instead with opportunity, doors I might walk through to have a connecting conversation.

Shall I ask about their passion? Where it's coming from? Shall I ask about the stake they have in this matter, how it's impacting them personally?

Shall I ask about their belief? How they learned it, who they care about and how they weigh the opinions of those in their sphere? What it would mean if everyone agreed with them? How do they live it in the world themselves?

Shall I ask about their understanding of social order and what makes a human life good and meaningful?

Shall I ask about the reward they would receive if I were to agree with them?

All this optionality is available to me right here, any now. It is waiting for me beyond my own delusion-field, beyond my emotional reactivity to what arises in my delusion-field and in the emotional intensity another might offer.

It is NO JOKE to claim my reactivity, but it is my definition of adulthood. Adults are responsive and claim their reactivity—when an adult behaves reactively, they take responsibility and make amends and learn from how it goes.

Most everyone does some ruminating. I installed a process in my own mind that harnessed my rumination practice and now runs a refinement program. Where many people have the "why did I do that? how did I fuck this up?" loop running, my program has specific steps to take me beyond these questions to show me what it looks like to be who I want to be in the world.

I always arrive at a positive target, something manageable and achievable that I can do. This is what it means for my delusion to have utility.

This is available to everyone, and there are certain common beliefs that can corrupt the process, especially ideals.

My relationship to the ideal is a relationship to a delusion, and I use it like one. This is not a dismissal of ideals or any other form of delusion or abstraction, it's a right-placement and sound investment in the utilities and the limits of ideals.