What is your reality?

Last month there was the viral sensation of 'What Colour Is The Dress?' and it got me thinking, can we really trust what we see with our eyes as our true reality?

A colleague showed me the image on my return from my recent trip to India. He told me adamantly that he saw black and blue while the dress was clearly white and gold to me. Instantly, I started to doubt my reality. When he looks out the window, does he see what I see? When he looks at me, does he see the face I see when I look in the mirror?

After a beautiful yoga-filled week in India, my mind was absorbed in the philosophy of yoga including that of the idea of 'Maya'. Maya translates as illusion. It's the idea that this world we live in is an illusion. Of course, you can taste food, see with your eyes, feel with your hands making those things real in terms of the manifest world but in terms of a spiritual, transcendental world, this world is seen as ever-changing and spiritually unreal.

The Divine is within us and all around us yet we are blinded by veils known as Upadhis. These veils obscure the truth; they obscure the truth that you are part of Divinity which is your birth right, as Swami Sivananda says. Practising yoga helps us to realise this, to connect to this truth which is our true nature. Our true nature is not Maya. Maya is the world you are living in now. Our true nature is in Samadhi - the ultimate blissful state.

So with the idea of Maya viewing this world as unreal, is it so far fetched to question what your reality really is? Is it so strange to question the way you see the world compared to the way others may see the world?

Taking this idea, if we see this world we live in as being unreal does that mean the things we feel, see, taste are not real at all? The emotions you feel are not real, the food you taste is not real, the sights you gasp at are not real. Perhaps this is true. Perhaps we are living in a matrix where our mind projects images into what we call reality and this shapes the way we see the world.

So going back to the colour of the dress, it could be argued that this is proof of that. This is proof that our mind is in control and has powers beyond our recognition. My mind and your mind projected different colours on to that dress. The receptors in your eyes translated a certain signal and message to the brain which told it what colours to recognise. How about if the mind does that for everything else we experience? How can you really be sure people see what you see, feel what you feel, taste how you taste?

It also brings up the idea that if you can control the mind, you can control your reality. This also relates to the effect of positive thinking. If you decide to feel a certain way, this shapes how you view the world. If you set your mind to think positively, everything else around you seems positive - you draw that energy into your life. If you think negatively, it's usually a downward spiral, right? One thing goes wrong, your mind clings to the negativity of that experience and then more things go wrong...As Paramhansa Yogananda said: "If you want to be sad, no one in the world can make you happy. But if you make up your mind to be happy, no one and nothing on earth can take that happiness from you."

Knowing that you are living in Maya, in illusion, and knowing that your true nature is in Samadhi, unchanging bliss, you can start to see how the mind works and learn to control it. So next time you find yourself down in the dumps, pick yourself up, thnk positively, change your mindset and change your reality. It's not far fetched to do this. Anything is possible and it starts with controlling the mind. Namaste.

#PositiveThinking #Yogaphilosophy