What reality do you live in?

I’m not an active poster on Facebook, but I still go on about once a day to see what is going on. 

What I’ve observed over the past few years is the “split” of my online friends into distinct dimensions of perception. Meaning that the way people perceive the reality around them is so vastly different that it feels like they live in an alternative reality to my own.

I trust that most of my online friends (who truthfully knows all of their Facebook friends?) are like me (and you). 

The majority of us have the same loving, compassionate hearts. We love and want to be loved in return. We want good health and happiness for ourselves and our families. We want to live a happy life and want the same for others. There are some outliers, but we are mostly the same.

Yet...that is not what we see. 

When we go online, we are not seeing the truth of our fellow humans; we see their egos. We are seeing the output of the input. What is the input?  Our families, our friends, and the people we surround ourselves with, as well as the media we consume.

What is output for the world is a synthesis of what we take into our consciousness. It becomes our narrative. It becomes what we believe about the world; our beliefs become our experiences.  

Thus, all the different realities we each experience. These realities become our narratives. And they divide us. 

We all have our narrative. I’m not lecturing, telling you how you should be because you practice yoga. I have my narrative and you have yours. It’s part of being human. 

But when I’m communicating on social media, there is this belief within me that I should be uplifting or happy or even, (God help me) inspirational. Yet my personal experience is that of changing hormones levels, fatigue, three kids with three different schedules, a busy business, a partner who works two hours away...and did I mention I’m tired? How do I share that on Instagram? 

When I’m deeply tapped into these narratives, I feel more alone. But my heart knows I’m not alone. Although at times it feels that way, I know it’s not my reality.  

Why?  Because yoga teaches us that there is one reality. This reality threads through all of us and plugs into our hearts. You can call it God, the Universe, Prana, Chi, Higher Self, Life. It doesn’t matter. This reality is Truth and it connects us all no matter what our beliefs are.

There is no story or narrative in this reality. There is only love. (I might get cheesy.)  

We can access this reality through stillness, through silence. By observing the inner narrative and not believing it, however convincing it may be.

This is work. Often called “the work” because it takes attention and time and perseverance to dissolve outer and inner narratives to connect with our truth, which is we are all one. We are all waves in the same ocean. Rays of light from the same sun.

I’m still a little cheesy, but I am speaking my truth to you.

I think we all know that on some level, but to FEEL it is another experience entirely.

You know that feeling of connectedness when you are in yoga class with other people breathing together?  The feeling of oneness that can happen when a group of people create sound together? 

That. 

We are tapping into the oneness then. We tap into it all the time, and then we unplug from it to tap into the narrative. 

The reality that I want to live in is the reality where we are all connected. 

Where we share our truths with each other. 

Where we can be vulnerable and authentic and talk about the ups and the downs of our lives. 

Where we hold space for each other in acceptance as we dig deep and excavate these layers of narrative that have been piled upon us all of our lives.

Where we feel joy and sadness together and know that always this too shall pass.