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I think your awareness shrinks. (And by awareness I mean attention. What you direct when you pay attention. What you concentrate when you concentrate. What gets
by swayvil 2y ago
I think your awareness shrinks. (And by awareness I mean attention. What you direct when you pay attention. What you concentrate when you concentrate. What gets jerked around when you are distracted).
You spend your whole life focusing on the important stuff / ignoring the unimportant stuff.
In this way you slowly whittle your reality down to a nub.
Also, much that was half-visible or vaguely-visible or almost-invisible gets discarded this way. That's a lot of reality.
Also, the "important stuff", in our society, tends to be mental stuff. Important ideas and plans and such. So by the time you're an adult you've discarded pretty much your whole reality except for a little mental videogame that you play until you die.
So it makes sense that an adult might suffer from reality starvation.
- cosmic_cheese 2y agoI agree that this is probably a major contributor. The human mind has only so much mental bandwidth available, and mere existence in modern society demands much of it. Whatever is left over is slowly consumed as responsibilities accumulate. I believe that this loss is somewhat reversible, however. Whenever I take a vacation that serves as a hard break from practically all of my responsibilities, I notice that the color and details of the world begin to trickle back in. If only it were practical to remain in that state for extended periods.
- swayvil 2y agoHmm yes, that's the question. What are methods for reversing the shrinkage? How do you intentionally open your awareness to the invisible reality? I think a loss of control is called for. Ya, travel might do it. Also drugs, meditation...? Or it could even be thrust on you, an accident or disaster. A sudden violent involuntary expansion of awareness.