I often write, think beautiful thoughts. Stop talking bad about people. Spread love, kindness and light instead. Look for the best in people and the world. Why? Because it will make your own life better the minute you look charitably on the world instead of finding faults. For me, the cut-off point in my interaction with a person is when that person starts spewing poison, talking bad about people behind their backs. I don't want my reality contaminated.
Because reality is based on our PERCEPTION. Here's an article by me to convince you:
The eye is like a megapixel camera, and ancient Greeks thought that a divine light in the eye enables human beings to see. But actually, the magic lies in the billions of neurones and trillions of synapses in the brain, and would you believe it, about one third of the brain cortex is engaged with vision.
Thus, we do not see reality as it is. We reconstruct reality. Most of you are familiar with 3D images created on 2D computer screens or picture books. You could almost imagine the tiger jumping out at you in 3D or feel yourself being sucked into a 3D vortex, though you know the image was created by dots and pixels on a flat screen.
This is a photograph of the Australian jewel beetle (Julodimorpha bakewelli) mating with a beer bottle. This is because the beer bottle appears like shiny brown sheen of the female jewel beetles. So, based just on the visual as it actually appeared, the jewel beetles' numbers were reduced quite significantly because the males were too busy trying to mate with beer bottles. They were consequently killed by the hot desert sun or by foraging ants.
(Photo credit: www.australiangeographic.com.au)
Indeed, neuroscientists have shown that we reconstruct reality for evolutionary purposes, rather than seeing the world accurately as it is. So, the eyes are only the beginning. They connect to the complex brain cortex within, the seat of our consciousness and the determining factor in how we live our lives and experience reality.
From my novel, Catching Infinity, Chapter 2, Nights in Oxford Are Long:
"Then give me what you really believe," PW said, turning his head slightly to look at Alice, smiling down at her from his great height. He has the most beautiful eyes, she thought, far, far better than they appeared in my fantasies. Close up, the browns, greys and mossy greens were flecked with some metallic colour, like refraction of blue stars in the observable universe. Colour is the function of temperature, and at 10,000K, stars burn blue. And those lips, she had kissed them thousands of times in her fantasies, felt them move against hers. In all, she had seen the whole universe static in his eyes.
"We can manipulate the universe," she said. "We can manipulate reality. Look at me and tell me what you see."
"I see you," he replied.
First published in www.catchinginfinity.com