Spiritual and personal growth practitioners often speak of Reality and Illusion.  These can be challenging concepts.  Reality with a big “R” is indescribable, but called by many names.  It is like a fluid, all-encompassing, and malleable energy.  We get a glimpse of this Presence during meditation, in the overwhelming love that we feel for our child, and in the unspeakable and exuberant joy that we sometimes experience.

Reality with a big “R” is Creation.  It is Creative.  It spontaneously creates and actively gives form to thoughts.  Reality is Infinite Possibility.  What we are right now is an Illusion because it does not accurately reflect what we will be and what we can be.

Think of what you currently see, feel, hear, and experience as reality with a little “r.” Little “r” realities can be deemed illusory because they are transient and susceptible to a myriad of perceptions.  For example, in the wonderful book Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, a little boy thought something was wrong with an orange that had seeds.  He had never seen or eaten oranges with seeds.  Seedless oranges were part of his reality.

I read an article about toilets becoming commonplace in Zambia, where people usually defecate openly or in the bush.  Based upon my reality, I envisioned American-style porcelain toilets with seats and lids.  In the Zambian reality, toilets were outhouses with mud brick walls and straw roofs, within which were pit latrines, holes dug in the ground with wooden planks over them.  Empty bottles and jugs were filled with water to make handwashing stations.  This reality that I couldn’t envision was a celebrated accomplishment in Zambia – a step up the sanitation ladder.

Everyone has varying “realities” that others may not be able to imagine or comprehend.  Some of us live with tremendous wealth taken for granted, while others accept as normal daily war and strife.  Change would be impossible for any of these illusory scenarios if there was not an overriding Reality in which all things are possible.  This Reality is responsive to our imagination, dreams, focus, determination, will and action.

People once thought the world was flat and that only birds could fly.  Men and women longed to explore the deep seas and outer space, to understand the human body and cure diseases.  Today, such accomplishments are common.  What was only imagined hundreds of years ago now exists.  Our ancestors dreamed of the lives that we live today.

War, peace, wealth, poverty, health, food, life, death, love, hate, and so much more are concepts that were and are currently being thought and acted into being.  Something or someone determined to be more, to do more, to have more, and the consequences of those thoughts and actions became form.

Judgment occurs when my little “r” reality doesn’t match your reality.  I create sometimes hurtful perceptions about how you look, speak, behave, and otherwise live your life.  Wars are created because those with power want others to live according to the visions of their personal realities.  For better or worse, big “R” Reality conforms to these visions.  Reality itself does not change its Nature.  It accommodates and adapts to our Illusions, like water or air that is fresh and flows, creates flowers and food, becomes sweet, blocked, or polluted depending upon the environment or circumstance.

We as sentient beings have immense power, but we are unaware.  The Bible in Psalm 82:6 states: “Ye are gods, children of the Most High,” but we walk the earth in darkness, creating with “neither knowledge nor understanding.”  As we become aware of the transformative Reality in which we exist, we can consciously create the lives that we want.  We can dream into existence worlds of peace, love, and abundance.  We are proof. We are the effects of causes created in the past.

We are the continuum.  We are the children of those who used Reality to create our today.  What kind of tomorrow are you creating?