When my mind is addicted to the experiences or imaginations of others, whether it be thru the TV, computer, phone, newspaper or radio, I live a Second-Hand Reality. I’m in the backseat of life always living someone else’s journey because it creates an addictive dream-like state on a regular basis.
Also, when I’m not piggybacking on their past or the products of their imagination, I’m stuck on my own past or imagination. I’m repeatedly drawing on desirable sensations on the one end of the spectrum, then having to pause and pay for it on the other end when reality has its way with me with undesirable sensations, also known as my blowback.
Therefore, the truth is I am spending my life living in either a foreign or older reality, and not in the present or active reality which would best help my life right now. I’m attached to escaping my first-hand direct reality because unreality, or indirect reality, is where dreams come theoretically true. In fact, it is the only place they come true.
By obsessively striving to achieve the ideals projected by others, or constantly reconstructing the events or imaginations of my own mind, I live second-hand while my first-hand experience grinds to a halt.
Earlier in my life, my attention was fixated everywhere except on the ground under my own feet. Several stories and narratives derived from a number of sources, people both dead and alive, provided a safe haven for me, a home to always return to and find comfort in. And being the homely person I am, I ended up living there full time, even though it was all many miles away from my reality.
They say, “Home is where the heart is”, and while this may seem like a good thing, it isn’t when your home is in second-hand reality. The stories I picked up as a young lad grew into something much larger down the track, and a more powerful narrative overrode my reality setting altogether, giving me a false sense of what was actually in front of me as a young adult. Eventually, this split between perceived reality and actual reality caused my life to come to a screeching halt. Only when my heart and mind returned to the real world in 2015 was I able to get my life moving again.
We all need outside influences and many rich stories to build ourselves up in life. Also, for simple means of entertainment and to escape life every now and then. But there comes a point when too much influence or the wrong type of influence will hurt, as I should know since I ended up living across and tripping over multiple realities, and thereby hurting the active-reality or my first-hand reality which is the basis of my existence.
What was really in front of me was a definite mismatch from what was on my screen upstairs due to the buildup of grime on my mind’s filter, if that makes sense.
Therefore, a lifestyle of bad decisions, ignorance, and arrogance resulted in a reality barely held together. I wanted to get my act together in life, but I kept feeding on the powerful commentary coming from the many hypnotic signals flying about in my vicinity; i.e., from TV, Internet, Phone, along with a number of people I shouldn’t have kept close by. I wanted to blend or duplicate these greater realities or dreams into the front seat of my life and take charge, but I couldn’t make it happen. Instead, I went completely off-track while thinking that I was getting closer to my success.
On that account, these influences, including the lack of good influences, that built up my intense Second-Hand Reality meant that my Active-Reality suffered, and I lost my power to achieve anything worthwhile.
First-Hand Reality / Direct Experiencing:
- I’m engaged in the real world without too much background or filters of the past ravaging my attention. In turn, I get a clear intake of information about what is happening right now.
Second-Hand Reality / Indirect Experiencing:
- I am experiencing the real world passively. My attention is consumed by mental imagery from the following three channels which provide a captivating dream-like state:
- I am experiencing a series of records from my previous experience.
- I am experiencing my imagination, which is a refinement of my past records, thereby holding no basis in the real world.
- I am experiencing the product of someone else’s imagination or recreation of their past records by constantly comparing them to objects in my database.
In an acute case, my real-world experiencing slips into the background of my attention far too often, which affects the basis of my existence. This causes Second-Hand Reality to be a dominating factor in my life.