Reality and the Virtual Landscape

I'm, not much of a computer game player, but I do remember getting caught up in Myst when it first came along. (I should actually play it again, as my new computer is much faster and has a 19" monitor, but I digress.) Virtual reality, far beyond "simple" game playing, is the ultimate in gaming experience. You strap on a headset and earphones, ramp up the computer, and step into another world.

Now, we want to add here that virtual reality is just that -- virtual. It may have the look and feel of a real world, and as you interact with it you are having real feelings, but the feelings are being triggered as you interact with the imaginary. The experience feels real because the sub-conscious mind cannot tell a dream, a day dream, a trance or virtual reality from reality. The thing about virtual reality is that you consciously enter it – you know you’ve chosen to spend some time in unreal reality-ville.

Most people find that they readily adapt to virtual reality. Which really isn't so odd. It's what most people do all the time, living up there in their imaginations. Which is OK, as long as we know we’re there. And a powerful imagination is a necessary tool to find another way of being.

Where all of this becomes non-helpful is when we refuse to see that what we imagine is not real. Here's a fresh example. I met for the first time with a mom and dad and their almost 17 year old daughter. I add here that the mom is a social worker, and am interested as to whether a study has ever been done on the inanities perpetrated by social workers or therapists on their own kids. Anyway, the daughter, they tell me, is angry and rebellious. And sure enough, when she opens her mouth, out pops invective regarding her imprisonment.

In a nutshell, she's not allowed out on week nights, without specific permission, which is seldom granted. She's not allowed to go a lot of places she would choose to go, were she allowed out, which she's not, although theoretically she is. She also is not allowed to have friends in on weeknights, same rules, without permission, but the list of unacceptable people is long. I naively, and with great trepidation, fearing the worst, asked what she'd done to deserve such draconian measures. Mom replied, "Nothing, yet. We afraid she will, though. We don't like her friends, her boyfriend, and we're worried she'll get into trouble." Turns out they've never met the boyfriend, but have "heard stories."

The parents are living in virtual reality, writing the scenarios, describing to each other the scenes, scaring each other. The real kid is just a normal, pissed off teen, who is locked up in the tower of her parents' minds. They think that locking her away will somehow provide her with the skills necessary to be independent when she goes to university in a year or so. Exactly how this will work they cannot say. They tell me they are doing this for her own good.

Now, I understand their wish to protect her and keep her safe, but really, tell me where and if that is possible for any of us. Safety is another illusion we come up with, as in "Our streets were much safer back in the good old days." Right. 

The frustration and fear the parents are feeling has a name. The discomfort comes from cognitive dissonance - that is, the tension that results as we register the difference between our fantasy and reality. The parents believe that their imagined scenario is "more true" than the reality of their daughter's actual behaviour. She asks, between invectives, why they believe their fantasy and disregard her mostly responsible behaviour. Needless to say, they are speaking two different languages entirely.

A cousin to this, and the idea for the rest of the article, is the creative versus the destructive use of our imagination -- using virtual reality as an adjunct and proving ground for how we are living our life, as opposed to dreaming up doom and gloom scenarios.

These two aspects of the internal theatre can be described this way:

1) There's the "I am imagining that my life sucks, woe is me" version, and

2) the "I am imagining the life I am creating for myself" version.

I suspect all of us have a default position (the attitude we most readily adopt) and also that we all do both of these virtual realities at various times.

My judgment would be that the negative one, the endless listing of what's wrong, is not of much help. I used the term "awfulizing" in one of my booklets -- it's the practice of scaring ourselves by dreaming up all the bad things that could happen, and then imagining that they will happen. Like the parents in the above scenario, but directed at one's self.

A client will come in and begin to talk about what's wrong with their life. When I ask them what they do want, they say, "Well, I don't want more of the same." Their imagination is, obviously, reviewing what they don't want, in glowing detail, then saying, "Let's not have more of what I've just obsessed about." As if this will automatically get them something better.

I suggest to them that they may have spent their life pursuing what they don't want, then not wanting what they got, which was different, but still what they don't want.

A far better use of virtual reality is this: I want to imagine, clearly, what I do want. I want to test the fit, the look, the feel of my dreams, my desires, my goals, my directions, the people I choose to bring into my life. I choose to engage in a "walk through" in my interior space, testing, observing, making notes. Discarding what doesn't work, amplifying what does.

Often, when something shifts in someone's life, and a positive experience happens, I will hear "I never imagined that would happen." Isn't it amazing how true those words are.

Interestingly, resistance to using imagination as a creative force usually arises as a way to keep you from sticking your neck out. One of my clients calls this "the fear of success." If I imagine my life being full and rich, I might actually have to take responsibility for living such a life. Much easier to simply scare myself.

The tactics of this resistance are many: You can play the "I don't know what I want" game, (insert a whiny voice for this one,) or the "Nothing I want ever happens anyway" game (petulant voice and a stomp of the foot) or the "If I risk that, I'll be hurt" game (voice of fear here.), among others. There's safety in the familiar. Just not much life.

I suggest just the opposite tack. Determine, right now, that from now on you are going to explore who you are and what your skill set is. Agree to re-create your life in virtual reality. Use all of your skills to examine your project, your life, eliminating what doesn't seem to work, strengthening what does. THEN, and this is essential, look at what you have created and ask yourself, "What is my first step? My second? My tenth?" And then, begin. And the virtual will evolve into the real. Which is the only true test, and the only place we really live.

What's your dream? How are you making it happen?