Hacking Reality: Subjective Objectivity

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As my 30-day subjective reality experiment concluded last month, I shifted to a different mode of living. I finally got used to seeing the world through a dream lens. It was seriously challenging to hold that perspective at first, but after a few weeks, my subconscious took over, and I no longer had to consciously remind myself that this is a dream. Eventually the dream perspective became my default way of thinking.
Freeing Mental RAM
Up until that point, holding that perspective was a major cognitive burden. My mind often felt fried at the end of the day. The experiment required a serious conscious effort, a lot of dedication, and perhaps a twist of fanaticism.
Holding the subjective perspective required a significant amount of mental RAM. Multiple times per hour, I had to keep refreshing that perspective. Otherwise I’d fall back into an objective mindset by default.
This was difficult to be sure. I don’t think I could have succeeded in making this shift if I hadn’t dedicated myself to 30 days of total immersion.
While it can be a fun experience to try holding this perspective for an hour or perhaps an afternoon, doing it as continuously as possible for a whole month is a whole different animal. It’s like the difference between having an idea for a new business and actually starting one. The first is easy and fun; the second can be fun too, but it requires a lot more work. One is dabbling; the other is doing. Most of the gains are only accessible on the doing side; dabbling only gives you a glimpse that something cool is there.
After the point of subconscious integration, everything became easier. Conscious effort was no longer required.
In a way this has been an eerie transition. It almost feels like I’ve shifted dimensions. It’s one thing to condition a new belief about financial abundance or eating healthier, but changing my beliefs about the very nature of reality has really turned my life inside out. This was not an easy transition.
In this article I want to document some of the ongoing effects of this experiment, now that I believe I have a clearer understanding of where this is leading long-term.
Beliefs Are Buried
First, this experiment really drove home how easy it is to take beliefs for granted and not even be aware of how they filter our experiences. Because I made such a big shift in my beliefs in a few weeks’ time, I was able to see the marked contrast between the old beliefs and the new ones. It felt like I went through a major reprogramming of my subconscious.
Most beliefs are subconscious. They run on autopilot. We don’t even notice them.
Installing a new belief is like putting on a Band Aid. At first you can’t help but notice that you have some foreign object sticking to your skin. But after a while, the sensory input patterns stop making impressions upon your conscious mind. You stop noticing the Band Aid. Essentially it becomes a part of you. Then later you see it again, or maybe someone else notices it, and you say to yourself, “Oh yeah… I’m wearing a Band Aid.”
The subconscious mind is very pliable and programmable. That makes it very powerful. But it has a downside as well. Once some programming is installed, it takes more effort to uninstall and reprogram it. A half-assed effort won’t get you very far; you’ll just solidify the old programming by piling more code on top of it.
One of the best ways to change your beliefs is through a process of immersion, which is what I used for making this shift. I consciously set the old beliefs aside and pushed myself to adopt the new beliefs 24/7. And I did it publicly, so other people would hold me accountable and help to push me. It isn’t easy but it works.
Hacking the Mind
As a result of this experiment, my mind seems to be running a different operating system. Instead of running an objective operating system, it’s now running a subjective one.
As with any good operating system, it takes some getting used to, but after a while your comfort level increases, and you don’t notice it so much. You run programs on top of it, but you take the underlying OS for granted much of the time. However, the OS is always running, and it dictates which programs you can and can’t run. You may not notice it, but it’s still doing a lot of work in the background.
What I didn’t realize before this experiment was that a mental OS has constraints that are similar to a computer’s OS.
Every OS has its strengths and weaknesses depending on its architecture. Even if the underlying hardware is the same, switching to a different OS can unlock new capabilities. Some things may be easier with a new OS, if only because you can gain access to new high-level software that’s written for that OS.
On my Macbook Pro, I’m running Mac OS X, but I also have Windows 7 installed. There’s some Windows software I really like, such as The Journal, that isn’t available for Mac OS. So I run Windows programs on my Mac using Parallels, which creates a virtual Windows machine that runs along with OS X.
Objective Subjectivity
When my mind was previously running an objective operating system, it’s strength was running programs that were built upon that architecture. But it wasn’t as good at running subjective programs.
In order to run subjective programs on my objective OS, I first had to run a subjective virtual machine. That allowed me to see reality through a subjective lens. Then I could run subjective programs on top of that.
This was very mentally burdensome though. It took a lot of mental RAM to load a subjective virtual machine into my conscious mind. And that didn’t leave much room for running subjective programs.
For example, suppose I want to try having a conversation with someone as if they’re a dream character, but my underlying subconscious belief is that reality is objective in nature. How can I make this interaction happen?
First, I have to load up my subjective virtual machine. In other words, I have to imagine that reality is a dream while suspending my belief that reality is objective. It takes some conscious mental effort to do that.
Then I have to imagine that other people are dream characters, and I have to retain that perspective while conversing with them. And finally, I have to pay attention to what I’m experiencing.
That’s a lot of mental work! It’s no wonder my brain felt fried at the end of the day.
Moreover, with an objective OS and a subjective virtual machine running on top of it, there wasn’t as much mental RAM available for subjective programs and their data. This turned out to be a serious limitation that prevented me from having the fullest experience of subjective reality. Ultimately it required too much mental effort. I needed to get the subjective OS running natively instead of as a virtual machine on top of an objective OS.
Installing a Subjective OS
My subjective reality experiment was basically a process of installing a subjective OS to replace my objective one. At first I had to run it as a virtual machine. But eventually I was able to get it running natively (i.e. subconsciously).
After this point the cognitive burden was greatly diminished. More mental RAM was freed up, as well as more CPU cycles. This meant that I could run more complex subjective programs. In practical terms, I could do more than have subjective conversations with friends or write subjective articles. Now I could see how to run my whole business subjectively and make plans for the long term, based on reality being a persistent yet flexible dream.
I had to rewrite a lot of code to add useful software to my subjective OS. I had to figure out how to eat, how to exercise, how to have relationships, and so on. I had good programs for these functions on my objective OS, but they couldn’t work the same way on the subjective side. The porting process required a lot of thought.
I’m still going through this process now, but at least I have the basics figured out. I’m able to function just fine, but so much has changed that I’m not living the same way I did before this experiment. It was very much like switching to a new OS on my computer and having to learn all different software. At first, productivity drops because so much is unfamiliar. Now I’m at the point where I have some good basic programs, and I’m able to be moderately productive again. This past week has been very productive for me.
I like the OS analogy since it helps me understand and explain what’s happening, but let’s not overplay it and get into dual booting and such. Dual booting may be a nice option for a computer, but I don’t yet see an equivalently easy way to do that with my brain. Then again, maybe that’s what happens when we go to sleep and have a dream.