....We all have one fundamental choice to make; believe our senses--based on the evidence--and act accordingly, or don't. For those that choose not to, they are forever lost imo. They can't ever do anything but sit in a corner rocking back and forth, basically.
In post #20 I described how there was a time when I was believing that there is another side to reality. I hypnotised myself and was catatonic some of the time. I lost some memories. People would often act as if their senses are useful eventually and so begin to do things. Also medication can help (like in the case of the "Awakenings" movie involving catatonic patients)
BTW since about the year 2000 (when I read old Ken Keyes books about we being a "perfect observer" and playing a role) I would ocassionally get the feeling that I'm in a dream. His books stopped me from having spoken thoughts as much as possible. When I feel like I'm in a dream my senses feel numb and I can lose a sense of hunger/fullness during a meal. And when I talk I kind of feel an echo between hearing it and sensing what I'm saying.
From what you’ve written, it would appear as if you are dealing with a brain that is not functioning within optimal operating parameters. I’m wording that delicately because I don’t mean to insult; it’s just (evidently) the conditions you’re dealing with.
But, of course, since they are your experiences, you don’t know any different, other than in comparison to what others tell you about their own experiences. And perhaps during certain periods, you have moments where you sense that something is off, shall we say? We see this in many different aspects of brain function (or “mal” function as the case may be), such as schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s, brain damage from trauma or birth, etc. Which certainly argues that there is a baseline optimal functioning state and degrees away from it.
But who is to say that your experiences are any more or less legitimate than any others? Every experience any self has is constructed by the brain. They are always after any fact, never concurrent. It may be nano-seconds after, but there is a latency between something that the body directly experiences and what the brain processes and imbues to the analogue “self”—which has become the primary identity of the body, regardless of the fact that it’s a secondary construction.
We simply act as if it is all instantaneous and continuous because that serves the best function. But interrupt that function (through various means as mentioned previously, but also through such things as sleep, drugs, alcohol, oxygen depletion, etc) and the effect on the constructed self is readily apparent. Indeed, sleep is an excellent example of what I’m getting at, because there is a whole process that goes on, where the body/brain prepares for the “self’s” experience in the dream state by releasing drugs that paralyse the muscles (so we don’t harm ourselves as a result of the self reacting to anything in the dream state).
The point of all of this is to say that, evidently the body/brain is in constant real time
direct interraction with an “external” objective reality—and maintains that connection to the best of its ability and under certain physical constraints—even if the part of the brain (whatever it may be) that maintains the animated, constructed self is malfunctioning.
Iow, we—the “self”—may not be able to trust what we are experiencing, but we can always trust that our bodies know what it is experiencing. That’s what it’s important to be in “tune” with one’s body and why excerize is important and meditation is important, etc.
