The Emotional Distortion of Reality

How do you view the today’s political landscape?

Well, if you are a Democrat your view is very bleak, very dark. 

You feel like the biblical end of the world has arrived, and the Antichrist is taking over.

You feel like the hope has died and a great sense of despair is covering the nation.

You feel like inevitably a great disaster is about to happen.

On the other hand, if you are a Republican, things are looking pretty rosy.

Finally, it looks like we are coming out of the darkness and the long promised changes are here.

Hope is on the rise and finally, commonsense and order is coming back to the nation.

You feel like inevitably great things are about to happen.

I may not be 100% percent in my perception but no matter how you phrase it one thing is for sure.

At this moment there is a great divide splitting the nation into two opposite fractions.

One question probably has popped in your head. I know it did to me.

How come these two different, antagonistic views of the political landscape can coexist?

The answer is very simple. The other guys have lost their minds.

People have lost their common sense, their moral compass and are acting like a herd of lemurs heading for the precipice under the spell of a corrupt political system and a corrupt media.

They are just a bunch of lunatics, ignorant mental retards that have completely lost touch with reality and are about to have a rude awakening.

Right?

Maybe not. The irony is just too thick.

Maybe we should stop and ask again, this time very impartial, objective without any bias.

How can two people look at the same picture and see two different things?

Here is one explanation: They are wearing colored glasses.  That’s right.

If you are wearing dark, smoky colored glasses, everything you look at will be dark and gloomy.

If you are wearing pink colored glasses, everything will look pink and perky.

Emotions are colored glasses for our brains.

Whatever we look at is colored by what we feel at the moment.

Have you ever been in love?

When you are in love you can wake up in a rain storm, have a flat tire on your way to work, be late and have your boss yell at you and when your love calls you feel like you had the best day of your life.

Take the same scenario and run it without the feeling of love. Not as rosy anymore, right?

Now take that a notch down. Play that scenario when you are depressed.

Feeling like committing suicide at the end of the day, right?

That is the power our emotions have on how we see our reality.

Reality is the only truth and in order to see the truth, we have to remove our emotional colored glasses.

Yes, it is easier said than done, but not impossible.

It all starts with being aware of our emotions at the time we are trying to define the reality of an actual state or event.

Are you emotionally charged? Then your reasoning and your conclusion are distorted.

If your charge is positive you are seeing the reality better than it actually is.

If your emotions are negative, you are seeing the reality worse than it is.

The only way to know what the reality is to look at the world non-judgmentally, to look at the world without emotions.

Steady practice of meditation and mindfulness is the only way to see the truth.

Liberated from the prison of reason we can witness reality as it unfolds.

When we drop off our Ego we can start realizing the truth.

What the world needs is not a better political system or better technology or more money.

What the world needs is better people and we can start by becoming better ourselves.