Create Your Own Reality? How Does That Work? (or Not)
People say, ‘”You create your own reality,” but what does that mean? According to one source it means
“You create your reality by your thoughts”- “You create your experiences … and become conscious creators”
- “Every situation you experience … is by your own design”
- “If you think something, it is.”
- “Understand that you create your reality and that every other person creates their reality.”
- “Begin to look at the events of your life and how you create them. Understand that you always create them to serve you.”
- “Begin to say to yourself, ‘I will accept responsibility for all that I am involved in. I will accept responsibility for everything that happens to me. If I don’t like what is happening to me, I will begin to ask myself why I create things that I don’t like. Maybe it’s to get my attention about something so that I can change what is really not working for me that I cannot see.'”
Ah! Now we are getting somewhere. This teaching that “you create your own reality” is, at best, an attempt to alert people to take responsibility for the content of their minds and the trajectory of their lives. Yet at its worst, it is a seduction, an invitation to absolute selfishness if not solipsism.
One problem with this idea that you create your own reality
That same source addresses one problem that comes to mind, the immense suffering in the world generated by forces greater than individual devastation, humiliation and depravity:
Some of you believe that you create your own reality but that others do not create theirs-especially little babies who have all kinds of things happen to them or children who are abused. It is a difficult concept for many of you to grasp that seemingly helpless children or starving people also create their own reality. Whenever you buy into the victim mentality, you send people the idea that they are powerless and you make that probability one for yourselves. You must learn to honor other people’s dramas and lessons…. You must understand that others must go through the realms of density to bring them to light. Sometimes the greatest enlightenment lies in the greatest catastrophes and the greatest difficulties.
What is the purpose of a life dragged under the wheels of catastrophe or submerged under Great Waves of change, we ask, when hearing of tragic loss (if we aren’t too jaded).
The answer, according to those who believe that we create our own experiences, goes deeper than a simple matter of perception to a different understanding of life purpose, a completely different orientation to existence than what is commonly understood.
An understanding of how karma works might be helpful here, if only we did understand. The idea you create your own reality is not really tenable without resort to influences from beyond this one world and one life. 
Another problem with this idea that you create your own reality
“It does not take into account the fact that the mental environment is completely dominating for most people, to the point where very few people even have original thoughts. They are simply recycling all the influence that they are absorbing and have been absorbing since the day they were born. And because human beings are essentially social creatures, they will always tend to associate with whatever group they identify with, whatever group they think is giving them promise, purpose, meaning and security.” The Gift (March 31, 2007) by Marshall Vian Summers
So the problem is the very attitude that this idea is trying to correct: our passivity towards life, our lack of self-determination and strategic focus on higher purpose, our carelessness about whom we associate with, our tendency to blame God or the world for what befalls us. The answer, however, is not to live in a world of our own creation.
The answer is to understand not only are there forces greater than the individual but also the power of the individual and the responsibility of the individual to find their own life purpose and those other individuals who together will have the force of creative agents shaping the reality we all collectively share.
Further discussion on taking responsibility for co-creating reality
- “Create your own reality” on the New Message wiki
Really compelling connections that punch holes all over the “We create our own reality’ theory. I love the ‘lock step automaton’ image and the quote pointing to how unlikely it is to have a unique thought in this M.E.–let alone create my own reality. Thank you for this powerful analysis. However, I remember the advent of this thought some 20 years or so ago. It was such an empowerment for the individual who had been locked in victim-hood–which is where many of us lived back then. I think it was pointing toward taking responsibility and moving in a positive direction. Then I remember it being married with the idea of ‘abundance for all’ if you just worked on creating your own reality. There was a warping and skewing after that but I do think it had some merit early on. Many good ideas have been warped and skewed to fit the greedy over time.
When we cared years on end 24-7 for our girl Kelly who was totally incapacitated permanently from a traumatic head injury following being hit by a car, a man of no wisdom said that “it was a soul choice”. We almost had to hold back her mom to keep her from knocking his head off. The only choices involved, the only reality that we chose and created was the incomprehensible care giving that she needed. It was work from 6 in the morning till midnight with Kelly screaming the whole time, bed messes all day and bite by bite feeding.
There is no “Secret”. There is service. There is work. The workers are the saviors. The visualizers are useless bodies and in some societies would have been considered a waste of good meat.
[…] of confidence in the righteousness and freedom of any human mind apart from its culture and […]
[…] We are sentimental and superstitious–we really have no idea how foolish our hope that all will be well if we only have faith. We do not detect the subtle distortion that discredits real issues when we wish to believe we can create our own reality. […]