Being Real

Observations

I think I'll focus on the phenomenology of this question, and note its connection with the ideas of presence and embodiment.

The quality of experience varies.  Sometimes objects or situations (an unfinished project, the noise of a neighbor's power tool) seems irritating, chaotic, intrusive.. pr perhaps the object is fatigue or a body state of illness or physical discomfort.  There's a lot of secondary emotional experience attached -- not liking the feeling of the feeling of the situation, etc.  This feels "stuck" in some way:  inflexible consciousness, a state of fixation.   Other times that's missing and I'm relaxed and fluid and the objective situation is the same but I can distinguish the "I" aspects of experience separate from the contents of experience.  This seems "more real" ... but how is that, exactly?  I'm freer, more open and responsive to a wider variety of forms, and qualities, nuances, of awareness in the changing flow of experience.  The field of experience is larger, deeper, more dimensional.  At the same time the "objects" seem freer in some way to reveal a greater variety of what they are "in themselves".  I think of this latter state of experience as "more real".

I'm out walking in nature, noticing the ground, the textures, the movements in response to a slight breeze, the contours of the ground, all in a mixed sensory mode of "synaesthesia" that references subtle body responses and movements as I am in the process of moving through my environment.  I'm feeling very "embodied".  When I compare this to a state of absent, abstract, discursive thinking, I think of it as "more real".

Want to feel "more real"? Try this -- walk around slowly in a natural setting, barefoot, and preferably, naked.  It won't just be the novel, vulnerable, unfamiliar feeling that will lead to a heightened awareness.

Approaching a tree, I have an instantaneous, full-body sense of a possible encounter, including momentum, orientation, trajectory, various body sensations of converging on it in a physical collision, the possible effects on my posture, bones, skin, relationship to the ground, and in sum, my entire body and relevant elements of environment.  It strikes me, the role of imagination as a crucial dimension of presence in the process of perception as an embodied process.  And since this isn't literally happening, it could be considered an act of simulation or imagination embedded within the experience of perception.  Yet I'm not going to label this as an illusion and question its "reality".  On the contrary I'll venture that this participation of imagination-within-perception makes experience "more real".  Imagination is the gateway to reality.

To be embodied -- sounds like a passive condition as our language doesn't provide an active verb -- seems to be to cultivate or build up a whole landscape of anticipatory and participatory sensitivities required to meet and engage with the unique circumstances (including people and other conscious entities) that life presents.  As a quick formulation -- I'm "more real" when in embodied contact, with a participatory interplay ("feedback") from others and circumstances, in a way that is congruent with what I project or anticipate.  In fact, I rely on the presence of others as a "wakeup" influence, if I were to take "being more real" as an intentional practice.

According to this view, life is more "real" when I'm engaging in action, which the whole subject/object/relationship triad -- a sense of myself, of situations or circumstances, and their dynamic relationship.  This state of presence contrasts with the state of being submerged in or identified with the objects of experience.

This sounds dynamic, material, circumstantial.   What about meditation, then?  Closing the eyes, letting attention withdraw from "external" perception and sensations. This sounds different than the experience of embodied, participatory flow I described earlier.  Meditation can however be a very present, embodied experience; the perceptions, sensations, and movements are subtler than in typical outward activity.  I find meditation supportive to, and a component of, the experience of being "more real".  It provides the subject ("I am") pole of the combined (triadic) event of being present.

Being Real "As a Person"

Life is complex and rich.  Let it register fully in awareness.  Participate.  Don't pretend life is as simple as one wishes it to be, or as simple as the concepts by which we try to apprehend it.  Learn to see with, through, and beyond concepts, definitions, interpretations, secondary emotions, ideas and feelings "about" what's happening.

If there were such a state as "enlightenment" (which I neither confirm nor deny!), it could be summed up in the word "responsiveness".