Foundational Pillars of Reality Shifting

In my life I have experienced reality shifting in many ways. Some of those experiences were dramatic and took me into a new future. Others were smaller in scale, with effects that were more localized in time and space. Either way, each experience left me more convinced, first unconsciously and then increasingly consciously, that reality shifting is real and that it is a real part of my life.

In this essay I want to share what I see as the foundational pillars upon which a practice of reality shifting must be based. Before I outline those, there are two particularly dramatic experiences from my own life that I want to share, because they help illustrate these pillars and why they are essential.

The first one happened when I was in sixth grade. I was terribly awkward and shy at that age, and one day I was sitting with other children, feeling completely uncomfortable with myself. It was an awful experience, but it was often my experience.

That night I was watching a silly sitcom on television, and I noticed that one of the characters was funny, gregarious, and loved by everyone. I decided that I was going to be that person. The next day at school I was simply a different person. My only two real friends pulled me into the bathroom between classes and wanted to know what I was doing. I pretended not to know what they were talking about. They told me emphatically to stop, but I didn’t.

It was in eighth grade that the reality shift I had initiated that day was complete. It was an election year, and as part of an assignment I had to give a campaign speech. I was terrified. Just before it was my turn to speak, I decided that I couldn’t do it. Instead, I decided to be someone else. I walked up to the podium as that new person and gave a rousing campaign speech that was so animated that the entire class, including the teacher, was stunned into silence. No one could recognize me. I had become, in reality, the person I had shifted into two years earlier. In many ways I am still that person today.

The second dramatic reality shift that I want to share with you occurred when I was living in a spiritual community. It was during one of our many spiritual intervention meetings, when one group of people would try to “wake up” another group. These meetings were regular occurrences, and we all had different opportunities to be on one side or the other. This time I was one of the unawake trying to wake up.

Somewhere in the middle of a very intense situation, something shifted inside me and I suddenly realized that I was utterly free. I looked around the room and felt as though I was somewhere else. I was at peace. I had felt that before, but this time it was different. This time I knew that I was different.

As time went on, my friends in the community kept pointing out all the ways I was still acting like my old self. They told me that in spite of whatever I had experienced that day, nothing seemed to have changed. I could see that many of my old habitual behaviors were still present, but I still knew that I was different, and I wasn’t going to let anyone talk me out of it.

It took about eight months of living with almost constant feedback to the contrary before the people around me began to see that I had actually changed. Over the next few years, that change became the foundation of a new life. I was a different person, and everyone could see it.

What I want to point out in these two anecdotes is that reality shifts happen instantaneously as soon as we embrace a new reality, but our old habits and the world around us take much longer to catch up. We have to be able to hold fast to the reality shift we have realized long enough to allow our psychology and the circumstances around us to align with it.

The quote by Neville Goddard: “As soon as we succeed in transforming self, our world will dissolve and reshape itself in harmony with that which our change affirms”, helps us remember that we simply have to recognize that the dissolution of the old self and the old world takes time.

I have identified three foundational pillars of reality shifting that must be in place in order for us to be successful with this profound practice, and I want to share those here.

Conviction without Confirmation
We must have the ability to hold steady in our conviction of a new reality without needing confirmation from the world around us.

Belief in Multiple Realities
We must find a way to transcend the traditional view of a single physical universe and authentically open to multiple dimensions of reality.

Vividly Focused Imagination
We must develop the ability to rest in a vividly focused imaginative experience of the reality we have entered before it is materially present to us.