What people say
I can honestly say that, for the first time in 50 years, I’m learning how to just be. How to relish the present moment, which, magically and mysteriously, unlocks the door to the treasure house that is the rest of my life.
- Jennifer Green, Salem, Oregon
From the moment Jon and I connected, I had this deep experience of loving presence and complete trust. Something bypassed my mind and my ability to figure things out, and communicated directly to my heart and soul that I was safe and in the right place. There was a creation of power in our relationship that he honored and witnessed as being mine. It was my power. I had the experience of being wonderfully, beautifully powerful, in the most loving, energized way.
- Laura Lind-Blum, The Idea Midwife, Waterbury Center, Vermont
Jon can help you recognize where you are, and become more clear. My work with him has not been about plotting out my future, it has been about helping me come into deeper relationship with myself so that next steps unfold easily and effortlessly.
He creates a safe, spacious container for you to go as deep or wide or high as you’re capable of in any given moment. It’s a matter of him being able to see the facets and help me make them real in me.
- Sandra Leader, Carmel, CA
My feelings changed from, “Quick, fix me, I can’t stand how I feel, make it better, hurry,” to, it’s not about hurry, and it’s not about fixing, it’s about staying where you are and getting more and more and deeper and deeper sensations that this is okay. You’re fine, this is okay.
It helps me reframe experience. I don’t see anything that’s happening quite the same as I’ve ever seen it before, because my viewpoint has been enlarged. There’s more, there’s peace, there’s joy, there’s love, there’s health, there’s everything.
- Layne Young, artist, Salem, Oregon
The Reality Gap
August 10 2010
There’s a gap between how you experience your world — and how the world actually is.
That gap may be large or small. It usually varies from one moment to the next and from one situation to another. And whether you notice it or not, it’s often present.
What you believe you want and how you think things should be are on one side of the gap. What actually is resides on the other side.
The wider the gap, the more struggle and suffering you experience.
The narrower the gap, the more you’re in the natural flow of life.
Being in the flow of life means being free to experience and respond directly to what’s truly happening, instead of to your mind’s interpretation of events. Of course that doesn’t mean everything magically goes as planned, or even as you thought you wanted. But — as one client commented — it’s like the difference between trying to thread a needle wearing gardening gloves, and threading it with bare hands.
Here are some ways to become aware of where the reality gap is most present for you.
Start by noticing
Another term for reality gap is denial — and it can range from something relatively minor, on up to the very serious. Everyone’s heard stories of people refusing to acknowledge symptoms of illness until it was too late to take effective action.
Of course, that’s a very extreme example. And it’s the day-to-day instances that create most people’s feelings of endless struggle.
A feeling of tension in your body, a sense of emotional discomfort, and especially outright emotional numbness, are your clues that something’s out of alignment for you — that you may be avoiding looking at something.
These uncomfortable, unsettling feelings can be very subtle. One of the key aspects of a reality gap is that you don’t want to notice how wide the gap is growing. And your attention tends to skitter away from what your mind doesn’t want to see.
Notice what you’re turning away from — and see what happens when you turn back and take a closer look.
What’ the cost?
Every reality gap has a cost.
When you avoid what’s asking for attention, you’ll pay a price in the end.
One client looks back at a series of relationships in which she knew she was giving more than she was receiving. The pain of resentment, the loneliness and hurt of betrayal, her feelings of being unappreciated and taken advantage of, and even the financial costs involved in divorce — those are, as she sees now, all part of the price she paid for not paying attention to the reality gap she was experiencing.
Looking at situations in your life, what’s the cost you’ve paid?
Allow compassion
The root of a reality gap is usually some sort of fear. Fear of being wrong, fear of rejection, fear of not knowing what’s ahead — it’s fear that distorts your perception of what’s happening.
Whether you notice a reality gap in your life as it develops or see it in hindsight, don’t judge yourself. Notice how you’re feeling as well as what’s happening, and give yourself some care and compassion.
Acknowledging the feelings of anxiety, discomfort, and fear helps you close the gap and allows responsive action to arise.
And allow courage
It’s ultimately far easier to be with what truly is, instead of allowing a reality gap to develop.
But if you’re like most people, you’ve spent a lifetime struggling to change things to be what you think they should be instead of letting them be what they actually are.
Allow yourself to respond with courage to what you’re facing, even as you acknowledge the anxiety that may also be arising.
As one client told me, “I feel more solid — it’s a feeling of strength and natural power. Yeah, it takes some attention, and it takes looking at what I’m afraid of. But it’s so much easier to be with what is instead of struggling to manipulate it into something it can’t ever be!”
“How hard it is, sometimes, to trust the evidence of one’s senses! How reluctantly the mind consents to reality.” George Norman Douglas, 1868-1952, British writer
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