WHAT'S REAL AND HOW WOULD YOU KNOW?

What is "real" and how would you know?

Is something real if it has weight? Mass? What about an experience…Is that real? What makes experience real? Is the memory of the experience "real"?

Is any movement you make real? With your body? thoughts? Movement of the heart?

Feelings? Are they real? Is anything that is fleeting real? What about motion itself? Or Stillness?

Is pain real? Pleasure?

Is reality a Who? A what? A why?

All of the above?

None of the above?

What of any passing experience is real?

Understandably, there is so much to occupy us just to maintain, perpetuate and gratify ourselves, that these questions go mostly un-asked…and if they are asked, will they lead to answers? (My roommate in college assured me that there is no answer. Was he right?) Are any "answers that rise from the depth of being" real as it relates to the problems of living? The demands of life?

If you follow this line of questioning far enough it leaves you off at...

"Huh?"

So what informs me of what is real? I like to think that somehow "real" is related to eternity…that for something to be real, it has to persist in some kind of recognizable consistent unity throughout "Always"

And, while we're at it, the "real" must persist through ubiquity…anywhere I step into time and space and beyond…will reality be there to greet me?

In other words, if something is real… by this definition, it must be enduring.… So, if something isn't enduring, can it be real? What is it then that endures? What enables something to endure? What is enduring reality actually made of? Can we make it up? Are we made of it?

Or…

If "enduring" is a fundamental characteristic of "reality, what about "endearing"? Is endearing also as indigenous to reality as enduring?

Do they go hand and hand waltzing throug... Ubiquity?

Or is reality what most of us think is the only real "reality? "If it makes money, it's real?" "If it don't make money, it ain't real!"

So there's this profound dichotomy: According to a very prominent socially shared belief, if not conviction…"only that which makes money is real." How does that belief relate to the thought that is what is real is eternal and ubiquitous and may not cost any-thing and still be real?

How to reconcile this is apparent dichotomy. What's a mother to do?

This is where I think that the point of view that only that which makes money is real and the prospect of eternal existence stuff being real is crucial to reconcile. Because... we can be assured that we will continue to have to wrestle with everything that gives money its significance...but in spite of that we will still have to confront the ultimate, "huh?" ....eternity stretched out before us dressed as an unending question mark with no apparent job prospects?

Now, if we focus upon what these two perspectives have in common, I believe we can find our way to a more successful way of being in the world, with each other, and with reality.

So the admonition to "get real" starts to take on some...well...reality.

This is how we get there:

What I think they both have in common, what is real for both perspectives, the reality they share is that they're both about making an exchange.

I believe exchanging is the universal constant. Everything is constantly exchanging with everything else. In its best use, money facilitates the exchange in the world of time and space...products, services, and information. Indeed, all that's going on IS the exchange.

Premise: To get be real and to have a successful economy, we need to exchange more and more effectively at every level that exchange is possible.

When we come to appreciate that it's the exchange itself that generates resource, life, energy, then we can withdraw our addiction to the metaphor, money, and refocus ourselves upon that which is eternal and ever reliable, which is "the ongoing exchange." Specifically, for our purposes, we'll start with the Human Stock Exchange and the dynamics of exchange...how to maximize your use of it.

Next blog: The "Human Stock Exchange" and how it works!