The Nature of Reality
Welcome back. Let’s pause and take a step back.
Before we can explore how perception, belief, trauma, and awareness shape reality, we need to get clear—at least provisionally—on what we mean by reality in the first place.
It’s a word that gets thrown around like everyone agrees on what it means.
But under the surface, it holds layers. Competing definitions. Tensions between science, philosophy, experience, and culture. We say things like “face reality,” “accept reality,” or “live in the real world”—as if that were a single, stable, shared thing. But is it?
That’s the heart of this lesson.
We’re going to explore what reality actually refers to. We’ll unpack the difference between objective reality and subjective experience. We’ll look at how language, cognition, and belief systems shape the way we relate to reality. And we’ll challenge the assumption that there’s one neat answer to this question.
Because in truth, reality is layered. It exists at the level of physics, yes—but also at the level of psychology, culture, story, and awareness. And each of those levels has something real to say.
The Traditional View: Objective Reality
Let’s start with the classic definition—the one many of us were taught in school, either directly or by implication.
Reality, in this view, is what exists independently of your perception of it. It’s the physical world. The measurable world. The stuff that’s “out there” whether you believe in it or not. Whether you notice it or not. Whether you feel like it’s real or not.
This is often called objective reality. And in scientific circles, it’s foundational.
There are atoms, laws of motion, gravitational forces, electrical currents, neurons, and biochemical reactions. These processes don’t depend on your mood, your memories, or your belief system. If you step in front of a moving car, the laws of physics don’t pause to check your worldview.
From this perspective, reality is stable, testable, and discoverable through observation, measurement, and replication. And let’s be clear: this view has immense value. It’s how we’ve built medicine, technology, space travel, climate science. It gives us a framework for navigating the physical world with precision.
But here’s the rub: you and I don’t experience that reality directly.
We experience it through our minds.
Which brings us to the next layer.
Subjective Reality: The World as You Experience It
Subjective reality is your internal world of perception. It’s the reality filtered through your body, mind, memory, emotions, history, language, and expectations.
Think about it this way:
Two people can walk through the exact same city block. One feels alive, energized, and inspired by the diversity and movement. The other feels overwhelmed, anxious, and threatened. The external environment hasn’t changed. But the internal experience—the reality for each person—is completely different.
That difference isn’t trivial. It’s foundational.
You’re not walking through the world collecting objective data.
You’re walking through the world with a nervous system that’s filtering, highlighting, ignoring, and interpreting everything it encounters—automatically.
So subjective reality isn’t about whether you believe in unicorns or conspiracy theories. It’s about the fact that everything you experience is mediated through your own perceptual lens.
And that lens isn’t neutral.
It’s shaped by:
Your early attachments
Your cultural context
Your cognitive patterns
Your emotional needs
Your trauma history
Your neurobiology
So while the world may be “out there,” your reality is always, in some way, constructed in here.
But Wait—Doesn’t That Make Reality Meaningless?
This is where people sometimes get anxious. If everyone experiences their own reality, does that mean we can’t trust anything? That there’s no such thing as truth? That we’re all just making it up as we go?
Not at all.
What this means is that reality is multi-layered. There’s a material world. There’s a perceptual world. And there’s a symbolic world—what we call meaning.
And each of those worlds is real in a different way.
If someone loses a loved one, the emotional reality of grief is just as real as the biological fact of death. If someone is raised in a high-control religious environment, the psychological reality of shame may shape their identity for decades—even if they’ve long since left that community.
And if someone sees a snake where there’s actually a stick, the physical object may be neutral—but their heart rate, fear response, and decision to run are real and consequential.
So subjective reality isn’t fake.
It’s just psychologically organized rather than empirically measured.
And that matters. A lot.
Consensus Reality: The Reality We Agree To Share
There’s another layer of reality that sits in between the objective and the subjective.
It’s what we might call consensus reality—the version of the world we agree to operate within together.
This includes:
Cultural norms
Social rules
Shared language
Legal systems
Scientific consensus
Collective memories
Consensus reality doesn’t always reflect objective fact. But it reflects a shared agreement that allows us to function as a society.
For example, money is only valuable because we all agree it is. Laws only work if we all roughly accept them. Holidays, time zones, national borders—these are not physical realities, but they have very real consequences in how we live and relate.
Now, here’s where it gets interesting: consensus reality can shift. Sometimes dramatically.
What was considered “natural” or “true” 100 years ago may now be seen as oppressive or absurd. Think about gender roles, racial hierarchies, mental health diagnoses. These were shaped not just by science but by culture. And as culture evolves, so does consensus.
This is why psychological maturity includes the capacity to question consensus reality without rejecting all of reality. It’s not about becoming a contrarian. It’s about recognizing that some of what we call “truth” is really agreement. And that agreement can be reexamined.
Language and Reality
Let’s talk about language for a moment—because it plays a hidden but powerful role in how we construct reality.
The words we use don’t just describe the world.
They organize it.
If your language has ten words for snow, you’re more attuned to the differences between snow types. If your language doesn’t distinguish between guilt and shame, you may experience them as the same internal state—even though psychologically, they function very differently.
Language acts as a kind of map. But as the saying goes, the map is not the territory.
And yet most of us live inside our maps without realizing it. We confuse our labels with the thing itself. We say, “He’s a narcissist” instead of “He behaves in ways that are emotionally manipulative and self-focused.” We say, “That’s just how the world is,” when what we really mean is “That’s how I’ve been taught to see it.”
So part of deepening our inquiry into reality is learning to hold language lightly.
To use it as a tool—not a prison.
Philosophical Detour: Kant and the Limits of Knowing
Now let’s take a brief philosophical detour—because this problem isn’t new.
Back in the 18th century, philosopher Immanuel Kant posed a challenge that remains unresolved to this day. He distinguished between two kinds of reality:
Noumenon – the thing-in-itself, which exists independently of perception
Phenomenon – the thing as it appears to us, shaped by our sensory and cognitive apparatus
Kant argued that we can never directly know the noumenal world. We only know what our minds are able to perceive—what we experience through categories like time, space, cause, and effect.
In modern terms: our brains come pre-loaded with software that interprets raw data in specific ways. So we’re always seeing a version of reality—never the full thing.
Now, you don’t have to become a Kantian to appreciate this insight. It simply reminds us:
There are limits to what we can know.
And humility in the face of those limits is not weakness. It’s wisdom.
So What Do We Mean by Reality?
At this point, you might be thinking: Okay, so what’s the answer? What is reality?
Here’s the answer I’d offer—not as a final truth, but as a psychologically grounded working definition:
Reality is layered. It includes the physical world, our perception of it, the meanings we assign, and the agreements we make with others. Each of these layers is real in a different way—and none of them tells the whole story on its own.
Reality is the ground we walk on.
It’s also the filter through which we perceive it.
It’s the story we tell about it.
And it’s the way that story is reinforced—or challenged—by others.
To live well in that complexity requires something more than certainty.
It requires flexibility. Awareness. And the courage to stay curious.
Why This Matters for the Rest of the Course
Why spend an entire lesson defining a word?
Because if we don’t clarify what we mean by reality, we end up talking past each other.
We get trapped in surface arguments—about facts, ideologies, or beliefs—without realizing that we’re actually living inside different frameworks entirely.
When someone says, “That’s not real,” what they often mean is: “That doesn’t match my experience of reality.”
When someone insists, “You have to face reality,” what they often mean is: “You need to adopt my interpretation of what’s happening.”
Recognizing this doesn’t mean giving up on truth.
It means approaching reality as a layered process, not a static object.
It means taking responsibility for how we construct it—and how we relate to others doing the same.
In the coming lessons, we’ll explore how those constructions happen:
How perception is filtered and biased
How identity is shaped through narrative
How trauma disrupts our sense of coherence
How culture fragments or reinforces our beliefs
And how awareness gives us another way to relate to all of it
But all of that begins here—with the recognition that reality is not a single thing to be uncovered, but a complex interplay of perception, meaning, and agreement.
And that, in itself, is worth sitting with.