The Nature of Reality
Welcome to the final lesson in the “How Do We Know What’s Real” course. We’ve covered a lot.
Over the past seven lessons, we’ve explored the nature of reality from multiple angles—perception, belief, memory, trauma, story, culture, and awareness. Not in search of a final answer, but in service of a deeper question:
How can we live more clearly, more courageously, and more compassionately in a reality that is always being filtered, constructed, and reinterpreted?
This final lesson is about integration. About taking what we’ve explored and asking: What now? What kind of inner posture allows us to navigate complexity without collapsing into confusion, denial, or rigidity?
We’ll talk about psychological flexibility—not as a technique, but as a way of being. We’ll talk about grounded curiosity—an approach to life that values contact over certainty. And we’ll explore how we might live—not as possessors of truth, but as participants in a reality we’ll never fully grasp, but can keep returning to with awareness and humility.
The Temptation of Certainty
Let’s begin by acknowledging something that most psychological models, spiritual traditions, and philosophical frameworks agree on:
Certainty is seductive.
The mind longs for it. Not because it’s logical—but because it feels safe. Certainty quiets ambiguity. It creates direction, structure, and meaning. It gives us an answer to hold onto when life feels too large, too contradictory, or too painful.
This is why people cling to rigid beliefs—even when those beliefs create suffering. It’s why identity becomes inflexible. Why dogma replaces inquiry. Why entire cultures prefer simplistic narratives over complex truths.
But what certainty offers in stability, it often costs in openness.
Certainty closes the door on other perspectives.
It punishes contradiction.
It resists change—not because change is dangerous, but because it threatens the illusion of control.
And in the absence of certainty, many people swing in the opposite direction—into nihilism. They say nothing is real, nothing matters, everything is relative. But that’s just a different kind of rigidity—certainty about meaninglessness.
So what’s the alternative?
Psychological flexibility—the capacity to live in contact with life as it is, without needing to reduce it to what feels safe.
What Is Psychological Flexibility?
Psychological flexibility is a term often used in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), but the idea stretches beyond any one modality. At its core, it’s the ability to shift, adapt, and stay present with changing experience—internally and externally—without losing contact with what matters most.
It’s made up of several interwoven capacities:
Cognitive defusion – the ability to see your thoughts as thoughts, not truths.
Emotional openness – the willingness to feel discomfort without needing to numb, control, or avoid it.
Self-as-context – the recognition that you are more than any one role, identity, or storyline.
Present-moment awareness – the capacity to stay with what’s here, rather than retreating into narrative or distraction.
Values-based action – the ability to choose behavior based on what matters, not just what feels comfortable.
Taken together, these capacities allow a person to stay grounded, even in uncertainty. To stay open, even in contradiction. To stay kind, even when the mind wants to protect itself by judging or withdrawing.
This is not weakness. It’s a highly resilient form of strength.
And it’s what allows you to live inside the mess of being human—with clarity and integrity.
Why Flexibility Is Essential for Navigating Reality
Reality—as we’ve seen throughout this course—is not static. It’s filtered, framed, fragmented, and constantly changing.
Which means any worldview, identity, or belief system that’s too rigid will eventually become a problem—not because it’s wrong, but because it can’t adapt.
Psychological flexibility is what allows you to say:
“This belief helped me for a long time, but I think I’m outgrowing it.”
“I used to think I understood this issue, but now I see it’s more complicated.”
“I don’t have to know everything in order to move forward.”
“I can be in contact with someone I disagree with without needing to correct or convert them.”
“I can feel fear without building a worldview around it.”
This isn’t relativism. It’s responsibility.
The responsibility of choosing how to relate to what arises—rather than being ruled by the stories the mind is used to telling.
And this flexibility doesn’t make you less real.
It makes you more responsive.
More humane.
More capable of growth, connection, and compassion.
Grounded Curiosity: A Posture of Living
Now let’s introduce a second quality that pairs beautifully with flexibility:
Curiosity.
Not the shallow kind of curiosity that’s just looking for a new answer to grab onto—but grounded curiosity. A sustained openness to reality as it is—without flinching, without fantasizing, without shutting down.
Grounded curiosity asks:
What is this moment, before I label it?
What might I not be seeing yet?
What is this person actually trying to express beneath their defensiveness?
What part of me is afraid of not knowing?
What belief is being challenged right now, and why does that feel threatening?
Curiosity is not passive.
It’s incredibly active.
It requires attention, humility, and a willingness to stay in the tension of not-knowing.
And most importantly, curiosity creates connection.
With yourself.
With others.
With the world as it continues to unfold in ways you can’t predict.
Letting Go of the Hero’s Journey
One of the stories many people unconsciously carry is what psychologists call the hero’s journey—a narrative arc where life is supposed to make sense, resolve neatly, and reward you for your effort.
You go through hardship, you learn the lesson, and then you reach clarity.
You overcome the chaos, and arrive at a stable truth.
But the actual shape of a psychologically honest life is more like this:
Learning, forgetting, and remembering.
Opening, closing, and opening again.
Revising stories you once thought were final.
Discovering that “closure” often means holding space for contradictions.
Reality is not a lesson to be mastered.
It’s a process to be in relationship with.
And living in reality doesn’t mean transcending doubt, grief, confusion, or complexity.
It means learning to stay in contact with those experiences—without needing them to resolve.
From Knowing to Relating
By this point in the course, you might have noticed a shift.
In Lesson 1, we asked: What is reality?
But now, a better question might be:
How do I relate to reality?
Because at some point, it becomes clear that the goal isn’t to solve reality.
It’s to live it.
To meet it.
To respond to it with presence, clarity, and care.
That’s what grounded curiosity makes possible.
You stop trying to figure everything out, and instead you ask:
What’s here?
What’s real enough for me to respond to with integrity?
What’s the next honest step?
This kind of orientation doesn’t give you closure.
It gives you contact.
And contact—with the moment, with others, with your own experience—is where life actually happens.
Reality as Relationship
Let’s end where we began.
Reality is not a fixed object you carry around.
It’s not a universal answer to be uncovered once and for all.
Reality is a relationship.
Between:
Your nervous system and the world.
Your beliefs and your experiences.
Your history and your capacity to stay present.
Your inner life and the people around you.
Your identity and the story that no longer fits.
Your awareness and the constant stream of thoughts that try to define you.
And like any relationship, it can be tended.
It can be respected.
It can be entered into with humility, honesty, and care.
You will never fully know reality.
But you can live in it with presence.
You can respond to it with integrity.
And you can hold space for others who are struggling to do the same.
A Final Word
This course was never meant to give you answers.
It was meant to sharpen your questions.
To remind you that you are not the contents of your mind.
You are not your stories.
You are not your certainty.
You are not your confusion.
You are the one who is aware of all of it.
And in that awareness, something clear and quiet is always available.
Not a doctrine.
Not a system.
But a relationship to life itself.
So I’ll leave you with this:
You don’t have to have it all figured out.
You just have to stay in contact with what’s here.
Reality doesn’t ask for certainty.
It asks for honesty.
And the courage to keep returning.
Thank you for being part of this inquiry.