The fine line between delusion and your creating your reality?

[inavalan]

I just read a paper analyzing data of a survey on people who experienced some kind of persistent forms of nondual awareness, enlightenment, mystical experience, and so forth (Persistent Non-Symbolic Experience).

The paper is overall informative, but the attached quote made me wonder about delusion vs. creating one's reality.

The author mentions here, and elsewhere in his article, significant discrepancies between some subjects' self-assessments vs. the way they were perceived by the author and his colleagues.

Are these discrepant self-assessments delusional? If what the subject perceives to be is different from others' perceptions, is that a delusion or a valid alternate reality.

Are such situations desirable or acceptable, or they signal psychological problems?

Basically, where do you draw the line when one's strong beliefs (truths, as they are unconscious beliefs) become delusions and are detrimental?

At this time, I don't have an answer.
 
 

Stress and PNSE  (persistent non-symbolic experiences)

As mentioned, some individuals reported that stressful life events caused them to lose their PNSE. The first hint of this was a woman who stated she lost her PNSE of 5 years at a time when her father had just died, her son was ill and unlikely to survive, and her husband of many years had left her. When asked about her internal state during this period, she stated that it was her usual equanimity until she lost the experience of PNSE. After several more of these types of reports the project began asking about life circumstances participants were kept in touch with, in part to look for stressful situations.

There were three times when it seemed like a participant's stress level might have been high enough to warrant a follow-up visit. The project's very first participant was one of these individuals. I had known this participant for over 20 years, since long before his transition to PNSE. He was a healthy, retired medical doctor in his 60's who was in Location 2.

Over the course of a week, his father died followed very rapidly by his sister. He was also going through a significant issue with one of his children. Over dinner I asked him about his internal state, which he reported as deeply peaceful and positive despite everything that was happening. Having known that the participant was bringing his longtime girlfriend, I had taken an associate researcher with me to the meeting to independently collect her observations. My fellow researcher isolated the participant's girlfriend at the bar and interviewed her about any signs of stress that the participant might be exhibiting. I casually asked the same questions to the participant as we continued our dinner conversation. Their answers could not have been more different. While the participant reported no stress, his partner had been observing many telltale signs: he was not sleeping well, his appetite was off, his mood was noticeably different, his muscles were much tenser than normal, his sex drive was reduced, his health was suffering, and so forth. None of these were being noted by the participant, even though he was professionally trained to identify them. The same was observed in the other two participants.


From: "Clusters of Individuals Experiences form a Continuum of Persistent Non-Symbolic Experiences in Adults"

by Jeffery A. Martin, Center for the Study of Non-Symbolic Consciousness

https://digitalcommons.ciis.edu/conscjournal/vol8/iss8/1/

[inavalan]

Anyway, be worried if you are sure you know the truth! In any domain, not only the "spiritual".

[Deb]

Delusion vs creating your reality comes up often in Seth forums. Such as this one.

So yes, claiming that you know "the one" truth from either a physical reality or Sethian perspective is suspect. Being a Seth reader, I now ask myself "whose truth?" It comes down to the old three (?) different wine glasses or coffee tables argument if you're a Seth reader, or being delusional if invested in the OLC. F2 vs F1.

I can say that having read enough of the Seth materials, I no longer write off claims by people describing things that I used to instantly dismiss as psychotic or delusional. Now I just tell myself that they are making that reality for themselves, and I wonder why they choose to do that. Jane/Seth definitely opened my mind.