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What is your Reality? What is your Truth?

Perception, what is perception? (Asks the audience) If anyone could give me

the simplest word for perception I will give them a hundred. (Note to have play money,
if a person answered give him the play money, wait until he is able to realize you have
given him the wrong one). What is the problem? Let the class see what kind of money
you are holding.

You see everyone, perception is the ability to see, hear, or become aware of
something through the senses. In simpler terms, the ability to realize, recognize and
discern. Perception is discernment for me, the ability to judge. I have been given the
right to speak and think at my own when I become unsure of something. Doubt comes
in when we begin to realize that the standards given to us by the society are not me.
Now let’s use those three words that I have given, realize, recognize and discern, Our
fellow classmate here, realized that I have tricked him when he recognized that the
money was a bit shorter, has unfamiliar writings. He discerned the money he was
holding fake because he knows what the real one looks like. He was able to determine
a real one and a fake one due to experiences and time. We are able to learn the truth
or true reality because of experiences that had made our senses aware. With time we
grow in knowledge, correct? There are truths that can be known in their immediacy but
the test of truth in terms of the good life can only be attained with the passage of time.
This is why Plato argues that time is the ultimate test of truth.

Plato believed that true reality is not found through the senses. Phenomenon is
that perception of an object which we recognize through our senses. Plato believed
that phenomena are fragile and weak forms of reality. They do not represent an
object’s true essence. The senses are not trustworthy. Plato believed that there was a
higher realm of existence accessible only through using your intellect to go beyond
your senses. If I told you my own reality, will that be yours too? Possibly a yes or no, but
when we are in a situation where I have said my reality based on my own senses and
not yours would you likely to believe me or believe your senses? This illusion, in which we
are all immersed, is also the source of all our knowledge. For example, we may think
that something is round, that another thing is square, that this thing is long, and that
thing is short—but this so-called knowledge is short-sighted. It is not the truth, it is only a
reflection of what is real.

In summary, the nature of reality is all about the “being” of a thing. The what
makes an apple an apple. Is it really an apple or it just looks like an apple? The real is
the genuine, the reliable, what I can safely lean on. It is akin to truthful, valuable, and
even delightful. Its opposite is not illusion, but the fake, the counterfeit, that which can’t
be trusted, has no cash value. Reality is a person’s mental perception whereas real is
what we want to think it is. Truth however is absolute, reality is cognitive. Even the
famous, Albert Einstein said, “Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one”. So
what does a person who has the only power to control his own perception? Trust
nothing and question everything—begin with all of your beliefs. See them for the
shadows of perception that they are.