028. The Filter Running Your Reality

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Hey, hey, welcome to the podcast.

I had so much fun talking about the mind in the last episode that I thought would continue

with the mind and talk about something that's running in the background of your life.

It's quiet, it's extremely efficient and it doesn't really make itself known to you,

but it is shaping what you see, what you notice, what feels significant, what feels threatening,

what feels validating, and most of the time you don't even realize it's happening.

That's called the reticular activating system or the RAS or the RAS.

So the RAS is one of the reasons two people can live in the same world and experience completely

different realities.

So the RAS sits in your brainstem and its job is simply but extremely extraordinary.

Every second, your nervous system is receiving millions of pieces of sentry input.

It's just coming at you, just so much of it, light variations, tone shifts, subtle facial

movements, temperature changes, background noises, micro expressions, there is so much going

on and it's coming at us, just millions of pieces of information per second.

And so if you consciously process all of it, you would shut down.

You'd go into overwhelm, like overdrive and basically shut down, a little bit like what

my last laptop was doing every time I gave it something new to do.

So the RAS filters, it decides what gets prioritized in your awareness.

Now this is fairly important.

It filters according to what it already believes is important, not what is objectively true.

It filters what is familiar.

It aligns with existing beliefs, what could be a threat.

This is survival intelligence.

It is so super intelligent, this is not sabotage.

This is a really complex, in-depth survival intelligent.

So here's an example that most people will instantly recognise.

You decide you want a new car.

So you choose the model and you pick a colour.

Let's say it's yellow.

A colour you've not really particularly noticed before.

And then suddenly, what do you see?

Yellow cars are everywhere.

They weren't just to live it overnight.

All of a sudden they didn't produce more yellow cars.

They were always there, but you're filtered changed.

And so the moment your brain tagged yellow car as important, your RAS began highlighting

them.

Same roads, same traffic, just different awareness.

And to take that out of cars and into identity, if somewhere in your internal condition you

carry the belief of, I'm not enough, your RAS will highlight moments that confirm in

adequacy.

It will amplify subtle criticism.

It will replay neutral feedback as negative.

It will skip over evidence of competence.

And it's not doing this maliciously, it's doing it mechanically.

And if we think of the law of mentalism, this becomes very practical, because experience

begins in the mind.

You are not interacting with raw reality.

You are interacting with your nervous system rendering of it, like I mentioned in the

previous episode.

The law of correspondence, as within, so without.

Your internal patterns shape what you notice externally.

Your filter highlights that matching evidence.

And so life appears to validate your conditioning.

And it's not because the universe is punching you, but because your system is so goddamn

efficient.

So let's go a little bit deeper.

You will always have thoughts.

You will always have fear.

And your RAS is particularly sensitive to fear.

So why is this?

It's because uncertainty equals unfamiliar.

And unfamiliar equals potential threat.

And threat equals prioritise.

So when you grow, and I mean when you evolve, when you stretch beyond what is known,

your system activates.

And this is where many people misinterpret the experience.

They think fear means wrong.

They think activation means stop.

They think anxiety means I'm not ready.

But what's actually happening is the law of polarity.

Expansion and contraction are inseparable.

You cannot expand without feeling contraction.

Fear is contraction.

Growth is expansion.

They upholds of the same movement.

So when you step towards something new, like starting a business or ending the relationship

or raising your visibility, increasing your income, your RAS scans for evidence of

risk.

It highlights what could go wrong.

It accelerates your thoughts.

And this is not failure.

This is rhythm.

And the law of rhythm tells us everything swings like a pendulum.

Confident swings into doubt.

Clarity swings into uncertainty.

Momentum swings into pause.

And so when fear shows up at your next level, it doesn't mean you've regressed.

It just simply means that you've moved into new territory.

The fear doesn't disappear.

It evolves.

And the fear of starting becomes a fear of being seen.

And the fear of being seen becomes a fear of sustaining success.

And then the fear of sustaining success becomes a fear of losing it like it continues to

evolve as you do.

It's the same mechanism.

It's just a new altitude that you're looking from.

And so this is where the law of cause and effect becomes so personal, like I mentioned

the last episode, every time fear arises, you make a choice.

And this is often unconsciously.

If fear arises and you shrink, delay, overthink, retreat, that becomes the cause.

The effect is reinforcing that conditioning.

Orass strengthens the belief that this territory is unsafe.

And so you're filtered titans.

Think of it like looking through a straw.

Your perspective is very narrow, and it narrows more under this environment.

Or another example.

It's a horsey example, like the blinkers that they have around the horse's eyes, think

in the US they call them blinders, but us Aussies call them blinkers.

And these are used so the horse is focused, and it's not distracted by its peripheral

vision.

It only sees what it can see right in front of it.

But if fear arises and you remain aware, if you feel the activation still move, then it

becomes a different cause.

The effect is expanded capacity.

The straw widens.

The blinkers are taken off.

And so your nervous system learns that activation does not equal danger.

And this is how safety recalibrates.

Now let's return to the car analogy.

So when you decided yellow cars were important, you're filtered up dated that.

But imagine if every time you saw a yellow car, you told yourself, that's dangerous.

That's too much.

That's not for me.

Your system would begin associating yellow with threat.

And that sounds a little bit crazy in that context, but this is what we do.

We do it with visibility, we do it with success, we do it with intimacy, we do it with money.

We tag something as desirable, and then when the nervous system activates, we misinterpret

that activation is a warning instead of growth.

And then we can go a little bit deeper, the law of vibration.

Every emotional state carries a frequency, like I mentioned in my last podcast, fear vibrates

differently than trust.

Resentment vibrates differently than acceptance.

And so your baseline starts to become what your system expects.

And if you constantly rehearse worst case scenarios, your nervous system calibrates

to hyper-vigilance, your RAS scans for threat.

And if you repeatedly pair fear with grounded action, if you speak well nervous, act while

you're uncertain or move while activated, you're baseline shifts.

And so the vibration stabilizes.

And then something very subtle happens.

And I feel to begin highlighting different evidence.

And so you notice opportunities where once you saw danger and you notice connection where

once you anticipate rejection, and it's not because reality changed overnight.

All of a sudden, new yellow cars weren't just put on the road, it's because your internal

frequency did.

And I feel it's important to say here, you cannot think your way out of this.

You cannot affirm your way out of this.

You retrain your filter through embodied experience, through repetition, through regular exposure

to what once felt unsafe.

And this is not about eliminating fear.

There is no level where fear disappears.

Even at the highest levels of growth, fear is present.

It just sounds different.

It looks different.

It shows up differently.

So instead of asking, how do I get rid of this fear?

You ask, is this protecting me from harm?

Real harm, like an elephant chasing me down, or is it protecting me from growth?

And that question interrupts the automatic causation.

We move from the automatic timeline to the conscious timeline.

It brings awareness into the loop.

The rasp keeps running, the mind keeps generating thoughts, the body keeps responding to what

is new.

But you are no longer unconsciously ruled by them.

You are participating consciously from the present, the conscious timeline.

The external world will continue unfolding according to cause and effect beyond your

control.

Market shift, people change, circumstances evolve, that does not stop.

Not internally something stabilizes.

You stop trying to become fearless.

You become self trusting.

And you stop asking, when will I feel ready?

You start asking, can I move with this activation without even abandoning myself?

And that is growth.

It's not the absence of fear, capacity in its presence.

And when your capacity expands, your filter expands, the straw expands.

And when your filter expands, your perceived world expands.

And that is where power lies, not in controlling reality, but in understanding the mechanism

through which you experience it.

So this episode is devoted to the great mayor of horse racing, my kaivi diva.

She was an absolute champion of champions.

So thank you, beautiful souls.

I truly hope you received what was meant for you in this episode.

Until next time, be kind to yourself and be well.