Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be considered real.
Niels Bohr
Everything is real and nothing is.
It it’s real to you then that’s as real as real gets.
We each get to decide what “reality” is for one person – ourselves.
Anyone who would have you believe that what you experience is not real,
is themselves made of stuff that cannot be considered real.
How real is that?
agnotarte
dave umbongo
drkenplacebo
highfellow
recoverynetwork:Toronto
recovery network: Toronto 
Hi Loren, re: Thanks for your response Patricia. Is it Patricia Deegan?
No it isn’t. actually CounterPsych is my own website project I empowered myself with (and a few others in the process) after my own experience of the “he said-she said” thing.
(I found the following two links) Talking AT My Psychiatrists – Blog Summary View
Talking AT My Psychiatrists –that’s my experience there.
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Thanks Patricia. Will investigate! Counter psyche. Nice name!!!! I’m going to put my ‘website’ the title of my book backwards so this doesn’t get picked up by the webmasters. No spacing Paradox of Portals. (That should fool the mechanical robots!). Hope you come to Hearing Voices the first Monday of every month!!! Would love to meet you.
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The bots will find it even backwards but that’s OK. You wont see me Loren as I am non in Toronto,,,,,I am in southwestern Ont. but don’t go to TO hardly ever. still best to you. hang in there.
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OK!! I wish you the best. Will get to your blog, as soon as I am able. Hope you have a comment section!! And glad you’ve found this site.
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I have asked Psychiatry to define the parameters of of “normal” for me since they must know them to be able to tell the difference. No definitive answer so far. Thanks you NB. let’s quantum leap out of here……
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What if someone doesn’t believe that what I think is real…..or even that “I” or my “Being” is not “real”……(Could this deny simply the truth of what I think…. or my ‘reality’…… ????? (You may not believe this, but such a he-said she-said issue led to many a Portal of Paradox within my ‘real’ life!!!!) How strong must one be to believe in one’s reality, without being carried away to the asylum or other forms of incarceration????
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Well Kevin. This is for you, (following perhaps a recent conversation on Heidegger’s Being and other topics). Well I never went that deeply into this tradition when I studied it. I also don’t have the $149 for the course. But for me, the logic of this Eastern tradition is a ‘real’ alternative to the Western monotheism: the distinction for instance between achieving a what? Godhood and/or the mind of a/the Buddha. Perhaps in another life???? In any case, what of such realities as ‘offered’ here: http://learn.wisdompubs.org/academy/courses/sutra-tantra/?utm_source=Academy+%7C+Sutra+%2B+Tantra+Promo+1&utm_campaign=Abhidhamma+Studies+Ebook+Deal&utm_medium=email
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I post the following because I love ‘coincidence’ – and therefore the ‘reality’ ‘fact’ that it happened to be the next e-mail on my list of readables/unreadables…..!!! 🙂 realities/unrealities…..!!! 🙂
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As I referred to this ‘song’ in another comment: may I simply offer anyone who needs assurance, that I ‘simply’ no longer feel ‘helpless’!!! How strong must one be to believe in one’s reality, without being carried away to….”….. Well perhaps it’s something like believing in the paradox of there being ‘dimensions within ‘reality’ – that one can indeed experience at the same time. So it does not disturb me in any way that this message from the Beatles came through a mechanical technological model of ‘the truth’…. Yeah that may all be up in the air, but even if ‘they’ are implanting messages within my brain those are still ‘mere’ machines- I can still experience a reality of being grounded even if my head is occasionally still in the clouds. I can also interpret ‘you’ as being there, whether in your ‘truth’ you are or you’re not…!!!! Enjoy: https://ca.video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?fr=ssb-uh-t1&p=Help+me+I%27m+falling+The+Beatles#id=55&vid=1df0b448652381664f4d39d15378f2d7&action=click
Enough! I’ve talked too much again. Guess I’ll never be a ‘Buddha’!!! 🙂
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Well, I cannot help but think and rethink this quotation by Niels Bohr. In looking over my comments, though, I find that they are indeed directed towards some kind of comparison which for want of better words, I shall call the Absolute Reality/Truth and the Buddhist term- Conventional truth, or empirical reality for want of better words. So I’m not really taking this I guess in a personally interpreted psychologically therapeutic way, or even a sense of rebellion that we all indeed deserve to have in our attempts to ‘remain ourselves’ despite other ‘points of view’. But today I came across an Old FB Memory, which made me think that indeed Buddhism/Hinduism may indeed have something in common with the pagan/Israel Christianity. And it is within this context that I have come to interpret Bohr’s quote within this context. You may or may not want to buy this ‘idea’ – after all I do believe that we all indeed are entitled to our own realities… I think it’s called ‘Freedom of the Will’??? or something!!!! Anyway here’s Guy Finley, on what? – just living with the reality of what you’ve got’ —- ??? Indeed – listening to all those voices – without consolation? may indeed be difficult….. indeed sometimes I find it ‘quite impossible’…… http://www.guyfinley.org/free-content/audio/5081?utm_source=TwitterAndFacebook&utm_medium=StaffPosts
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I believe you as I too had one of those he said-she said experiences. It does not “fix” everything of course but self focus with boundaries is a key to your OWN stability whether anyone ELSE believes you or not. You may find reading some of my own experience of this helpful. look at my website , which has helped to empower me, though not without risk, and on the Talking AT My Psychiatrists page to start.Hang in there and don’t feel alone in this as you really are NOT alone.
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Thanks for your response Patricia. Is it Patricia Deegan? (I found the following two links) Talking AT My Psychiatrists – Blog Summary View
Talking AT My Psychiatrists – Blog Summary View
Click to access MedicationMeetingPacket.pdf
I did write a book on this subject in which I related my ‘experience’ to philosophical studies. Indeed what else is our reality but our experience, if such a reduction is allowed! The good, the bad and the ‘ugly’…!!
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Thanks for the quote. I’ve learned a lot from children’s books, and they taught me that relationship and love are important in discovering “real.” It’s great to have your web site spreading and linking us in the mutual discovering.
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Hi Berta
Thanks, and I’m totally with you. I saw some write the other day how we can detect “objective reality” by recording it with machines like audio recorders and cameras.
How sad t’would be if our understanding of living and of experiencing being alive were limited to what we can detect with a mere machine.
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While musing today, I thought that perhaps it is a great irony, that the Catholic church – or Aristotelian/Thomistic metaphysics, for example, takes the existence of God to be the most objective truth, or ‘reality’ – (the actuality as contrasted with (the logical possibility??) or in metaphysical terms ‘potentiality’. Yet God is a Personal God, and this implies, does it not, agency if not subjectivity. So would that not imply that the highest objectivity is in this case a form of subjectivity? But of course that still leaves me with the ‘reality’ that my subjectivity is not an actuality, but a mere potentiality. Where does that leave me with respect to judgment, ascertaining what is real, for instance, even in an attempt to discern what the ultimate ‘reality’ referred to a ‘God’ might be? (Please ‘help me here’ (Beatle Song) – perhaps it could even give me the courage to post this on the theist-atheist debates I often get involved with…. (but only when I am considering what is real!)….!!! Really!!! Is Truth Real? Is what is Real the Truth? You may chose to speak this with out without the ‘Capitals/capitals’!!!! An opportunity perhaps to decide on what is ‘Real/Truth’!????
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Wow now that`s real. 🙂
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keep’n it real, baby
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