⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ 𓂃 you’re trying to feel your dr with your cr senses
⠀a lengthy shifting guide
why is it so hard to shift from your cr to your dr but not so much vice versa? you’ve spent the first large chunk of your life believing this reality to be the full extent and foundation of existence. even if you now logically understand this not to be the case, the years spent curating and deepening a mental, emotional, and physical anchor to this reality has warped your perception of reality and instilled in to you the subconscious idea that your cr is the default. and in treating it as the default, the end all be all, and in compromising with it, you reinforce the idea that you are attached or stuck here—that it is even a place to get stuck in in the first place. not only do you trap yourself in this reality and grant it power over you that it does not actually have, you start viewing your cr as the “starting point” too, and shifting as some form of transportation from point A to point B. accompanying this belief is an imagined distance created between your current reality and desired reality. you might’ve already recognised this in yourself; the feeling that your dr is somehow faraway, a place that needs to be travelled to.
it’s important to make and internalise the distinction between a shift in realities as an act of metaphysical travel, and a shift in realities as a shift in focus. imo the former is a much better descriptor for what shifting actually is in essence. i will go into more depth later, but a byproduct of being raised the way you were, growing up knowing nothing but your cr and rooting & centring yourself wholly (confined) within it, is the over identification you end up developing with your cr self. you are not living reality, you are watching it. but after years of the constant unbroken immersion, the two become almost impossible to distinguish. you define yourself by and take on as if they were your own the thoughts and identity and feelings of the “vessel” you are observing, and let them dictate how you experience reality. the lines begin to blur between you; your cr self, and you; your awareness/the observer.
feel your hand. don’t touch it, but notice it’s weight and temperature, or the air around it. now feel the feeler. can you feel yourself? or your body, maybe? now go a step further and feel the one feeling. you probably aren’t fully able to, but this is the observer. “the observer”, or the state of being after breaking the immersion, is you in your natural or purest state. it has also been described as pure awareness, the void state, ego death, sakshi, the self, anatta, and interpreted in different ways across a multitude of different religions and branches of spirituality & philosophy, all used as a means to an end for different things. fyi—i’m not saying you have to completely forsake your cr identity or start ignoring/dismissing your senses or thoughts to shift, just understand that those things don’t define you or your reality. the means to the end here is just getting a point across and hopefully helping improve with the approach you take to shifting. all of this to say, you’re not travelling from point A to point B. point A and B are not places you can (technically) even travel to or exist in, because you’re just watching/observing/being aware of. shifting is not the transportation of a self from one location to another. shifting is simply changing what is focused on/experienced; from one stream of experience to another. a shift in focus.
to summarise, you as in your ego, the you in this cr as you know it, your body, your brain, your thoughts, your identity, don’t actually go or shift anywhere. you, your awareness, in favour of perceiving you, your cr self, the one sat at your computer or phone or whatever reading this right now, starts perceiving a different you/ego/self—one that could have the exact same personality, memories, and thoughts, just in another realty, or one that is a different person entirely. there is only a change or “shift” for the observer, not the cr self or ego. so stop trying to feel your dr with your cr senses. you’re not going to. you’re so immersed in your cr and cr self that you automatically rely on this reality’s bodies’ senses to gauge your success when you try to shift, waiting for your cr self to get a cue that it’s never going to get. the surroundings your cr self feels aren’t going to go anywhere. nor are your senses going to shut off. your cr body will continue to receive sensory information, because that’s what bodies do. so don’t lie there expecting your bedsheets to disappear or magically warp into your dr surroundings or something and feel like you’ve failed when they don’t. shifting is not about somehow willing your surroundings to change or lying in your room forcefully convincing yourself that your senses are feeling something else, it’s about acknowledging what’s beyond those senses. feeling and connecting to what your dr self feels.
if you can still feel your cr, it’s not you feeling it, it’s your cr self. and you are not your cr self.
you can apply this to your thoughts too. your thoughts are no less your cr self’s than your senses are. if you start getting doubts mid attempt or can’t let go of the thought or feeling that you’re not in your dr, remind yourself that you are not your feelings or thoughts or doubts. you are simply observing them. of course your cr self will think that they’re still in their cr, they are. just ignore them and shift your attention elsewhere. your focus and awareness are what dictate what you experience, if you relinquish your focus from your cr and direct it to your dr instead, that’s where you’ll “be”.
obviously there’s no one set way to shift, so if you want you can stop reading here and apply this information to your shifting journey in whatever way suits you. if you’re interested in my method though, here’s the compilation of all this info into practical steps you can actually take to shift.
get comfortable somewhere you won’t be disturbed. close your eyes and focus on what you can see. the light behind your eyelids, shapes, colours, whatever. but instead of automatically interpreting these sensations as belonging to your cr, allow them to become sensory input from your dr. light? that’s coming from the lamp by the xyz in your dr bedroom. or maybe your in a field if that’s a fitting setting for your dr, and it’s the sun shining down on you. shapes? that’s because you’ve been lying down with your eyes closed for a while now, you’re tired after your classes or job or whatever you do in your dr. even if it’s nothing at all, let it be your drs nothing. just feel it. do this for about a minute.
then move onto your body. whether it’s sinking, lightness, tingling, focus on it. and do the exact same as you did for the previous step, interpret it as input coming from your dr. don’t worry if you can still feel your body lying in your bed, because your surroundings aren’t going to change—at least not physically. again, those sensations belong to your cr self, and they don’t prevent awareness from directing itself elsewhere. the goal here is to shift your focus away from them and onto something else, so hyperfocusing on your cr and worrying about your surroundings is counterintuitive. just gently guide your attention back to your dr, really try feel your dr surroundings and what your dr body is currently feeling. if you can’t fully avert your focus away from your cr, that’s fine, at the very least just try receive/tap into the input coming from your dr alongside your cr.
finally focus on what you can hear. if you’ve already managed to make a connection with your dr through your sight and physical senses just build up on what you’ve already got. feel grass tickling your skin? deepen the connection there by focusing on the sound now too, the wind blowing through it. see light behind your eyes? focus on the hum of the lights.
repeat these exercises over and over, deepening the connection with each cycle. if you don’t manage to get anything the first cycle just keep going until you do. it might take some practice. like i mentioned before, after spending so much time here and being in constant attunement with your cr self, the sense that your cr is the default starts to take root and it can be difficult to shake the feeling that you’re just indefinitely “here”. it’s normal for it to take some time to learn how to question this feeling and push past it. since you've never (technically?) been aware of anything outside of this reality, learning how to do so can be a bit like learning how to use a muscle you've never used before.
this method operates on the idea that reality is something that is tuned into through focus & narrowed awareness and not something metaphysically travelled across, so for the most success with it, i’d recommend starting to make a conscious effort to see your dr less like a place and more like a wavelength or channel, a perspective already existing beyond your current focus. shifting to your dr then becomes an effort to notice and receive input from this channel/wavelength, input that already exists out there and that simply needs to be acknowledged. you’re just picking up on what’s already there, feeling something that a version of you already feels.
persist in the belief that reality is observed and flexible. you’re not "stuck" anywhere unless you believe you are.
This is how an average interaction would go down if more people knew about shifting. Imagine all the extinct species you can eat and the child labor you can perform. A life there which can't happen here. /hj
I am coming to you once again with a shifting question.
I don't really understand it when people say that when you shift, you should think as if you are your dr self, and you shouldn't say things like "I can't wait to be in my dr" and how you should ignore the 3d entirely. Because in my day-to-day life, I still have things I'm excited about, but I still say things like "I can't wait to go to this concert" or "I can't wait to see my parents again" while knowing full well that it's going to happen.
Example that inspired this post: I made a pie today, and when it went into the oven, I thought, "I can't wait to have my pie." Like I know I will have some pie soon, I know it's inevitable, but yet I feel excited about having it, even though I know that the pie is not finished yet. Like what is so bad about acknowledging 3d, while knowing that shifting is something that will happen. Just like my pie that just came out of the oven.
Idk, maybe I'm just hungry and need to understand what the difference is between me being excited about having something that I know will happen, and me being excited about shifting and saying things like "I can't wait to be in my dr"
(I saw the movie leaks and I was INSTANTLY thrusted back into ATLA hyperfixation and I wanted to give it a go at drawing one of my all time favorite characters because Toph's story is so wonderfully done and theres so much nuance that I HAD to draw em out. This is a two parter piece AND I still have more ideas so buckle up)
happy pride to ALL queer beings!!! all the beings whos labels contradict one another, the beings whos labels make no sense, the beings who are trace, trans abled, trans harmed or harmful, beings with paras!! yu all deserve a happy pride month!! be proud of your identity!! yur all valid and deserving of love!🩷🩷
