Yes, tricky to put into words! On that, we can certainly agree. So please forgive the length…it grew! (So much that I’m thinking of turning it into a post.)
My take: reality is experience. ‘Objective’ reality is the shared experience we agree on. Simplistically, if we both agree it is a ‘coffee cup,’ then it is for us, objectively, a ‘coffee cup.’ Another example is this very discussion. We’re sharing/comparing experience in terms of conceptions, perceptions, definitions, etc.
Going further, if reality is experience, experience is awareness of change.
That won’t seem at all obvious (!), so let me explain…
To experience a coffee cup is to experience, literally, the feel of the coffee cup (‘feeling,’ as I think of it, is the direct, visceral manifestation of the abstract term, ‘awareness’). The texture, pressure, heat on skin, the shadows, colors, shape, this is what we feel (what we are aware of). It might not seem that anything about the coffee cup has changed as we experience it (experience is the awareness of change, remember), but it’s not the ‘coffee cup’ alone. It’s the interaction, coffee cup with sensory tools, that’s what has changed. Light waves interacting with subatomic particles in the coffee cup, then with our eyes, particles of ‘skin’ interacting with particles of ‘coffee cup,’ and so on.
An interaction, in physics, is a transfer of energy. Another word for it is ‘force.’ It is in that sense that experience is ‘awareness of change’ because a transfer of energy means there has been a change in local energy distribution. Being a local change tells us that experience occurs HERE and NOW. (The ‘past’ is experienced NOW as memory. The ‘future’ is experienced NOW as expectation.)
We feel the interactions detected by our sense organs and in our body or brain (neurons firing manifesting as memory and thought).
Putting it together, if there is experience, we could say that there must be an ‘I’ that is ‘having’ the experience. The ‘I’ exists, and only exists, as the sum total of experience—the awareness of change—HERE and NOW.
Crucially, however, just as experience changes moment to moment (because that’s what experience is, the awareness of change), so too must the ‘I’ change from moment to moment.
And that, of course, goes counter to our own ‘experience’!
Enter the ‘self.’ The ‘self’ is itself (!) a feeling, an experience, an awareness of change…across time. It’s a unique version of ‘I’ in the sense that it is the feeling of ‘I’ arcing across time.
So ‘I,’ fearfully grasping my mommy’s hand on the first day of kindergarten, and ‘I’ holding the hand of my tearful son on his first day of kindergarten, can be the same ‘I’ despite the entirely different experience.
On the one hand, we take this ‘self’ of ours for granted. On the other hand, we question what ‘I’ truly ‘am.’ What is ‘my’ essence.’ What am ‘I’ at root?
Easy answer, ‘I’ am the totality of ‘my experience.’ The essence is the all. And the all…(remembering that experience is only HERE and NOW)?
The all is me. I am the reality I experience. All of it.
