Reality

Subject: Reality

So our reality is made up of 'actual reality' and 'perceived reality'. Actual reality is what it says on the box it is real and complete in itself without any adornment without any subjective analysis. Actual reality is hard to find amongst our thoughts which are cluttered with prejudice and assumption, thoughts gained through a life of living with and amongst shadowy perceptions and assumptions.
What we see and hear goes through the filter of scepticism and propaganda where our reality is distorted by so many things. Our upbringing and the people we mix with. The books we read and the shows we watch cloud our vision of everything, distorting actual reality and substituting a perception a perceived reality which is made up.
The mental clutter we experience in life is normal and unless you are a monk locked away on a retreat struggling to gain access to this actual reality what hope have we who simply take our day as we see it and modify what we see with prejudice. Now I don't use the term prejudice with the prejudicial assumption that it is necessarily harmful or injurious it's just that we prefix everything with our convictions, we don't see "the wood for the trees" as they say. If we were to stop and think that our thoughts come from somewhere and that the somewhere could have been good or bad and that depending on our perception of the somewhere that we had gathered our thought, we embellish it with thoughts about the scene in front of you and add further distortions which we file away as our truth. If our truth is made up of a multitude of distortions gained throughout our lives the real truth is hidden out of sight for ever.
It reminds me of the dilemma of "false news". What do you believe if so many conflicting stories are put out as factual. Do you give up on your search for the truth and withdraw into the realm of the personal only to find the personal is distorted with fake concepts about reality.
These dilemmas can only be solved by honing ones thoughts down to the particular and examining each particular presumption for what it is. Like a geologist, the lump of rock he holds is full of information about reality the reality of a particular period in time but what if we dig down further into the foundations of our life to find its basic elements, its truism, its reality.