I Am The Observer

This is a follow up to Moving You Sim Through The World which is a follow up to Living Life As A Sim Rather Than A First Person Shooter. In those posts it is suggested that imagining yourself from the 3rd person minimizes the stress that one normally feels when imagining unpleasant things in the future, the cause of anxiety.

The Goal: The Ability To Feel Joy In Any Situation

This 3rd person, dispassionate view of oneself, allows us the possibility to feel joy at all times, even in times of what would normally be extreme stress or difficulty. In fact this is best practiced at those times. For example, one can receive the news that they were just fired from a job. When experienced through the normal first person perspective, one may feel as if the world has turned against them. Incredible sadness that is actually only temporary, is felt as if it is timeless and will be felt forever. Imagining ourselves at that moment from a 3rd person perspective reveals that we are but a person receiving negative news. From that perspective, the news can be seen as temporary as is all news. One can easily be thankful that, for example, the Sim (the view of ourselves in the 3rd person) is in the best of health. This is an opportunity to feel joy for the 3rd person is unbound by any constraints not to feel joy.

The Observer Is The Real Me

If I lose an arm, did my soul lose an arm or just my body? is my soul any less because my body does not have an arm? Why therefore do I insist that the reality I see is only when looking through my eyes?

Perhaps, the real you is not how you feel looking through your eyes, but the observer that is aware of your life. Even thoughts that we feel are being processed in real time, right now, are actually imagined. What we feel is reality is only our perception, and is not necessarily truth. This is how a person can play a practical joke on you, you think something is truth and it is only something you perceived to be truth. Truth and reality are stitched together by our minds. This is fine because we have no other choice, however, using the 3rd person perspective, the observer, allows us to see this more clearly.

The observer takes in information and makes decisions, but the observer also exists in a reality that is controlled by the observer. This allows the observer to feel joy at any time no matter the circumstances.