What a human recognizes as reality is not reality but a mental representation of reality. The human mind creates mental stories, pictures, templates of everything one experiences, and those images are what one sees as life, as oneself, as the world.

One’s perception of one’s body is a good example of this: for the most part humans know how their body looks like. They know it because they can see themselves in mirrors, they know it because other people comment on their looks, they know it because they can see their bodies. Even so, one’s idea about how one looks like is always a bit off, compared to what one actually looks like. One’s mental picture of oneself might have a bit less wrinkles that are actually there. One can see oneself as a bit slimmer than one is, or a bit bigger, one can see oneself as a bit taller, or shorter, than one’s actual size.

A relatively balanced mind creates a mental image of the physical body that corresponds closely with the actual body, based on the information from one’s senses and the feedback from other people. When the mind gets unbalanced, unstable, the mental image of one’s body begins to diverge from the actual body so far that it becomes delusional. An anorexic person who is dying of starvation will see herself as fat, for example.

When it comes to normal, human life inside in physical reality, when it comes to experiences that humans generally share, the mental image of a stable mind reflects the reality pretty closely. The mind’s images are constantly updated based on data coming from physical senses, based on the feedback one gets from others.

When it comes to experiencing that which has no physical representation, and which most humans do not experience, one doesn’t have that feedback. One doesn’t have the data to check one’s mental images against. This is why it is so tricky, so hard, to remain present when navigating the spiritual landscape.

When one enters into the realm of spirituality by, for example, taking on a spiritual practice, one will sooner or later begin to experience things. Those things will be different from what one commonly experiences as a human going about a normal, human life. Those experiences will be something that most humans don’t ever experience. Those experiences will have no physical aspect, nothing to see with one’s eyes, to touch with one’s fingers, to take photos of, to stick under a microscope. The mind will have to conceptualize, understand and assimilate those strange experiences all on it’s own, without much help from the “normal” reality. This means that the mind will be virtually unchecked in what stories it will create, what explanations it will concoct, what beliefs it will come up with to explain the strange experiences one experiences. It is incredibly easy for a mind to go way off the reservation, devoid as it is of the usual checks and balances. It is incredibly easy for a mind to create stories that are bizarre, fantastical, delusional.

My very first spiritual practice was Zen meditation. When I was introduced to this practice I was told that I was practicing presence. I was practicing my ability to be present with what is, to see clearly what is. I was told that some strange experiences might come, and that I should let them go. Experiences were not the point of my practice. Presence was.

I consider the years of practicing being present with what is to be of great value, because what I essentially practiced was my mind’s ability to remain present, stable, aware, no matter what happened. Having trained my mind in being present with what is, I significantly reduced the possibility that when I experience something weird and bizarre my mind will go off and make up some fantastical stories about me being an enlightened master come to Earth to save butterflies, or to bring back rainbows and unicorns. My mind, having been trained in being present with what is without making up fantastical stories, was better able to remain present with experiences which can be, by all accounts, plenty fantastical.

Most minds are not trained, however, so when something strange happens they get lost in the strangeness. In fact many practitioners who enter spiritual realms are avidly searching for those strange experiences and have no interest in practicing the ability to be present with them, which greatly increases the possibility of getting lost in mental delusions.