---
title: "Big Picture on the High Hills · Zoom Back to Your Reality (CW004)"
heading: "Big Picture on the High Hills · Zoom Back to Your Reality (CW004)"
subheading: ""
updated: "2026-01-17T21:25:00+00:00"
words: 610
url: https://ananda.icu/talks/casual-watcher/cw004-big-picture-on-the-high-hills-zoom-back-to-your-reality
description: "Fresh air on the high hills. Zooming up and taking in the big picture. What's going on in our lives? Do we have any real free will? Or just swooshing around in our narrow reality tunnels? Bound in our own matrix of reactive conditions. Hike up the ladder to the planes of metacognition sometime. See how your mind is mapped."
...


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**Words:** 610 ⁘ **Length:** 03:00 min ⁘ **Created:** 2026-01-15 ⁘ **Updated:** 2026-01-17

 Fresh air on the high hills. Zooming up and taking in the big picture. What's going on in our lives? Do we have any real free will? Or just swooshing around in our narrow reality tunnels? Bound in our own matrix of reactive conditions. Hike up the ladder to the planes of metacognition sometime. See how your mind is mapped, witness the makings of your awareness.

 [#CasualWatcher](/q/CasualWatcher) [#BigPicture](/q/BigPicture) [#Metacognition](/q/Metacognition) [#SelfAwareness](/q/SelfAwareness) [#MatrixOfConditions](/q/MatrixOfConditions) [#LiberateYourMind](/q/LiberateYourMind) [#WitnessPlane](/q/WitnessPlane)



**Lots of fresh air up here on the high hills.** Helps you clear your mind from the immediate. Zoom into a broader perspective. Sorry about the wind. Also someone's revving a chainsaw in the background. So, you know... But here we are, lounging at the viewpoint, contemplating what's going on. 

What's typically going on is people are anywhere but in the fullness of their awareness. Narrow spectrum. We step into these little reality bubbles, crafted by the identity we conceive for ourselves. Then we leap into the bubble bath, seeking reality tunnels to swoosh in, driven by our desire and intentions. And there we go onward. 

For whatever bearings we had of a broader map, we are still driven by our reactions, like bouncing around in a pinball machine. Then the sum total of those reality tunnels driven by our intentions, the zigzag, the mishmash, idiosyncratic compilations, that is actually the matrix and lay of the land in your awareness.

When you're in it, when you are immersed in your little universe, you don't really see it for what it is. You don't see your finity when you're engrossed in it. You don't realize your conditions when you are bound by them and executing their directives.

But when you zoom out, come to a higher vantage point, taking in the big picture, you begin to realize, what the hell am I actually doing? And what is this all a part of? Does it make any sense at all? The lack of rhyme and reason in your particular driven vectors only becomes evident when you see the full context.

This here represents your typical dwelling. It's an upcycled container for infectious waste. How appropriate! But you can open the lid from your container, embark on a journey up the stairs to higher and higher planes of metacognition. Where you actually witness all the sprouting little thoughts coming from your head — turning into desires, turning into intentions, and driving you down the merry road.

It's not really a very merry road when you are driven down it without any control of the ride. Sure you think you have free will, that you're in charge, but you know, zoom out, see it for what it is. Up to a higher vantage point you go and see from there. What's the actual reality of how I roll?

Is there actual free will — or are we still very very bound by our conditions? Release yourself from your bondage. You only ever release yourself from that bondage of conditions when you stop reacting. When you stop having preference over "this and that should be", "may not ever be". 

When you battle the winds, then, you know, you're on the losing side. There's of course the "change what you can if you must", "if you can't then don't — and don't worry about it", right? Don't beat your head against the brick wall.

Was there maybe a point somewhere in there? I don't know. Figure it out. All right? Casual watcher rolling on down the next road. The road less taken, recalling all the roads ever taken. All right.