The Equation and Its Components
The reality equation is deceptively simple:
Reality = Actual / Expectation
Its elegance conceals the richness of its structure. Actual—the numerator—is fixed. It is the outcome of the Immutable Past, She, who has already resolved every potentiality. It is final, settled, complete. The denominator, Expectation, is what varies. Expectation is not merely a psychological forecast or emotional desire; it is a complex number comprised of a real part (the subconscious prediction) and an imaginary part (ideas—entities drawn from conditioned love). These two components, though orthogonal, are inseparably conjoined in shaping human experience.
So what does this equation have to do with grief, with the sensory echo of a dog’s bark that no longer corresponds to a living source? Everything.
Rusty’s Bark: A Case Study in Subconscious Prediction
Rusty, the dog, has died. This is actual. Immutable. The bark, however, is still heard.
This is not memory. This is not hallucination. Nor is it mystical. It is a real-time sensory output from the subconscious prediction machine—the real part of your expectation. Every morning at 4:30 a.m., for six years, a specific, patterned event occurred. The dog barked. The sound was etched into the body’s temporal landscape with surgical precision. That bark, at that hour, became a predictable pattern in the subconscious base.
When Rusty dies, actual changes—he no longer barks. But the subconscious doesn’t consult actual before rendering its predictions. It predicts based on pattern, not fact. And so, the bark is rendered again, just as real as it ever was—not because Rusty lives, but because the subconscious predicts he will.
You hear it. Clearly. Audibly. Just like the checkerboard shadow illusion where a dark square is “seen” lighter under a cast shadow, even though no such difference exists in luminance. In both cases, your perception is not a passive registration of actual—it is an active construction shaped by the denominator. It is expectation doing exactly what it is designed to do: anticipate what comes next. And in doing so, it defines your reality, which is not the same as actuality.
No Mythology Required
Here is where the application of the reality equation becomes a saving grace.
The bark is not a message from the spirit realm. It is not Rusty reaching across the veil. It is not unresolved grief or psychological breakdown. It is not a phenomenon in need of a story. It is simply the real component of expectation—your subconscious prediction—continuing to assert itself until enough weight accumulates in the actual to overwrite the pattern.
That overwrite does occur, but it is not instantaneous. The prediction machine always asks: “Is this the new norm?” And it does so without needing permission from your conscious mind. It will quietly absorb the new signal—no bark this morning, again, and again, and again. Eventually, the prediction adjusts. The bark disappears. Not because you’ve healed, but because the base of the expectation rectangle has adapted. The real part has rewritten itself in response to new consistency. Rusty’s absence becomes the new normal.
Shared Reality, Divergent Denominators
Why might you hear the bark and another person, in the same house, does not?
Because the denominator is personal. The numerator, actual, is universal—Rusty is dead. But expectation is unique to the individual. Your subconscious prediction is yours—a specific, non-verbal pattern built through repeated exposure. Your father may have a similar pattern; another family member may not. There is no contradiction. It is not the presence or absence of Rusty that determines what is heard, but the shape of the subconscious prediction.
No Control, No Blame
You do not control the denominator. You do not command your subconscious prediction machine to “update.” Nor do you summon ideas from the realm of conditioned love. These are not cognitive decisions but relational realities. What the reality equation offers is not a mechanism of control, but a framework for peace.
Peace, not because it explains away the bark, but because it correctly places it within the machinery of perception. Peace, because it liberates you from the need to construct a myth around your grief. Peace, because it clarifies that you are not broken. You are simply human, standing at the event horizon, where the stillness of the Immutable Past meets the probabilistic contours of Expectation, shaping the quotient we call your reality.
One Example, Infinite Utility
This single case—Rusty’s bark—demonstrates why the reality equation matters. It provides structure to the ephemeral. It grants legitimacy to subjective experience without elevating superstition. It allows for phenomena that feel mystical to be understood without reducing them to pathology or denying their reality.
This is just one application. Others will follow. But for now, let this be enough: the bark was real, but it was not actual. It came from the future, not the past. And because you understand this, you are not confused. You are not frightened. You are free.