# Neutrality of Reality > Reality is fundamentally neutral with events having no intrinsic positive or negative charge and the same situation serving either expansion or contraction depending on whether a person assigns positive or negative meaning through their response - Canonical: https://sassani.app/topic/neutrality # Neutrality of Reality In Bashar's teaching, neutrality is a statement about reality itself: everything in physical reality is fundamentally neutral, a set of props and circumstances without built-in meaning. The effect any event has on you is determined not by the event but by the meaning you infuse into it through your response. This is not the everyday sense of "neutrality" as emotional flatness, detachment, or moral indifference; it is the recognition that the meaning was never in the object, and that recognizing this gives you the choice — and the responsibility — to assign a meaning that serves you. ## Everything is a neutral prop The foundational statement is unambiguous: "physical reality is just a neutral set of props. Circumstances do not have built in meaning at all. The greatest gift you have been given by creation is that, I know this will sound funny, life is meaningless. The point being that you were created to give life meaning." The same framing appears in shorter form throughout: "everything is neutral, and only the meaning you give it determines the outcome and the effect that you experience." This is why Bashar can say that "all circumstances and situations come into your life fundamentally neutral and can go either way, positive or negative." The neutral-prop entry in the GLOSSARY records the same teaching. Because the circumstance is neutral, its double-duty capacity is real: "any circumstance can do double duty because everything is fundamentally neutral. And when you put the meaning in, the positive meaning in, you can only get a positive effect out, even if someone else's intention toward you is negative." Someone else's negative intention does not have to become your negative experience, because you are experiencing your version of them — your own rendering — not them. ## Neutrality is the place of choice, not a refusal to choose Neutrality is often misread as not caring. Bashar's neutrality is the opposite: it is the vantage point from which choice becomes possible. The skeleton-key factory analogy makes this concrete. Picture yourself as the factory owner standing on "the absolute neutral energy between the two... in the balance point," with negative-belief workers on one side of the floor and positive-belief workers on the other. The neutrality of the catwalk is what lets you decide which workers to feed: "it depends on who you're paying attention to. And that's why it's important to know that you're on this catwalk, this neutral catwalk." The point is not to stay neutral forever; the point is to choose from neutrality rather than from being unconsciously matched to one side. The same sessions frame this as the difference between responding and reacting. "The idea and the proof of change is not that the outer world has changed, it's that you respond differently to it even if it looks the same." Change is therefore measured at the level of state of being, not circumstance: "change is not about what happens on the outside. It's about how you respond to what happens. It's state of being, not circumstance." ## Meaning is the mechanism The teaching reduces to a mechanical claim: the meaning you assign is the effect you receive. "Give everything that happens in your life a positive meaning if you want to experience a positive effect. If you give things negative meaning, the only effect you can get is a negative one. Because everything is neutral, and only the meaning you give it determines the outcome and the effect that you experience." This is the same mechanic that lets Bashar reframe the collective events (war, loss, intense change) as opportunities to clarify preference by contrast: seeing "what you are not" can help you understand "what you are." The cleansing-flame session carries the implication that even energies usually labeled negative (anger, grief) can be used in a positive way because they too are neutral props. "You do not have to feel victimized by your negative emotions. You can turn them around. They are in that sense also simply props. They are only reactions to things you believe to be true." Anger can be used "as a cleansing flame to align you, to orient you, to strengthen you," not because anger is positive in itself but because the energy can be assigned a positive purpose. ## Practical implications A learner can apply neutrality as a pause before assignment: when something happens, treat the circumstance as meaningless until you have chosen a meaning, rather than reading the first interpretation that arrives as the meaning the event "really" has. The sessions frame this as the path of least resistance: "as soon as you feel anything out of alignment, deal with it and find out why it's there. And it will always come down to something that you have been taught to believe is true over something else." A second implication concerns the search for hidden negative beliefs. Bashar's practical tool is the factory catwalk: from the neutral vantage, ferret out the remaining "negative worker" hiding in some corner of the unconscious, turn the factory lights on it (identify it), and let it clock out and go home — not by fighting it, but by recognizing it is producing the product you hired it to produce and that you no longer require that product. The skeleton key itself is the single master belief that "beliefs can always be changed," since a negative belief's only power is to make itself feel unchangeable. The chapter preserves the standing boundary that neutrality is not a substitute for ordinary judgment about safety, harm, or professional advice. To say a circumstance is neutral is not to say it is safe or appropriate to remain in it; it is to clarify where the lever of experience actually sits (in your response and meaning) so that action, when taken, is taken from a chosen state rather than from a reactive one. Bashar's material is offered as a reflection for use, not as medical, legal, financial, or safety direction. ## Representative passages Physical reality is just a neutral set of props. Circumstances do not have built in meaning at all. The greatest gift you have been given by creation is that, I know this will sound funny, life is meaningless. The point being that you were created to give life meaning. And the meaning you give it determines the effect you get out of it.— Bashar, Master Tools Of Transformation (master-tools-of-transformation#text) Everything is neutral, and only the meaning you give it determines the outcome and the effect that you experience... the idea and the proof of change is not that the outer world has changed, it's that you respond differently to it even if it looks the same.— Bashar, Knowing The Difference Between Positive And Negative Feelings (knowing-the-difference-between-positive-and-negative-feelings#text) You on the catwalk are in the absolute neutral energy between the two. You're in the balance point... it depends on who you're paying attention to. And that's why it's important to know that you're on this catwalk, this neutral catwalk.— Bashar, Skeleton Key Factory Analogy For Transforming Negative Beliefs (skeleton-key-factory-analogy-for-transforming-negative-beliefs#text) All circumstances and situations come into your life fundamentally neutral and can go either way, positive or negative. Depending upon the type of person you create yourself to be, utterly determines the type of effect you get out of those neutral situations and circumstances that you attract in your life.— Bashar, The Cleansing Flame (the-cleansing-flame#text) ## Related - [Definitions & Beliefs](https://sassani.app/topic/definitions-and-beliefs) - [Reality As A Mirror](https://sassani.app/topic/mirror-nature-of-reality) - [Judgment](https://sassani.app/topic/judgment) - [Self-Empowerment](https://sassani.app/topic/self-empowerment) - [Positive & Negative Energy](https://sassani.app/topic/positive-and-negative-energy) - [Neutral Prop](https://sassani.app/topic/neutral-prop) Markdown twin of https://sassani.app/topic/neutrality. The HTML page is the source of truth.