From the moment we are born, our minds are shaped by the environment we interact with and we are taught to see life a certain way. We are limited by the controlling forces that come from what we learn in general and from our parents, siblings, television, teachers, textbooks, and many other avenues. The problem is that while we are confined to these norms, we lose the opportunity to see what is beyond and what is truly real, and instead keep our gaze focused on the shadows perfectly cast before us. In Plato's allegory, those in the cave, just like us humans, have been there since birth and have not seen the light and are condemned to ignorance or, at best, opinion. In this article I will show how my understanding of reality changed after reading Plato's Allegory of the Cave. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay In Plato's Allegory of the Cave, we are introduced to fictitious prisoners who since their birth have lived in the depths of a cave their entire lives. In truth, there is nothing else they would know beyond what is provided to them. The prisoners are in chains, so they can only look forward. Behind them is a path with a blazing fire, which projects objects, shadows of traveling people, objects and other things onto the wall in front of them. For them there is definitely one real thing, which is the shadow cast in front of them. This can be translated as a form of low understanding due to what prisoners choose to believe as reality. Plato then provides a description of what might happen if one of the captives were able to escape bondage and leave the cave. Looking directly at himself in the sunlight would hurt his eyes, and he might even choose to go back to the cave because it really is more comfortable to be in a place where there is less pain. But if that doesn't happen, it may adapt and see individuals and objects it initially saw as shadows. Plato goes on to say that if the prisoner continued his escape and managed to leave the cave, he would be blinded from the true reality. But after some time, he would adapt and be able to see things in this higher world and recognize that they were more real than the shadows he experienced in the cave. If this escaped prisoner finally returned to the cave with intentions of enlightening his fellow prisoners, still partially blinded by the enlightening experience, the prisoner would have difficulty readjusting to the life of the shadows. So he would not have been able to convince the other prisoners of the good he had seen. Human beings and the reality of the universe are perfectly reflected in the prisoners and the dark world where we constantly experience the shadows of reality. Just like the prisoners in the cave, humans spend most of their lives in a cave chained so that we can only see shadows of reality cast on a wall in front of us through a great fire. Most people will be content to see the changing patterns of shadows before them, but a few others will try to see them and learn from them, but in both cases they only see the shadows of reality. However, if one of these people manages to free themselves and escape from the "cave". He is destined to see the true nature of existence. He could, undoubtedly, go back to the cave and try to explain to others what true reality is and how it is different from projection, but there is a high probability that they will not believe him. They are more likely to be content to continue maintaining theirslong-held beliefs, no matter how misinformed they may be. People take what might be considered shadows of imagination as reality. Leaving our caves symbolizes learning the true nature of humanity in its divine form, captivity and all, but, above all, morality, goodness, beauty, and truth. For Plato the light of the sun is a representation of truth and the divine while the fire in the cave is an inferior source of light and is not part of the true and good. Once a person manages to achieve this knowledge of the ideal, he may have difficulty returning to the ordinary world where ordinary objects are nothing more than a reflection. Personally, I may not be able to perceive the true form of reality rather than reality. simple shadows like that of prisoners, but at least I understand that the true form of reality is beyond us and what we perceive in the world is just a shadow cast on a wall that makes our minds believe it as the object real. Shadow-based thinking binds humanity to the chains of ignorance. Therefore, we see and hear, taste, feel, smell, and interpret the world and form our beliefs in ways that are shaped by the experiences we perceive from the world. These beliefs, however, are not strictly related to objective reality. We therefore live two lives, one which is the shadow of our reality, driven by the imagination and shaped from birth by social experiences and those that are invisible to us, which in my opinion embrace current reality. One of these two realities unfolds before the human eye, day after day, reflected right before us for thousands of years. As humans, we live in the reality of what we see, hear and experience: the shadows on the wall of the cave. Plato's allegory is intended to encourage the human race to move from the darkness of their own ignorance to the brilliance of sunlight, for example, to the knowledge of things as they really are. The shadows of writing cast across the flickering fire show people's imagination. The irony makes it clear that only natural sunlight can shed light on the errors to which our beliefs are subject. Plato's allegory of the cave shows the way in which our primordial subconsciousness has kept us in the darkness of superstition and even ignorance. By questioning those who presumed to possess knowledge, he discovered the embarrassing fact that we normally live by vague half-truths and demonstrated the falsity of the sophisms we normally use to mask our ignorance. In the dialogues, Plato left testimony to the inimitable wisdom of Socrates. Plato himself believed that personal dedication to an ideal was necessary for a soul to become immortal. Therefore, I believe that when a person lives true to himself, when he dedicates his life to work, to faith or to an ideal, he rarely does it for selfish purposes. The I, myself, and myself, have little to do with love or dedication. The search for perfection, in this case, transcends the personality and requires determination and dedication. Only when the mind is in a state of supernal concentration does the eternal become evident. This state is experienced beyond all limits, emotions and individual intelligence. Today, most of us are too concerned with success, money, reward and not realism. However, not much virtue lies in that form of passion. What someone does for himself, he seeks and finds his own reward. Any sense of true accomplishment tends to be greater than any vanity of success. What the mind conceives transcends the reality of this world. The cave metaphor suggests that it can be difficult to understand the.