We’ll Forget the Movies. But Mixed Reality Will Eat at Your Soul.

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You’ve probably seen the term “mixed reality” tossed around lately — usually attached to some sleek new headset from Apple, Meta, or Microsoft. The phrase sounds like tech-babble, but here’s all it means:

Mixed reality is when your real-world surroundings are blended with computer-generated images so convincingly that digital objects seem to exist right there with you.

Think of it like this: you’re in your living room, wearing a pair of glasses. You still see your sofa, your coffee table, and your child playing. But through the lenses, you also see something that isn’t really there — maybe a life-size puppy chasing a ball across your rug.

As you walk around, the puppy darts behind the coffee table and disappears from view just like a real dog would. It feels real because your brain sees it interacting with the real world.

This isn’t science fiction. Apple’s Vision Pro and other headsets already do it.

And that’s where the danger begins — because in this new world, the line between watching and living disappears.

We forget what we watch. We become what we experience.

That’s not poetry. That’s neurology.

We’ve all binged a show — scary, sad, violent, peaceful, whatever — and for a couple of hours, we feel everything. Our hearts race at the jump scares. We cry at the ending. We feel uplifted or disturbed.

But a week later? It’s mostly gone. Ninety percent of the plot evaporates, and with it most of the emotional residue. Our brains know we only watched something.

But what happens when we don’t just watch — when we live it?

Mixed reality is not just a new screen; it’s a new environment.

When you put on those glasses, you’re not looking at a story; you’re inside it. Your eyes, ears, and nervous system react as if it’s real.

The adrenaline, the cortisol, the emotional bonding — all the things your body does during real life — fire off as though you’re actually there. And your brain encodes those moments not as a movie you watched but as an experience you had.

That’s why veterans flinch at fireworks years after combat. That’s why people who’ve lived through disasters remember the sounds, smells, and heartbeats decades later.

The body remembers experience — it doesn’t forget.

So, picture a child “living” a violent game, not on a screen but in their actual bedroom. Or a lonely teen “dating” an AI-generated partner who seems utterly real.

These aren’t just pixels. These are memories being written into their nervous system. They’re not watching pretend. They’re participating.

The technology companies pitch mixed reality as the future of entertainment, education, and work. But very few are asking what it does to the human soul when the line between imagination and incarnation blurs. How do we recover from experiences that never “really” happened but that our bodies and hearts believe did?

Because here’s the truth — and it’s not going away

We forget what we watch. But we never forget what we live.

Mixed reality is moving us from one to the other. And if we don’t start thinking about the psychological and spiritual costs now, we may find ourselves living in memories we never actually lived — but can never escape.

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Martin Mawyer is the President of Christian Action Network, host of the “Shout Out Patriots” podcast, and author of When Evil Stops Hiding. Subscribe for more action alerts, cultural commentary, and real-world campaigns defending faith, family, and freedom.