On these pages you can read something like: The world is an illusion. The past and future do not exist. You are not your body, thoughts and emotions.
Then you close my blog, and then what? The bills still waiting you to be paid. You still anticipate about a reason why your back screams with a real pain, what a diagnosis may be? You hear drops in the kitchen, it is a leaking faucet. The worry about another expense hits you like a wave. An honest question arises in you head, if all of this is an illusion, why is so much trouble around you?
The first step of awakening
This is a valid question. You are caught between a profound truth of nonexistence and your daily reality you cannot deny.
The world is a dream. Nevertheless, the mosquito in the dream can bite you, and it may suck your blood and it will itch you. You have to play your part in the dream. Think about it. If you dream that someone threw a stone at you, you quickly move to avoid being hit. You don't stop in the and meditate on the illusory nature of the stone. You act. You respond to the rules of the dream.
The bill arrives, you pay it. The body gets sick, you see a doctor. Someone cuts you off in traffic, you hit the brakes. Spirituality was never meant to fix daily problems. Freedom is not found in inactivity. Freedom is found in understanding that as you act, there is no actor, there is just action, that's it.
Your life, with all its celebrations and joys, sorrows and suffering, successes and failures, is an imagination. An epic, complex movie. Sometimes beautiful, sometimes terrifying. The body you inhabit, the personality you've built, the name you answer to, all that is part of the grand stage of life. And you are completely absorbed in the story. You believe with every atom of your soul that you are an actor.
So when the suffering comes, you suffer. When the body ages, you fear death. When the actor is betrayed, you feel the pain. That is walking sleep, a psychological state of dreaming. Awakening is seeing through this imagination. Everyone is pretending. Human interactions are not real.
All is a play of manufactured, momentary emotions, just a performance
Have you noticed? A funeral for example. Everyone is crying, sharing memories, talking about how much they’ll miss him. And you’re standing there, watching your neighbor who hasn’t spoken to the deceased in five years suddenly become his best friend.
Tears stream down his face as he hugs the widow like family. But you know him. You know he couldn’t stand the man. He complained about him constantly, called him boring, made excuses to skip his birthday parties. Yet now, he’s devastated. Now he’s telling stories that never happened. Now he’s performing grief. And the most unsettling part? Nobody else notice it. They’re all nodding along, comforting him, treating his theater as sacred.
And once you see this, you can’t unsee it. This isn't paranoia. It’s not bitterness. It’s life. Your brain, doing exactly what it’s supposed to do, connect dots, read the illusion, except now you realize something: you are acting too.
Someone smiles at you. Before, you would have smiled back but suddenly, the smile isn't a smile anymore. It is a transaction. A move on a chessboard you didn’t even know you were playing on.
Welcome to awareness!
The thing I tell you to chase. And really , you are shifting your attention from the movie onto the screen, the great space, the presence.
The presence doesn't care about the plot of the movie. It simply allows all images to pass into presence and unaffected, without judgment, without resistance, let them be there. You, your true essence is this presence. Pure consciousness, unchanging silence.
The bill you need to pay is an image in your movie, the pain and the doctor's diagnosis is a scene. They are real for the character, but they cannot touch, stain, or harm the presence that is your true self.
Okay, you might ask. I understand the metaphor, but how does this help me on Monday morning when I have to go to work and deal with a difficult boss?
It all depends from your attitude
You can pay the bill with a knot in your stomach. Your mind may be screaming, "I don't have enough money! Why are things so expensive? What's going to happen next month?" You are suffering. Your action is steeped in a time, in regret for the past and fear for the future.
Or you may be fully consciousness of the presence and also take the bill. You look at the amount. You make the transfer. The action is the same. But internally, there is silence. You deal with the reality of the moment without the mental masturbation. The action is done with a clarity and peace. This is action without an actor. It is the doing that flows from presence.
You will forget this post. The movie is compelling, and you are a role you have played for a lifetime. It doesn't matter. Your only practice is not to never forget. Your practice is the gentle, compassionate act of self-remembering, again and again.
Each time you remember, you will find that the world, which once seemed so solid and threatening, is actually... nothing.
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