13 Illusions to shake up your awareness
Wednesday, February 11, 2009 at 2:06AM Illusions are self-created obstacles to a clearer view of things. Illusions are destined to dissolve as part of learning and unlearning. This is part of a personal journey that is guided, diverges and finds its way home. Each stage is ultimately a choice. You decide when and where to pause. Your unique view of life is yours alone. You are invited to shatter your own myths.
When a person is ready to question or explore his own deeply entrenched ideas, he may awaken to acknowledge the rigidity of ideas and also shift positions or attitudes. Consider these 13 concepts to ponder and reframe;
1) Ego. Part of the psyche experiences and reacts to the outside world and imagines your self-image into being. To separate yourself from the selves of others and from objects of ego, thought causes you to forget or repress the truth. From the moment ambition is born, you are prompted to quantify it.
2) Money. This takes shape as a piece of paper with random value linkedto numbers. Virtually everyone buys into that idea and allows it to control how they think: what is affordable, enough, desirable, feasible, doable, relative and inconceivable. Currency is a human invention that arose with human motives.
3) Duality. To separate concepts into two parts is a gradual denial of unity or oneness with everything. To envision poverty distracts you from wealth and abundance. Polarities of positive and negative such as good and evil fragment underlying wholeness. As one concept exists, the opposite also exists, even if you do no choose to acknowledge it at this moment.
4) Consolation. From birth, part of you is consoled when you are fed, clothed, and loved. When was the last time you fully trusted all of your needs are met from outside yourself? Faith becomes consolation during trouble. Yet, you imagine issues where none exist and imagine what you require to dissolve it.
5) Comfort. This zone is a view of a degree of tolerance for mediocrity, anxiety, worry, and stress. It also denies what soul whispers. Some people view this as an excuse to stay put, to continue fooling self and everyone of what you need. To lose what you thought you needed shifts focus to what matters. You move away from tangible things that are bought, sold, stolen, burned or bequeathed to uncover other priorities.
6) Form. Your view of the physicality of things is grounded in beliefs. You envision or hear about objects, infer about density, texture and viscosity, without necessarily touching or experiencing them. You visualize shape without seeing and create interpretations of your sense of reality.
7) Beliefs. The focus of your devotion is hidden. It has nothing to do with what you believe and everything to do with your state of consciousness or, level of conscious awareness and deliberate intent. To work in the realms of expectation and assumption creates layers of illusions you come to accept.
8) Fear. There is nothing to fear except your ability to create it. What you anticipate you will gain or lose goes deeper than ideas you access in the mind. This invokes fundamental views about what makes you who you are. What can you live without? Few people recognize your own misunderstandings.
9) Pride. A high opinion of one's own dignity, importance, merit, or superiority is a view that grows from fears like inadequacy and insecurity. What you think you have or not does not change who you are. Thinking without complete awareness explains many human issues. People reflect each others issues, differing only in degree and level of awareness.
10) Effects. Reality is something other than perceived effects, for it is part of the Cause. Beside, over and above, under and behind, all forms of Being, Matter, Energy, Force and Power, is the ever-calm, contentedness. Reconnect to inner knowing grows into absolute trust. This translates into confidence in the goodness and justice of the only Reality that exists.
11) Crisis. When old ways of thinking and doing fall short or no longer satisfy perceived needs, a person may imagine the self is threatened. Behaving as you have done is not necessarily aligned with the natural flow of energy to start with. If you take too much without giving back, this creates imbalance. A sense of urgency draws attention to issues of survival.
12) Armageddon. It is said a final battle involving good and evil will occur before the end of the world. Another way to view significant energy movement and upheavals is to concede former consciousness is dissolving on a wide scale. Such a view helps explain geographic, environmental and climatic shifts that might otherwise be viewed as a domino effect toward catastrophe. Life-changing transition is imminent. How you understand it is grounded in perception.
13) Perception. If you agree your outer reality reflects your level of inner understanding, then indecision or turbulance speaks volumes. How you come to recognize and grasp each experience is based not on superficial human senses, but on deeper awareness. Answers do not always emerge in the form of words. Letting go of ways you sense the world is an act of growth that dissolves dogma and resistance and brings you face to face with something indescribable.
"If the structures of the human mind remain unchanged, we will always end up re-creating fundamentally the same world, the same evils, the same dysfunction." -Eckhart Tolle
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Reader Comments (21)
I think on a very basic level that illusions are needed so we can strive outside of ourselves and shatter them. They are different for each of us. For instance, I know of people who are based in ego, money, hedonism, etc. They are quite comfortable and consoled there.
From an observer's view, we may think of them in a certain light, but from their view, they may think of us as incapable of achieving what they have. Their comfort of those things may shake our illusions of what is acceptable and what isn't? This is a devil's advocate view.
Whenever I read your amazingly insightful words, I am reminded of something I have heard before--and that is that we are presented with the same lessons over and over in life until we learn them. You help me learn. And I thank you for that.
Melinda
Interesting reading.
For every action there is also an equal and opposite reaction, and illusions are what many strive to achieve regardless of the consequences. One only has to step away from their own perceptions to witness the cause and effect of individual actions. Sometimes being in the wrong place at the wrong time can shatter illusions quite easily, then people look at life differently.
Enjoy the rest of the week,
Colin
I like what you said: There is nothing to fear except your ability to create it (fear). Well put!
This is unrelated to this post, but I've been meaning to ask you if you, your family and friends are safe from that raging fire? My thoughts and prayers go out to everyone there:)
Namaste,
Henie