Once I stumbled on the idea, I've always been intrigued by the notion that "this" is all an illusion, that we're participating and walking in a dream. Sufis talk about the 70,000 veils; Christians about the "world to come", meaning that this certainly isn't it, it's just something we have to endure until we get to the real life after we die; Buddhists talk about "enlightenment" as waking from a dream.
Why would that be so?
Why would the setup here be that we're two-part beings, one part infinite and one part in these jellybags jiggling around out here, and with transitory understanding and remembrance about who we really are and why we're here in the first place? Why would the amnesia be part of the formula? Why would we want to cripple our journeys here by forgetting what we're really capable of in the first place? Is there a learning curve involved in this life-game? Is remembering our infiniteness the object of life, or merely just a "juice-pack" we pick up for extra stamina points so that we can complete the remainder of our quest in this vivid MMORPG ? And what is our quest here, really?
Did we, as some assert, set ourselves tasks, learning goals during the interlife period between incarnations that we hope to get accomplished this time around, or at least make headway on?
Or is it merely to learn how to wake up, to learn how to stay awake to surf this spacetime continuum in a body we know is a combination of both infinite spirit and finite matter?
Is it so that we, once knowing this, can unify and become one with the other beings who are all figuring this out?
If it really is "world with out end, Amen", then I can hardly imagine that this one puny lifetime has much significance unless we get to come back and do it again and again for definite reasons.
All I can say is, I don't know. But I'm burning to find out :-)
I'm merely happy that at this point, 45 solar orbits into my game that I've even figured out we're capable of waking up in the first place in order to play the game from a different perspective.
(prepared in Googledocs and published to the blog directly! yay! I heart Googledocs! )
3 comments:
Hello friend of soul,
It's Fabulous Friday! I read with interest your latest blog entry. Those have been questions I've been mulling a lot myself. If "this" is all an illusion, a waking dream, then what is its purpose? Interestingly, this is precisely what "Disappearance of the Universe" & "A Course in Miracles" delve into... but the answers given there were not at all what I expected. But hey, I value diverse viewpoints!
In essence, ACIM states that the only true statement that can be made is this: God is. Everything you can perceive with your senses isn't real. The reasoning is this: If God is eternal, infinite & unchanging, obviously this world of change & time isn't part of God. The most simple, basic way I can state what I understand of what's being taught is that we are all One (okay... that concept I'm familiar with), the "separation" never occurred, therefore we never left "heaven"... but don't know it. The illusion of separation was created when, while floating around in the unchanging, eternal joy of heaven, we had the thought, "I wonder what it would be like to experience something other than this?" Then BAM!, the big bang & the universe & everything & everyone in it was created so we could explore that question. Since we're all eternal beings, (really all God), there can be no harm in this, no damage that can come from exploring this question. There is no "death" no "time" no destruction. It's all a dream our ego cooked up out of its unconscious guilt. It parallels the Eden story & being "cast out" for eating the fruit of the knowledge of "good" & "evil". Of course, only goodness exists, but to experience it we had to have it's opposite to provide a context for knowing what it is.
According to ACIM, it is our subconscious guilt over creating this illusion of separation that keeps us stuck in it. According to this teaching (admittedly, I've mainly gained from the quotes of ACIM & discussion in "Disappearance of the Universe" & haven't really gotten into ACIM yet) there is no literal guilt, God has nothing to do with this illusory creation of ours, holds no grudges for us desiring this experience, therefore there is no such thing as "sin" either. We made it all up. From the ego's perspective, however, the sin is very real & requires punishment. Unconscious guilt always leads to some form of violence. The more complicated the illusion seems, the better, as the more we feel like we have to "figure it all out" before we can "become enlightened" & return to God, the longer the ego can keep us trapped in the game.
One of the stories told was Plato's story of the cave. (You can read more of this at the following link: http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/platoscave.html ) In brief, it states that, if you'd been held prisoner in a cave for a long, long time, being "set free" & going out into the light suddenly would freak your ass out. You would have no concept of what "freedom" is. (It interested me to discover that Plato's cave story was at least part of the inspiration for the movie "The Matrix"... which I've often thought was an amazing spiritual parable.) So, we're in this process of forgiveness. According to ACIM, the Holy Spirit is required to help heal all the subconscious stuff we can't get at. Our conscious minds are only the tip of the iceberg & our subconscious, until healed, will continue acting out of its belief in separation, lack, guilt & punishment. But, if we learn to forgive on the conscious level (very similar to Eckhart Tolle's "watching the thinker" & allowing thoughts to be there but not believing them anymore), this allows the Holy Spirit to go to work on all the unconscious stuff we can't get at. The end result of this forgiveness practice is eventual enlightenment... being freed from "the cave" & getting back into heaven, which we never left in the first place.
Following the forgiveness path laid out in ACIM promises to help you see through the illusion, reconnect with God &experience Oneness directly. The labeling process of "good/bad, dark/light" & all the other seeming opposites will be seen for what they are... One & the same. It's going to be interesting studying ACIM this year & going yet further down the rabbit hole!
OneTree
I had settled on "God is" also as my only reasonably-certain anchor point :-) ... everything else is up in the air still.
I do have a strong sense of "being freed from the cave"; my mental imagery is exactly like coming out of a dark room and into a larger, lighted place. And I know that we all love our cages. I'm trying to deeply know that mine is a place I can go back to if I want to, and in truth that though the cage offers familiarity and the illusion of safety and comfort, it's really no safer than being outside the cage, either. "Danger", "safety", "certainty", "insecurity" ... all the same thing: illusion.
Funny; I just came across this Rumi quotation that seems appropos to the "whats this all about, why am I in the dark" discussion:
"Never lose hope
if the beloved pushes you away,
if he shuts the door on you, don't go,
be patient and wait!
If is your patience that will
draw him back.
If he blocks all your roads,
be sure
he will show you a secret way
unknown to others."
trans. Maryam Mafi & Azima Melita Kolin
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