Experience has both reality and illusion components in it. Both worlds are present yet one is superimposed over the other. The illusion has been superimposed over reality. This view of the world becomes the personal world of the individual. The personal realty the “I” calls truth.
What is REAL?
For the most part, the” I” is unaware of the superimposed world as an overlay of the real world. It experiences life as “just the way it is, was, or will be.” Consider this is not the truth, only a perspective; a personal way of seeing and experience each and every moment of life. Reality is life – just the way it is – without the superimposed opinions, judgments, and evaluations that the isolated individual perspective must add to “life”. Without the assistance of ‘one who sees the world as it really is’, “I” cannot distinguish reality from illusion. Reality is obscured when one is in the world of illusion.
Who is it that sees the world truly? Consider it is the Holy Ghost, Holy Spirit, The Spirit of God, the Higher Self. By many names it is The Authentic Divine SELF. This SELF reveals ITSELF to the “I” moment by moment and replaces the “I’s” confusion with ITS clarity. The Authentic Divine SELF is not deceived by the “I’s” misperceptions. IT sees from a higher perspective, free from the fog and haze of a lifetime of accumulated distortions.
“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about language, ideas, even the phrase each other doesn’t make any sense.” Rumi
“Whoever enters the way without a guide will take a hundred years to travel a 2 day journey!” Rumi
I want to share with you my perspective and what I have noticed about these two worlds and the power that has come into my life as I began to distinguish them in my life. I wear glasses to correct myopia and astigmatism. These are the results of mis-shaped lenses in my eyes. The distorted lenses causes the light to not focus accurately on the retina of my eye and without my glasses, the world appears, fuzzy, hazy and distorted. When something is very close to me, the amount of distortion is much less. I see it clearly. I can read a book and focus on the details of an object I hold close to me. The further something is from me the less detail I can make out. My glasses act to correct for the distortion caused by the lenses in my eyes. But the glasses only work for me when I wear them! On my night stand they make no difference to my vision. My glasses don’t even care if I wear them or not. They are always willing to assist me though – I just have to choose to wear them.
The Holy Spirit works something like that. The Holy Ghost is always willing and able to correct my vision. Yet He waits for me to ask for His assistance. That is the nature of love. It waits patiently for me to choose it. No upset not retaliation for waiting. Love is kind, accepting, and available – always.
To continue the analogy: Before I got glasses, I had no awareness that the world I was seeing was not the way the world actually was. Things far away were ‘supposed’ to be less distinct and hazy. There wasn’t a problem for me to see it that way until I “needed” to see more clearly. I was 12 when I got my eyes check out by an Optometrist. When I walked out of the Eye Doctors office wearing my first pair of glasses, I saw the world differently. The colors of the leaves popped with brightness. The street signs were vibrant, I could clearly read them. I saw dust and dirt and tiny things that I’d never noticed before. The mountains were alive with trees, shrubs and lowering color. I was living in a new world. Had the world actually changed? – Not really, but for me it had. I was now seeing it differently.
The Apostle Paul told of this phenomenon as he described spiritual conversion and awakening as moving from “seeing through a glass, darkly” to seeing face to face. (1 Corinthians 13:12)
I am spiritually seeing more clearly now than any time in my life. I am aware of the experience of seeing clearly in contrast to my experiences of seeing things from the past. It has taken time to be able to distinguish the source of my various experiences. The symptoms of distortion were not always clear to me. Now I know that my feelings are my best guidance and indicators of perceptual distortions. Feelings come in two categories for me. Simply put, one feels good and the other feels bad.
The Holy Spirit – my Higher Self – communicates through my feelings, using the mechanism of my feeling emotional body to indicate when I perceive accurately or not – interpreting reality as it is, rather than as I imagine it to be. When I feel good my seeing and experience of life is more closely aligned with what is real than when I’m feeling bad. Feeling bad now means my interpretation of life is not aligned with reality, not life.
The lesson I learned for me to be happy is to turn the authority to assess and interpret life over to the Holy Ghost. Left to my own interpretation I would see a world that threatened me and a world that I would have to change or wait to be changed for me to feel good.
For example…
Looking back through my life, I now realize that many, many experiences were the determiners of who I became. The moments of pain, suffering, and disappointment were the times I decided by myself what the truth was. I decided what I was, what I could or could’t do, become, or express. Now I realize that it wasn’t the world that made me the way I wound up being, it was my limited perception, my life restrict ted point of view that made me decide what was possible to become. Each life experience determined by one preceding it colored and distorted what actually was happening, Life now was losing it simplicity, its grace, flow and joy. My undistinguished, unexamined beliefs based on past misperceptions and limiting decisions were the “sayers” of what happened. They became the commentators and play-by-play announcers in the ongoing drama of my life. These little voices in the background of every moment, constantly spoke their opinions, their judgments, using their distorted value system to give meaning to my life – moment by moment, never quieting down, always sharing their insights, their knowing as my truth.
“You’re not big enough – not smart enough” “There isn’t enough time or money” “Don’t say that, they won’t like it – you could get in trouble” “Be careful” “Slow down” “Speed up” “STOP!”
The nightmare in my mind has become a background to everything I experience; painting each moment on top of this noisy, fearful canvas.
Undoing the perceptual distortions painting the canvas of my life has become the only work to do. I realize that I cannot do it; only one who sees clearly can take that job on. Earlier I said: I gave the Holy Spirit the authority to make the corrections – I meant it. The Holy Ghost is the higher perspective of SELF. From there, the truth of reality is known and revealed. My part in this is to be willing, 100% willing to be at the source of my life and turn over the perceptional evaluation to ONE WHO SEES CLEARLY. I am responsible at each and every moment, I choose to see as God sees or I decide alone. To decide alone is to be stuck with the world of illusion, the world filled with the fruits of the “Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil” and in that world I die, moment by moment, until death has its’ final victory!
To choose for God’s point of view, facilitated by the Holy Spirit and brought about in Christ is to be filled with Truth, Light, and Joy – The fruits of the “The Tree of Life.” What is required? It is simple – a desire to know truth, a willingness to see things differently, and letting what I had made be; having given up trying to fix and change it.