The One Illusion
La Única Ilusión
A reflection on the single illusion that underlies all others: the belief that what I am is bound by this body and mind. Freedom, the teacher suggests, is not achieved but recognized, received not on our own terms but as something already here.
The One Illusion
A reflection on the single illusion that underlies all others: the belief that what I am is bound by this body and mind. Freedom, the teacher suggests, is not achieved but recognized, received not on our own terms but as something already here.
I will try another experiment, a talk without questions. What is this illusion that we can be free from? All illusions are supported by one illusion. Every misinterpretation of reality, of what I am and of what all of this is, rests upon a single illusion.
We could say there is a reason for the illusion. There is a wanting of it. It is not a curse. In a sense, it is chosen. It is a preferred way of living and experiencing, and that is the resistance. Until nothing is wanted more than the ending of that illusion, we will keep choosing it, because every other wanting is based upon it.
Something must be sacrificed
So, in a sense, something of what we want must be sacrificed: to have things on our own terms, to have satisfaction on our own terms. But this ultimate satisfaction, this ultimate freedom, is available if we are willing to let it be not on our terms, to let it be given without merit, given not through achievement but through grace. Strangely, we might imagine that to be great news.
For some reason, we really want things on our terms. We want to gain, to achieve, to make things be the way we want them to be. Yet this ultimate satisfaction, the ending of the struggle, is always available here. So any effort we make to wake up through our own achievement and merit is just more of the same illusion.
Surrender as defeat and reward
It is a surrendering, and in a sense that surrendering is the ultimate defeat. But it is rewarded by reality: the recognition of our true nature. The reward is peace, freedom, and well-being. Yet it is not achieved. It was always here. Our true nature always was.
When we are in this so-called journey of awakening, which is in a sense a dance and a wrestling match with reality, with ourselves, it may be a slow process or a faster one, more dynamic and intense or gentler. But ultimately it is about seeing. What is the true nature of that which we call I when we say I am?
The assumption at the root
We begin by believing that the reality of the I is this body, this mind, the mind that arises from the body, bound by the body and destined to suffer its conditions and its needs. From the assumption that what I am arises from this body and this mind, there is suffering. There is fear: the fear of my ending, the fear of undergoing unavoidable pain. And so what we try to do is avoid pain and avoid ending.
But ending is not only death, although ultimately that is what it is: the imagination of what the death of the body will mean for that which I am. In the day to day, it is the ending of what I am relying on in order to rest. The sense that what I need in order to rest is a relationship, or a better relationship, or a more pleasant one, or a better job, or a job at all, or a spiritual opening, an energetic experience, and so on. Whatever the mind is busy with all day is the sign of what I believe I am and of what I believe is needed in order to finally arrive at a resting place. I tell myself I will be able to rest when this and that are achieved through effort and control, striving and stress.
The trap of doing nothing
Hearing this can be tricky, because we can interpret it as, "Well, then there is nothing to do. I will just do nothing." And that becomes another strategy for arriving somewhere, another agenda for the same purpose.
So the way through is not by modifying what is happening, but by seeing more deeply, more closely, more accurately what is actually happening. What is the nature of thought? What is the nature of that which I call I? The more we see this reality, the more we see the nature of the I am, the more that illusion begins to dissolve. It may be sudden or slow. It can come and go.
What the illusion actually is
The illusion, ultimately, is the sense that what I am is limited, separate, that it has a beginning and an end, that it is born in time and space. The experience of this body, this mind, and this world makes it seem so convincingly real. That is why it is said that this world is illusion, illusion only in the sense that it is not what it appears to be.
It is real. It is alive. It is miraculous. It is beautiful. It is not separate. It is not out there. I did not come into it. In a sense, it came out of me. It comes out of this. It is appearing out of I am. The I am is prior. Between the alpha and the omega is the I am.
This can be tasted
This is not theoretical. It can be tasted and known right now, as you know breaths, as you know sounds, as you know sensations and thoughts. I came into this world as a thought. Everything appearing right now, this whole experience, everything that appears out there, is a thought. Everything that exists out there is a thought. Everything is appearing here: not inside, not outside, not before, not after. That is experience.
To see this more and more clearly requires a very gentle, honest attention. Honest in the sense of being willing to recognize the illusions within our own experience, our own interpretations and thoughts. The tastes of the nearness of this truth have different flavors: sometimes shock, sometimes rushes of fear, but often a taste of delicious aliveness, intimacy, beauty, and freedom.
What we are searching for
The more we recognize this, and realize that it is tasted always right here and right now, and that our thoughts of tomorrow are only imaginations and thoughts appearing right now, we begin to understand that what we are searching for is the nature of this reality, the taste of this reality. It can be experienced as God, and ultimately as I am, with God not being separate. These are only names for the same taste of the presence, the love, the peace, the freedom we are looking for.
That is what I have.