Keeping It Real in an Unreal World: Staying as Real as Possible in a World of Illusion

PRELUDE…

…In this book, Keeping it Real in an Unreal World, I examine the reality of illusion (or the illusion of reality?). I talk about how we can come to pursue our best efforts at finding something that resembles a path through the foggy haze of an earth-dwellers life, and the fuzzy twists and turns and convolutions of existence.

If our voyage is one of expectation, our reality will become just that. It’s a perceptual thing; how we each perceive it is a highly individual matter. So, with an open mind, I promise that rewards will come out of your enthusiastic reading participation.

Don’t assume you know anything whatsoever about real life; I think it goes better for us when we think of it like that. In reality, each day we start out new, and each new day presents itself with an entirely new set of illusions.

In sorting out the illusions, we have the chance to make things happen in our lives.

The book is presented in five sections. To begin with, in Section One I examine the whole matter of reality and illusion. Then, in the next section I talk about the individual self, and what reality means to him.

The third section explores reality close to home, in the lives of our mind, and with our friends and family.

Section Four moves into the outer world, where a global view of reality is addressed.

Finally, in the last section (Five), I take on the great and perennial metaphysical questions. I do my best to apply the human notions of God and Universe to the world of the thinking self.

Of course I am only sharing thoughts on how I narrowly see things. You will hopefully have your own spin on reality, different from everyone else in the world. Keeping it real comes in many shapes, sizes and colors. Each of us looks at it uniquely, and what you are about to experience in this book is merely one tiny sliver of reality perspective.

When you are finished reading the book, I hope you will have given more consideration to the matter of what’s real and not real for yourself. I trust you will take valuable living information from it.

Reality. It’s a funny thing. How we negotiate our way through it goes a long ways towards whether we adapt or fail in our experiences and encounters with life.

Enjoy your journey, both through the book, and through life!

SECTION ONE

REALITY AND ILLUSION EXAMINED

1   Is anything ever as it seems?

2   Is reality really real?

3   Everything is real; nothing is real

4   The unreality of waking up each day

5   The human organism: Army of sixty trillion cells

6   It gets interesting when things move

7   The reality of high and low vibrations

8   An oasis of hope

9   Being real with being fully alive

10   Being real about death

11   Haven’t we been here before?

12   The shifting momentums of illusion

One

Is anything ever as it seems?

In this twisting, turning world of half-illusion, we do well as we try and keep our perceptions and experiences as real as we possibly can. Or is that really true? In reality, life is a series of dark caves, and we are (metaphorically) like groping cave walkers, with the use of only flickering flame torches and fading flashlights to guide us along our bleary way.

It’s already tricky business to negotiate a rendition of reality in even a few scattered aspects of our lives, so doing what we can to stay real, and depicting as many accurate images of life as we realistically can, are fairly certain to be helpful matters along the way as we go…aren’t they?

During the vast majority of our participation in what we could easily think of as the great illusion of life, we seem to be always coming to know that what we thought we were seeing, we weren’t really seeing after all. Our realities call for constant re-vision, and the same holds true for our other senses as well-what we merely think we hear, smell, touch, taste…it’s not true, we’re really not doing what we think we are.

Bear with me; it turns out that the body of our living is being filtered through the subjectivity of our minds and of our personalities. In reality, the whole set of processes is just one individual take on the matter. How can we be so sure that it is as have concluded? Our egos are stubborn about what we think it all means, but deep within us we sometimes catch glimpses of knowing better.

Does that make sense at all?

From a profound space within us, once in a while, at least, we get to see through the charade, and embrace the superfluous nature of our common existence.

Life, by that nature of being such an illusory guessing game, keeps us continually in the shadow of doubt. While on an ongoing basis we are revising what our current reality is from what we had previously thought it was, this turns out to be something required of us to do, otherwise we get caught up in a previous time and space, and get even more out of touch with all that transpires around us.

The (veiled) truth in the matter remains that in the minute we settle into one particular viewpoint, or reality, another cognitive counter-force presents itself as being still more of the real thing. So we promptly switch to that newer impression, and we are quite normal to abandon the old illusion, and gravitate towards what we consider a newer, clearer reality. This happens at least until that one begins to erode…in favor of yet something else. Follow me?

Frustrating? No, not at all…its just part of how life works, and there need be nothing frustrating at all about that. Life is life. Isn’t it?

What is going on here does not necessarily constitute a good thing, nor it is of course a bad thing. It’s all just our reality unfolding, and us getting busy at the work of unraveling it, sorting it all out. Life turns out to be a matrix of juxtaposing realities, whether we ever see this clearly, or not.

The continual and perpetual state of flux and change that goes on in our lives is also going on all over the universe at all times. Nothing is standing still; nothing is remaining constant. Thus, we are right to conclude with the question of whether anything is really ever as it seems, and also to wonder if what we merely think we see, hear, touch, smell, know (and on and on and on endlessly) is not that after all.

All of this is what we know as the intricacy of the weaving web of our lives, and all of it is very much okay. There is no reason to become confused or bewildered about life. Life is a confusing, bewildering thing, if you really think about it, that is, so usually we just don’t think about it. But that doesn’t satisfy our curiosities not to think about it.

We are wise to strive to see the clarity nestled away in the Whole of life. That the people and places and things we encounter in the wonderful adventures of our lives are very different than we might first imagine, and changing all the while still. Part of the great voyage of our mortal escapade is experiencing the continual delight of seeing that what we thought it was, after all was said and done, turned out not to be that at all. Read that part again, perhaps, and see if it makes more sense the second time around.

So…as we become comfortable with that which, by its nature, is not really very comfortable, we grow more and more. comfortable with it. The bewilderment and confusion of things not being what they seem to be is something of which we can reconcile. It’s essentially a matter of accepting the idea to do so, and then practicing the doing of it.

Well, this is the start of it. Reality is a tricky thing. So no wonder I sound ambiguous about it. But we will sort is out as we go.

Two

Is reality really real?

In this oftentimes-unreal world of ours, at least we can say that reality is real. Or can we? Who said reality was real? How are we so sure of that? Why do we treat something as if that something was what it only appeared to be? This is surely a most distasteful trait in humans. Shouldn’t we question the core of things a little bit more than what we do? Shouldn’t we probe a bit deeper into them, in order to determine their truer meaning and intent? We accept the surface of things, noting the coat of paint on the wall, and never questioning the wall itself. What, after all, happens when we don’t question our realities?

Is the obvious as real as it seems? When we think so, we usually start to take things too seriously after a while. This isn’t always something good for us.

One thing that could be said about life, even if nothing else seems to be certain, is that it is not so serious as we first think; we all know we are not escaping this thing alive, don’t we? As we seriously cling to the scripts of our lives, we forfeit our vision of any bigger picture in favor of the multiplied little ones we are currently focused upon. We might readily become wrapped up in a reality that becomes life or death, feast or famine, loving or hating, winning or losing. Those sets of opposites are not what they really seem either. They arenot what they seem at all, and we miss the point when we think they are.

An old story is told about Gandhi, whom, while once a passenger on a train, was asked to jot something down of newsworthy influence for a young reporter. He simply wrote this: I am my life. It might be getting as real as we can get when we start to comprehend that we are just our lives. While we are never going to grasp it all-not in this present form of ours at least-we can couple up with the illusion of our ongoing existences, and know that we are, at least for a time, just our lives. We can operate from the only location we presently seem to have available to us. But it really isn’t serious as we do this, although many of course would have us believe otherwise. They would set our course on a quite purposeful one, filled with meaning and goals, and laden with the messages they have come to know that are God’s.

Their confidence in such things doesn’t need to sway us. We can find the courage to abandon confidence, in favor of questioning, and in so doing, insure that our journey might not end so abruptly after all. If we choose not to, we don’t have to wonder if reality is real or illusion; what does it matter anyway?

Gandhi also suggested the profound recommendation that follows as to how best to live our lives: Detach and enjoy. When we first think about this, it does not sound extremely profound, as we try and put it into practice in our daily lives, it becomes so much more than those three simple words. Wrapping our brain around the concept of detach and enjoy is almost too simple, but like the easily embraceable greased pig, so much more often than not, our pursuits result in us walking away quite empty-armed.

There may come a day when Man might question even the existence of a historical mortal by the name of Gandhi, (or of Jesus, or of the Buddha, or of Einstein, et al) let alone what they really said, and what they really stood for. But no matter, we’re surely not here just to get it right. Is reality simply solving part of the great puzzle of life, or might it more accurately be stated as staying in our moments, and knowing, if knowing absolutely nothing else, that at the very least, we are our lives?

Three

Everything is real; nothing is real

When we were still little people (before we got all grown up, that is) it didn’t take much for many of us to become convinced that the skies above us were filled in general with cloud-men, cloud-animals and cloud-things. While in one sense we were just seeing clouds, the activities in those clouds, to us as children, were thrilling manifestations to behold.

Sometimes we were encouraged by our early teachers, as they even helped to point out to us the comings and goings in those big popcorn fluffs, and it seemed to stimulate our already-active imaginations to see all of what there was to see in them. Then a day came when we stopped looking up. We never got into the habit again, having abandoned it in favor more of reason…too bad for us.

Recently I was a passenger on a long international flight. After a prolonged period of time spent in staring out of the window I asked the flight attendant if she would please look out and tell me what she saw. I had noted many things and people out there, in the midst of some unbelievable cloud formations at 35,000 feet, all moving about, and going to and fro, and I wanted to know if she could see what I saw.

Without a moment’s hesitation, she leaned down and peered out the window…then turned to me, winked, and said, yes, of course she could see them too.

She even pointed out one that I had missed!

Having suspended my imagination for many years on the childhood possibilities that abound, I am starting to come around to seeing them re-emerge in this modern, new version of my existence…maybe she was doing the same thing as me?

The matter of reality is a tricky one, to be sure. Just as it could be argued that everything we see-feel-touch-encounter in our physical world is real, we might likewise, and just as easily, make the case for everything in it being not so real, too. Do you, after all, really think that all of what you are experiencing in this life is really what it appears to be? It is both naive and weird to imagine such things, and yet, much of what appears to be real seems to turn out to be verifiably so. It’s all somewhat of a paradox, for both everything and nothing are real, and all of this is playing itself out at the very same time.

A philosophy of fence straddling seems to be a safe way to assess the invisible divisions between reality and illusion. Can you manage that? The reason for this is that truth and spirituality are so closely tied to the rather delicate matters of paradox. The extremities of opposites can both be true in this world, as we can know reality in an unreal world just as frequently as we can know unreality in a real world. With the wizardry of paradox, then, reality is both real, and not real, at the very same time.

A tree might thus be viewed upon as a tree, or as a swarming mass of atoms. When we look at it, what do we see? When we look at it, do we see it with our eyes only, or with our total mind and intellect?

A dog is a dog, and also a rather sophisticated collection of molecular chains. When we behold the dog, we can just make out the outline, and process the barking, and note a few colors, and patterns. Or, we can think deeper thoughts about the dog that reflect more of the reality that little Spot really represents?

We humans are physical beings, can there be any doubt that we are spiritual beings at the very same time? When we are simply viewed with eyes, what is it that we see? The mass of humanity may just be clumps of passing form to us, or we can look deeper, and see more. We know for a fact, living with ourselves as we do, that we ourselves are somewhat complex. Can we not then superimpose that same complexity, and even more of it, onto the body of humanity?

When we do, we see so much more than mere physical form. We see all kinds of things happening, not the least among them being what is going on in the deeper, spiritual and metaphysical aspects of human existence.

We mortals are physical mass, yet near-invisible energy, and invisible spirit, going on at once. So what are we, really? And what is everything else in our world as we penetrate the outlines of what they only seem to represent? It is all just what it seems to be. And it is all not what it seems to be; it is both real, and not real.

A cloud is a cloud. A cloud is also precisely whatever else we want to see it to be. What is a cloud to you?

Four

The human organism: army of sixty trillion cells

While we may think we are just bodies going through the motions in life, in reality, we are so much more than simply that. Who of us can readily count to a trillion? It’s a bit difficult to really conceptualize a trillion units of anything. Now try grasping onto the reality of sixty thousand billion cells, because that’s how large the average army of cells consists of in a typical human being.

Sixty thousand billion cells (sixty trillion)-the number, written out in long form, would look like 60,000,000,000,000-is about the number of cells, give or take a few thousand billion, that are floating around in these human bio-organisms of ours called body-minds.

Our cells are coming and going all the time. And at least each six or seven years, or so, every molecule in every cell in our human bodies has undergone a process of complete and total regeneration. The ramifications for just this simple fact are incredible. Chief among them is the question of memory: if all of the physical-ness of what we are is completely and totally replaced every six or seven years-and much more often in most parts of our bio-organisms-then one might logically ask someone at the age of twenty five, or fifty, or seventy-five a very legitimate question: How it is that we can manage to remember our own childhood? What, in other words, is doing this remembering?

Think about this mind-boggling reality for a minute.

Obviously, something non-physical has to be involved in the process. A realistic deduction is that we are not just physical beings, but that indeed something about us is very non-physical (very spiritual?) and it can be taken into account as we make our assessments of who and what we are.

Just who and what are we then? If we are just bodies, bodies die, and so we, too, follow in death. So this would be the end of the human story. But if we are more than merely material manifestations (something other than walking, talking, breathing slabs of animal meat, if you will) then just what more are we?

As for the old molecules, to where did they run off? They don’t die, albeit they can’t! Molecules are impossible to kill; they just change. But where did they go? If they were a part of us before, and now they are not, then where