Earthy Reality Versus Make Believe:

Pretend, for a moment,  that you're driving your car along a major highway at sixty-five miles an hour when you suddenly decide that you  no longer need to stop for traffic lights?  What do you suppose your life expectancy would be?   Unless you have some magic that the rest of us don't have, the answer is a few minutes, or at best, a few hours.  

Why is that?   What's wrong?   In basic terms, the answer is:  You'd be out of touch with earthly reality.   You'd be living in an illusion.   You'd  be ignoring a very important survival principle, and as a result, your life would be in imminent danger of ending suddenly and violently.

Now, that's obviously an extreme example of being out of touch with reality, but what if the illusion you held was something much less dangerous?   Suppose for a moment, that you were like the character in the old, Jimmy Stewart movie, Harvey.  In the movie, Mr. Stewart's character believed he had a invisible friend, a seven-foot-tall, white rabbit.  Such a belief may touch on eccentricity or even insanity, but it's not really dangerous or life-threatening.

.

What About the Less Obvious Illusions?

Do you believe in anything that puts you out of touch with earth-plane reality?   Most of you will answer, no, but are you sure?   There are countless, less obvious illusions that fall between the two extremes mentioned above.  

In this section, we'll  examination some of the most common almost-believable beliefs -- beliefs that few of us ever question -- beliefs that most of us accept as truth simply because others believe they're true.   Some false beliefs have only a few believers while others have literally billions of humans who accept them as true.   Some of these socially accepted illusions that have gotten humans (as a species) into such dire trouble that human extinction is now a real possibility.   

Later, we'll examine some possible alternatives that may make us a bit more functional, but for now, let's start by examining a few fundamental questions about the nature of being.  I offer the list of questions below not to provide answers, but rather to bring to the forefront of your consciousness the fact that we simply do not have answers to these questions.  

*   What is the true spiritual nature of a human being?

*   Are we our physical bodies, or are we something 
     other than our physical bodies?  (Are you a soul with a body,
     a body with a soul, or only a physical body?)

*   Were we created by God at conception?  Or are we 
     eternal beings who always were and always will be?

*   What is the nature of God?   What, if anything,  does God want
     you to do?

*   What are we?  Where did we come from and where 
    are we going?

*   What happens to “us” when our body dies?

*   Is there life after death? If there is life after death, 
    what is the nature of that life?

*   Can there be life without spirit?

*   What is this non-earthly “stuff” we call spirit?

*   Is “Christian one-life-ism” fact or fiction?  Is atheism fact 
    or fiction?  Is reincarnation fact or fiction?   Is there 
    a fourth possibility that we are not aware of?

*  If one religion is right, are the others wrong?  The major
      religions have mutually exclusive beliefs. They can't all be
      completely  right, so what beliefs in which religions are right
       and which are incorrect?

*  Who gets to declare that their religion is right and everyone
    else's religion is wrong?  How do those who claim to be right
     know that they're right? 

*   When does life begin?   When does an individual 
     Earth-bound human life begin?

*   Are abortion, human cloning, and capital punishment 
     religious issues?   If so, what makes them religious issues?
     Who makes that determination?

*   Are abortion, human cloning, and capital  punishment secular
      issues?   If so. what makes them secular issues?
     Who makes that determination?

If you believe you have a absolute irrefutable true answer to any of the above questions, please consider the possibility that you may be living in an illusion.  Because there is no one, single, provable answer to any of these questions, how do you know that your answer is the right one and that everyone with a different belief is wrong?   Ask yourself these three questions:  

1)   What is the difference between reality and a belief about reality?   

2)   Do the beliefs that I adhere to match what the evidence indicates
       is most probably reality, or are they only my beliefs about reality?  

3)   How can I know the difference?

.

.

Book Content  --  Section 06  --  Unmasking our Most Common Illusions

http://www.joy101.org/book-content-06.html