Life’s an Illusion
I’ll get right to the
point. Life is not necessarily what we
think it is. And no, I’m not going to
extrapolate this to the extreme to try to convince you that we really exist on
some obscure planet in a distant spiral galaxy and that all of this we’re
experiencing as “Life” is only a dream.
Of course, it is kind of cool to think that we could waking up any time
now, wandering out to the kptfrun to put on the cuggy and then stepping out on
the prafo to watch the bos rise and enjoy the sounds of the bilbs as they greet
the morning. We naturally, would be all
the more enlightened because of the dream experience of the previous night and
could therefore anticipate an even more productive, enjoyable day at the Snark
assembly plant. (Does excessive caffeine
intake cause everyone to think weird stuff like that? Probably just me, huh?)
Where were we? Oh yeah, the illusion thing… Let’s start with
the physical, material stuff. Everything
you see is not as it appears – or as it is interpreted by our little
brains. When we look around, we “see”
all kinds of solid forms. Computers,
desks, paper, chairs, walls, books, etc.
These things not only look solid, they feel solid and can be held,
moved, sat upon, used to support other solid things - and broken. So they’re all composed of some densely
packed material and therefore are completely “solid”, right?
Not even close, Martha. When you get down to the itty bitty particles
that all of these nice solid objects are made of, you’re gonna find only little
teeny tiny bits of energy, specks of particles and a hell of a lot of space
between them. In fact, there’s a bunch
more space than there are specks of particles. Here’s one of the analogies I
can relate to easily. If we arbitrarily
designated the nucleus of an atom (the combination of the neutrons and protons
in the center of an atom that contain just about all of the atom’s mass) as the
size of a grapefruit, the rest of the atom that is the electron cloud (little
negatively charged particles that are zipping around the nucleus like a bat
outta hell) would take up a space equivalent to a large football stadium. Hmm, let’s see. Grapefruit is the “solid” stuff – football
stadium is the space and energy stuff.
Yeah, there’s a hell of a lot of space inside those little atom
guys.
Of course, when these little
bundles of specks and energy (it would take about a hundred million of ‘em laid
end to end to stretch out to a length of approximately one centimeter) share
their electrons to bond with another atom – or atoms – to form molecules… and
then these molecules link together using the energy of their foundation atoms,
we can wind up with materials that appear and act like they’re completely
solid. OK, for those of you who may tend
to get picky here, we also wind up with other similar things we can touch such
as gas (air) and liquid – the other two states of matter that make up our world.
So where’s that leave
us? Surrounded by, living with, eating,
drinking, using and yes, even mating with “things” that are mostly space and
energy. (I think I just saw several
married ladies’ hands go up to question the energy part of that last
statement. Please put your hands
down. You know what I mean…)
Our physical, material world
then is not exactly what we normally perceive it to be. And, if you’ve been tracking along with me
through the previous articles, it’s fairly easy to see that the rest of our
little world operates pretty much along those same lines. Our perceptions of ourselves, of those around
us and the events and situations in our lives and the rest of the world are
shaped primarily by our inputs and experiences to this point in our lives. Depending on the “quality” of our programming
so far, our personal perceptions of this world can range from fairly realistic
to way outta whack. The great thing
about this though, is that other’s perceptions of our perceptions are tinted by
their own personal or collective experiences (programming) so as a result,
reality (if there is such a thing) clouds up really quick. Whoa… I think I just gave myself a headache
Yes, it’s often extremely
difficult to determine where skewed perception ends and reality begins. Of one thing we can be sure. Our individual perceptions of life are the
foundations for our personal reality. So
I’ll encourage you once again. If your
reality is not everything you desire – if it’s not bringing you the enjoyment
of life you feel you deserve – then it’s worth putting forth a little effort to
examine your “programming” to see if there aren’t a few changes you’d like to
make in your thought processes and the way you’re viewing life. It can be well
worth the effort.
While you’re doing that, I
really do need to get rid of my headache.
I think I'll go pour a cup of cuggy and go out on the prafo to watch the
bos rise…
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