To understand the nature of delusion is very powerful. To know that one’s own mind can put up an illusion that can fool the mind that made it is liberating. I once believed the I Ching had been written all those hundreds of years ago just to fool me in the here and now. The next thought I had was that I must be very paranoid to believe such a foolish thing. It was good to realize that I was paranoid. It was much better than thinking that the universe was somehow against me personally.
Yes, interesting read on Delusion. Would that be the same as people having their own reality..I find that some people I have been close with in my life..have their own reality..which sometimes can be so different…due to childhood history. Therefore as an adult they cannot *see* beyond the imprinted emotional scars (for lack of a better word). This can lead to not being able to communicate well.
So, I find myself rather than being so quick to form a opinion about the person. I ask them lots of questions to see what makes them tick. And maybe form some common ground of communication. To me it is like Delusion can be such a struggle in ones life.
Commuicating with friends can possibly bring it light, and try to bring some form of liberation to the mind.
Hope I am not rambling, but I really like to study people and wonder why they think the way they do??? And not get Delusioned myself in the process.
Thanks for the blog..!
I had a similar reaction to the I Ching when I lived on the Farm in 78. I didn’t recognize it as paranoia at the time – just labeled it an ego trip, I guess. I had no antecedents to articulate my reactions, so it does help to get your take on this.
Later on, I marveled at how inciteful the I Ching authors were to be able to map the human landscape so effectively. I was very stoned and digging out a bunch of subconscious, as it was, and, apparently, the I Ching stuff tapped in even deeper than I was going at the time.
Another thing I remember is being clear on a lot of stuff and being incredibly scared(paranoid) at the same time. I was extremely sensitive to suggestion(delusion?) Like keeping the demons out of my freshly opened head. Bob Marley was awesome because he was so clean and got me high when I was tripping. Incidentally, I had never tripped that hard on acid.
Eventually, I stuffed that ball of intensity back into my sub conscience but at least it’s more accessible, now.
I am grappling with communication. For example, I’ve had a recurring debate with a few people about spirit. They each seemed to believe that spirit did not go beyond astral vibrations. One guy even insisted that time is what created spirit. I tried to argue that time created the material part but somehow he couldn,t accept that idea. Also, a common thread was a belief in a hierarchical relationship between man and beast, between beast and beast, and even between man and woman. I’ve had a lot of fun debating but find myself at a loss for clarity when I got attached to getting my point across. This Delusion thing got me checking to see if I am off base somewhere in here. Like, “What am I reacting to?”
Whenever I am confronted with the insistence of ‘better-than-worse-than ‘above-and-below’ ‘arbitrator-follower’ I get a ‘red flag’ and want to clarify the situation. What’s amusing is that it reminds me of wanting to ask you questions when I lived on the Farm and thinking, “I should be able to answer this myself”. Sometimes I would have a reaction to something and go, “What was that?” and then come to realize that it stirred up an answer to a question I had been carrying around for a while. I go in and out of clarity so this idea that I can fool myself improves my humer.
This Delusion thing got me digging into my reactions to other stuff, too. I came to articulate the difference between being an optimist and ‘Pulling on the UP Handle’. Being an optimist implies that being a pessimist is a necessary balance. As an avowed optimist I was buying into a degree of self delusion, like saying, “Things will improve without my help.” The ‘up handle’ is cool because it’s like saying, “I may not see my way clear right now and maybe I’m just fooling myself but I’ve been in a better place so I’m going to try to groove until I find it”
That’s the only way I can dig ‘better-than-worse-than’ – not blaming anybody and having a direction to work on. And that better place doesn’t have to be longing for the good-old-days, either. Garrison Keillor responded nicely when he was asked if he missed the old days of Prairie Home Companion. He said something like, “I don’t get sentimental about that old stuff. It distracts me from what’s going on right now”
I reached adulthood when I realized I would never be innocent again. From that point of view, self delusion is my substitute for lost innocence so as to avoid uncomfortable astral or shaky karma. Come think of it, some of the funniest comics illuminate our endless delusions. It’s like there’s a bit of the Bodhisattva in a lot of people who are not even thinking along those lines.
Thanks for staying connected.