This article reveals the essentual illusions in life we must manage better to find truth and beauty in life.
Managing the Grand Illusion & All The Others Too
By
Bill Cottringer
“When he to whom one speaks does not understand, and he who speaks himself does not understand, that is metaphysics.” ~Voltaire
Achieving lasting success in anything involves learning how to better manage one grand illusion that drives 5 other essential illusions that have been perpetually debated by philosophers, metaphysicians and scientists since the beginning of consciousness. The grand illusion has to do with the resulting dualistic universe of opposites, such as life and death, right and wrong, success and failure and all the infinite other yang and yins, that either do exist in reality or which we just created in our language and minds. At the least, we have probably made them worse by contaminating them with our dualistic judgements. The 5 essential illusions seem to be inseparable from human functioning in the material world, whether all the stuff we perceive and interact with is really “out there” or just “in here” or both or something else. These necessary illusions include:
- A created universe with a beginning and ending. The problem here is, that the quantum equations of science today have significantly disproved the popular Big Bang Theory of the universe’s creation and predicted ending, and now see the universe as always being in existence forever. Paradoxically, this allows for the other illusions to prevail, but at the same time, also be managed more productively.
- Time’s sense of mechanical movement from the past to the present to the future. The more viable concept of time, more in line with current scientific research, is the so-called eternal now moment, continuously expanding back and forth within itself and just appearing to be repeating itself with different content. In essence time isn't going anywhere. It came with the universe.
- Space “out there” containing real objects in a container. The trouble here of course is what contains the container, which is a nonsensical question that simply can’t be answered with the words that created the dilemma.
- Free will in destroying realities we don’t want and creating newer ones we do want. The trouble here is that all present choices hoping for future gains are really just conditioned from the illusion of the “past” in timelessness. (but standby for when free will does become a potential reality).
- Separation from the ultimate Oneness of the universe, with the paradoxical gift and curse of ego self-awareness, which only humans have. Maybe because of the grand illusion of dualism, life seems to be a very basic back and forth movement between separation and union (i.e. life and death), even when we use our own separated uniqueness to rejoin the Oneness without any separations.
If I have lost you at this point, please rejoin me to make practical use of this knowledge in managing all these illusions better with these usable strategies:
1. If the universe has always existed and will always continue to, there really is no rush to correct mistakes or achieve what we want. All the problems and their solutions that can exist are right there in front of us for immediate use.
2. Knowing that time is not really sequential but more as a convenient measurement, and rather only real as the present moment, also slows us down to notice something very important which we have been failing to notice all along (next under # 4).
3. Sorry but I am going to skip the space illusion since it is only the extreme motion at the end of time that doesn’t really exist either.
4. The potential for exercising true free will only occurs when we begin to question the realness of these illusions. This realization leads to focusing more in the present now moment to notice the only real choice we have right now—how we react to the precise position in which life has moved our pawn piece on the chess board. This is when we evolve in our awareness to create free will to become more sensitive to moments of opportunity or danger as they really are in nature, before they seem to come and go in a time that doesn’t really exist in the way we frame the problem.
5. The sense of uniqueness and separation from everything else in the universe is probably magnified as half of a polar opposite created by our dualistic minds. Regardless of whether the polar opposites really exist or not, this perspective can help us become more sensitive to how judgments can destroy the potential pleasure of the moment and influence us to stop claiming one side of the two-sided coin as superior to the other, rather than just neutrally different, without any good-bad value. We should be waiting to enjoy and learn what we may from the experience, before prematurely writing it off.
6. The end result in ending all this nonsensical dualism of illusions, or at least managing them more productively, is that we get twice as much in half the time and that is a real bargain maneuvering through today’s hurried overload.
Now If I have lost you again, let’s all come full circle to home without confusing words. It is high time to let go of the fears that come from the wrong perspective of allowing these illusions to manage us. Only then can we start actually managing these illusions to get closer to where we want to be so we can get on with experiencing life, learning and improving one moment at a time to do our part in making the most out of this opportunity that really isn’t an illusion. The opportunity of course, is to notice the choice we have immediately before us, to react to where we are and what we are doing, right now. That is where the saying, “Take care of the seconds and then the minutes, hours, days. weeks, months, and years will all take care of themselves.”
“Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun.” ~Alan W. Watts
William Cottringer, Ph.D. is Executive Vice-President of Employee Relations for Puget Sound Security Patrol, Inc. in Bellevue, WA., along with being a Sport Psychologist, Business Success Coach, Photographer and Writer living in the mountains of North Bend. He is author of several business and self-development books, including, You Can Have Your Cheese & Eat It Too (Executive Excellence), The Bow-Wow Secrets (Wisdom Tree), and Do What Matters Most and “P” Point Management (Atlantic Book Publishers) Reality Repair Rx (PublishAmerica), and Reality Repair (Global Vision Press) Bill can be reached for comments or questions at (425) 652-8067, 425-454-5011 or bcottringer.pssp.net or ckuretdoc.comcast.net
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"In essence time is[n’t] going anywhere."
And, the idea of a "container" for the universe does certainly seem to be ridiculous. As far as a start and an endpoint to the universe. At 14+ billion years and counting, using our puny measure of time, with our lifespans around 100 years at this point (one crazy genius is predicting we will reach immortality by 2050), I say, who really cares? ;-)
I really like your explanation of dualism because as I've grown older, and perhaps, wiser, I realized, except for extremes like brutality and murder, much of the wrong/right causes that people advocate are really part of a continuum of value and should be honored rather than hated for their differences.
"6. The[y] end result in ending all this…"
I appreciate your explanation. This is one of the most uplifting and insightful articles I've read here in some time. It certainly goes along with my philosophy of situational ethics where I do not fall back on old timeworn and obsolete fears, beliefs, and mores to deal with the situation that comes up, but rather use logic and knowledge that is easily acquired (especially now via the Internet) to decide whether or not to accept or reject a particular path of action. The key is "action." Without action, ideas are just that… Vapor in the wind.
Ron