Immersed in a World of our own Creation

Sometimes it's difficult to know that we don't know. Many of us believe and trust what we have been taught to the point that we perceive the world from the prism of our beliefs and values.

As the late spiritual mystic, Dr. Howard Thurman said, "I forgot how easy it is to forget." His words are reminders for us to remember how easy it is for us to forget that our beliefs and values came from the collective illusions disguising themselves as the truth.

Our beliefs and values  create various characters for us to play during different epochs. Some of the characters we play possess the things we most desire in ourselves, while many others display traits we believe are undesirable. And some of us are better or more proficient actors than others.

Some of us get to live our lives on a national or even international scale; however, most of us live our lives in basic anonymity. We're so anonymous that our neighbors don't know we exist.

Unfortunately, we do most of our acting in front of  ten to fifteen people that we call friends, some family members, and whenever we expand ourselves in special events: parties, weddings, funerals, and so on.

If we were Hollywood actors, we would starve to death, because only  minuscule numbers of people were really interested in how we're living our lives. In other words, only a few people ever see us act.

Most of our acting occurs in our minds. We immerse ourselves in a world of our own creation  We created this world from our beliefs and values and our characters act according to them.

The high walls we have erected around our minds protect us from outsiders. This allows us to imagine all types of things existing outside of our minds. It also allows us to create characters that express this imagination.

Sometimes we create horror movies by doing things to create unpleasant situations. While at other times we create love or romantic characters, which result in happy or unhappy endings.

We are usually overwhelmed by fear, worry, lack, limitation, and doubt, which keeps us in a perpetual state of suffering. We fear what will happen to us when we go outside of our minds. We worry about what people are thinking about us.

This allows us to imprison our minds with thoughts of lack, limitation, and doubts about our power to function in the outside world. So whenever we get the chance, we load our minds with as many toxic beliefs as we can, and trick ourselves into believing we are actually living in the outside world.

Meanwhile, we have forgotten we're still living with the beliefs and values that we acquired from society, parents, and life experiences. The illusions of money, fame, political, and social power seem so real. It's as if this is all our lives can ever become.

Nevertheless, the illusions continue changing within our minds. They keep providing us with characters to express ourselves within our own minds. And just like the movies, we find it difficult to believe what's happening is only an illusion.

To free ourselves from our characters, we must understand how we created them. This means we must clearly accept our beliefs and values as illusions. When we can do this, we are able to know that the outside world reflects what's in the inside world (mind).

For us to change the outside world, we must first remove the toxic distortions preventing us from seeing ourselves and the world without the illusions. We are always living according to our beliefs and values, even when we forget they're there.