55 - Illusion, Delusion, and Trust

Everything is ok in our world and lives, yet it does not always feel that way.  Is the world an illusion or a delusion?  To see is to be free.  What happens as the delusion melts?  Trust happens.

These podcasts are here to support your personal path of awakening whatever that might be. I feel they are most powerful when listened to in sequence from podcast one forward because each is built on the last. Though they, also, all stand on their own. If anything does not resonate, please disregard it and follow your heart. All my podcasts and website are free. Enjoy!

Though I am a psychotherapist, and these podcasts are offered to be spiritually helpful, they are not psychotherapy. If psychotherapy is ever needed, please reach out to a psychotherapist.

www.williamecooper.wordpress.com for more support. You may, especially, enjoy the short contemplations and the resource page which gives you some supportive material.

Transcript

Hello. This is William Cooper. Welcome to Awakening Together, Relaxing into Happiness. The thing I'd like to talk about today is everything is okay. That's how it turns out, that's the end of the story.

Everything's okay. Pretty much every spiritual practice is designed to dissolve the separated mind and when you do that, you find out that it's okay. When you do a mantra, you focus on the infinite and it's okay. When you meditate, you're resting in the infinite, your infinite self, and it's okay. You see your thoughts disappear, and you're still there, it's okay.

In the Tibetan book of the dead, over and over they read to the dying and recently deceased person, what's going to happen to that Tibetan person? And they say, for instance, go to the east and you're going to come across fire and all these horrible things and just keep persisting because they don't exist. They're an illusion. Keep going to the white horse with the beautiful god on it and it's okay. And then they go, oops, you didn't do that.

You got afraid and you ran. That's fine. It's okay. Go to the west. Oops, there's going to be a lot of fire and bad things.

Don't pay attention to them. They're illusions. Just keep going to the god on the white horse. Oops. You got afraid again.

Go to the north. And the same thing. Oops. You ran. Go to the south.

The god is waiting for you. It's fine. Don't worry about all those big pits of fire and scary things. It's fry fine. Oops, you got scared and you ran.

And it goes on like that for a long time. It goes way beyond that, every little thing. It's turns out as they read the book, it's okay. Oops. You got afraid.

Oops. You didn't do that. Oops. It's okay. Here's another option.

Here's another option. Isn't life like that? In our last podcast, we talked about the continuum is almost like 2 sides, 2 ends of a stick. On the one end is oneness and on the other end is deep separation. And in that deep separation, the value is that you can feel, because you're separated, afraid and angry and anxious and you can make your own personal movie out of this where you triumph, you go through the fire, you go through the illusions, you have the black and white.

Creation itself is made of duality. You have to have all these horrible and good things to triumph. And isn't that really what a relationship is? It's a mix, right? Wow, this is the best person ever.

Wow, I hate this person. Wow, we've worked things out, it's going great. Oops, it's not. That's a relationship. That's our life, we star in it.

In our life, we star in our life, we are the movie star. And, it's compelling. And we have a whole lifetime to work things through when we ultimately find out it's okay. And if we don't find that out in this lifetime, there are more lifetimes, as many as you need. It's okay.

That's essentially the essence of the Tibetan book of the dead. It's okay. But that we don't need the Tibetan book of the dead to tell us that. That's our life. It's okay.

Now it doesn't always seem okay, I know. It seems some when the more cut off we are, the more distant and horrible things appear. I remember I used to have great existential angst. That's one of the reasons I went through a 4-year program and got a Master of Theology. That's one of the reasons I went to India.

I had great anxiety. I had great fear. And I also had great anger. I'll talk about that in another podcast. But a lot of stuff, hope and hurt, yes, deep abandonment.

I had it all. Maybe you've got some of these things, maybe you've got all of them but it's okay is the bottom line. In awakening, as we relax and we connect to the other end of the spectrum, deeply, the part that's observing in meditation, the awareness, which we're always aware, we find out it's okay right now, even when it's quote unquote not. We're in the world, but not of it, yet we are fully in the world. We really are, Yet we're not.

It's a paradox, right? Well, how did all this happen? Let's talk about it for a second. You've heard the word maya. It means illusion.

That's the Sanskrit word for illusion, or the power of illusion. And the idea is that the infinite God, the infinite one and we talked in our last podcast, it's like we're all fingers of the same hand. It's the one is going down through that hand and even though the little finger senses things quite differently, if it's touching one thing than the thumb, which might be touching something else. The infinite, the one that goes through the arm feels them both and understands the whole picture. Whereas the thumb by itself doesn't nor does the little finger.

It's like all of us individual people are like fingers. And as we go up the arm and we melt into the oneness that we all are; we find that the oneness is simply going down through all of the individual fingers, called people and called dogs and called cats. And through all these fingers, it senses everything. But the finger itself, if it's fixated on, oh, I'm a separate finger, I'm a separate person, it doesn't feel the infinite, the allness. And so, it feels quite cut off.

And when it feels cut off, it feels angry or scared or abandoned. That's the human predicament. But as we awaken, all that is relaxing our barriers and our habitual mindsets so that we open, open, open and we discover, oh, we're the whole entire spectrum. We're both sides of the stick and everything in between. Jesus said the father and I are 1, yet he was an individual and at the same time, 1 with all.

Now that statement is true for all of us, yet I wouldn't go around saying I'm God because that'll get you killed just like Jesus got killed or likely it would. I'd rather go about and say it like Yogananda said it. He says, it's not quite right to say I'm God, better to say that God is becoming me. As all these separations dissolve, the one is coming down through creation, through all the individuality and it's both feeling all the sensation of the fingers and at the same time, fully relaxed and radiant that everything's okay. You are the one, the infinite.

And you can trust how things are working out even if at one end of the stick, it doesn't look so good. It looks like a big tragedy on the other end of the stick as you open up, you realize, oh, it's just fine. This is the play; this is the drama that I'm creating. I'm creating it. The one.

Me. We'll talk more about that aspect later in another podcast, but you get the rough idea. So back to the power of illusion, the one, the infinite, who is you, has the power to create illusion. And what does that mean? That means the one, the infinite, beyond existence can create existence.

Can make existence. And existence appears to be separate from the one. Yet as you awaken, you find out it's all made of the one. It's like, the example I use often, it's like all the guns and, knives and quote, unquote, bad things are made of the substance called love. Everything is love even if it's been shaped into a quote unquote negative thing.

Why on earth would you shape love into a negative thing? It's like shaping freezing water into the shape of a knife and stabbing somebody. Why would you do that? Well, if you're very separated and you believe the illusion of that separation, you might be afraid and you might strike out or you might be angry or you might feel deeply hurt and you want to kill somebody. I don't know.

But you would have your own reason. You get the idea of why that might happen. So, it's a drama and you're not going to watch a movie unless it's exciting and, you know, in our culture, we like movies with guns and knives and everything, so guess what? Our reality is full of guns and knives and everything. That's our real movie.

So, the power of illusion, you as the one, create this illusion. Isn't an illusion like some people say, well, the world is simply an illusion. It doesn't exist. Does it exist? Maya, is it an illusion?

You know what? It does exist. If a bus is heading for me, I'm getting out of the way. How about you? All the people that believe it's an illusion; they're jumping out of the way too.

Why? Because it's not exactly an illusion. It's just as real as from which it flows. It's two sides of the same coin. The infinite, everything beyond existence, is also everything in existence.

Love on each side of the spectrum, each side of the stick. The whole stick is made of love. It might just appear differently. So, it's not an illusion as Adi Shankara said, it's a delusion. Adi Shankara, Adi means first, Shankara means something like guru, a leader of, of a community that's becoming enlightenment.

That's the leader that shows everybody the way. The first chakra, Adi Shankara, he lived about 730 AD, something like that. And he broke the notion previously that, oh, the world is an illusion and where the people were coming from that said the world is an illusion, it's they could see just like I can see and maybe you can see, the world strobing in and out of existence, the world all made of love when it appears like it's knives and, guns and things like that. But it's all love, so it's all an illusion really. I mean, all the hard edges really don't exist when you look at them closely, they melt away.

That's how your emotions can melt away and your troubles can melt away. That's how awakening happens. All the, boundaries melt awa right? So they'd say, well, it's all an illusion. And Adi Shankara said, no, it's a delusion.

The world exists, but the way we see it is deluded. The infinite has the power of delusion. It can make things look different than they are. And that's what makes creation. It makes positive and negative; it creates duality when really there is only oneness.

But it appears like a duality, yet it's all one thing. It's all the infinite. So, delusion. Well, interestingly enough, as the one comes through all the of the individual fingers, we'll call those people, the one can create delusion all through the finger. I, in my own quote unquote individual self, can hallucinate things called thoughts.

A thought is a hallucination. Right? We create it. We can discreate it or create it. All a thought is is a hallucination.

Same, with emotions. We can shape consciousness into an emotion. And we can act on our thoughts and our emotions, which are these hallucinations that we have made. They are delusions because we have the power of delusion as well. We can delude ourselves and others.

That is said to be man's greatest power, greatest city. City is a Sanskrit word that means power and people have lots of cities. The intellect would be a city. The power of delusion is a city. Some people can do miracles, that's called a city.

These various powers. They go on and on. Well, the greatest one is said to be the power to create delusion. You can make a film; you can make a movie, and you can get lost in it and that's called your life. A delusion.

So, here we are sitting in our delusions and I'm here to say it's okay. They're just it's just a movie that we've created. You know the power of, intention or the power of creation or, there's lots of seminars on how to create things out of nothing and how to see your future and all that's true. We can create in this world. We have the power because we are the one, the oneness, the infinite.

We can create. Sometimes what we forget is all of our unresolved stuff, all of our unresolved vibrations are also constantly creating things. And so we create something consciously, but unconsciously we're creating we're undoing all the things that we're trying to create consciously often. And I talk about that in our podcast series, which is a little earlier in these episodes, about creation and intention and things like that. So even when it doesn't look that way, everything is okay.

It's all made of love, it's all made of chocolate, so to speak, even the guns and the knives. It's all okay and you never die as you sit still and let all of the silt and all of the delusion and all of the murkiness kind of settle until you're simply like clear, silent water. You see that it's okay. That everything is okay. That you never die.

You the infinite is infinite forever and that's who you are. So, you can enjoy your movie that you've created, your world, and, at the same time, know that it's okay. You're in the world but not of it. It's okay. It's a delusion.

And as you clarify, it you're no longer deluded. And then you see it's a beautiful painting. You're not so stuck to each individual stroke. You just enjoy all of it, all of the sensations. You enjoy them.

And you begin to let go of those things that don't serve you because yes to see is to be free. And as you rest in clarity, you very much flow from the top down from the infinite, from deep clarity down through your life. And those parts that are murky and causing pain and trouble and disease begin to relax and unwind, and they quit blocking and rather, they begin to flow with health and well-being and radiance and goodness. Everything's okay. And that's where deep trust comes from, a direct experience that everything is okay.

Now at first, if you're in a very separated state, it doesn't seem that way. And so just to believe that everything's okay if you don't directly feel it, that's unfortunate. I I you know, that's like trying to believe something that you don't see as true and it it's not helpful. I think it would slow down your progress. Instead, if you don't feel like everything's okay, then just fully be with that.

Everything doesn't feel okay. But even so, at some level, deep inside, isn't there a tiny, tiny part of you that does feel, okay? Usually, there is. I'm not saying there is for you, but usually, there is. I'll bet there is for you, actually.

Even when and here's the problem. When you're very separated, the mind is all you've got because you're kind of cut off from a lot of your intuition. So, you try to figure it out with your mind and that's okay. And sometimes you can figure out some stuff. But generally, you can only go so far because the mind is simply a tool that hallucinates from where you are.

And when you're separate, it hallucinates from a separate place and so it can only understand so much. So, but even beyond the mind, even when you aren't figuring it out, does some part of you feel like it's okay? I think so, and I'll tell you why. Because it is okay. And on some level, there's just enough intuition to know that.

You are the whole spectrum. You are both sides of the stick and everything between and the whole stick is made of love anyway. So, some part of you can feel that. You can feel the truth of it. So, what do you do?

You do your spiritual practices, and you begin to open up. You don't just try to believe something you don't believe, you don't go over and over, it's okay, it's okay, it's okay, but I really don't feel so, I really feel like it's a disaster but it's okay. No. It's a disaster. But just notice some part of you does feel like, yes, it's okay.

And enjoy that part. Enjoy the whole thing. Just understand what's going on. You might go, maybe I am the whole spectrum and maybe I am really attached to one end of the stick right now. As you do your spiritual practices, you open up.

Some spiritual practices are psychotherapy. That is a powerful practice. Sometimes medication is helpful. Whatever works. You know, that's all that matters.

You know, in the infinite, who cares? Right? Let's not get a mindset, let's just use what works. Sometimes going for a good jog works. A guided meditation works.

But in these podcasts, we're going much deeper, aren't we? We're looking at the big picture because to see is to be free. Okay, trust. That's what we're talking about. How you get there will be different for every person.

But I am confident you will get there because it is okay. I know that absolutely. And so do you on some level because we're all the same. We're all the one. Okay, I've enjoyed talking with you and we're going to continue kind of looking at this and, approaching it from different angles for just a little bit until we fully can melt into trust.

Have a good week. I look forward to talking to you soon. Take care. Bye.