Awakening to Delusion

At the end of the day, to realize delusion is the function of awakening i.e. to realize that this nature of delusion is perpetuating in nearly all of our so-called moment to moment “reality”. When we live by this so-called deluded truth of our own, we seldom question our thoughts, not to mention what we perceive, feel, touch, hear, see, smell etc. This is exactly what delusion does – not knowing what is true, and thus making what one knew before, true for the moment now – a typical example of delusion. It may sound relatively subjective as one can only know what one knows and does not know what one does not know – as such it is alright wherever one is. Yet, if we look into the arena of our lives, we get glimpses of our past experiences that points to the fact that our lessons of pain many a times are due to the ignorance of what is at that given moment.

Delusion and ignorance rise hand in hand together. Because of the nature of delusion, the mind inclines toward not noticing what is exactly in front, thus ignoring the obvious. One common error in nearly all of our life’s transaction is this thing called “experience”. We experience having a new house, we experience having a good relationship, we experience stress in our work place, we experience someone betraying us once or again, and many more uncountable experiences we have within a day. In truth, we can’t experience anything that is outside except experiencing our perception about it. Thus we can’t experience a new house except our meaning about the house. If our so-called new house is plague with lots of malfunctions, we have to experience the meanings of those malfunctions, hence our unpleasantness deriving from it. Similar if our perception is in tandem to what the house is, pleasantness arise. Whatever it is, our experiences has nothing to do with the house except our meanings or perception about it. We have never once left our mind, and all our so-called worldly experiences are all based from it.

Similarly when we experience betrayal of another, we are in truth experiencing our own invested interest turning sour. We did not notice that the meaning the mind gives to the world backfired by unmet expectation. We did not notice that trust upon another is delusional as it is deeply invested in self-interest. There must be a payoff in certain form when we give ourselves away to another – else we wouldn’t have done it in the first place. After all that has been said, it is not about seeing wrongness in our actions or putting a blame to what is but rather, to see the reality that when delusion is not recognized, pain is rampant, suffering is inevitable. Yet the good news is that when one wakes up from it, each and every meaning of pain and suffering just disappears right away – just as darkness cannot exist in the midst of light.

What if the stark reality of life is that what we think it is, is not exactly what we think it is. What if we are now told that what we think it is, is not at all closer to any truth, except our own imaginary perceived reality. With this information, and with the wisdom within one to reflect upon this, the journey towards self-awakening is possible. But if one was to brush it off as nonsensical then the phrase ignorance is bliss will stay true until Truth comes a knocking. Only then the journey begins from scratch, slowly but surely towards arriving at one’s own door.

For those already on the Path, a wiser self-reminder is non-conclusion as to put a conclusion to any situation, event or experience is to invite delusion into the pathway.

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