Illusions and Stories - Pulling the veil aside to discover
what’s really real for you
Life is but a dream
What is life but an illusion? A form of waking dream
in which we play out various scenarios so that we can experience
different aspects of ourselves. ‘Conversations
with God’ is a wonderful book that I’m really
enjoying, and want to share with you. It says that in
the beginning, was god (or spirit, whatever you want to call
it). And spirit just was. But hadn’t created
anything yet. And spirit yearned to know itself, but
could only do this by experience. And as nothing yet
existed, there was no mechanism for experiencing anything!
So spirit created everything, so that experience became possible.
And created polarities, everything in existence being part
of a pair: light/dark, sun/moon, love/fear, man/woman etc.
The reason for the polarities is that the ‘isness’
of black cannot be experienced without the ‘isness’
of white, and so on. And spirit/god is everything
the ‘alpha and the omega’ all of creation including
what we call ‘bad’ is a necessary part of this
amazing experiencing machine.
(As an aside, the question ‘why does god allow
such awful things to happen’ is answered thus:
because we have free will. God never imposes ‘the
way things should be’. We are free to create that.
If we weren’t free, we would not be having the experience
- we would be in a kind of puppet play being run by god.)
So, what about us? Well, in order to experience, spirit
needs something with which to have that experience.
So he created soul bits of himself, put them in bodies, and
for the purpose of the experience, made us forget Who We Are.
Now, ‘Who We Are’ is a part of him. Which
means, we have the same amazing powers to create as spirit
does. Only we have forgotten. Our job, here on
earth, is to Remember Who We Are. And we do this by
experiencing. So we experience great love, and we know
‘We are Love’. Or we experience great hate
and we know ‘What Love Isn’t’. And
then for those of us who have remembered or have an inkling
of ‘Who We Are’, our job is to remind other people,
perhaps just by modelling our greatness. Ie, having
the courage to display our wonderfulness by say, exhibiting
our paintings or dancing wildly where others can see us or...
showing our kindness and spontaneity to a tramp... and so
on.
Another place where we are drowning in illusions and stories
is in any situation where we get into the ‘head trip’.
There is an example in the ‘Conversations with God’
book where we approach a tramp on the street. Our immediate
instinct is to give the tramp five dollars. Instead
of just doing it, we go into the head trip about, how they
will spend it on drink, how we can’t afford it, how
other people might think we are stupid, what our mother might
say, etc etc. By which time, we have already walked
apologetically by without giving the person anything!
The book suggests learning to just go with the original instinct,
give the money, and forget about the story and the head trip,
partly because it is a better way of living, and partly because
it re-educates the brain into... how to get out of the head
trip! Pause a moment and reflect on your head trips
(we all have them!) How much energy does it take you
to do one simple thing? Could you just DO IT next time
(ie do the first that comes into your head, spontaneously)
and stay out of the head trip? For example, you meet
someone new and you want to kiss them. So you just say
‘I want to kiss you!’ and you do! And it’s
wonderful. And there is no head trip around ‘oooh,
I wonder what he’ll say if I ask if I can kiss him....’
Huge energy drain, head trips, aren’t they? Imagine
the joy of living freely without them! How much more
fun we might have!
Another example of the head trip is where we completely fabricate
a whole scene out of one simple bit of information that we
choose to interpret in a certain way and blow out of all proportion.
This is completely exhausting! For example, someone
says they will phone you and they don’t. Instead
of just thinking ‘oh, they haven’t phoned me yet’
(the fact of it), we think ‘oh, they don’t love
me anymore’, ‘oh, they don’t care about
me’, ‘when they phone I’m gonna be really
angry...!’ and so on! We create a whole trip for
ourselves which takes loads of energy, and isn’t REALLY
REAL!! Our minds are making it all up! In actual
fact, the phone is broken, or Aunt Maud just interrupted them,
or they got up late and are eating breakfast, or any number
of things which are not a part of the head trip!! What
to do? Either, consciously choose a positive story ‘oh,
they haven’t phoned. I’m sure they will
when they can’. Or just phone and say ‘hi,
what are you up to!’. What a lot of hard work
we create for ourselves, eh?
Experiences – did you get it?
It’s easy to get all tangled up in the experiences that
happen to us – to blame and play the role of victim
- as in ‘how could he DO that to me!’ If
you are thinking like this about any given situation, then
you are most likely missing the point of the experience –
consider reframing it as something like ‘How could I
ALLOW him to do that to me!’. Victimdom is a place
where we don’t take responsibility for our experiences,
and actually, though it’s easy, it’s not much
fun! More fun, is something closer to personal empowerment,
where we take the responsibility, and we also gain the ability
to be self-determining and create what we really want.
Sitting in a job you hate? Why, exactly? Why are
you not doing a job you absolutely LOVE? Has someone
got a gun to your head? The only person with the gun,
I think you will find, is ...you! Feelings of ‘not
good enough’ (very common) also cause us to punish ourselves
by giving ourselves less than the very best.
I’ve just been on an amazing course with Amana Virani,
called ‘I-AM’. (I wrote about it in an interview
with Virani in a previous issue). It has been the biggest
experience of my life, and has taught me so much! The
technique involves making hand movements (mudras) in the energy
field of the person receiving it, as they lie down and relax.
It works on a very deep, fundamental level, yet is gentle,
and only takes up to about half an hour! It was wonderful
watching people perform this beautiful technique on the course,
and seeing people transform. They just look so different
afterwards! One of the areas that is worked on is the
‘experience matrix’ – think of it as a string
of all the experiences you have ever had, that gets straightened
out. This is where our ‘illusions and stories’
tend to hang out. During the process you get to revisit
experiences and come to a place of resolution. Did you
‘get’ the lesson behind the experience?
As Virani says ‘it’s not about the stories you
create about the experience, it’s whether you got the
“isness” of it!’. The technique is incredibly
powerful and very freeing as things that may have hung around
for years are brought into balance and understood. Sometimes
this is conscious, sometimes at a deeper level.
I am practising this technique now as a result of doing the
course and so am sharing it with others – a great joy!
It is a marvellous tool. It also works on soul contracts,
karma, awareness of choices, and energy.
Fly above your life, try to see it as a play set on an open
stage – and see if you can ‘get the isness’!
NEXT ISSUE: Love - how to do it, be it, without even
really trying
Jeli Lala created the ‘Ashram of Jewellery and Art’
– Gifts, Crystals, Tarot, Art, Healing, Café
- at no. 1, Sukma St., Tebesaya, Ubud (opposite Jazz Café),
with husband, Putu S. She has studied yoga and other
spiritual practices for over ten years. She writes “In
this column, I share some of my personal experiences and spiritual
methods – hopefully, you’ll find this interesting,
and maybe it will give some ideas for your own journey.
Come visit!”
Jeli welcomes comments and may be contacted on:
Email: jelila@jelila.com
Website: www.jelila.com or www.imagine-retreats.com
