In the end, it’s a question of how I want to live.
When I “experience” the world, there is no way to objectively know what happened, in any situation. There is no way to have complete knowledge of an outside world (and this “me” I think I am, with this body, is part of “the outside world”). Reality and the true me exist prior to the apparent “world” I bring into being with my story.
Evidence, however compelling, is not proof of what is.
The horizon from ground level is evidence that the earth is flat. It is not proof.
Ego, the separate “I” I believe myself to be, writes stories and then writes in all the evidence to “prove” them. But evidence is just more story. The storytelling is so incredibly compelling that it doesn’t even seem to be coming from inside. The story is so well written that it completely writes out the fact that it’s ever been written, the fact that there’s even a writer, that everything I’m experiencing has, in fact, not been experienced at all, but interpreted (i.e. made up) in the mind.
Ego is so insistent, so ruthlessly protective of the illusion of its existence, that it will write ANYTHING in an attempt to prove itself. Ego has only one agenda: to be believed. So it writes in evidence upon evidence upon evidence, unceasingly bombarding me with evidence until I agree that it’s true.
And it’s all made up.
All of it.
Everything I experience is me buying a story I made up, supported by evidence I made up, all written by a “me” I made up, in order to “exist.”
So when “I” think something “bad” has happened to “me,” the “me” that came into being when I believed that stressful thought desperately wants to survive, so it goes to work “proving” itself. It’s a matter of its life and death. And it will cause me to believe anything, however absurd, as long as it still gets to exist. The thinnest, most absurd evidence, the most painful evidence will do as long as it validates its story. Ego would rather suffer than not exist. It would rather throw itself into the burning fires of hell than not exist.
The only way to be free of suffering...
To be free of danger
To be free of annoyance
To be free of frustration
To be free of opposition
To be free of fools
To be free of assholes
To be free of bad presidents
To be free of evil movements
To be free of enemies
To be free of pain
To be free of guilt
To be free of shame
To be free of trauma
To be free of depression
To be free of isolation
...is to recognize the truth that there is no evidence that anything has happened or will happen - until a thought is believed.
And so if there is a problem, there is only one culprit: what I’m thinking and believing. A story written by the ego for the sole purpose of validating its imaginary existence. A story written to help a story of a “me” written by the story of a “me.”
A way out of suffering is to question the story, the thought that originated the story, the very existence of the author of the story and to arrive at the Truth prior to all of it, which is complete oneness, perfect balance, total peace.
“I failed.”
Is it true?
Can I absolutely know that it’s true?
How do I react, what happens when I believe that thought?
Who would I be if I couldn’t have that thought?
Could the opposite be just as true or truer?
Ego will keep writing stories. That’s just what it does. That just appears to be the way of it.
But when I understand that they’re all made up, all is well because I don’t have to believe them.
Instead I can turn to my true nature prior to any story (what some call my “heart”), and write from there.