Real Illusion

By:  Marc Deprey

Perhaps our suffering is a wake up call that our investment in what we call reality—feelings, forms—is misplaced. We are more than just individual life, but life itself. I’m always struck with the limitations of language and the assumptions inherent within. Words relate to the experience of physical reality. Yet much of what words mean is metaphorical. You see a tree and call it such, but what is the reality of a plant that is connected to the ground and the air and sun for food?  At an atomic level there is no “place” where the “tree” starts and the “not-tree” begins. Atoms are 99.9% space. What we see are merely vibrations that seem like dense forms.

But that is an illusion. Our assigning of names to things somehow makes them into separate things, with separate realities. We see ourselves the same way, individual entities formed by events, tempered by happenstance, and independent of one another. But maybe, just maybe, we are really the 99.9%, the unformed consciousness, the simple experience of awareness, the light in the darkness. And our thoughts are just a projection of words—words that assume a density that isn’t real.

Kind of makes those “thoughts” about our “problems” seem just a little less important. Maybe the real illusion is that there is anything beyond the here and now. Dealing with two RAD kids has taught me to dig deep and realize that my new education had more to do with unlearning things that seemed so evident before. And in the end we can experience the awe of All.