Everything Is An Illusion, Or Is It?

Everything Is An Illusion, Or Is It?
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We've heard it all before, FEAR is the enemy! ANGER is bad, only LOVE will set you free, everything else is just an Illusion! Ok here's what I want to know, who's in charge of deciding what is LOVE? And if EVERYTHING IS AN ILLUSION, then why isn't LOVE as well?

It's time to stop the "Spiritual Cop Outs", you know those nifty phrases "spiritual" people use in order to shirk personal responsibility and to stay forever locked in the "illusion" they seem to be trying to avoid. (Ok I have probably said this and I'm sorry) You've heard phrases like "Fear is an Illusion, only love is real". I suspect the only REAL LOVE (as in not an illusion love) is the speaker's definition of it. What if my definition is different? Seriously, I want that gig!

When you say that feelings are an illusion, especially when a person is experiencing fear, you might sound very enlightened, however, it often serves to make the person having said feelings feel unheard and disconnected and what if their fear is trying to tell them something important? What if you playing guru has accidentally shut them off from a really important message? What if their fear was trying to tell them something!!!! Like Run, it's a bear! (although I'm told you're not supposed to run from a bear, a real one or an illusionary one)

Here's my truth: Fear isn't an enemy, fear is a guide, just like our other emotions. Fear is an opportunity to pause and check in, to listen to our gut and our intuition. When we begin to understand our emotions, all of them, and use them as the tools they are to navigate this reality they can become very useful indeed. Any emotion, be it fear or love unchecked and unprocessed can cause a whole lot of heart ache. Conscious awareness to our every emotion and our reason behind it creates conscious action.

If you want to call fear an illusion, then you sort of have to say love is an illusion as well. You can't have it both ways. Why? Because if everything is an illusion, then every experience you're having here is an illusion and there is no real, anything, neither love or fear or your bank account, however I suspect you're not going to tell the Gas Company their bill is an illusion, so why on earth would you say that to someone experiencing fear?

Fear, Love, Anger are all emotions, emotions are tools. Use them! I have come to believe that to say that everything is an illusion diminishes our experience here in this reality. It also gives us an excuse to negate each others experiences, because hey your feelings are just illusions so I don't actually have to care or respond in a way that is compassionate, I can just look at you all bliss eyed and state "Your fear is just an illusion, even if you are "technically" correct.

This is the plane of experience in which we've been given the chance to experience all, which is why we have a body and senses and emotions! This is why the "illusion" exists. At least in my not so humble opinion, or you can go with we evolved from Gorilla's, we're mostly acting worse than Gorilla's these days, so hey that may be truth and all this other stuff is just existential crap we make up to entertain ourselves.

But if this is the plane of experience, an opportunity for our souls to take human form and figure out some of the existential poo, well then hiding in a cave probably won't help, nor will hiding behind pithy one liners like "It's all an illusion". You've got to get your hands dirty in this illusion in order to really get how much of an illusion it really is.

If Quantum Physics is true, and we all love to make everything about Quantum! Well then EVERYTHING IS AN ILLUSION! OR IS IT? IS IT A WAVE OR A PARTICLE? IS THE CAT THERE OR NOT? Exactly... it might be and it might not be and no one really knows, for sure, so you might as well make the best of it and learn something while we're figuring that one out. Like for instance how to process fear instead of hiding behind "it's an illusion" because sometimes fear can stop you from being bitten in the ass, and that hurts, like for real, even if it is an illusion. :)

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