To understand oneself better is to be able to live more effectively.
What is real/true?
Many search for the answer to this question by researching into the physical world. Truth by definition must be that which is unchanging. If it changes –is transient- can it be the truth? Matter is energy and as such it is in constant motion and so constantly changing.
Others say that the answer to this question is within, to them the material world is one of illusion. They research into the world within: the universe of consciousness. They say that if you look within, you will find the reality of the self: of me, myself, I.
The movie
When you watch a movie what are you seeing? Flickering light on a screen? Yet whilst we watch it, it becomes real for us. What makes it real? Is it not us that gives status to that reality -to the flickering images on the screen- for whilst it lasts? You forget your seat once the movie begins don’t you? You go into the movie, you feel with the characters and you forget yourself don’t you? Then there is that movie that you just don’t get into, what hasn’t happened there?
We bring the movie onto the screen of our mind, we give it and it’s characters energy. However, when we lose ourselves in the movie we also lose our freedom. If something happens in the movie it is as if it has happened to ‘me.’ How I am feeling now depends on what happens to the characters in the film. I am no longer free. If I want to be happy anytime and anywhere I need to be an observer of the movie and not ‘in’ it, then I can enjoy it. Freedom and happiness go hand in hand.
What if we are doing something similar with the world around us as we do with the movie?
Imagine that this ‘world’ we find ourselves in is in fact just another movie that we have become lost in? In fact we have identified so much with one ‘character’ that we think that this is ‘who I am’ and all that I am.
Right now I am and you are.
Here on the screen of my mind is where ‘I am’ and ‘you are’. Similarly there on the screen of your mind ‘you are’ and ‘I am’.
Step away from being in ‘your movie’ for a moment and see how you create the whole world on the screen of your mind. The objects, ideas, beliefs, concepts, everything… sit and watch it all. You are the principle actor, creator and director. Sometimes you are a hero and at other times the villain or the victim. You can put ‘me’ into or out of your mind (world) whenever you choose. Isn’t that the greatest movie that you have ever seen!
What does this show me? That my primary reality is one that is being constantly created on the screen of my mind. Beliefs, concepts, ideas, people etc. come and go so what/who always remains?
What is the constant? The ‘I’ that says ‘I am’. This ‘I’ doesn’t change does it? Wherever you go ‘you’ are there, are you not? Can you leave ‘yourself’? If you do where do ‘you’ go? Even if you go off into a daydream for a while… then there ‘you’ are again. This ‘I’ is the only truth as it is the only thing that never changes.
To be free of the illusion of the movie
I can only free myself by becoming aware of ‘who I am’ and ‘what I am doing’.
The ‘I’ that says ‘I am’ is the being of consciousness, of conscience, the being within. ‘I’ have a mind and there is ‘the screen of my mind’ with events happening on it. ‘I’ am not my mind but it is part of me. In the material world we separate everything into objects, in consciousness all is one. The ‘being within’ has certain faculties including the mind, but ‘it’ isn’t them. They are part of ‘I’ not all of ‘I’.
