Nothing In This World Is Real

Image © Gavin Tobin

See that shark floating in the sky? It’s not real. Nothing in this world is real. Not literally.

When you close your eyes and visualize something in your imagination, is what you see real? Depends on how you define real, I suppose. What arises in your imagination is 100% just as real as what arises in physical reality.

Is it any wonder why your body physiologically responds the same, whether you have an experience in real life physical reality or whether you simply close your eyes and visualize?

Everything I look at in physical reality seems to have about the same solidity as wisps of smoke, about the same literal “reality” as uniquely shaped clouds that my mind thinks look like cats or dogs.

If a cloud changes form, who cares? Why panic? If it disappears or reappears, what does it matter?

What we appear to be is a fleeting shadow, a distorted and fragmentary reflection of what we all are when we no longer assume that we are that phenomenal appearance.

-Wei Wu Wei

Our bodies, birth, death, money, hunger, joy, horror, suffering, celebration, fear, being in love, thoughts, emotion, people, mountains, animals, sponges, scissors, mothballs, flamingos, radios, birds, sunshine… they’re all part of this amazing dream of the mind, existing only within the imagination.

To call them real seems to be about as silly as actually thinking that that cloud formation floating in the sky literally is a shark with a laser beam attached to its head, or whatever it looks like in our mind’s eye.

We’re making it all up. It’s make believe. We’re making ourselves believe our thoughts and in so doing, creating for ourselves an experience we call “our lives.”

When thoughts arise, the world arises.

None of it is real. Not a single thing. What a grand illusion, a magnificent nothing.

All such notions as causation, succession, atoms, primary elements… are all figments of the imagination and manifestations of the mind.

-Buddha

Total Inner Peace

Some have talked about divine detachment, unshakable peace, and imperturbability. I wouldn’t claim to be fully there yet, but I feel this energy approaching it, coming closer to it, seeing the reality of it, and shedding away even more layers of mental belief structures that are out of alignment with how reality is actually structured and thus peace’ing the everchanging mind/body thingy we call Ariel.

It’s kinda like being the eye of the storm, the emptiness of nothingness that is untouched no matter how hard the winds scream all around.

Silence can not be damaged by noise.

Emptiness can not be affected by substance.

Only a something can be affected by something else. For example, our bodies can be destroyed by other forces in this world. Certainly. The mind can be damaged by this or that. Of course. Yet the I, the true I that you and I ultimately are, is never ever at the effect of anything in this world. It literally sits outside/beyond this world, is not of this world, and yet is not in any way separate from this world… and is thus by default paradoxically within this world and inextricably intertwined with this world appearing AS this world.

Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the peace of God.

-A Course in Miracles

The waves of the ocean may come and go, crashing into the shore which leads to their demise, yet nothing bad actually happens to the ocean.

All is well.

The waves of the ocean may evaporate and be lifted away from their home, but it’s only a matter of time ’till they return, supporting the natural cycles of nature in the meantime. Nothing bad happens.

All is well.

What is Real, the true I, pure awareness/love/bliss/being/existence/presence/consciousness is right Here, for there is nowhere else for it to be… including everywhere, for even everywhere is also right here.

Fear not the changes of this world, the you are the changeless presence beyond, as well as the changing flow itself. You are both. You are all. All is well. You are well.