Some say, it is better to be asleep so that the dream can remain real in order for the intensity of the experience to be felt; for how can everything else be felt to the extreme of it, unless it is real? This reminds me of a scene in Matrix where this fella who betrayed all those who are plugged out from the Matrix and told Smith while dining in a restaurant that even though he knows that the piece of steak that he is about to put into his mouth is not real, but it tastes so darn delicious.
If what we are looking for is realness, why would we treat what is not real as real? It is like playing with a toy, and knowing that it is a toy, we just simply enjoy playing with it and once we are done with it, we just place it back to where it belongs. But when we start to think that the toy is real, it becomes a reality hence scaring us to the bits when things go wrong and then there it is, we are heading out the door, forgetting that it is just a toy. Strange isn’t it? I’d say that it is fine to treat the toy as real for the moment, but it is important to remember that a toy remains a toy; as illusion remains an illusion. It is like buying a handbag. If you can afford to buy a Louis Vuitton, why would you want to buy an imitation one, lest you believe that you can’t have the real one and hence settle for the latter?
The thing is, each of us deserves the Louis Vuitton and secretly, we each know that. So we work towards it. And it is like that, we are also always trying to find the easy way out, which is impossible. So we are enticed, and then we get a Louis Vuitton along the way and then realise that it was imitation, what happens then? Do you still want it? Of course, I am just using a material good as an example or rather, as a metaphor. But you get what I mean. It’s painful at that point to know that what we hung on to is unreal, but let’s put it that way, at least the imposter is being revealed and wouldn’t it be a call for celebration instead of constant self-bashing?
Taking responsibility is scary, because it means to own up all the pain that we feel deep within without having anyone to be our scapegoat as there is no one else to illusionarily ‘split’ the pain. It is not about being unwholesome, but it is simply simply impossible! So someone was telling me… yes, taking responsibility means no one is at fault and it is all MY fault. That too, is untrue. It is the innocence of what was thought. And if there is innocence, how can it be anyone’s fault, much less my fault?
So what do I do when I take responsibility? I will be forgiving what I thought had happened was real, when in truth, nothing actually happened – meaning, my perception of the way things were and are. Forgiving that it was an error, a misunderstanding that something like that could be put into a meaning that hurts, that upsets, that could have caused a sense of separation within myself hence projected onto my brothers and sisters.
Asleep is to mean that there is an “I” in delusion that can be in control of things, that could want things the way it should or shouldn’t be. The “I” that plays God. And to be awakened, is something else what many Great Masters invite us upon. We cannot envisage what they are talking about, until we taste a sip of their cup, and that can only happen when we begin the journey of Truth.