How can you see the Illusion as an illusion when it appears to be so real? And how is it that it seems so real if it is an illusion?
These are the questions humans are beginning to ask as your species moves into the experience of its own conscious evolution. Now there will be answers, and you will step out of the Illusion of Ignorance.
I will give you answers here, for your consideration. Remember as with all communications from God, take what you read as valuable, but not as infallible. Know that you are your own highest authority. Whether you read the Talmud or the Bible, the Bhagavad Gita or the Qur’an, the Pali Canon or the Book of Mormon, or any holy text, do not place your source of authority outside of you. But, rather, go within to see if the truth you’ve found is in harmony with the truth you find in your heart. If it is, do not say to others, “This book is true.” Say, “This book is true for me.”
And if others ask you about the way you are living because of the truth you have found within you, be sure to say that yours is not a better way, yours is merely another way.
For that is what this present communication is. This communication is just another way of looking at things. If it makes the world more clear for you, fine. If it puts you more closely in touch with your own innermost truth, good. But be careful not to turn this into your new “holy scripture,” for then you will have simply replaced one set of beliefs with another. Seek not a set of beliefs, seek an awareness of what you know. Use whatever you find that returns you to that awareness. Understand that you are living an illusion, and that none of it is real. Yet the Illusion points to what is real and can give you an experience of it. How can you see the Illusion as an illusion when it appears to be so real? And how is it that it seems so real if it is an Illusion?
The second question will be answered first. The Illusion seems so real because so many people believe that it is not an illusion. In your Alice in Wonderland world, everything is as you believe it to be. There are thousands, millions, of examples of that. Here are two.
Once, you believed that the sun revolved around the earth—and, indeed, for you it did. All of your evidence proved that it did! So certain were you of this truth that you developed an entire science of astronomy around it. Once, you believed that everything physical moved from one point to another through time and space. All of your evidence proved it! So certain were you of this truth that you built an entire system of physics around it.
Now listen carefully. The wonder of these sciences and these systems is that they worked. The astronomy that you created based on your belief that the earth was the center of the Universe worked to explain the visual phenomena you saw in the movement of the planets across the night sky. Your observations supported your belief, creating what you called knowledge.
The physics that you created based on your belief about particles of matter worked to explain the visual phenomena you saw in the physical world. Again, your observations supported your belief, creating what you called knowledge. Only later, when you looked more closely at what you were seeing, did you change your mind about these things. Yet that change of mind did not come easily. The first people who suggested such a change of mind were called heretics or, in later times, foolish or mistaken. Their ideas of a new astronomy, with the earth revolving around the sun, or of quantum physics, in which particles of matter did not move in a continuous line through time and space but were seen to disappear in one place and reappear in another were labeled spiritual and scientific blasphemy. Their proponents were discouraged, denounced, even put to death for their beliefs.
It is your beliefs that were true, the majority of you insisted. After all, were they not supported by every observation? Yet, which came first, the belief or the observation? That is the central question. That is the inquiry you did not wish to make.
Is it possible that you see what you want to see? Could it be that you observe what you expect to observe? Or perhaps more to the point, looked right past what you do not expect to observe?
I tell you, the answer is yes. Even today, when your modern science—tired of the mistakes of the past—vows to observe first, and draw conclusions later still those conclusions cannot be trusted. That is because it is impossible for you to look at anything objectively.
Science has concluded that nothing which is observed is unaffected by the observer. Spirituality told you this centuries ago, and now science has caught up. Your doctors and laboratories have learned that they must conduct double-blind tests during important research to even come close to guaranteeing accuracy. In human experience, all things are considered within the context of what you think you already understand. You cannot help but do this. You know no other way to proceed.
Put another way, you are looking at the illusion from within the Illusion. Every conclusion you come to about the Illusion is, therefore, based on the Illusion. And so, every conclusion is an illusion. Let this be your new insight and your constant reminder:
Every conclusion is an illusion. Now, let us return to the first question. How can you recognize the Illusion as an illusion when it seems so real?
You have just learned that the reason it seems so real is not because it is real, but because you believe so firmly that it is. Therefore, to change the way you see the Illusion, change what you believe about it. In the past, you were told that seeing is believing. But lately a new idea has been advanced—that believing is seeing. And I tell you, this is true.
If, when you confront the Illusion, you believe it is an illusion, you will see it as an illusion, even though it seems very real. You will then be able to use the Illusion as it was intended to be used—as a tool with which to experience Ultimate Reality. You will remember to create the Illusion. You will cause it to be what you wish it to be, rather than simply watching it present itself as you think that it has to be, out of your agreement that “that’s just the way it is.”
So just how can you do this? You are already doing it. You simply do not know it and are thus making unconscious, rather than conscious, choices. That is, when you are making true choices at all. Most of the time you are simply accepting the choices of others.
Your choice has been to choose what others have chosen. And so, you re-live the cultural story of your forebears—as they did of theirs, even unto the seventh generation. The day that you stop choosing what has been chosen for you will be the moment of your liberation.
You will not then escape the Illusion but be liberated from it. You will step outside of the Illusion, but will continue to live with it, free of its ability to control you or your reality. You will never choose to end the Illusion, once you understand its purpose, until your own purpose is fulfilled.
Your purpose is not only to know and experience Who You Really Are, but to create Who You Next Will Be. It is your function to re-create yourself anew in every single Moment of Now, in the next grandest version of the greatest vision you ever held about Who You Are. This is the process you have called evolution. Yet you need not be affected by this process in any negative way. You can be in this world but not of it.
When you are, you will begin to experience the world as you choose to experience it. You will then understand experience itself to be an action rather than a reaction; something that you are making, not something that you are having. When you understand this, everything in your life will change. When enough of you understand this, everything on your planet will change.
Those who have understood this secret have been called Masters. Those who have taught this secret have been called avatars. Those who have lived this secret have been called blesséd. Therefore, blesséd be. To live as an enlightened Master, you must become a heretic and a blasphemer, for you will not believe what everyone else believes, and others will deny your new truth even as you deny their old one.
You will deny that the world as others are experiencing it is real, as did those who denied that the world was flat. As in those days, this will fly in the face of what seems incontrovertible, based on the appearance of things. As in those days, this will generate argument and disagreement, and you will set sail across stormy oceans to discover endless horizons. And, as in those days, you will live in a new world. This is the world that you have been waiting to create, and which you have been meant to experience, from the beginning of time. Time, too, is an illusion, so it might more correctly be said “since the Illusion began.” Always remember: The Illusion is not something you are enduring, it is something you are choosing.
You do not have to live the Illusion if you do not choose to. You are here because you wish to be. If you did not so wish, it would not so be. Yet know that the Illusion in which you live is being created by you, not for you by someone else. Human beings who do not wish to take responsibility for the life they are experiencing say that God has created it, and that they have no choice except to endure it.
Yet I tell you that the world you live in is the way it is because that is the way you have chosen it to be. When you no longer wish the world to be the way it is, you will change it. This is a truth that not many humans can accept. Because to accept it they would have to acknowledge their complicity, and this is something they cannot bring themselves to do. They would rather cast themselves in the role of unwilling victim than of unwitting co-creator. This is understandable, of course. You could not forgive yourself if you thought that your world was the product of your own creation, the result of your own wills and desires. And why could you not forgive yourself? Because you do not think that I would forgive you. You have been taught that there is such a thing as “the unforgivable.” And how can you forgive yourself for something that you know will not be forgiven by God? You cannot. And so you do the next best thing. You excuse yourself from having had anything to do with it. You deny responsibility for what you imagine that I would call the inexcusable sins of man. This is tortured logic, because if you did not create the world as it is, then who did? If someone says that God created all the horrible flaws in the world, you jump to defend Me.
“No, no, no,” you say. “God merely gave man free will. It is man who has created these things.”
Yet if I say, “You are right. I did not create, and I do not create, your life as it is. You are the creator of your reality,” you deny that, too. Thus, you seek to have it both ways. God did not create these things, and you did not create these things. We are both merely sadly observing them.
But when you become really angry or frustrated with life, some of you change your tune. When things get bad enough, you are ready to blame Me after all.
“How can you let this happen?” you call out to Me. Some of you even shake your fist at the heavens. The Illusion has turned to confusion. Not only is the world a cruel place, it has been created that way by a cruel and heartless God.
To sustain this thought, you must see yourself as separate from God, since creating a cruel and heartless world is not something that you would do. You must imagine a God who would do what you would never do, and you must see yourself as subject to His whim. This you have done—religiously.
Still, even in this you see a contradiction, for the God of your highest understanding, also, would not do these things. So who did do them? Who is doing them to this very day?
Somebody must be responsible, so who is it? Enter Satan.
To resolve the contradiction of a loving God who would do unloving things, and to escape your own responsibility in this matter you have created a third party. The perfect scapegoat.
The Devil. Now, at last, everything is understandable. There is Another, who stands between what you want and what I want, and who makes us both miserable.
You are not responsible for the uncaring, unloving world in which you live. You did not create it.
“Well,” you might say, “maybe at some level I did create it, but it was not my fault. The Devil made me do it.” A comedian’s line has become your theology. Or is it that your theology has become a comedian’s line? Only you can decide.
Source – Communion with God – Neale Donald Walsch