Life Beyond Your Wildest Dreams

Yesterday I was enjoying a cup of coffee with a friend and was asked if I had any ideas as to new programs that might be offered at the centre specifically around the subject of “Transformation of Human Consciousness”… My response was something like, perhaps I wasn’t the right one to ask as I don’t have any belief that there is anybody who needs to be transformed and from here there isn’t any such thing as ‘human’ consciousness, or even, as science tells us, a stand alone human being as a real solid object for that matter. As I drove home thoughts came about assumptions and old beliefs. So when I got home I opened “Simply Notice” to where the bookmark was and this is what appeared…   Chapter 11 “Life Beyond Your Wildest Dreams” “The focus of noticing will shift for the next several chapters. It will shift away from Life’s ease of present awareness, to noticing more about the five senses. The reason is that the senses seem to create illusory appearances. The senses seem to fool us by making the world and daily living appear other than they really are. Some illusions are minor – such as an illusion of a mirage in the desert – and they have little impact on daily life and society. Other times, an illusion can have a huge impact. As said in the beginning of this book, one such illusion appears to be affecting your every waking moment of every day. Yet this illusion for the most part has gone totally unnoticed by the general public. Even more important – the illusions give rise to false beliefs, and the false beliefs severely restrict how we live. Before getting into specifics, it helps to put all this illusion talk in perspective. The biggest breakthroughs in the so-called history of man often involve a dramatic change in ways of seeing, or understanding. What basically happens is that the old, limiting beliefs are seen through or new discoveries are made. What these dramatic breakthroughs often boil down to is a simple matter of noticing something that wasn’t noticed before. The classic example of breaking through illusions and limiting beliefs would be the now-clichéd flat earth. The following may seem as if it is badly overstating the obvious. It’s done only to refresh your thinking about the power and influences of un-detected illusions. It’s also a warm-up for exposing the other illusion that is largely unnoticed today. Supposedly, earth at one time was believed by some to flat and so massive that it was the centre of the universe. It could be said this belief was not accepted by civilizations worldwide – but it helps to illustrate an important point. Of course the realization eventually came that earth is a relatively tiny sphere, apparently floating in a vast universe of space. The key question to ask is, “How could such a belief have started?” It was due to two illusions. Both illusions involve the human sense of sight. The first illusion is the earth’s horizon, which appears when seen by a human body standing on earth. Of course, the body’s limited sense of sight is incapable of seeing the earth’s natural curvature. The second illusion involves planetary movement. Each day (or night), the sun, moon and stars come into view. Again, to the human sense of sight when standing on earth, it appears as if these heavenly bodies rise above earth’s horizon. It also appears as if these bodies all rotate in space around earth. So – to the untrained eye, it really does look as if the earth is a massive flat object. And it really does appear as if earth is at the centre, and the universe is geo-centric – with the sun, moon, planets and all stars rotating around it. What counts are the beliefs that arose out of these illusions. The most famous was, “Don’t dare sail beyond the horizon of this flat earth, or you’ll fall off.” Needless to say, people’s acceptance of the beliefs acted like self-imposed barriers which were incredibly limiting. Again, all due to illusion. Here’s the point in dredging up this old example. Today we pride ourselves on being much more savvy, advanced and enlightened that the flat earth folks. We don’t like to think of ourselves as still capable of accepting illusions and ignorant beliefs.  Yet unwittingly we are.