Is This World Just a Dream? So Can I Just Drink Beer and Watch TV?

Me: Spiritual types say the world is just an illusion, that there is nothing to do, as we are already perfect. If there is nothing to do, does that mean I can sit in front of internet, pants down, drinking beer?

Teacher: If you want to, yes! Especially if it makes you feel good. Close the door though, you don’t want your wife to see.

Me: Hey! Seriously.

Teacher: There is nothing to do, nowhere to go. That is correct.

BUT.

Before you can realise that state, you need to do some inner work. YOU are the one HOLDING onto life. You try to control life, to enforce it to your will. You get angry when things don’t go your way. You plan the future to the smallest detail, and start screaming / blaming God when life doesn’t go the way you imagined it would.

When the Teacher says there is nothing to do, just let go, he means let go of your clinging to life. Stop making plans for the future. Stop trying to plan, or even think about what will happen tomorrow or the day after. Just let life happen.

Me: But if I do that, I’ll starve to death. How will I live in the world? How will I make a living?

Teacher: That’s what your ego thinks. If I stop controlling every single second of life, m y life will be ruined! Boohoohoo!

And the funny thing is, your life is ruined because the ego will sabotage you. The ego is a cruel task master. If you are about to become successful, it will sabotage you. If you don’t do what it tells you, it will constantly find ways to thwart you. It will look at the smallest mistake you made, blow it all out of proportion, and try to shame you.

Your own mind that does that to you. One part of you will try to rise you up, ask you to have dreams, to make a jump for it, all the while secretly sabotaging you.

Because the ego only loves being in misery. It is only happy when you are miserable. Then it can say: Ha! I told you. The world is cruel and unfair. There is no mercy for wicked people like you, because of the original sin / karma or whatever nonsense the ego read that day.

The ego uses the scriptures to attack and hurt you.

That’s why when the Teacher says: You need do nothing, the ego immediately jumps to “But I will starve to death! What will I DO?”

Because it cannot imagine a third alternative. That the Universe itself will provide for you. That it is the Universe that has ALWAYS been providing for you.

But you get stuck in an illusion like state where you think you are in control. And so starts your journey to misery. You, or rather the ego, sabotages any chance of being happy. And it does so while it claims to be looking out for you. The world is a cruel place, we have to look after ourselves, as no one else will.

By thinking like this, you stop the flow of Universal Love, without which the Universe IS A cruel and HARD PLACE.

Me: What do you mean by self sabotage by the ego?

Teacher: Look at any alcoholic. S/he will, when sober, swear on the lives of their children never to drink again. And yet, just a few hours later, they will be stealing money from those same children just to get a high. You must have examples from your own life?

Me: I want to be loving, but sometimes I’m rude to people I love. I say things that hurt them, sometimes profoundly, and yet later I think: *Why did I say that? THAT WAS NOT ME. It was like another person took over my body. An insane person.

Teacher: Yes, that insanity that comes over most people, including you, is the EGO. It loves misery, and will make every effort to bring more of it. It will say you need the perfect partner and job and house and car to be happy.

And yet as soon as you have it all, it will start finding faults. The wife is growing old, or can’t cook, or doesn’t work. The boss is rude, the house needs maintenance, the car is too expensive to run.

And if you don’t achieve your life goals, the ego will say: You loser, you can’t even find a husband/wife, all your friends seem to do so. Stuck at the same dead end job, you are pathetic. What a loser I am!

No matter what the circumstances, the ego will find a way to be miserable and complain. It can never be happy, because the EGO WAS BORN FROM PAIN.

Me: Teacher, what does that mean?

Teacher: The ego is the child of forgetfulness, born when You forget who YOU ARE. You start thinking you are this limited body, or even worse, the thinking mind, with its non stop analysis and attempts to tear everything apart.

The Pain of /humanity is the pain of not remembering who you are. It is caused by the hidden knowledge that one is bigger than one seems, that a human is more than just body and bones and thoughts. That something survives death. And here we are not talking about what the religious people call the soul, the thing that goes to heaven or hell. Even that is a PART of the DREAM.

No, we are talking about your REAL SELF, your true self beyond death, beyond pain, beyond the dualities of sadness/happiness. Your True Self JUST IS.

Forgetting this is what causes your pain. This is what gives birth to the ego. But rather than fix the roof cause, the ego looks outside to its pain. It blames its parents, spouse, boss, the government, the corporations, everyone else except itself.

Like the Course in Miracles says, You think you have many problems, but you only have one problem.

That problem is your separation from your TRUE SELF. This is what causes you pain.

Let us come back to our original question: Is there anything to do? Anywhere to go? If we are immortal here, why do we need to meditate?

Me: Ehhhh, if I knew the answer, I wouldn’t be here, would I? I would be sitting on some mountain top, feeling all enlightened.

Teacher: Ha! There is no Internet reception on mountain tops, so maybe not.

To answer our question: There is nothing for you to do. By you here, I mean the little you, the egoic self, as compared to the big YOU, your True Self.

All meditations, all techniques, all religions (in their true inner form, not the superstitious and ritualistic outer form) aim for one thing: For the little you, the mind, the ego, to shut up for one second, so that the Real Self can come forward.

Me: Us humans cant just shut up, can we?

Teacher: Nope. Well, your minds can’t. :)

So effort is required, but only as much as to make the mind silent, so the Light of the Self can flow through. Once this starts happening, THEN there is nothing for you to do. The Light will not let you forget, will not let you go back, though you can resist it.

Me: Resist it how?

Teacher: Many ways for us to go into now. By letting the ego try to control the light, which happens when you try to become a world Guru before you are ready. By letting the ego interpret the Light in its own way, to make itself bigger, as in Oooh lala, I’m so Spiritual. There are a lot of other ways, which will we will discuss another day.

Me: So I shouldn’t plan on wearing golden robes and calling my self the Saviour

Of the World (TM) just yet?

Teacher: Maybe not today :)