research shows that it's not so much about changing the narrative that is important but it is changing our relationship to this narrative so that we can see the narrative for what it is which is really a constellation of thoughts

Our practice is about experiencing an underlying wholeness, an underlying perfection and joy that is part of our lives regardless of their content. But like Bodhidharma’s answer, this is very deeply counter-intuitive to most of us, yet we have to figure out what it means to practice without turning it into a version of self-improvement.

the false reality governed by images facilitates the work of the cap capitalist system the system gives you the illusion of having Free Will and choosing what you consume but in reality everything has already been decided for you

All I can hope for is a reconstruction: The way love feels is alwaysonly approximate

this is the essence also of one and if we are part all well then we all can have this experience because it is who we are

The basic concept of animation was already in the air through earlier inventions like the magic lantern and eventually the zoetrope

sometimes people ask me uh is it possible that we're living in a simulation that all this is you know that reality isn't what we and and if you think about it it's not just 00:52:31 possible it's guaranteed

we're in a position as a modern techno-industrial culture this is my view that it's false to say what the oil 00:29:32 companies are saying that we can keep producing oil and gas we'll get the society to pay for carbon capture and storage and and other stuff but it's going to be a technological salvation 00:29:44 and then we can keep on with our life that's one version the the other version is the environmentalist version which the federal government has bought into and that is we'll go green and then we 00:29:57 can keep everything

Self is an illusory modelling construct created by perceptual systems of Agents

On the other hand, it means that you now need to trust that Apple isn’t going to fuck with the podcasts you listen to.

illusion of immediacy descartes was big on this one 01:21:51 and udio takara was big on this one in india that somehow i know my own mind my own states my own being immediately directly without anything standing in 01:22:04 between but i know only know other things through the mediation of my sensory apparatus and my sensory organs nobody thinks that when i look at an apple that that redness and sweetness are 01:22:18 immediately available to me we think they're mediated by my eyes and my visual faculty by light hitting my eyes causing stuff to happen on the back of my retina electrical stuff happening in my occipital cortex and i see the apple 01:22:31 that's a lot of mediation right and we think the same thing about every external object but then if i ask my own feelings my own thoughts my own emotions do i know those through the mediation of 01:22:44 something they think no i know them immediately because they're just part of me and we forget that we know them through the mediation of our introspective senses which are just as mediating just as subject to illusion as 01:22:57 any of our external senses um we get the illusion of agent causation something that augustine makes very plain in the western tradition the idea that somehow our actions as the notary public 01:23:11 suggested are uncaused are free and that there's a big difference between things that happen to us and things that we freely do forgetting that our actions are caused 01:23:23 by our desires and our beliefs and our desires and beliefs are caused by our emotions and our values and our and our va and all of that and that if our things were uncaused we'd be these weird 01:23:35 random objects but we think of ourselves as standing somehow outside of the causal nexus even if we know that that is simply insane there's an illusion of unity this idea 01:23:48 that myself is completely simple and singular even though my thoughts and my experiences and my sensations and my actions are plural but there's a unity behind that that there's no that this i 01:24:01 am exactly the same thing that i was when i began this lecture and we know that that's an illusion so these are all of the reasons to shed the self-illusion and why we think of the self-illusion as crazy 01:24:15 and that gets us through the second major part of what i wanted to do tonight

we're telling ourselves hey no elephant in my house nothing to worry about whereas the self that we really think we have is that self which is always 01:16:36 subject never object always agent never patient that self that is the enjoyer that stands opposed to the world and experiences it that acts on the world 01:16:49 the self that has a mind and has a body but is not itself a mind or a body that's the serpent and chandra kerdi thinks that if we don't pay attention to that serpent if we don't understand what 01:17:02 it is we believe ourselves to be in our heart of hearts we will never succeed in dispelling the illusion and hume also is trying to identify here 01:17:14 the serpent and he's identifying it as the idea that the word self even means anything

illusion of independence 01:02:25 part of what it is to be a self part of what it is to me this underlying transcendent atman is to be independent of the world standing against it acting on it but not being acted on by it 01:02:39 taking it as object but always being subject and so we get this illusion of independence and of transcendental freedom that really mistakes who we are and gives us very strange moral 01:02:51 attitudes of praise and blame and anger and pride and so forth

there is a difference between the 00:33:06 serpent and the elephant and that we do atavistically think that we are something other than our minds and bodies and i think that the serpent is real that is the serpent is the illusion illusory self that we need to get rid of 00:33:19 and so even if it's crazy to think that we are such a thing and when we say it out loud it sounds stupid and incoherent that doesn't stop us from believing it because we are stupid incoherent kinds 00:33:31 of beings wired for stupidity and incoherence with the task of somehow trying to unwire ourselves into something approaching inside

we we can know that the 00:26:37 illusion the mueller liar illusion is an illusion we can draw it ourselves a hundred times but knowing that doesn't make it go away and that's because that illusion is perceptual not conceptual it's a we're 00:26:51 absolutely wired to see things that way and it may well be that we are wired or badly wired um to see ourselves as selves instead of as persons

now i want to introduce you to my favorite 00:24:20 illusion which is going to be important because i'm going to use it as a model for everything that we're going to talk about later when we talk about the self and that's the mueller liar illusion so here we have two lines with little arrowheads and 00:24:33 those two lines those two parallel lines are exactly the same length as one another you can sort of line them up visually and see that um but the arrowheads on each side make the 00:24:44 top line look much larger than the bottom line and the amazing thing about the mueller liar illusion one of the reasons i like it is a it's really easy to draw and b um even if you know that it's an 00:24:56 illusion you're totally sucked into it so um and i'm just always amazed by that right you can just draw this illusion for somebody draw the parallel lines the same length they see that draw the 00:25:08 arrowheads and all of a sudden the lines change in apparent length and i use this because it um it illustrates an important thing about an illusion and this is something that we find again from india as a definition of 00:25:21 an illusion an illusion is something that exists in one way but appears to us in a different way or for being very technical we would say something whose mode of existence and mode of appearance 00:25:33 are discordant but that is just atrociously technical and sensibilitic um so these two lines exist as equally long but they appear to be of 00:25:45 unequal lengths and that would that's what makes them an illusion a mirage exists as a refraction pattern of light but appears to be water so whenever we get that difference between a mode of appearance and a mode of existence we 00:25:59 have an example of illusion and i say that because i want to argue that the self is an illusion that we exist in one way that is as persons but we appear to exist as selves and so we have to come to understand 00:26:11 that illusion in order to begin dispelling it

Contents 1 Overview 2 Reasons for failure 2.1 Overconfidence and complacency 2.1.1 Natural tendency 2.1.2 The illusion of control 2.1.3 Anchoring 2.1.4 Competitor neglect 2.1.5 Organisational pressure 2.1.6 Machiavelli factor 2.2 Dogma, ritual and specialisation 2.2.1 Frames become blinders 2.2.2 Processes become routines 2.2.3 Resources become millstones 2.2.4 Relationships become shackles 2.2.5 Values becomes dogmas 3 The paradox of information systems 3.1 The irrationality of rationality 3.2 How computers can be destructive 3.3 Recommendations for practice 4 Case studies 4.1 Fresh & Easy 4.2 Firestone Tire and Rubber Company 4.3 Laura Ashley 4.4 Xerox 5 See also 6 References

yogachara theory and i'm thinking here about three nature theory and three naturelessness theory suggests to us that we are simply wired for certain illusions and among them is 00:29:19 the illusion of immediacy um and we're wired to thematize our experience through the framework of subject object duality i often compare this to the way that we're wired for certain 00:29:31 optical illusions for instance you don't have to learn to see the mueller liar illusion as an illusion we all see it as an illusion and it's because of the way our visual system has evolved and there are lots of other optical illusions like 00:29:44 that the color five phenomenon for instance and so forth yogachara really takes very seriously the idea that from beginning with time we've evolved karmic predispositions to certain kinds of 00:29:55 illusions and these are some of them and of course a little bit of reflection shows that that duality has to be illusory um after all um we are 00:30:09 not subject pure subjects standing outside of the world of our experience confronting a world of objects some of them outer and some of them inner that's the vedanta position that ain't the buddhist position instead what we are is 00:30:24 organisms and again i will set aside all of the debates we might have about how those organisms are constituted but we are organisms embedded in an environment and our bodies our sense faculties are 00:30:37 part of the world in which we find ourselves as a consequence our subjectivity our own engagement with the world is constituted not by standing outside and detecting things but rather by being 00:30:51 embedded in the world and the only way that we could possibly become aware of any object whether it's a tree or an apple or a thought or a feeling is to construct that as an object in our field 00:31:04 of consciousness even if in doing so we manage to hide from ourselves the fact that we are constructing it

this is not to say that our inner life has some kind of a second grade um existence conventional reality is not 00:25:14 second level reality um because as the guardian and chandra kirti also emphasized we must remember that conventional reality dependent 00:25:26 origination is exactly the same as emptiness which is ultimate reality the only kind of reality anything that we ever encounter is going to have is conventional reality so when i'm talking 00:25:38 here about cognitive illusion i'm not arguing that the existence of our interstates um is illusory i'm arguing that the illusion is that we have immediate access to them as they are and 00:25:51 that their mode of existence um is um intrinsic existence so this allows us to understand the majority analysis of the most fundamental cognitive illusion 00:26:04 of all the illusion of the immediacy of our knowledge of our own minds and the givenness of our own interstates and processes our direct knowledge of them as the kinds of things they are independent of 00:26:18 any concepts that's the illusion that wittgenstein quine and sellers each in there worked so hard in the 20th century to diagnose and to cure but we can put this just as easily and maybe more 00:26:31 easily in the terms of second century indian madhyamaka the fundamental cognitive illusion is to take our mental states to exist intrinsically rather than conventionally and to take our knowledge of them to be 00:26:45 immediate independent of conventions this illusion is pervasive it is instinctive and it is profoundly self-alienating because it obscures the deeply conventional character of our own 00:26:57 existence and of our self-knowledge and this illusion is what according to buddhist philosophers lies at the root of our grasping of our attraction and diversion and hence at the root of the 00:27:09 pervasive suffering of existence

there's a second kind of cognitive illusion this first cognitive illusion as i've suggested is thematized both in buddhist philosophy and in western philosophy but the second 00:07:06 kind of illusion i find not thematized so much in the west though in some quarters it is some but not all but very much stabilized in in buddhist philosophy and that is the superimposition of subject object 00:07:19 duality um and when we do that um we take the nature of our experience to be primordially structured as subject standing outside of the world viewing an 00:07:31 object now we always know we know that on the slightest bit of reflection that that's crazy that we are biological organisms embedded in a physical world and that 00:07:43 all of our experience is the result of that embodied embedded and embedded experience in the world it's still however almost irresistible to have that kind of image of ourselves as wittgenstein put it as like the eye 00:07:56 to the visual field that we stand outside of the world as pure subject with everything else taken as object and that reflexive taking of experience that way is a very profound kind of cognitive 00:08:09 illusion one that is extremely hard to shake to overcome illusion though we first have to come to know that illusion better you need to know your enemy in 00:08:21 order to defeat your enemy and so i'm going to spend a lot of time trying to acquaint us with the nature of these illusions that is to say if we want to avoid a pointless trek through the desert uh for 00:08:34 water we'd better know that what we're seeing is a mirage and not an oasis when we become aware of that fact then we're able to redirect ourselves in the right uh in the right direction

16:15 - Adam Smith - The Wealth of Nations

when we attribute sensory experiences to 00:06:39 ourselves for instance like the experience of red or the experience of seeing blue the model is external properties and we think of there as being inner properties just like those external properties that somehow we are 00:06:52 um we are seeing immediately

so this is white light passing through a dispersive prison and this is a visible spectrum from about 420 nanometers in the violet through 500 nanometers and 00:00:18 the green 580 yellow 610 and orange and 650 red and some of the slides that have this along the bottom axis so how dependent I'll be in color what do you 00:00:30 think we depend on color a lot a little lots okay

I want to start with a game. Okay? And to win this game, all you have to do is see the reality that's in front of you as it really is, all right? So we have two panels here, of colored dots. And one of those dots is the same in the two panels. And you have to tell me which one. Now, I narrowed it down to the gray one, the green one, and, say, the orange one. 00:00:41 So by a show of hands, we'll start with the easiest one. Show of hands: how many people think it's the gray one? Really? Okay. How many people think it's the green one? And how many people think it's the orange one? Pretty even split. Let's find out what the reality is. Here is the orange one. (Laughter) Here is the green one. And here is the gray one. 00:01:16 (Laughter) So for all of you who saw that, you're complete realists. All right? (Laughter) So this is pretty amazing, isn't it? Because nearly every living system has evolved the ability to detect light in one way or another. So for us, seeing color is one of the simplest things the brain does. And yet, even at this most fundamental level, 00:01:40 context is everything. What I'm going to talk about is not that context is everything, but why context is everything. Because it's answering that question that tells us not only why we see what we do, but who we are as individuals, and who we are as a society.

so here's a straightforward question what color are the strawberries in this photograph the red right wrong those strawberries are gray if you don't 00:00:12 believe me we look for one of the reddest looking patches on this image cut it out now what color is that it's great right but when you put it back on 00:00:25 the image it's red again it's weird right this illusion was created by a Japanese researcher named Akiyoshi Kitaoka and it hinges on something called color constancy it's an incredible visual 00:00:39 phenomenon by which the color of an object appears to stay more or less the same regardless of the lighting conditions under which you see it or the lighting conditions under which your brain thinks you're seeing it

So, if some of you are still feeling a bit too certain, I'd like to do this one. So, if we have the lights down. And what we have here -- Can everyone see 25 purple surfaces on your left, 00:15:03 and 25, call it yellowish, surfaces on your right? So now, what I want to do, I'm going to put the middle nine surfaces here under yellow illumination, by simply putting a filter behind them. Now you can see that changes the light that's coming through there, right? Because now the light is going through a yellowish filter and then a purplish filter. I'm going to do the opposite on the left here. 00:15:31 I'm going to put the middle nine under a purplish light. Now, some of you will have noticed that the consequence is that the light coming through those middle nine on the right, or your left, is exactly the same as the light coming through the middle nine on your right. Agreed? Yes? Okay. So they are physically the same. 00:15:56 Let's pull the covers off. Now remember -- you know that the middle nine are exactly the same. Do they look the sa

Even the beautiful bumblebee, with its mere one million brain cells, which is 250 times fewer cells than you have in one retina, sees illusions

also true for complex perceptions of motion. So, here we have -- let's turn this around -- a diamond. And what I'm going to do is, I'm going to hold it here, 00:08:53 and I'm going to spin it. And for all of you, you'll see it probably spinning this direction. Now I want you to keep looking at it. Move your eyes around, blink, maybe close one eye. And suddenly it will flip, and start spinning the opposite direction. Yes? Raise your hand if you got that. Yes? Keep blinking. Every time you blink, it will switch. So I can ask you, which direction is it rotating? 00:09:20 How do you know? Your brain doesn't know, because both are equally likely. So depending on where it looks, it flips between the two possibilities

Here we have that exact same illusion. We have two identical tiles on the left, one in a dark surround, one in a light surround. And the same thing over on the right. Now, I'll reveal those two scenes, but I'm not going to change anything within those boxes, except their meaning. 00:07:11 And see what happens to your perception. Notice that on the left the two tiles look nearly completely opposite: one very white and one very dark, right? Whereas on the right, the two tiles look nearly the same. And yet there is still one on a dark surround, and one on a light surround. Why? Because if the tile in that shadow were in fact in shadow, and reflecting the same amount of light to your eye 00:07:35 as the one outside the shadow, it would have to be more reflective -- just the laws of physics. So you see it that way. Whereas on the right, the information is consistent with those two tiles being under the same light. If they're under the same light reflecting the same amount of light to your eye, then they must be equally reflective. So you see it that way. Which means we can bring all this information together to create some incredibly strong illusions.

let me show you how quickly our brains can redefine normality, even at the simplest thing the brain does, which is color. 00:05:29 So if I could have the lights down up here. I want you to first notice that those two desert scenes are physically the same. One is simply the flipping of the other. Now I want you to look at that dot between the green and the red. And I want you to stare at that dot. Don't look anywhere else. We're going to look at it for about 30 seconds, which is a bit of a killer in an 18-minute talk. (Laughter) But I really want you to learn. 00:05:55 And I'll tell you -- don't look anywhere else -- I'll tell you what's happening in your head. Your brain is learning, and it's learning that the right side of its visual field is under red illumination; the left side of its visual field is under green illumination. That's what it's learning. Okay? Now, when I tell you, I want you to look at the dot between the two desert scenes. So why don't you do that now? (Laughter) 00:06:21 Can I have the lights up again? I take it from your response they don't look the same anymore, right? (Applause) Why? Because your brain is seeing that same information as if the right one is still under red light, and the left one is still under green light. That's your new normal. Okay? So, what does this mean for context? It means I can take two identical squares, put them in light and dark surrounds, and the one on the dark surround looks lighter than on the light surround. 00:06:47 What's significant is not simply the light and dark surrounds that matter. It's what those light and dark surrounds meant for your behavior in the past.

we need to treat one another with respect despite our differences like this is like an aspiration for people 00:41:01 right except for they thought it was in the bottom quarter of stuff for everybody else so what happens if i'm like i i would like to get back to treating other people's respect but i don't think 00:41:12 they care about that for me back to that ambiguous interactions that we have all the time i'm gonna read disrespect into most everything i see right and so i i think it's really critical like 00:41:25 like i talked about this as like congruence right this need for our private selves and our public selves to be as as closely aligned as possible we've known for a long time that that's that's a critical part of fulfillment 00:41:37 and self-actualization i mean how how do you get there you're the expert on that like how do you how do you get there if you have a divided self like my private self is different than my public self like so we know that at an individual 00:41:48 level but given the the fact of collective illusions i believe this idea of congruence may be the most important thing you can do for other people right because it doesn't help anyone when we misread each 00:42:00 other so profoundly

the thing is about humans is that this this stuff generalized the group stuff kind of generalizes from individual relational stuff like it's it's a you look at codependent relationships 00:24:00 one-on-one you start to see similar dynamics you know like you start to it's just have you thought about it the individual like the individual uh uh illusion level and how those basic first principles have reasoning for 00:24:13 first principles here you know yeah you're upset correct so so it's actually it's like fractal quality to it right so you see illusion in in in just between two people or small groups

what we find and what we have found and partly why i wrote the book is the trick with illusions is your brain is certain it knows what the group thinks so if just being told it with data that it's not true it the number of times people 00:19:45 say man i i wish it were true but i know it's not and you're like so what we found our strategy we felt like is when the more that people came to understand 00:19:57 the phenomenon of collective illusion the more likely it is that they were willing to take new data and say okay wait now that i know that this is possible and i know that like i can't really trust my brain to tell me what the group thinks they 00:20:10 were open to good data where otherwise it just seemed like the data itself like and if you think about it like how many other organizations have shown us like look how much common ground we have and yet it doesn't seem to move the need so our bet is to socialize the concept of 00:20:24 collective illusions get people to understand this and then hopefully we can now start to have the conversation with data about who we really are as a people i mean like to me it's it's it's incumbent on us to actually meet people 00:20:36 where they are and and i think this is an important concept so it's on me to try to communicate in a way that people understand and can relate to

so what 00:03:11 is a collective illusion then right so like what's the definition simply they simply stated right collective illusions are situations where the majority in a group ends up going along with something that they 00:03:23 don't privately agree with simply because they incorrectly think that most other people in the group agree with it and and as a result entire groups can end up doing things that almost nobody really wanted

i talked to todd rose about this notion of collective 00:00:51 illusions you know humans are a tribal species prone to conformity and in a lot of instances we act according to what our in-group wants rather than what we want as individuals ironically todd's research shows that we make poor 00:01:04 inferences about the majority consensus and that failing to recognize collective illusions can have negative consequences on our identities relationships values and society to avoid falling into conformity traps todd encourages us to 00:01:17 live congruent private and public lives that adhere to our personal convictions

To be perfectly frank, this proposal seems far more about creating the appearance of safety than addressing an actual deficit in application correctness. I'm not questioning the value in detecting unhandled promises (resolved OR rejected) as a development tool for calling attention to a potentially undesired flow... but just like other lint rules, this belongs in tooling and NOT the execution environment.

A platform like Twitter makes our asynchronous posts feel like real-time interaction by delivering them in such rapid succession, and that illusion begets another more powerful one, that we’re all actually present within the feed.

valac produces C source and header files from Vala source files as if you've written your library or application directly in C. Using a Vala library from a C application won't look different than using any other GObject-based library.

Satan is a personification of the illusion of separation

Affective forecasting is the process by which we attempt to pre-dict how we will feel in the future. One of the ways we fail at this task is called the end of history illusion,which suggests that we’re well aware of how much we’ve changed in the past ten years, but we imagine that that’s it—we’re done changing. When asked how much we think we’ll change in the next ten years, we assume we’re done.

People often talk about how colours are meant to contrast, by using colour wheels or by checking the HSV coordinates, but be aware that these tools are lies. The scale of computer colours is typically not perceptually uniform. Brown should be a narrow region for instance and blue should be a huge region. To see the proper range of each colour, consult a rainbow.

But any sense that “data” has an inherent “visual form” is an illusion

In 2012, Facebook conducted secret psychological experiments on nearly 700,000 users

о «трех владыках материализма» – это «владыка формы», «владыка речи» и «владыка ума»

Под иллюзией continuous improvement скрывается хаотичное движение неуправляемой частицы с глубоко скрытым экзистенциальным кризисом. И на векторы этого движения влияет бесконечность разных факторов: настроение, меняющиеся краткосрочные приоритеты, возможность быстрых маленьких побед.

The computer programming the child.”

27This realization will surely come, when you can recognize that this Message is from Me, andwhen you have determined that it shall be. To you, whom I have inspired with such adetermination, I will cause every illusion in time to disappear, and you shall in truth know Me.The exercise of your mind along these abstract lines will not hurt you. Instead it is what yourmind needs. For, not until you can grasp My Meaning when presented to you in ideas such asthere herein contained, coming from without, can you perceive and correctly interpret My Ideawhen I inspire you from within. Your mind I AM thus preparing for USE, not to gain moreEarthly knowledge, but in order that you can receive and give forth My Heavenly Knowledge tothose whom I shall bring to you for that purpose.With a prayer to Me, Your Own Real Self, your Father-in-Heaven, that true realization maycome, read carefully what follows

In the Eternal there is no Time, or Space, or Individuality, and it is only by reason of thephenomenon of Thought being born from the womb of Mind into the world of Matter that theillusions of Time, Space and Individuality occur; the thought, or Creature, acquiring theconsciousness of separateness from its Thinker or Creator

I AM You, the Real Self of you, All that you really are. That which you think you are, you arenot. That is only an illusion, a shadow of the Real You, which is I, your Immortal, Divine Self.I AM that point of consciousness focalized in your human mind which calls itself "I". I AM that"I", but that which you call your consciousness is in reality My Consciousness, thinned down tosuit the capacity of your human mind. It is still My Consciousness, and when you can drive fromyour mind all its human misconceptions, ideas and opinions, and can cleanse and empty itutterly, so that My Consciousness can have a chance to express freely, then you will recognizeMe and you will know that you are nothing -- being only a focal center of My Consciousness, anavenue of medium through which I can express My meaning -- in matter.

As I have already said, do not try to determine what is real and what is illusion at the level of dream. You must understand that it is your willingness to pay attention to me, to my presence outside of the dream—and therefore your presence outside of the dream—which is the only thing that will bring you to a point of being able to distinguish what is Real. And, of course, there will not be anything remaining appearing to be unreal, so no distinction between the two will have to be made. We are talking about clarity, here, in which there is no confusion, no distorted perception.

The whole false fantastic sense of self has arisen out of an attempt to understand who is asking the question. Indeed, through an analysis of the questions, one could come to the conclusion that the questioner is fearful, jealous, confident, expectant. But that is like trying to see something through a mirror around and corner which allows you to see something that you cannot otherwise see directly. The sense of the questioner which is gathered from the nature of the questions is necessarily absolutely illusory. This, now, is a new way to describe what has been called “The Fall”—the means by which one experiences ignorance of Reality.

Now, whatever excitement or trepidation might be being felt is, of course, not being felt by you, but by the ego—the fantasy sidekicks which both of you and everyone else who is not Awake thinks they companion with. In fact, they think that they are the fantasy partner. The excitement comes from the sense that what is going to be heard is foreign—therefore, perhaps threatening. And I am saying “threatening” with a certain sense of thrill, because the ego likes a little bit of threat. It provides the motivation for challenge. And it is all bull-shit!

Now, this graduation is constituted of a commitment to Reality and an abandonment of the illusory sense of self; a commitment to Knowing, which it now will be much easier for you to make since I am making it clear to you that you are not listening to something other than your Self, and therefore there is not a listener of dubious integrity. The presence of the experience of Knowing is truly an experience of Self, and not of someone else who is Valuable. Why, indeed, would you continue to make an investment of trust and commitment in something that is Real and thus apparently borrow some value which never truly becomes yours, and therefore leaves you in your illusory sense of incompetence and limitation?

This does, indeed, cause it to seem to be entirely up to you, which, of course, does not compute with the ego’s suggestion that That which is divine has ultimate power to penetrate illusion, and therefore if one’s Guide is not penetrating illusion, then we must not be Who we say we are. That is simply another part of the defense, another part of the justification for ignore-ance.

You do not know whether the observing of the events in the Mideast on TV is unworthy of your attention, but your experience of financial lack is worthy of your attention, because you grasp that they might both be of the same order of illusion. Is one or the other of them more worthy of your attention? Are they both? Or neither one? I will tell you something: If either one of them were the appropriate focus of your attention, that is what we would be talking about! But, you see, we are talking about letting go of the sidekick and its polarized, dualistic perceptions—confidences and doubts, fulfillments and lack of fulfillments—and, indeed, we are talking about anchoring yourself at Home by means of simply connecting with me, because it is literally that shift from the standpoint of the sidekick to the standpoint of your Being which separates the tares from the wheat, the illusion from the reality, the overlay of misperception from the underlying Reality which is being misperceived. Then the illusion of lack will not be present to deal with, and the experience of the Wholeness of You, the Wholeness of God’s Self-expression, will be what is being experienced.

That which makes abundance appear to be lack is entirely in the standpoint. It depends entirely on which end of the binoculars you are looking through. As I have said before, you have a habit of switching ends quite frequently. This is what is frustrating you. When you receive a telephone call, or a statement in the mail, which claims that your Supply is not omnipresent—some part of your universe is coming up short—you must recognize this as being totally false. Your Being is omnipresently present and active. Since that is the Fact, then it would be foolish for you to go out and attempt to correct that illusion on the basis of the phone call or statement. The attempt is made on the basis of a false assumption.

Again, do not let your experience of being as Conscious Being become divided into many beings, externalized, “out there,” separate and apart from You. That is the illusion. The fact is that everything you see is going on as You, and you must understand that the You that you experience as “being alive,” “being conscious,” is the I that is Mind, God. The realization of this fact is what is called the Christ, the True Perception of Your Being. It is this True Perception of your Being which is dawning in your thoughts more forcibly than ever before.

RAJ: Paul, that statement was made within the illusion of three-dimensional existence. In the first place, there is no man separate from God for God to give anything to. Secondly, it is only from within the finite frame of reference that there can seem to be an “earth” separate from “man” for man to have dominion over. Any apparent success that the human concept (ego) has of being able to exercise dominion over an earth “out there” only succeeds in further deepening the illusion that life is going on objectively.

As I observe myself, it seems incredible to me that there is this definite reluctance to get into the subject of Substance, or into the specific answer to the problems we have been faced with over the past number of months. It is extremely strong. RAJ: And, Paul, it is entirely operating at the level of belief. It is a totally ignorant experience. That is what makes it most incredible. It simply means that you are going to have to move through it purposely, and not hope for some way to get around it.

I cannot force you to do it, but I would suggest that you get back into that Place as an ongoing state of Being and remain there. Being out from Mind is the only state of Being in which illusion is absent. Illusion is always distressing and uncomfortable, as you well know.

RAJ: Very well, Paul. I want you to consider the fact that “pedestals” are for show. They exist for the purpose of exhibiting whatever is resting upon them. As a matter of fact, the pedestal itself has become an object of art. I want you to consider the fact that a pedestal is used to set something apart from everything else. It is a divisive structure, three-dimensionally speaking. It is also divisive from an inner standpoint, wherein it equates with “ego”—”a liar and the father of it.“1 It is the liar, in that it holds up that which is not separate and says, “This is separate.” It is the father of the lie, in that what it holds up as separate is concocted of its own fantasy. The pedestal, together with what it shows off, is total illusion. One truly does not exist without the other.

It is important to begin to see that Being is unfolding Itself successfully, with absolutely perfect precision, no matter how you feel. Emotional responses are illusions, having no relationship to the Actuality of Being. Thus, if you are wise, you will not let your emotional responses signify anything to you regarding Reality.

t seems to you as though you have had a strenuous and purposeless day today. However, these are the idiotic ravings of ignorance, which would fool you into believing the exact opposite of what is unfolding in and as your experience as purposeful, dynamic, fulfilling and intelligent manifestations of your Being. As I have said before, you must learn to recognize that your Being is unfolding Itself at all times in perfect harmony with Its Nature. You must begin to accept this as the Fact, rather than what your imagination can come up with based upon what it sees, hears, tastes, smells, and feels. The Absolute Facts of your Being have never for an instant ceased operating, and never will. Therefore, anything other than this Fact is pure fiction, and you should not waste one moment on it. The only reason you don’t see it is because you are looking through your preconceptions about what is right for you. Then, when your Being unfolds Itself in a direction in which you are not consciously looking, it seems as though unfoldment has ceased altogether.

Seeing out from Being is that perfect Awareness which Mind experiences of its own infinite Self-expression. All that actually happens is that the illusion, or misunderstanding, caused by conceptual thinking simply evaporates. One is left with a clear view of the Actuality of one’s own Being and the Harmony of it as one’s own experience.

RAJ: Thank you, Paul. The reversal of any situation is accomplished by proclaiming the Fact at the point of being as Conscious Being. You must realize that doing this does not actually reverse a thing, since what appears to need reversing is not a “presence” at any level. It is, instead, the apparent absence of one’s awareness of his Omnipresent Being. Proclaiming the Fact from the standpoint of being as Conscious Being opens the apparently closed door to the Actuality. It is the method by which you practice or be what you are successfully.

Beloved friends, as we speak of these things, though, let not seriousness enter the mind. For in Truth, all we are really doing is describing for you what you need to do, and can do, in order to release the burden of illusion that seems to cause you to feel a heaviness upon your countenance, a sense of a lack of safety in the world. You could think of it as taking your rheostat and turning it up a bit by enlightening you, taking your burden of guilt and judgment from you.

They are deeply immersed in illusions and in dream images; their eyes merely glide over the surface of things and see "forms."

Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions- they are metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force, coins which have lost their embossing and are now considered as metal and no longer as coins.

and therefore people think that, if his name is mentioned many times, many things have been said about him. So that Homer, by means of this illusion, has made a great deal of though he has mentioned him only in this one passage, and has preserved his memory, though he nowhere says a word about him afterwards.