We’re Living In A Dream World

by Jean-Claude Koven, 
(© copyright All Rights Reserved)

Most people are other people,” Oscar Wilde once remarked. “Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.” As he so wryly observed, the vast majority of us are not who we’ve been pretending to be, and the lives we’ve been living until now are molded according to rules and values that are not our own. Most of humanity is stuck in someone else’s discarded chewing gum and has yet to break free.

Unless we have been brave enough to forsake this trap, here is our likely portrait. Our religious convictions are those of our parents or community; we root for our hometown sports teams; our political allegiances conform to the party system society offers; we are an avid observer of the cultural pageantry, like the Super Bowl and the Oscars; our holidays are the standard ones, such as Christmas, New Year’s Eve, and Independence Day; we look to our political and religious leaders for guidance and protection; we feel driven to succeed—to make more money, to live a better life.

These are worthy and desirable choices which hold families and societies together. They make us who we are, we might argue. True, but only if we are content with admiring the wrapping and never looking inside the box. If we dared to look, we’d discover how these basic thoughts originate in a fundamental belief formed during the first years of our life: that survival depends on obeying the rules. Children typically bend their perceptions and interpretations of reality to match those of their parents and others who care for them. They find clever ways to please in order to receive attention and belong. As they grow up, the people and issues may change over time, but the initial patterns of conformity remain deeply ingrained in the subconscious.

The price for surrendering to consensus is steep. It is nothing less than the loss of individuality and curiosity. Without these two magnificent attributes, we disengage from the grandness of the creation and implode into the holographic illusion we have come to call reality. We become one of Oscar Wilde’s other people, thinking someone else’s opinions and assuming they are our own.

We are trapped in the daily drama the culture and the media feed us: mortgages, sporting events, tsunamis, sex offenders, AIDS, terrorism, global warming, corrupt governments, and economic inequities . . . all demanding our attention. The matrix plays us like an instrument. A thirty-second news bite can push our buttons. We get hooked and riled, liberally lacing our collective guts with corrosive bio-chemicals unleashed by our righteous indignation.

This condition is virtually universal. It is also the underlying cause of the world as we know it. People cling so tightly to their personal and social identities that they are blinded to anything that does not validate them. The inevitable product is a world of war, greed, and competition, driven by paranoia and fear.

The way out is easier than one might imagine. However, very few summon the courage, for it requires them to leave the comfort of their known world and walk alone, unaided by the crutch of belief and dogma, into the domain of pure consciousness. Most people would rather get caught up in the business of earning a living, raising a family, or helping their community than deal with the unsettling immensity of All That Is.

Yet it seems all humans are meant to take this epic journey of discovery at some point in their series of lives on this planet. If we choose to walk this path, we will find ourselves gaining a new perspective—that of consciousness, where the mind, with its judgments and emotions, ceases to dominate and the heart is our only reliable guide. The great issues of our daily lives that once commanded our attention now seem wondrously arbitrary and irrelevant—simply interesting experiences that lasted far too long and became unnecessarily weighty.

We now see the illusion for what it is: a game board projection designed so aspects of the Oneness can experience duality, fear, and separation. It is no more real than a programmed matrix in a computer game. You and I are merely units of awareness projected into the matrix, defining ourselves by the points through which we view and believing what we see to be reality. Who did the projecting? You. Who is the projection? You. There is only you.

How do we get to this liberating place from which we can see the larger picture?

The cosmic formula of creation is gloriously simple: Attention + Intention = Manifestation. Nothing in the universe evades this law. The reality we perceive is entirely a function of two forces at our command: our attention and intention. Bring conscious awareness to this equation, consciously monitor our attention and intention and what we are manifesting, and everything changes.

Through this ongoing process of self-observation it will become increasingly clear that the part of us that is projected into the illusion is in trouble. This realization marks the beginning of our journey out of the illusion. Once we begin to couple the law of Attention + Intention = Manifestation with the concept of Oneness, we begin to see a completely different picture. We are All That Is. There is nowhere for us to go, nothing to attain, no lessons to learn.

If we buy into the reality that we are an earthbound human stuck in the struggle of life, presto, there we are. If we focus on the part that is watching us flounder in the illusion, snap, we’re free. It can’t get much easier than that. Yet why are so few of us awake?

The written or spoken word can do no more than point the way. And trading one belief system for another accomplishes nothing. The answer lies elsewhere. Waking up is a consequence of induction. Just a few years ago we might have placed ourselves in the presence of a guru or master and, through devotion, discipline, or some other practice, gradually assumed some of his or her enlightenment. Now, using the law of A + I = M, we become our own master. By focusing our attention on the part of us that is watching the rest of us floundering in the illusion, we are taking a giant step in restoring control over how our attention is commanded. If we add the intention of reclaiming our essence, we complete the formula that can only result in the manifestation of whatever our curiosity seeks to explore.

The payoff of having been so deeply mired in the illusion that we nearly succumbed is compassion for those still stuck in the matrix, coupled with a large dose of humility. We have learned the illusion is perfect exactly as it is. The only thing that needs to change is the point from which we view it. Now all that’s left is to summon the courage to begin the journey home.

Jean-Claude Koven is a Rancho Mirage, CA based writer and speaker. He is the author of Going Deeper: How to Make Sense of Your Life When Your Life Makes No Sense, the Altbooks Reviews editor’s choice for the best metaphysical book of 2004. For more information, please visit: www.prismhouse.com

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