The Making of Fictional Lives
'My' fictional life involves the ‘myself’, as a dramatist writing my own story line for ‘my’ ongoing drama which has become ‘my’ apparent life. Each day, I get up and prepare the first scene of the next act of my story. In this ongoing drama, I am also the protagonist and the lead actor. This apparent continual process defines and reinforces both ‘my’ identity and ‘my’ ongoing reality as a pure fiction.
The 'Grand Illusion' is that I am convinced that I am a separate entity immersed in my own ongoing story. We can all resonate to Shakespeare's “All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts. . . . ..” This passage has always struck a chord deep within us that transcends the generations.
My reality is what I believe I am, because of what I have already experienced through my ongoing drama. The ‘me’ appears to dominate the center of consciousness as an egocentric self in control of my life. ‘My' reality is so interwoven with fact and fiction that I cannot clearly distinguish between them. Such is the grand illusion.
To awaken is to see things directly, just as they are perceived, before thought takes over the conscious mind.
In order to overcome the confusion that life throws at us, we raise fundamental doubts and ask questions like: “Why is life so incomplete, difficult and painful?”: “Is there another way to live?”; “There must be something more than this?”; ”What is this?” and “What am I?”
After much struggle and also, when no real answer is forthcoming, the mind becomes empty of ideas. That empty tension is the beginning of a paradigm shift, in which false beliefs, ideas and assumptions fall away. Now it is very important to stay with the question, ‘What am I?’ And as well, it is important to be in this empty but receptive awareness in which no meaningful answer is found.
Then, a transforming breakthrough will surely happen on its own, in a time not of your choosing. You see: a fictional self cannot liberate itself, while immersed in tits own fiction. Whatever you find to liberate yourself, would that not be just another fictional story for one’s ongoing fictional drama? (Excerpted from: Breakthrough: A Paradigm Shift to an Ecological Consciousness (unpublished manuscript).