FROM A SITE VISITOR: If the glass I drink from is not real, then how is it that I’m able to drink water from the glass? Michael
F.: So, Michael, as the discussion continues, is the focus shifting from trying to determine if a glass is real to determining if the drama in which you’re playing multiple roles is real? To determining if the perceptions you have of the characters on the stage is real? To determining if your image of “the world” is real? To determining if you are seeing the Real or only a series of mis-perceptions?
Yesterday, the following was offered to site visitors regarding persons trapped in the relative drama:
You perceived some actors to be charming who proved to be narcissists instead; you perceived some actors as being kind who were later revealed to be complete sociopaths, and you perceived some actors as being moral who would eventually be exposed as unscrupulous frauds instead.
There is another group of persons who do not even have the ability to see through narcissists, sociopaths, or frauds in the relative existence. Rather than being trapped on the stage in “The Drama of the Lie,” they are walking about in their sleep in “The Dream of the Planet.”
In the process of sleepwalking through life, they are engaging narcissists and sociopaths and frauds—and they are behaving as narcissists or sociopaths or frauds—but don’t even know it.
All who are playing their roles on the relative stage, or who are walking about in a dream while thinking they are awake, will continue to be trapped in all of the nonsensical drama and in all of the peace-preventing histrionics that the relative existence generates when the moment of “peripetia” has not happened and all of the false selves are perceived to be real and all of their false concepts are perceived to be true.
The peripetia is discussed in the non-duality-based-novel THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF WARS. Here is an excerpt from the novel in which the peripetia is explained:
“You seem at peace in the middle of this chaos. I want that peace,” Brett almost demanded.
“Brett, you’ve been shown the answer all your life. It was there for you to see in every play, in every movie, in every mystery you’ve ever read. Shakespeare borrowed the dramatic technique from the Greeks,” Kirk began. “Today, it’s the basis of all mystery and suspense stories, and it’s also the basis of realization.”
“I’m lost,” Brett confessed.
“Well look at every drama you’ve ever seen. The main character, who represents you and me and everyone, runs around like a chicken with its head cut off. He is confused and in the dark. Those who are in a position to sit back and witness the drama objectively can see that he’s just an actor on the stage and that none of the drama is real. But for entertainment’s sake, he and the witnesses can pretend it’s real. Both, in fact, can get so absorbed in the role that they take it to be the real for a time.
“But even amidst all of the drama, a time comes, that moment in the play when even the actor finds out the truth. It is called the peripetia in drama—that moment in the play or the movie when the lead actor finds out that everything he thought to be true is really false; when he sees that he was being misled at every turn; when those he thought he could trust the most, and who thought they were telling him the truth, were also wrong.
“It’s the moment of freedom that comes when one finds out that everything he ever thought or believed or held sacred (or thought worth fighting for) was a lie. The freedom comes when he gives up all of the concepts he bought into, drops his head in relief and amazement, shakes his head back and forth, wonders for a moment at how he had bought into all their crap, smiles at how easily he was duped, watches how all of the rest of the play unfolds automatically until its end, and leaves the stage after saying to himself, ‘Well, sonofabitch. I’ll be damned.’ And then he laughs. He laughs at it all. And then he’s done with it, once and for all.”
Are you done with it, once and for all, or will you settle for the instability and flux? Are you done with it all, or will you continue to settle for a relative existence with all its conditions, including conditional “love” and conditional peace and conditional happiness?
Are you willing to settle for more of the limitations and qualifications that the relative offers when mis-perceptions block seeing the Real? Are you willing to settle for the relative’s uncertain and unsure and compartmentalized existence? Are you willing to settle for continued interaction with adulterated and ambiguous characters on a stage?
Have dissociation and dreaming and sleepwalking become your best friends? Are you “bored to death” (that is, bored with all that walking about in your sleep, just experiencing a “death-in-life” existence of “settling for”)? The relative, mis-perceived via the ever-moving consciousness, will always be dominated by such instability and delusion.
Only abidance as the unchanging, unconditional, unadulterated and unambiguous Absolute offers stability. Are you settling, having been programmed to believe that suffering is OK for now since a reward awaits you later?
Or, is your “mind” claiming that all is fine? If so, why are you visiting this site? For mere entertainment, or in a search for something? Is there a search for an end to misery and suffering and delusion? The teachings point the way.
Is there a search for answers to certain questions that humans have asked throughout the ages, such as "Who am I, really?" and "What's it all about?" and "What happens when I die?" The teachings point to the answers.
Is the search for happiness and freedom and understanding and clarity and peace…NOW? If you have been programmed to believe that paradise is “there” and “later,” then you will never know happiness “here” and NOW.
To see through all of the nonsense and drama and histrionics and fiction that the programmed “mind” will generate, the moment of “peripetia” is a requirement, not an option. Please enter the silence of contemplation. (To be continued)
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