#8 We're All Hallucinating

Everyone's hallucinating, we live through our thoughts. Be empathetic towards others hallucinations.

We all know intellectually that life is subjective.

Whatever there is that you love, there's someone out there who hates it.

The reverse is also true, and we can find evidence of this everywhere in the world.

We even have a name for it.

Conflict.

When two people have different hallucinations and the inability to understand each other.

The problem is that we often forget that the reality we're staring at, isn't the objective truth we take it to be.

It's our point of view, our current hallucination, our thoughts as seen by our consciousness.

But even the gentle reminder of life's subjectivity will usually not be enough to snap someone out of their illusory cage.

This is where insights make the difference between understanding something intellectually, and understanding something directly.

We can take 100 smokers to an addiction center and all of them will agree–yes smoking is damaging to my health and may cost me my life–I should quit.

Yet, a good outcome would be if even just 1 person quit.

Why is that?

Direct Understanding

Having a deeper understanding where it's almost embodied, before and beyond being intellectualised–means it's the only thing that really makes sense to us.

We really do understand it.

If I held a knife in my hand and you kept stabbing myself, I wouldn't need tricks, chewing gums, self-help modalities or a support group (none of which are bad by the way way) to stop the damage.

I'd just have to stop stabbing myself, and that wouldn't be so hard right?

But first I must see that I really am stabbing myself.

Not just holding up a sparkly stick that makes cool rings of smoke.

This is a direct understanding.

And while there's no secret formula that I'm aware of to getting it, I know only how to block it–by entertaining the same thoughts that I've always entertained.

Let the mind still and let fresh new thoughts pour in.

Allow insights to come.

We might just be surprised what shows up.

Even more importantly, when we see someone who's clearly stabbing themselves–be empathetic to the fact that they don't know they're the ones holding the knife and putting in the force.

It's truly innocent–we're all doing the best we can with what we've got.