“You’ve got to see this!”
“I know you’ll like it.”
That’s what my eldest son said to me last weekend when he brought round a DVD of ‘Inception’ for us to watch.
If you haven’t seen it , it’s about the efforts of ‘Cobb’ (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) and his team, to fulfil a contract to plant an idea into the mind of a ‘mark’ while he’s dreaming, as an act of industrial espionage. The film jumps from scene to scene, constantly switching from the dream, to the dream within a dream, and the one within that; leaving the viewer to work out what is or is not ‘real’. It’s the kind of film that I love, not least because it makes me think. And boy did I have to think!
So what is a dream anyway? How can we be sure when we’re dreaming and when we’re not? How do we know what’s real and what’s not? What exactly is reality? And while we’re at it, what is truth? And what makes your version any more real than mine?
All very good questions, I know, but I couldn’t come up with a definitive answer to any of them. But what it made think of was something that had come up in ‘The Circle of One’.
Even in our waking lives, when we are telling our ‘story’ based on the many dramas that we’ve created, and we are living our illusion based on that story, it’s hard to tell the difference. We distort our reality, sometimes to the extent that we don’t always know what is real and what is not. “What we see are distortions of what we think our reality is, or how we believe it ought to be. Our perception of ourselves is only that; a perception created by us; an accumulation of other distortions and delusions..” And that, is how we live our lives. Never completely sure about what is reality and what is illusion, but steadfastly clinging to the version that makes us feel safe.
But just think for a moment, what it could mean if we adopted the idea that “none of this is real”? Think of how much more open we could be to re-creating a reality that was more in line with helping us to remember who we really are, and a truth that sets us free from the illusion.
When we choose to live our personal truth, and are ready to ask the difficult questions, we are ready to let go of our story and embrace a new reality. We are freed to pursue our spiritual expansion and to experience the love and joy that are a part of expressing who we really are.
Are you keeping it real? What’s your reality? What’s your truth? Leave a comment and let me know.
‘The Truth Will Set You Free’ is the fifth principle of the Circle of One.
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