In seeing the illusion you can see the reality behind it, but many stop there. They see how they, and their teaching, was mistaken, and that attachment is the source of suffering. Then they become detached, and stop there. They bring a spirit of detachment to the world, and when confronted with attachments they won’t engage. They declare themselves detached as if it’s a position above their previous state.

You should be able to live your life however you like, detached or not? Oh, indeed, and have the consequences of any choice, and enjoy your pleasure/pain as you see fit, and view things as you choose. Understand what you want to understand.

Fulfillment depends on what you innately need. If life doesn’t provide that ever, then there is no need to attach to it and keep striving for something that never comes?  Hmm, interesting point. They have done some experiments with that. Assuring that a young specimen have exactly what they literally need for survival. Skinner did it.  Drove his daughter to live the rest of her life in an asylum.

Can’t we learn from the “bad” things in our lives too? Aren’t all situations instructive? I leave waste in my toilet. It doesn’t get deleted from reality, but it’s removed from my living space. We don’t delete the “illusion” from reality, but we can choose how we live.  You can learn from any experience, but that doesn’t mean the learning was good or helpful. It doesn’t mean you got the ‘right’ message. You can learn a mistake very deeply, become very well rehearsed in it, and strongly identified with this mistake.

You said about joy… What can be the thing to keep one away from joy? The notion of sacrifice. The notion that to have enlightenment you must shun anything. That to have peace you must exclude something else. The idea that one thing is joyful, and another thing a block to joy, this can keep you from joy. This may seem strange, but it is the way of the mind. If you were to violently assault me, I can enjoy the experience. They call that masochism, and it could make me feel very alive, and I might in sharing that way with you assault you in return. Return that pain you shared with me. For some people this is very validating.

The most serene people learn to manage their world. It’s about control and about ‘shunning’ bad impulses which lead to chaos. Shunning chaos leads to order? In my experience this hasn’t proven true. Order cannot be achieved by negative definition. I have “suffered” a lot in my life, and I’m not looking for anyone’s sympathy, because it was my life experience, and in fact if I have anything worthy of sharing it came from seeing truth in that chaos. I have seen lives of “ease”, and they were not necessarily any better lived than mine.

“I spent all my life looking for Truth and I haven’t found it, yet.“ Ghandi. Spend all your life living, and you will have expended nothing, and gained everything. The path of transcendence is a path.  If it’s fulfilling to you then by all means live that path. For myself I have a different view, and I thank you for your tolerance of my sharing.

Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.

Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~