With or Without/Not In, Not Out

The Illusion We ALL Fail to See: Obstructions.

May 10, 2025

Ordiinary Living

To see beyond the illusion of the world, we must practice. One of the first practices that helps us see through the illusion is virtue.

YES! Virtue.

A lack of virtue is an obstruction. Without virtue hate and greed and illusion abound. Without virtue w e fail to see through the illusion because we prefer and believe in the illusion.

Before we go further stop what you are doing and see within your mind how you define virtue.

Examine your self by examining your character. The qualities to consider are:

Honesty
Loving kindness
Courageous
Truthful
Patient
Even-minded
Without shame
Without blame

The list may seem simple, but look closely at yourself as though each characteristic was a magnifying glass for seeing your character.

What Gets in Our Way of Letting Go of the World?

The things of the world keep us oriented in the world, focused on the world, giving us a sense of protection. But it is a temporary, false protection.

Physical protection, time orientation and spatial orientation are all of the things we rely on. These things give us a sense of being invulnerable to harm, physical harm, impermanence and presence in a body. We feel a sense of a solid footing.

But the solid footing is temporary.

These things are a block to our knowing and going beyond the temporary world.

We may find ourselves reactive, irritable, worried, with a sense of loneliness or a view that nothing seems to work out the way we want.

We may experience a dullness that shrinks our awareness. We might fret or wander without regard or understanding of our lives. We may feel bereft, cheated or left out.

The causes may be rooted in association with those who condemn, judge, or are just plain negative. Or we may be stuck in categorizing others as stupid, lame, ignorant, foolish, or even a burden.

The chains of experience and causes are a burden until we understand we must face the burden that we find arising. We may have to work wiser, work with no desire for any particular outcome, and ultimately do our best without seeking reward or change.

Yes! Seek no reward.

Facing the experiences and causes with no attachment for reward or change can and does shift to an experience of joy and peace with life as it is, right where we are.

We stop looking for something bigger, something better, something to satisfy our whims.

When we find ourselves in a downward spiral of mind and body we benefit by taking refuge in the Beloved, in that which has no beginning or end and has many names.

We may have forgotten our true nature which rests on constant change. We may have forgotten how to communicate, how to listen, how to help ourselves and others.

Obstructions arise. But even so we do not give up, we do not capitulate to the obstructions that come. When we experience difficulties, we need to accept the situation with our eyes on the Beloved without complaint.

Even when we feel stagnated we continue on. We don’t give up. We may not want to accept the obstructions but we must accept the changes.

Image By Ansgar Holmberg

Finding God.

To see God, we must set aside imagined protections. Our desire to see God needs to be greater than our desire for our own physical protection, our own identity, our own sense of invulnerability.

We need to let go of our sense of measuring time. Why do we need to measure time? We need to let reality appear as it is; the oppositions of light and dark merge; light in dark, dark in light.

It is to override our instinct to survive and fall overboard temporarily into the dark vastness.