Lifes an Illusion

I'll get right to the point. Life is not necessarily what we think it is. And no, I'm not going to extrapolate this to the extreme to try to convince you that we really exist on some obscure planet in a distant spiral galaxy and that all of this we're experiencing as "life" is only a dream. Of course, it is kind of cool to think that we could waking up any time now, wandering out to the kptfrun to put on the cuggy and then stepping out on the prafo to watch the bos rise and enjoy the sounds of the bilbs as they greet the morning. We naturally, would be all the more enlightened because of the dream experience of the previous night and could therefore anticipate an even more productive, enjoyable day at the Snark assembly plant. (Does excessive caffeine intake cause everyone to think weird stuff like that? Probably just me, huh?)

Where were we? Oh yeah, the illusion thing? Let's start with the physical, material stuff. Everything you see is not as it appears - or as it is interpreted by our little brains. When we look around, we "see" all kinds of solid forms. computers, desks, paper, chairs, walls, books, etc. These things not only look solid, they feel solid and can be held, moved, sat upon, used to support other solid things - and broken. So they're all composed of some densely packed material and therefore are completely "solid", right?

Not even close, Martha. When you get down to the itty bitty particles that all of these nice solid objects are made of, you're gonna find only little teeny tiny bits of energy, specks of particles and a hell of a lot of space between them. In fact, there's a bunch more space than there are specks of particles. Here's one of the analogies I can relate to easily. If we arbitrarily designated the nucleus of an atom (the combination of the neutrons and protons in the center of an atom that contain just about all of the atom's mass) as the size of a grapefruit, the rest of the atom that is the electron cloud (little negatively charged particles that are zipping around the nucleus like a bat outta hell) would take up a space equivalent to a large football stadium. Hmm, let's see. Grapefruit is the "solid" stuff - football stadium is the space and energy stuff. Yeah, there's a hell of a lot of space inside those little atom guys.

Of course, when these little bundles of specks and energy (it would take about a hundred million of 'em laid end to end to stretch out to a length of approximately one centimeter) share their electrons to bond with another atom - or atoms - to form molecules? and then these molecules link together using the energy of their foundation atoms, we can wind up with materials that appear and act like they're completely solid. OK, for those of you who may tend to get picky here, we also wind up with other similar things we can touch such as gas (air) and liquid - the other two states of matter that make up our world.

So where's that leave us? Surrounded by, living with, eating, drinking, using and yes, even mating with "things" that are mostly space and energy. (I think I just saw several married ladies' hands go up to question the energy part of that last statement. Please put your hands down. You know what I mean?)

Our physical, material world then is not exactly what we normally perceive it to be. And, it's a pretty sure bet that the rest of our little world operates pretty much along those same lines. Our perceptions of ourselves, of those around us and the events and situations in our lives and the rest of the world are shaped primarily by our inputs and experiences to this point in our lives. Depending on the "quality" of our programming so far, our personal perceptions of this world can range from fairly realistic to way outta whack. The great thing about this though, is that other's perceptions of our perceptions are tinted by their own personal or collective experiences (programming) so as a result, reality (if there is such a thing) clouds up really quick. Whoa? I think I just gave myself a headache

Yes, it's often extremely difficult to determine where skewed perception ends and reality begins. Of one thing we can be sure. Our individual perceptions of life are the foundations for our personal reality. If your reality is not everything you desire - if it's not bringing you the enjoyment of life you feel you deserve - then it's worth putting forth a little effort to examine your "programming" to see if there aren't a few changes you'd like to make in your thought processes and the way you're viewing