There is a story about a man approaching the Buddha and asking him:

 

Are you a god?

No, said the Buddha.

Then, what are you?

I am awake. 

We all know what being awake in a normal sense means, but that is clearly not what the Buddha had in mind, which is complete freedom from illusion and attachment, a very important topic already dealt with by many wise and competent thinkers and writers. I want to talk about a particular illusion that interferes with our awakening on a daily basis---the illusion created by self-deception, which has two aspects to it. 

 

Freedom from illusions is a state we all want to achieve, at least those who are aware that they are living a life of illusions---a rare group if my experience is any judge. But getting to that state is very difficult and often takes a lifetime (or more than one). Of our many illusions, perhaps the most damaging is that involving the usually very positive stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, a topic I have addressed a number of times. The problem? Psychologists have shown that many of those stories are partially or even totally false, yet we believe them absolutely. Such a condition practically guarantees we will have trouble awakening from our illusory slumber. 

This condition is neatly put by Pema Chodron, a prolific American Buddhist nun. She says, “By weaving our opinions, prejudices, strategies, and emotions into a solid reality, we try to make a big deal out of ourselves….” Clearly, this attempt is doomed to failure. Try as we might, we cannot make a big deal of ourselves, but we can surely make ourselves emotionally and spiritually smaller in the effort. 

Because most of our stories are lodged firmly in the unconscious, we obviously have no access to them. Thus, when we act out a story element and receive a strange or obstructive response from another person, we can only blame the other person or the circumstances. It can’t be me, the unconscious “loudly” proclaims. One of my stories years ago was that I was objective, a view that I held with absolute certainty. Naturally, I resented it when others either disagreed outright or implied I was less than I thought. I had deluded myself, and others had caught me out, causing me suffering. But I rejected them and their views, blaming them for my suffering, allowing me to wallow a bit longer in my self-deception. I had mirrors all around me, and failed to take advantage of them---my damaging illusion persisted. 

The second big category of illusions deals with views we hold about the nature of the world. We take for real our opinions, beliefs, values, and positions to the point that they HAVE to be true or our world takes a nasty shaking. We have invested great emotion and commitment in this illusion, as we do with all of them. The mere thought that it might be erroneous is terrifying, at least unconsciously, which means that this great anxiety goes unrecognized and unacknowledged. We try to disguise the fear by telling ourselves that our views are absolutely correct, but in the end we will pay the price for this fraud. As economists are wont to say, there is no free lunch. 

As I have said a number of times, our political views are among the worst of these illusions. They are often held with monumental rigidity and gross (used in both senses of the word) levels of self-righteousness. But whether it’s political views, or any others, the prominent characteristic is a desire that insists the world be what we want it to be. We deceive ourselves by imagining that we can force the world to do our bidding---ensuring that our illusory views are perfect. Naturally, when it fails to comply, we are shocked, furious or depressed. We have failed to understand the nature and origin of our self-deceptions, and thus of our suffering. Because of this we likely to export our suffering to others, which will seriously compromise our relations with them. 

Underlying and making worse the challenge of our self-deceptions is that we are firmly attached to them, whatever their form. Most of us seeking personal development recognize that attachment is the bane of a balanced and wholesome existence. But we still expend huge amounts of psychic energy ignoring the evidence of reality and trying to maintain our fictions. We are often encouraged in this futile effort through associations with others who share our illusions, or who, tit for tat, allow us our illusions if we do the same for them---the great dance of “let’s pretend.” In this state, we and they live in a self-referencing, self-congratulatory and self-deceiving world that is the enemy of awakening.  

But let us assume that some intrepid self-examiners see that part of being awake is appreciating that they have stories and opinions which are to some degree false, and that part of their lives are lived as illusions. This is a terrific realization, but more is needed. While vital to the self-discovery process, understanding is of little value if we do nothing with what we have uncovered. This is the often sad truth about attending seminars, reading books, listening to even high quality gurus---they are inputs, not outcomes. As wonderful as those activities can be, without the will to change, to dispossess ourselves of the illusions, we will merely have added yet another illusion to the unfortunate list. We have assumed that the activities are equivalent to the changes we want to see. And why not? It’s a hell of a lot less work than actually engaging ourselves around our challenged existence and practicing every day for years to work through our illusions.