Getting Started. PDF Version
The fantasy free advantage starts with the understanding that uncertainty is normal. Some uncertainty can be eliminated – but not much. Out of uncertainty, its close cousin insecurity is derived. Uncertainty and insecurity combine and fear is the result. Fear is assuaged by adopting euphemisms and indulging in fantasy. Cold reality is too overwhelming so it becomes replaced with fantasies.
No one knows what life is. No one knows what happens when we die. We are all conscious. No one knows what consciousness is. Is consciousness generated by life or is it independent of life?
Then , there is the will to live. The will to live is more confounding than life itself. Whatever is alive seeks to stay alive. Even a blade of grass with no brain has the will to live. Who knows the source of the will to live? Does life have a purpose? Any purpose is not apparent. All animals, including humans must consume animals and other living things in order to survive. Focusing on these attributes of existence is daunting. The mind doesn’t want to go there – so it doesn’t.
In the Old Testament, the author of the Book of Ecclesiastes focuses on these issues and draws no concrete conclusions. The meanings of a number of Old Testament books focus on how to live life in the face of life’s daunting unanswered questions and mysteries.
The race to escape reality begins at birth. Every child is unknowingly born into an eternal power struggle. Reality is replaced with fantasy because it is too harsh to cope with. Our world is governed by laws of dominance and subservience. Most people live in an oasis of peace separated from all of the belligerence and brutality …. that is actually an ongoing process. The attempted escape does begin at birth. This continues throughout life. Reality always wins in the end.
Basic Unanswered Questions
During a lifetime, reality catches up with everyone a number of times. That does not mean a person becomes enlightened and discovers what reality is. Having to deal with reality is not the same as grasping and internalizing the concept. As soon as a crisis passes and usually while the crisis is ongoing, life becomes centered around new fantasies. Sometimes old fantasies are refurbished, adjusted, and re-applied to one’s life.
Regardless…. reality is what it is. to all consumed in fantasy, their fantasies are their reality. Attack these fantasies of life and their beholders defend them vehemently. The lies of life replace nature’s reality with fantasies. The truth is then seen as threatening. I guess that it is. The truth about reality is what it is – no matter what. In other words, the way things are is the way things are.
We don’t know the origin of life. Some say God. Some say that life began when dead chemicals miraculously combined in such a way that life generated itself. The theories are many. The facts are few. We just don’t know.