When people stop being what you thought they were…

in spirituality •  6 years ago 

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Let’s talk about a topic that has the potential to change your life. It does anyway, but most of times in a very painful way. It doesn’t have to be like this though. Let’s talk about the magic and healing power of disappointment.

I’m sure you know that feeling in some way or other: You see someone (or something - it doesn’t matter if it’s a thing or body) a special way - you may even „love“ someone - and then, for numerous reasons, your perception of this person changes.
This is what’s called disappointment or a better word would be dis-illusionment.

The end of illusions and why we fear it

Let’s have a look at the meaning of illusions first. An illusion is to see someone (or again „something“) in a special way, that proves to be wrong in hindsight. Time is the important part here, because it seems as if we only could know that something is an illusion, after our relationship to it has changed. We then say, that time has proven us otherwise.

If we „loved“ a person dearly and she then turns out to be an asshole of epic proportions, we experience this disillusionment as pain.
Pain is another word for the ending of an illusion - at least most of us experience it this way.
Because we all had these experiences and we try to avoid pain, we fear this change - we live with the subtile (or not so subtile) threat of the other person to change. In the end, it’s the fear that our perception of this person could change anytime.

So even if we really experience this change of perception in the future or not, we always fear, that it could happen anytime.
This is, what makes relationships in this world so scary.

Why disillusionment is so scary

The real reason for this is not only do we try to avoid pain, but because it seems like this pain can be inflicted on us from the outside!
So first we give our power to make us _____ (happy, feeling loved etc) away to someone outside and once this habit has formed, we certainly fear, that the other person changes in some way - thus ending our illusionary perception - and therefore this person has from now on the power to inflict pain upon us.

The issue here is, that we have not only projected on the other person, but with that we have given our power away - the only power we ever have - the power to make the world what it is through our decision.

We always project. This is what minds do. All of the time.
Contrary to common belief, I don’t think, that we can stop projecting at all.
There are many popular psychological and spiritual systems that teach, that we once are able to stop projecting we have reached a very important goal.
I think, they are all wrong - not only with this goal, but with its underlying premise.
We only have the freedom to choose with which part of our mind we project. [Please review my past articles about this decision for further insights]

The necessity of disillusionment and disappointment

Once we realize what illusions really are, we can take our next step and start to view them in a different way.
The fact of the matter is, that other people don’t really change. The only thing that changes is our perception of them.
Disappointment is therefore a change in our mind and not in the other person!
So in the end we constantly fear, that we change our own minds!

People are what they are - a blank canvas on which we can project - nothing more and nothing less.
It’s obvious, because if another person would really be in a certain way, everyone would perceive them in exactly the same way.
Since your loved ones also have potential enemies who avoid them, any certain characteristic can’t be part of their being. It’s just your mind that does the projecting. The good, the bad and the ugly…

How a person truly is, can never be known, because any person - including yourself - is in and by itself neutral.
Disillusionment is therefore a very good thing - it ends an illusion and lets you see reality more clearly.

Seek only truth and be at peace

If you want to know truth and be at peace - a peace, that can’t be threatened and is unchanging (!!) - then you are advised to seek for disillusionment wherever you can.

Once you realize that this is how life works, you will look for opportunities the whole day, where illusions can come to an end.
Your prayer then becomes:
Please let me see each and every illusion in my life, so that I can once and for all be at peace
This is the end of specialness, and with that, also the end of suffering.

Disappointment and Disillusionment become your allies on the way and enfold their full healing potential.
Healing means the alignment with Truth - and Truth can’t be threatened, as we learn from this well known passage in A Course in Miracles:

Nothing real can be threatened.
Nothing unreal exists.
Herein lies the peace of God.
T .2:1-4

Seeing the unreality of illusions is then nothing we fearfully await, but something we actively look out for, since it will teach us Truth.
You will become fearless, every time you cry out to the world:
„Come on! Bring it on! Show me, what is true and what is false!“

Living this way, you have become a warrior of light and the Truth of God will show itself to you and everyone around.
This is the beginning of a whole new journey…

Love,

Atmos


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You're reminding me of years ago when I was giving my Buddhist lama hell over sexism within the religion, he told me that the path of awakening was the path of disillusionment. And that we had to let go of all our illusions in order to be free, especially our illusions about the Dharma.

Seems like the two of you are on the same page. 🙂

Cool! Can I now call myself Lama Atmos Black? 😀
I have been a Lama in a previous life though - but it could also have been an Alpaka or a Camel - not sure...
Anyway - disillusionment is a good thing - it brings to the forefront what is true and eternal. Thanks for stopping by! ❤️

Nice. Ah truth and illusion. This seems to be a primary topic of discussion for thousands of years amidst every culture in the world. The great cosmic mind that we are is pure truth, but as the mind will do, if we imagine truth we then must imagine illusion.

This is really the basis for the whole "God and the Devil" concept. There is truth and there is illusion. All part of the cosmic mind discovering itself and deciding what reality to create for the whole.

In fact the very nature of encountering the "New" is to firstly make "mistake". All natural, all part of the process. It seems the true cause of suffering is clinging to the illusion regardless of what reality keeps expressing.

Many indigenous tribes worldwide share a concept that the "Creator" first dreams of itself and then becomes the reality. So we have this amazing ability of IMAGINATION. In essence we 'practice' creating before we create.

Of course, if we believe the illusion is the reality we will get to experience the consequence.

This is how it goes in "God School".

Very cool.
Much love Atmos

Absolutely, and for me there is no difference between "dreaming up the universe" and "creating it". The one thing is imagination believed to be a dream and the other is imagination believed to be reality.
As A Course in Miracles tells us: There is no hierarchy of illusions.
So whether you call it a dream or reality doesn't matter - it's still the same illusion. 🙏

I resonate much with the way you describe imagination leading into creation. That's why it can seem like different people's lives are running by different rules. It's because they have different beliefs, which lead to different expectations, which are just imagination mixed with faith in what is imagined. Basically, we all create by buying into our illusions. And some of those illusions serve us in terms of a pleasant life experience, and others undermine our ability to experience pleasantness. But in the end, it's all illusion. Just happy dreams leading to happy dreams, or bad dreams leading to bad dreams.

Nicely said indigoocean! The illusion seems to be, in part, the nature of change. All things are temporary and transform. What is true one day may not be true the next.

Each person is really the center of their universe and as such are the true creator of their reality. I suppose we are as diversified and unique as we the cosmic mind can imagine.

What a strange, beautiful and fascinating universe we are making! we gotta Love it.

Nice! This is why separation with our ex-partners hurt so much. We always remember the illusion of the person and we are not seeing how the person truly is.

Indeed - and the most amazing thing is, that especially with ex-partners, you wouldn't have believed it, when someone would have told you this during the time you were a couple! 😀

Your post had been curated by the @buildawhale team and mentioned here:

https://steemit.com/curation/@buildawhale/buildawhale-curation-digest-07-03-18

Keep up the good work and original content, everyone appreciates it!

Thank you! This means a lot to me! I really like the synopsis of my article - you rock!

Nice one...... Thanks for the enlightenment

God bless u

I love to read you always with topics that are frequent in our life

Disappointment is something that we suffer all this happens every time we meet someone new they often show us what they are not and when they discover what they are we are disappointed and it is a pain so serious that when we feel it the first time we do not want it anymore feel more but it is something that always happens with a friend family or couple

Everyone is both right and wrong at the same time. As long as you use ideas and beliefs to point to reality, the absolute truth, they are true in that perspective. But they are wrong in that they are not the truth themselves, because the truth is beyond all concepts, words, ideas, beliefs, opinions and the mind. They only point to the truth. As long as you mistake your beliefs for the absolute truth, that can be very dangerous as there comes fanaticism, bigotry, intolerance and closemindedness. They are in reality one of the many different pointers to reality. The finger that points to the moon is not the moon itself. What do you think @atmosblack ?

Words are just symbols of symbols and therefore twice removed from reality.
On the other side, you could say that about everything we speak or write and put this as a disclaimer under each and every word. So it doesn't matter whether we write about absolute truth or relative truths, since even "absolute" and "relative" mean different things to different people.

Most of the time it happens that people do not present themselves to us as they really are, or we are ourselves who make a wrong image of them.

An interesting topic and something that undoubtedly happens to each and every one of us

Once we have gone through the disappointment is certainly something frightening and painful and we say that we are disappointed we believe that we know the person and we are sure of it but then it comes and changes everything and that person becomes the opposite at that moment we fall into the disappointment

  ·  6 years ago (edited)

Thank you for helping people with so much beautiful meanin words like those above ...

Yet another beautiful sharing. thank you.

People or things are the way they are, we must understand that. It is never going to be worth changing or making someone change at the expense of illusion. I believe that life is about making the right decisions.

You got a 7.75% upvote from @postpromoter courtesy of @atmosblack!

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Nice

We must accept the finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope. You will end up really disappointed if you think that people will do for you the same thing you do for them. Not everyone has the same heart. To assume is the root of all disappointments. When you have many expectations, you are preparing for disappointment. Better to be surprised with things

Thank you for this post. Disillusionment is similar in many ways to non judgement, or at the very least can help lead us there. Or perhaps non judgement helps us see past the illusions of many things. In any case, I practice this often without even realizing it, but I loved the article and perspective and now will be paying closer attention to the opportunities to see past illusion in every day life.
I would love to resteem this but don't see an option to do so. Anyway, awesome post and I look forward to more.