First, the definition of delusion: a belief or impression that is firmly maintained despite what is generally accepted as reality and despite rational argument.
When coming to AA (drinking), newcomers are deluded about many things that are clearly not the reality of those who are either not alcoholic or are sober and have worked the steps:
- That they MUST drink and have no ability not to.
- That they are uniquely defective, different. “You don’t understand.”
- That their actions are hurting nobody but themselves.
- That the actions of others and/or the past are causing them to drink.
…and so on.
No amount of explaining or trying to explain otherwise is believed by a newcomer. Only because the sober alcoholic’s sharing of experience – of suffering – is so specific and recognizable to the one still suffering and his embodiment of change so evident does the door of possibility crack slightly open for the newcomer (the notion that maybe, just maybe her experience can change too).
But the newcomer does not yet believe what is shared because she has no actual experience of it. She knows her case is different, but is simply surrendered by exhaustion and drawn by the incredible Light of evidence embodied by the sober AA. It speaks so loudly, nothing need be said.
One of the first things done with newcomers is to have them examine their drinking – particularly in writing. The purpose: to examine whether their actions actually resulted in what they sought. This writing does not unveil Truth, but it beautifully illuminates those lies believed up to the moment they are seen as such.
I can say that I am happy, but I must examine whether that is actually true, as my actual experience radically differs from unexamined assumptions.
Witnessing the embodiment of a new reality (sponsor) and the enlightenment of the “real-ized” examination of her experience IS the chink in the old reality.
It reminds me of going into a mental hospital with someone who might be diagnosed as delusional. He tells you that there are snipers on top of the high cabinets in every room. He is terrified and trembling, ducking behind couches and howling. The snipers are in full military gear, he whispers, and are gripping machine guns. One is holding a grenade with the pin pulled. That sniper is plotting to kill you both he hears. This is not a belief to him, but a fact, THE reality according to his sensory reporting.
You look around. There is clearly nothing on top of the cabinets. The hospital room is clean and empty save you two. It is unmistakable to you as it is to the other hospital staff who are clearly not sharing the delusion that what he is experiencing is not actually happening. You nor the staff need convene to discuss whether a possibility of cabinet snipers exist – it is evident to all that this is not true.
Now let’s say in his delusion, he sees the sniper throw the grenade at you. He doesn’t imagine it in the way we might think of the word imagine…to make it up although we are aware at another level that it does not exist…he actually sees it as a formation of the delusion in the same way as one would see everything in a dream while sleeping, including the experience of himself as a character in the dream. And so, he throws himself on top of you and tumbles under the table to save both of your lives. In doing so, he breaks both of your arms.
Although he sees that he hurt you and he feels badly about that, and he profusely apologizes, he is equally sure that it was the only option given the circumstance and is aghast at your inability to recognize his act of generosity and self sacrifice, which as obvious to him as it is absent to you. Of what could he admit at this point other than that?
In this circumstance, he certainly is a producer of chaos which he cannot see as such, but of exactly what need to be forgiven other than being in a state of delusion/confusion, and does that need be forgiven in the way you might currently understand forgiveness?
And what of the woman down the hall who believes she is Cleopatra? She smiles kindly to the slaves who wander into her room bringing water and meals because she is a gentle ruler (they are nurses aids), She asks them to fan her and to bring her lovers, one at a time, once she disrobes. Her shoulders relax at the thought of such adoration. She is “happy” according to prescriptive circumstances (which are perceived from a delusional perception), and irritated if they deviate – her state is not only circumstantial, but circumstances themselves are perceived through delusion.
To you, hers is obviously another deluded state – different in specificity, but alike in this: what is being believed AND experienced as real by both of these patients is clearly not happening as perceived by them. If you try to explain or convince them otherwise, they will become agitated, perhaps violent..not because they are willful! Not because they are stubborn, though they well may be both. Because you are denying a reality that is as true to them as it is not true to you.
Now consider the dreamer again. While sleeping, the dreamer is in a dream state. In that state, there is a room in which he sits, 40 years older, at a restaurant table and drinks coffee. A childhood friend, a famous actor and his dead uncle sit at the table too. They are laughing at him because he is naked. It is not the first time this has happened, his forgetting to wear pants in public. He sets his coffee cup on the table. The cup does not fall through the table, because it is made of wood. Music plays and someone gets up and starts dancing, oblivious to his nakedness. He feels the caress of the tablecloth. He feels a sense of embarrassment. He feels a sense of humiliation.
To the character in the dream, everything of the dream is real. He doesn’t realize he is NOT the character in the dream, rather the consciousness in which the dream is occurring.
All self-knowledge gained while in the dream state would inform him only about the character he is believing himself to be, and therefore would not actually contain any Truth whatsoever- his perception of truth, of knowledge is entirely self-referential to appearances within the dream state. Self knowledge would avail him nothing because all references to which the self-reference points are unreal/untrue.
Again, take the hospitalized patient who believes she is Cleopatra, for example. If you tried to help her out of the delusion from her own reference point, by asking her questions about her family of origin, she might tell you about her father, Plotemy IX, whose fault it was that she went from man to man because he married his own sister and had been looking at her with lust since she was a child. Her self knowledge would be of a false identity. How could it EVER avail her of Truth, of Reality or even of what is evident in a conceptual sense from those not in that delusion.
Only waking up (or becoming lucid in a dream state) would convince her (and would do so instantly) that what she had experienced prior to that instant in the delusion seemed real, but was not.
Yes, I did see those images, or if in a lucid dream, I am experiencing them now, but now I know it is not real because I no longer trust the reporting device (senses) to accurately convey what is Real.
Hence, we are always powerless over the beliefs and the perceptions of what is real/true held while in a state of delusion or a dream state because that experience – what the deluded one or the dreamer calls real – is a formation of the delusion, the dream.
• One cannot rely on the same consciousness that formed a delusion to see through it.
• One cannot stop the mind with the mind.
• One cannot rely upon an informational tool that is 100% unreliable to be a reliable source of information.
• The intellect ALWAYS forms what it believes and believes what it forms.
• We are always experiencing some state of delusion because of the nature of the finite, limited senses attempting to interpret the Infinite Reality of What Actually IS.
There is no way around it…except…
At some point, we stop relying on the ordinary senses (what is conceptually seen, heard, smelled, felt by touch, tasted or thought) to EVER accurately convey what is True.
So, what do we do about that when behind the veil? The fact that a delusional state exists definitively precludes the one experiencing that state to see outside of it, let alone recognize that it is delusion. Forget about admission…to him or her, what is there to admit?
Fortunately, God is never delusional. It always is fully Aware of Its own INFINITE Reality. God/Reality/Truth cannot reach inside “our delusion” and help us navigate it or fix it or placate it, or make it safe, or soothe it or pin the arms down on the metaphoric snipers any more than you could do the same for the man who sees them in the hospital.
REMEMBER, EVEN YOU AS A HELPER CANNOT SEE THE SNIPERS BECAUSE THEY ARE NOT THERE!!!
God/Truth knows nothing of our billion forms of snipers, is unaware of anything except Its own Reality. It already Is the Whole of Itself eternally awaiting our individual turning to and discovery of IT- that discovery seems to need to be preceded by some chink in the armor of delusion that results in a surrender to the possibility that what is sensed is not entirely true; namely, the suffering experienced from trying to change something in the delusion by applying the same thoughts and behaviors of the delusion.
We become willing to open to the possibility that just maybe we have misunderstood parts of our reality or have been somewhat confused…after all, all our efforts to stop a set of events from happening or make others happen have failed. It is not only impossible at that point for us to even consider the extent of our delusion, it is unnecessary.
Turning toward the crack in the delusion is all that is necessary for Truth to flood our experience; the more we turn away from the self-referential senses (reported as thought), the more Light that floods our experience.
At that point, the form of guide always appears looking like a sponsor or spiritual teacher or illumined master or perhaps, the sense of God appearing as The Voice or a feeling or whatever
When we are in a deluded state that is so variant as to be obvious to many of those around us, there seem to be many more guides available to rely upon to help us see a new reality. As we begin to realize the cracks in more subtle states of delusion, as we wake up more, as we begin to question collective delusion called human consciousness – the ones named “common sense, the way things are, and the reality we must accept, the way the world works”, there is huge resistance to those questions because we are asking those behind the delusional veil to deny what is real to them and now, there are a hulluva lot more behind the delusional veil that in front of it.
The road does not get narrower. It is Infinite and our sense of that Infinity becomes ever more expansive. But there appear to be radically fewer conceptual beings going toward Truth for Its own sake, regardless of the how disruptive it feels to have every concept of reality dismantled. There are times we may not see anyone else and we need trust in Truth Itself and ask Truth to Reveal Itself and patiently wait for a our sense of Truth to Illuminate our individual senses or to form a fellow traveler, but It will appear perfect for our individual unfoldment..
The only thing necessary is to individually turn away from the intellect, away from the personal sense of self, away from the confused sense of What Is Real and ask. As more and more delusions are revealed to be such, one becomes more hip to the fact that the reporting tool is inaccurate 100% of the time and it becomes easier to let go of a given delusion…eventually, one starts looking for the cracks before suffering is felt…it becomes an Easter egg hunt filled with joy instead of dread.
Why? Because Truth is more and more tangibly felt, Known to a greater and greater degree that the Truth of Me, My True Identity is SPIRITUAL, Incorporal, God Isness.
We need not know what Reality IS, ONLY THAT IT IS and I AM THAT, resting in that Knowing more and more.
In fact, we cannot as it is Infinite and the sense of it, finite; we cannot even know what the unveiled experience will look or feel or be experienced like. In fact, all ideas about it are an obstruction for they are by definition wholly an effect of the delusional mind and as long as they persist, are blocking the experience of Reality. We need simply stop relying on the ordinary senses, most particularly thought for the answer.
Any answer. All answers.