What If You Have Illusions?

Antisthenes articulated that “The most useful piece of learning for the uses of life is to unlearn what is untrue.” You can make your illusions fade away by recognizing things as they are. The wisdom of seeing things as they are provide a deeper understanding of the things around you. When you see things as they are, unclouded by judgments of “good” or “bad”, “possible” or “impossible”, you are better able to see and make the most of what there are.

How often do you say “I have an unpleasant feeling about this?” Usually, you follow this statement, with what if illusions, such as “What if the plane crashes?” or “What if he cannot be trusted?” or “What if I make a fool of myself?” Most of the unpleasant feelings that people have come from illusions. Illusions are erroneous concepts of reality. They are fabricated based on false or misleading perception or belief. They create problems that exist only in your thoughts. Steve Allen observed that “One of the nice things about problems is that a good many of them do not exist except in our imaginations.”

Illusions can create fear about something that might happen that has not happened and may never happen. Unpleasant feelings come from fear of what is coming next and what can go wrong. Living in this kind of fear restrains you from enjoying and making the most of the present moment. Later, when you look back, you realize that you did not live it and the realization makes you feel even more inadequate than you already did.

Illusions depend on how people see things. This is depicted in the following Chinese story:
Once a man dug a well by the side of a road. For years later, grateful travellers talked of the Wonderful Well.
One night, a man fell into it and drowned. After that, people avoided the Dreadful Well.
Later, it was discovered that the victim was a drunken thief who had left the road to avoid being captured by the night patrol, only to fall into the Justice Dispensing Well.

The story tells that people can have different views about the same thing based on what they heard or what they were told or what they have experienced.

Illusions depend on how a person perceives situations followed by some premature conclusions. This is illustrated in the narrative of Lieh-tzu, a Taoist writer:
Once a man found that his axe was missing, and suspected his neighbor's son of having taken it. Observing the youth walking around, the man was convinced that his was the walk of a thief. The youth looked like a thief and talked like a thief; everything he did pointed to his having stolen the axe.
Then one day the man happened to find his missing axe. After that, he noticed his neighbor's son wasn't behaving like a thief anymore.

When the man noticed that his axe was missing, he saw only one possible reason - that it was stolen. Based on a false assumption, he brewed a suspicion on his neighbor's son. These thoughts, foremost in his mind, created his illusion.

Illusions depend how a person feels about himself and his capabilities. This is illustrated in the following writings of Chuang-tse:
An archer competing for a clay vessel shoots effortlessly, his skill and concentration unimpeded. If the prize is a brass ornament, his hands begin to shake. If it is gold, he squints as if he were going blind. His abilities do not deteriorate, but his belief in them does, as he allows the supposed value of an external reward to cloud his vision.

The archer has set a value for his skill that it depended on some external reward. On certain occasions, you might have made a total fool of yourself at something you have been good at because of an external condition such as a large audience or a life-altering impact and an insufficient amount of confidence to deal with that external factor.

Antisthenes articulated that “The most useful piece of learning for the uses of life is to unlearn what is untrue.” You can make your illusions fade away by recognizing things as they are. Look at them, putting aside previous beliefs that you or others might have about them. Observe them as though you are seeing them for the first time. Mentally break them down to their basic elements and use intuition as well as logic in order to understand them. Look for connections between one thing and another. Identify patterns and relationships. The wisdom of seeing things as they are provide a deeper understanding of the things around you. When you see things as they are, unclouded by judgments of “good” or “bad”, “possible” or “impossible”, you are better able to see and make the most of what there are.