Fantasy versus Reality

Love and Imagination are the Breath of Creation.
(Quote from Spiritual Networks)

"Reality can connect you with God, fantasy can send you on a wild goose's chase." This was my response to a question someone asked in the Spiritual Networks community on the "Fantasy versus Reality" theme. Actually, it took me even a little bit of editing to get to this version. Instinctively, I wrote that reality is of God, while fantasy is of the ego. But then it occurred to me that our so called reality too can be tainted by the human touch. Sometimes one really has to look hard to find God in some of the man-created mess.

The expression "fantasy" is a problematic one for the reason that it already has the notion of being artificial embedded in it. What if we took "imagination, anticipation, entrepreneurial spirit, creative powers" instead, we would think very differently, wouldn't we? In conclusion, we shouldn't look down on a world that is created by the mind. Isn't it also true that reality is sometimes so brutal that only with the help of our imagined world we can keep going? I once read the story of a Prisoner of War, who more likely than not would have died given the conditions he found himself in over many years. He found a mental crutch though and played every day a round of 18 hole golf on his favorite golf course. Stroke by stroke, round by round, manifesting the imagined reality in his head. It is said that when he finally returned to America, despite his weakened body, he played the best round of golf ever, in honor of the course and the game that saved his life. 

God gave us a big heart and a beautiful mind to be Her co-creator. Let's celebrate both of our God-given institutions. We are God's Co-Creator with the mission to bring the utopia "Heaven on earth" a little closer to reality.  

It is all in the Mind

I am not what happened to me.

I am what I am choosing to become.

Carl Jung

A boy was lying in bed with his toy pistols, acting out some fantasy plays of cowboy and Indians. Of course, he was the Clint Eastwood with a magnum gun who always came out on top of everything. As he was playing a fear suddenly popped up, "What if my friends found out what I am doing here? Am I not a little old for this stuff?" But it was fun to imagine to be the powerful hero so he kept on playing until he grew out of it and moved on to other fantasies.

I was reminded of this story when I read the blog of a woman in her 50s who had a health check-up and was proud that she had lost 5 pounds. Her mind told her that it would be nice to lose another 15 pounds but her doctor discouraged her and remarked that farmers let old horses gain a little weight because they know it is good for them. Of course she was mortally offended. While the humor of the doctor was certainly off, there seemed some wisdom in what he said. I had a look at her photo and could only agree with him that she just looked perfect!

The mind races and buddies up with our emotions; frustrations, aspirations, fears, jealousy, brain-washing; all the negative stuff gets channeled in a direction that makes sense to the ego. The mind hates what is and clings to what could and should be instead. We run after gold on the horizon only to find much later that we ran after lead instead while trampling on the diamonds that were always right in front of our feet. But the good news is, all of this can be understood; all of this can be seen and experienced. And while it may take a while to bring the emotions along, this too happens in time. The little boy has finally grown enough that it dawns on him how potent he really is. There is no reason to carry around any imaginary guns any longer. It is all in the mind!

Don't Confuse Mind Sex with Mind-Blowing Sex

To the ego's dark glasses you need but say " I will not look here because I know these images are not true."
A Course in Miracles

Have you ever observed how different "mind sex", the exploration of sexual fantasies is from actually having sex. When you have sex, your mind gets blown away by the dance of yin and yang energies. When you have mind sex instead, you think this is just letting off a little steam, but this is not so. Every fantasy is a castle of the ego and you are sent on a pleasure trip that takes you away from who you truly are. While sex is of God, mind sex leads is of the ego and thus leads you away from God - it is as simple as that.

It is of little use to condemn sexual fantasies, you would be condemning yourself that way. If you meet someone attractive and if you afterwards have steamy fantasies there is little you can do about it. What you can do though, don't engage in it, just let this energy come and go and then move on with your life. But if you have spent the night watching pornography and next day you get one sexual fantasy after the other, you very much can do something about it. Stop watching pornography!

Many spiritual leaders have described our brain as a garden. Once you let weed in, it spreads fast and you have to painfully pluck it out one by one. Recent neurological discoveries very much confirm this theory. As they say, what fires together wires together. After some excessive consumption of pornography don't be surprised if your first glance goes to the breasts of your potential soul sibling. You may not really have access to her soul after a pornography orgie. Sexual addicts often report that they need to use all their willpower not to view all women as sex objects. And experts of the video game Tetris report that they see three dimensional rectangles floating in real life as well after playing the game. We see in front of us what our mind engages in all day; it is as simple as that.

Pornography, at least the stuff that is geared towards the male audience, is a classic ego device. The camera zooms into body parts and not people; most of the images display a power game that the ego loves. As you watch the graphic images you see in fact a hostile act of body parts which is hardly a symbol for wholeness much in contrast to having sex with your soul partner. Also, as every consumer of hard-core porn can tell you, the further along you go on this pleasure trip, the darker the sexual images will become. Sex addicts will also tell you that if you go down this pleasure ride long enough you will discover a strange trance. Biologically, engaging with the dark side releases chemicals in your brain that can get addictive over time. Psychological and spiritually a lot more is going on: the further you go down the mind sex road the more dirt you will throw on love. It is the demon whispering in your ear, "Go to sleep my friend - just enjoy the joy ride!"

The more you engage in these imagination, the more inclined you think that this is who you are; the more power to give to the demon, the more steps you take away from God. Experience for yourself how fear creeps in whenever you give a little finger to your demon. You can stop this nightmare; find a way to disentangle yourself from it. Shadow work is a process, it is a journey towards understanding who you truly are deep down inside. These graphic images may be beneficial to learn something about yourself, but eventually you will have to give up all forms of mind sex. Where your sexual fantasies are, true love cannot be. A spiritual path is a journey towards the light and away from darkness. When you connect with the Tao you will only experience love and all dark symbols will naturally drop by the wayside. After you have walked down the dark alley for a while, after you have understood the appeal of the symbols that you have seen, the Tao will intervene and take you in a different direction for the simple reason that every additional step would just hurt you. You will know when you are ready to drop all that and then it will not be so hard to do.

Just imagine, do you really think you will have sex the way you fantasize right now? Do you really think you will perform these acts that you see in on the internet or in pornographic movies? Just observe yourself, whenever you are doing something that deep down inside tells you that you are throwing dirt on love - you can observe for yourself that you are being infused with a strange dark energy at this moment. In fact, this strange dark feeling can actually add to the sexual excitement and is even something you can get addicted to. It is perhaps obvious to say that for a spiritual path traveler this dark energy is a step away from God. Guilt will surely come your way as the force that first entices you to engage will later beat you up over it.

Forbidden acts have a strange sexual appeal. Writes Robert J. Stoeller in Observing the Erotic Imagination: "In perversion the desire to sin is essential for being turned on." True indeed! Many sex addicts report that the very contemplation of their taboo activity puts them in a strange trance. Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam in their book A Billion Wicked Thoughts suggest that our visceral nervous system is responsible for this. We are wired to release neurological chemicals during periods of extreme stress. In the olden days we had to be on the top of our game when we needed to decide whether to run from the bear or face him. Apparently we can be addicted to these chemicals but we have to keep exposing ourselves to darker and darker sexual symbols to get the same stimulus. That is how the road to addiction looks like. Like with all ego activities, our neurological processes and biological wiring are exploited psychologically and we convince ourselves - consciously or subconsciously -that we are sinning when we engage in these taboo acts. 

Don't beat yourself up over the way you are wired, the whole point of shadow work is to figure out why you respond the way you do. Traveling along the Tao is never about "good" or "bad", everything that comes your way becomes an eye-opening experience instead and this may include mind sex and pornography as well. A spiritual path is all about experiencing and understanding everything yourself. You cannot make a mistake really, all you can do is to delay your homecoming journey, but don't worry, the Tao will at every stage show you the way to the light.

It gets very hard to be on that discovery course if we don't have a partner to play and experiment with. Some people are without a significant other, while others might just be dissatisfied sexually in their relationship. When we can't express our sexual desires we are tempted with substitutes like prostitution or pornography. It is ok to be fascinated with these substitutes but you have to turn towards real life instead if you want to advance on your spiritual journey. Of course you deserve to have a significant other and of course you have the right to mind- blowing sex.

So go out and find sexual fulfillment. The Tao will cooperate with you. Sex is divine and it is beautiful if you manage to get in touch with this natural flow of life. Express this divine energy with the one you love. Whatever your soul partner is, sexual healing will just be around the corner. If occasionally you miss a beat and walk down a dark alley instead that is ok too, your soul partner will pull you right back onto the healing path. Have mind-blowing sex and observe for yourself how the ego's dark symbols fade into the background that way.

This note is part of "A Demon in the Bedroom" series. Please also look for
"Sex and Spirituality: The Dance of Yin and Yang" and

http://zeitgeistinma.blogspot.com/2013/03/sex-and-spirituality-dance-of-yin-and.html
"Sex, Love and Power"

http://zeitgeistinma.blogspot.com/2013/03/sex-love-and-power.html

By Christian and Su Zhen 

Enlightenment as a Fantasy

She was a shy and docile woman and appeared peaceful and loving to everyone she met. Yet, she had that fascination with action, western and detective movies all her life. Through the aggressive hero in the movies she could experience what it means to be in control vicariously. When I gave her the advice to become more assertive in little things, she wasn't very interested. That's ok too. After all, that is why we have our entertainment industry, to give us in fantasy what we can't have in reality. 

There is one spiritual insight that our discipline has agreed on for ages: live in the now, and let the past and future be to itself. Be here now or be nowhere as they say. Fantasy is exactly the opposite of this concept, instead the motto becomes "be everywhere in your mind but the person and time you are experiencing right now". If you aspire to be enlightened, you want all your anguish to go away, you always want to be even- keeled and you hope that everything is coming your way. It is a nice stage to be in, to be sure, and it may even exist, but for you, here and now, it is unfortunately a fantasy and thus not helpful.

The only way out of the fantasy world is to face life and to try getting what you want! Try to find the way that gets you there. You will be bumping against constraints, you will have to make choices and the journey defines who you aspire to be. As a spiritual path traveler you are probably doing exactly that. You are finding your Tao that allows you to throw your psychological baggage over board. So just keep on doing what you have been doing. Just understand that whenever you are eying this elusive goal of being enlightened you are not 'here now' and thus you are unfortunately nowhere.

Reality Trumps Fantasy

Reality sucks, at least it can from time to time, while in fantasy land it is up to you to decide what turn it takes. Fantasies are ego castles and they will be grand, because you as the the creator of your fantasy world have the power to make them that way. Fantasies can be highly addictive. As you create your neurological pathways it takes little to trigger them to set off a chain reaction; the plots get thicker and more and more elaborate, and all these paths lead straight into the pleasure center of your brain. You must feel the increased blood flow to your brain as you spend longer and longer times in your mental kingdom, and when reality calls you to come back, you get irritable.

I remember once in elementary school discussing a boy who was in love with his comic book hero, and as he felt weak and lost in his real life, he compensated by getting increasingly lost in his fantasy world. " How sad!", my teacher said, and I honestly didn't understand then why it is a problem to get lost in a fantasy world. Today I do, life constantly invites you to play with it. Unless you make a profession selling 'prince charming fantasies', show up in real life and you will see no need to get lost in fantasy land.

The Fisher and His Wife

When our boys were a little younger they loved listening to fairy tales; as it turned out, 'The Fisher and His Wife' wasn't one of them. I understand why, the story does hit a little too close to home and little children are aware enough to pick this up. The fairy tale goes like that, a poor fisher catches a golden fish who promises him three boons if he lets him free again. The fisher lets the golden opportunity slip, but sets the fish free nevertheless. At home, he tells his wife about it and she demands that he goes back to ask the fish for a big house. Soon after she got her house,  she wants a castle. Soon after she got a castle she wants a kingdom. Even being a queen is not satisfying enough, and soon afterwards - her fourth wish -she wants to be God. Well, she clearly overstepped her boundaries and ends up being back in her old house without anything.

Norman Mailer in his book 'On God' reported that he always felt the most energetic when both his demon as well as his angel were equally excited about a certain project. That's what we tend to do. We are passionate about something and run after it, but as we are hit with many choices a long the way, the saner part in us tends to get the upper hand more often than not, especially when we deal with other people. Your ego is obsessed with something, while your True Self uses life as a perfect opportunity to heal. It doesn't matter what you are running after, the perfect opportunity to heal just lies around the corner. Only one thing is required though, you need to have both feet in life. If your head is in fantasy land all the time, the healing process cannot reach you because the loud voice of your ego tends to drown out the quite voice of reason.  This brings me back to the story of the fisher and his wife. She never spent time with any of her new entitlements. She didn't spend time in her new large house, experiencing what it means to take care of a large property. She didn't spend time in her castle, observing what it takes to lead people. She also didn't spend any time as a queen and consequently didn't know what it means to be responsible for an entire kingdom. No, before life could interact with her, her passion already got her to the big next crazy idea.

Along the way the whimsical fisher got many clues that the progression of things wasn't going right. When he went to the water to call the fish, the water got progressively darker and the weather progressively worse. He also had to wait longer and longer before the fish showed up. The Tao provides these signs, the feedback mechanism to make the right choices. Life heals if you are willing to take everything that happens to you and in your environment into consideration. Yes, you have to run after your passions - this happens to be your mission statement - but it is your job as a creator to find the solution that is consistent with your unique spiritual path. The fisher and his wife weren't ready to command their creative powers, but at least you can always learn from their mistakes. 

Magnum Force

Many of us aspire to be somewhere sometime and in pretty much all of our visions we want to be special: a movie star, a diva, an all-star, a CEO, a professor at a prestigious university, a famous spiritual author, enlightenment or whatever else it is that you consider special. The psychologists would say that this dream of yours may be as much as a compensation for the lack of inner security you have, as it is a desired expression of your creativity and vision. If you are truly creative, you will find an artistic outlet here and now in whatever job you have and you do not need to hide behind your fame or a title.

I took the title of this post from Client Eastwood's Dirty Harry movie - the ultimate male fantasy to dominate. Do you remember the size of his gun, the .44 Smith & Wesson Magnum? Fact of the matter is that you need  magnum force when you feel small inside, otherwise, why to carry this heavy weight around all the time. Take the other male fantasy, James Bond. Do you remember his pet weapon, his Walther PPK? How small and yet, how efficient and deadly it was in Bond's hands. James Bond is portrayed as the highly intelligent  and flexible force that always finds a way to cope with any situation. James Bond is the magnum force, he doesn't need to carry one. True, his  character is an infantile fantasy as well, but his story could also be a  reminder that if you truly face your environment and challenges here and now, this  magnum force will be with you. Let go of your fantasies and let go of all your idols and life will come your way and welcome you home as the force you were born to be - a spiritual giant.

On Fantasy

What can be fearful but fantasy, and who turns to fantasy unless he despairs of finding satisfaction in reality? Yet it is certain that you will never find satisfaction in fantasy, so that your only hope is to change your mind about reality. Only if the decision that reality is fearful is wrong can God be right. And I assure you that God is right.

(A Course in Miracles, Chapter 9, 4, 10)

So what exactly is it that makes you passionate, that makes your blood pump through your system at hyper speed? Go and get it tiger, but do it without deviating from your spiritual path. If it is reality, you will find a way. If it is fantasy, the Tao will find a way to communicate to you that it is. You are God's co-creator, remember? Your problem was created by yourself so that you learn how to separate fantasy from reality. There are three kinds of people: those that make things happen, those that suppress what could happen and those that wish unrealistic things would happen! Be a maker, be a shaker and be the one who carves a new spiritual path.