I have often thought of how strange this may seem to another species incapable of doing it.
Also, when it comes to fictional stories, we willingly and often enjoyably get absorbed into our own hallucinations.
And when it comes to what we call real life, we sometimes unwillingly and painfully get absorbed into our own hallucinations.
HALLUCINATING LIFE
Our experience of life is a hallucination. Our mind puts together sensory input to a more or less unified experience for us. And our experience of life is largely created by our mental images and stories.
It’s often a functional hallucination. Our mental field, combined with the other sense fields, helps us orient and navigate in the world.
And sometimes, when we take our hallucinations to be true and reality itself, we can mislead and create stress and suffering for ourselves.
GETTING TO KNOW OUR HALLUCINATIONS
Fortunately, there is a way out, and that is to examine our hallucinations.
What stories do I tell myself? What happens if I take them as true? How would I function in the same situation without that stressful story? What do I find when I explore the validity in the reversals of the story, finding genuine examples in each case? (The Work of Byron Katie.)
What’s happening in each sense field? What happens when I tell myself specific stories about myself, others, or the world? What’s in my mental field? (Mental images and words.) What’s in my sensation field? How does my mind associate the stories with the sensations? How is it to “take a “peek behind the curtain” and see how my mind creates its own experience? (Living Inquiries.)
When I look at what I more fundamentally am in my first-person experience, what do I find? How is it to keep noticing this? How is it to live from it, in the situation I am in? (Headless experiments, Big Mind process.)