We human beings have an amazing capacity for fantasy. We can create alternate worlds that share strong similarities to the reality we live in day to day, yet not really real. For people with this type of imagination, entering into and engaging with the inhabitants of these tales can be immensely enjoyable.
Our ability to make up whole worlds can have a debilitating side. People who reduce their sphere of influences primarily to themselves are in danger of manufacturing a vision of what is that fits what they believe and have determined to be true, or to what they on their own can handle. Of course they have built up a web of reasoning around their little world that acts for them as proof that they are right, and serves as armor against probing questions or concerns. It’s a fearful attempt to control the uncontrollable – life as it’s unfolding and carrying us along.
These people allow no one to act as sounding board, or mirror, or objective external reference point. Reality is as they have decided it to be. End of discussion. If they do ask someone for feedback they tend to hear what matches their own assessment, forbid topics that are personally challenging and cut off anyone who suggests that, just maybe, there’s another way to see things or to do things. Facing the (real) facts would put a choice before them that they would prefer to avoid – stick with their fantasy or radically change. Ouch!
When we spin our own version of how things are in this way, we develop an unassailable narrative. Nothing can penetrate or loosen it’s tightly woven fabric. It’s like building and sealing one’s self inside a space capsule going nowhere, no windows to the outside, decorated with scenes of what we imagine to be true. In fact, we are unfree, trapped and limited to what we have decided. We become our fabricated story.
We need to sense, then realize, then accept that we are stuck. Our life is only going in circles (no matter how wide), and we are not peaceful or happy. Once aware of these facts we need to own that, by ourselves, we cannot get out of this sad, discontented mess we have constructed – that we are helpless. It’s only if and when we acknowledge that we have done all we can, and it hasn’t worked, that we are able open ourselves to another way, to truth. Only truth can bring us to freedom. Freedom doesn’t come easily or without cost, but it’s infinitely better than the alternative.