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La La Land, Who Built It And Why?  By:  R.E. Darby


Caught In A Trap We Built


La La Land, an abstract conceptual version of reality that we built with one of our greatest powers for the purposes of helping us deal with the complexities of the material world. But in time, it began to control and consume more and more of our power until it now dominates our attention exclusively. What have we done? What is the price we are paying without even being aware of it? Have we forsaken our true nature and become lost in a conceptual world of our own creation? Have we become comfortable with La La Land? Does it serve our weaknesses rather than support our strengths? And if it is true that we are caught in a trap of our own making, how can we get out of it? Or can we?One of the human life forms greatest powers comes from the nature of our unique brain, our ability to think abstract thoughts, which is the ability to create mental constructs in our mind of things we may want to see become actually real in the material reality and is the first step in the creative process. These are the processes behind our creative power. However, power that is not truly understood can be used unwisely and then become an uncontrolled force. What if we began to imagine that the world was something that it is not and forget that we have imagined it and begin to actually believe that it is the true situation? As scary as this thought is, it is actually what has happened as time has past, but it has happened so slowly over such a long period of time, that we never noticed it and perceive it as the true reality and take it for granted. Initially, the development of the conceptual version of reality was necessary in order to help us deal with the ever increasing demands of a material reality that was becoming more and more complex, and ironically, our ability to manipulate concepts was how the material reality was becoming more complex. As to how this could have happened, it is a case of the soslow. The soslow is how trees manage to grow from seeds to giants without us being aware of it, so slowly that we don't register it on our awareness, and of course another reason why we may not register things on our awareness is that we are not aware of reality as it is actually taking place because our attention has been captured by another reality, the conceptual reality that we create through the use of language and our minds ability to think thoughts, which allow us to create ideas from concepts which then become ideas themselves.


The Processes Of Power


One of the human life forms greatest powers comes from the nature of our unique brain, our ability to think abstract thoughts, which is the ability to create mental constructs in our mind of things we may want to see become actually real in the material reality and is the first step in the creative process. These are the processes behind our creative power. However, power that is not truly understood can be used unwisely and then become an uncontrolled force. What if we began to imagine that the world was something that it is not and forget that we have imagined it and begin to actually believe that it is the true situation?

As scary as this thought is, it is actually what has happened as time has past, but it has happened so slowly over such a long period of time, that we never noticed it and perceive it as the true reality and take it for granted. Initially, the development of the conceptual version of reality was necessary in order to help us deal with the ever increasing demands of a material reality that was becoming more and more complex, and ironically, our ability to manipulate concepts was how the material reality was becoming more complex.

The Magic That Serves And Enslaves Us


This magic came from our ability to create and use language, not only to communicate ideas and concepts to each other, but perhaps more importantly for our minds to use word symbols to define and identify phenomenon, sensations and events for the purposes of understanding reality, which lead to the ability to manipulate reality. This was wonderful and led to first the industrial revolution and then the scientific and technological revolutions which have resulted in the world we perceive ourselves living in today. But this conceptual version of reality began to serve us in other ways that may not be in our best interests. We began to use it as our strategy for avoiding our responsibility for our own thoughts, feelings and behaviors. We simply manipulate our perception of the truth by manipulating the conceptual reality.

Who and what is being served here? Just what is the real price we may be paying for our perceived mastery over the material reality? Are we now the slaves of our own creations? And are we no longer able to connect with our true natures as a result of this situation? What is our true nature, when was the last time you listened to your own breathing, felt the blood coursing through your veins, became intensely aware of the radiation from our star on your skin, realized how intense and exciting life in the present moment really is? When was the last time you were able to stop the never ending activity of your mind and actually felt and directly experienced life?


Getting Free From The Trap


Of course our hope lies in the very power that we have allowed ourselves to be victimized by, but we must learn about that power in order to take back control of it and make it serve us in way that we determine by our ability to reason correctly, which by the way, we must learn how to do as well. And our hope lies in the tools that have been developed by the self help movement over the years, some of which are ancient tools that we simply have ignored, like meditation and yoga. Now don't let your arrogant mind dismiss these. You must realize that if you undertake the difficult activity of changing long held beliefs and behaviors, those beliefs and behaviors are not going to give up their positions of power easily.

It is going to take all your strength and power to successfully achieve this kind of goal and the first thing you must bring is a genuine desire to know what your true nature is and find out what it might be like to get back to the garden and no longer live in the La La Land of your mind, but rather live in the rhythm of life in the actual real world.

Here is a link to a resource that can help get you started on self awareness.