Get real, master life, and have fun!

Understand the nature of illusion and reality for a better life 

“There is no outside of you. It’s all an inside game.” NOT. 

This is an often repeated, badly understood half-witticism, and repeating it frequently doesn't make it so.

Reality exists, but it is extremely complex. We cannot grasp the complexity of the stimuli that we receive in any moment, so we carefully pick just those stimuli that are most important to our survival. We pay attention only to the few most important clues in in our world in any given moment. We have a very limited grasp of reality. We are in survival mode throughout our early life.

As a shortcut to faster understanding of the immediate world, we create an artificial, mental construct of how we think the world works. We interact with the world based on the assumptions and biases in our mental construct (ego).

Our weak, inaccurate, illusionary mental construct doesn't match reality because it is intended to provide quick rules of thumb so we can react to circumstances faster. The construct provides quick answers based on previous experiences, not the real-world, immediate circumstances. We make snap decisions about everything, and they are always wrong, at least just a little bit, but usually by a lot. 

We perceive the world through the filter of this mental construct. It is the lazy person's way to interact with the world, and it is always inaccurate ... until we clarify our perceptions by becoming aware of the construct/filter, and recognize that we never have an accurate understanding of what is going on or who any certain person really is. We categorize people by their behavior, but we don't know what they have experienced, what they think or what they feel. We don't actually know people - even those we've lived with for decades, but we respond to them according to our pre-constructed biases.

We don't perceive the world accurately, and we carry around an inaccurate, mental construct of the world as a survival mechanism, but that does not mean that the outside world is not real. 

The outside world is real. It is part of the game. You deny reality at your own peril. All you have left is an illusion, and reality will slap you in the face. 

Through meditation and contemplation, we recognize our mental construct (ego) and how it differs from reality. That is the inside game.

When we purify our inside game, we bring it to align more closely with the real world. Then, we become more accurate and more successful in our interactions with the outside world.

By the way, life is not a game, and reality is not a computer simulation. Life is a helluva lot more complex than any computer game can ever be. Real life is so much bigger that you are only a momentary, passing flicker in the universal flow of things.

But you are everything in building your life: Build it accurately to get in the bigger game and have much more fun!