The unconscious behavior of denying Simple Reality explains our delusional behavior as human beings. The cause of this Great Denial is fear which provides the energy for the continuous reactions needed to distract us from our natural state of being and which always underlies P-B. We live within a perfect Creation, as perfect expressions of the Implicate Order, with no reason to be afraid but we are unaware of where and who we are. We are essentially sleeping our way through life.
We begin life as an unconscious organism preoccupied with survival of the physical body. In constructing our survival strategy, we also create attitudes, beliefs and values that are acceptable to the family, tribe, religious community or nation state in which we find ourselves. The influence of the collective unconscious further explains the hypnotic effect of P-B. We rely on the intellect to guide us in our “rational” behavior and, for the most part, ignore the spontaneous insights (peak experiences or epiphanies) that emerge from time to time from our intuition.
Epiphanies can be defined as intuitive realizations of reality. We usually deny these or give them short-term attention because we cannot see how they fit into the ongoing narrative that we have committed to. We can call our experience of Simple Reality “feeling” as distinguished from “emotions.”
Emotions cause suffering, that is to say, they are “afflictive.” All emotions, even those we think are pleasant, are sources of suffering, especially those which involve craving. We would all do well to come to the realization as did Buddha that craving and aversion are the twin sources of all human suffering and indeed all human problems.
The power and inertia of The Great Denial may seem overwhelming at first, but that is because we are unaware of other aspects of P-A. First, no negative aspects of our experience like pain, disease and death have ultimate reality. They exist in the world of form, but that world is ephemeral and our relationship to it is a matter of choice.
We have the power to involve ourselves in that illusory experience of affects and conditions or to transcend it establishing a relationship that empowers us to choose a more profound experience. We are not victims of fate unless we choose to create a story in which we play that role.
Shifting our reliance from the intellect to intuition we can begin the transformation that will free us from the old story.
Choosing the underlying principles and practices of Simple Reality described throughout this encyclopedia and numerous published books, plus an online blog, we can begin our emancipation from The Great Denial.