Watch the Imagination

by Roy Masters

Continued...

I'm an expert on the subject, have been for a long time and when I would start to talk about demon possession years ago, the newspapers made me out to be crazy, weird. But now it is becoming a normal topic of conversation. Now you can watch "Touched by an Angel," an excellent program that represents the purest and best use of theater. You seldom see anything quite so well written. It's quite remarkable for these times. I hadn't suspected anyone existed who knew as much as I do about the subject.

This probing into the root cause of all our human problems is a very dangerous journey. No other country in the world will allow me to say what I have to say, but no matter how unpopular it may be in other parts of the world, l hope it will not become unpopular in this country. Truth is very painful. It is also very beautiful once you get past the humiliating part of it-of realizing yourself in reality rather than in your virtual reality.

We spend our lives in the virtual reality of our own minds, imagination, and there we are controlled by forces we cannot see. You do not live your own life when you live in your imagination, when you follow your imagination thinking that the ideas presented there are your own. They never are, absolutely, unconditionally, never are.

Let's take happiness, for instance. It can be found only within you; but where within you? You may seek happiness in your own vivid imagination, but that is a very dangerous place in which to live. Your imagination was not meant to be lived in, any more than your computer is a place to live in. You control your computer according to your will, but when you submerge yourself in your imagination you are living in denial.

In denial, you create a scene, a fantasy, into which you can escape the demands of reality. But in that dangerous world of imagination you escape the only protection you have, which is the Light within you. Lao-Tzu said "Use the light that is within you to regain your natural clearness of sight." Ah, why not? It makes sense, because the light that you are trying to be, the light that you, ego, are trying to be by assuming the godhead obscures any clear vision of reality. You don't even know that you are trying to be god. The whole process of dressing up in your imagination and thinking you're the cat's meow, the King of Siam, submerging yourself in the virtual reality of your mind, precludes your being able to see that that is what you are doing.

Not only do you not see that you are playing god, thinking that you're in control because you can't see otherwise, you also fail to see that you being controlled by other forces, other people, and being used. In exchange for supporting your virtual reality, you acquire an entourage of people who are using you. And you don't even see it. You think you are loving them and being loved by them. You actually have to give someone the power through money or praise to love you. A woman gives a man her body, and he gives her the idea she's a queen when she is a whore.

The danger of being stuck in your imagination is that it can lead to psychosis. People who are hopelessly psychotic can't distinguish reality from the imaginings of their own minds, but all of you are psychotic in varying degrees. I don't care what role you play in the social hierarchy, you are all immersed in the world of fantasy to some degree. Some of you have partial reality-you can see clearly in some areas and even be able to help others because you are not as lost as they are. But more often than not, they can't see what you're talking about. People are so lost that if you try to point reality out to them they can't hear you.

You may have a daughter who is enamored by some scumbag boyfriend. She is starry-eyed over him because he is playing up to her, making her feel like a queen on a throne, giving her a wonderful image of herself that is so contrary to the one her family has projected that she has developed some inferiority feelings about herself that this boyfriend has homed in on. And he is about to make use of the daughter you love. "Don't you see how this guy is using you?" you ask your daughter-you see it with the semblance of reality you still possess maybe from experience-but you can't counteract the exciting effect this young man has on your daughter. Her hormones are raging and her ego is pumped up to high heaven. Her ego is being serviced and she going to have to pay for that with her body. She will find herself embracing her violator, the enemy. It's always the enemy who causes you to have a blown-up image of yourself.

It's always the adversary who appeals to your base nature, your ego nature. He fakes love and worship. He pumps you up and helps you to accept yourself. You involve yourself with the emotionality of it. All of us have some angst about the way we live, some anxiety, some insecurity about what we are, and we are looking for emotional security to soothe the pain of our existence, but there is no such thing as emotional security. It's all the product of imagination.

Emotion creates security feelings, but it also creates insecurity. Whatever gives you security in that sense actually increases your insecurity the morning after the night before because you are more wrong, and as you become more wrong, you become more guilty and more desperate for excitement with which to enhance your vain imaginings.

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