There is an exit. We could call the exit recognition. There is this illusion in which we spend our waking days. It’s not so different from the dreamworld of our sleeping hours. The only difference is that we have invested the waking illusion with a certain amount of validity.
We are so sure of the reality of the waking phenomenon that we subscribe to it with the utmost belief. We are attached to it with blind faith because we never question the truthfulness of what appears to be real. The illusion is delusion for we have no desire to consider that there may be another possibility.
Notice however that there is an exit available if we only would see that it is there. So long as we refuse to see the exit we will continue to toil in ignorance enslaved to the delusion. Suffering is the nature of this illusion simply because it can never be permanent, and so we suffer since we think it can last. The magicians magic trick, his illusion, lasts only as long as the audience believes it to be true.
This illusion is as if we have been living our entire lives in a dark place. All we know is the abscence of light. If a voice came to us and declared, “do you feel that switch in the darkness? Flip it and you shall see the light!” we can’t conceive it. What is light? We only know darkness.
The exit is recognition. We are asleep in this illusory dream of change, form, transiency, and suffering. If we can push ourselves to intuit that an exit is available we stand to wake up. Deep inside you lies a stronger conviction than the vaporous belief that keeps you locked in this illusory world. In this place you know that there is more, you sense that there is a reality that is lasting, permanent and free of suffering. It’s just that you keep trying to make the illusion look like the real thing rather than trusting your intuitive conviction.
If you can home in on that intuitive knowing, that innermost sense, the exit lies before you. All that remains is to investigate the nature of the illusion that veils the exit. Recognize the dreamlike substance of what you believe to be real. Recognize the erroneous thought-streams that keep you trapped in this dream state. See beyond these mental structures, beyond them lies the door, there’s a clear EXIT sign above it.
Walk through the door. You’ll recognize there is no door, there was never an exit, there isn’t a “you” to make an exit, and never was there an illusory world to have been trapped in. This is the pure re-cognition of what was always reality. This is the seeing and knowing of what only and ever was. You were always the Awareness that made falling asleep possible.
The dreamer wakes up to the real. The real is infinite, limitless, free, undivided, unmanifest, bliss…the Awareness, the Beingness that can’t be conceived yet makes every thing conceivable.
