When we are living in the Mind-Created Virtual Reality without knowing that we are then we are engaged in an impossible struggle. We are trying to do something that no one can do, something that is flatly impossible for anyone ever to do, and this ‘denied impossibility’ defines everything about our (conditioned) existence. Just as when I am determinedly ignoring something my life proceeds to revolve (quite unconsciously) around the thing that I don’t want to know about, when we are engaged in the impossible struggle this struggle defines our lives without us being able to see that we are being so defined.
The ‘impossible struggle’ is the struggle to promote the existence of who we believe ourselves to be when we are ‘living in the MCVR without knowing that we are’. This project, this endeavour is doomed to failure right from the outset and the reason it is doomed is because who we take ourselves to be when we’re living in the MCVR isn’t who we are. That person, that identity doesn’t really exist and no amount of ‘promoting’ is going to change this! The ‘impossible struggle’ that is defining our lives is therefore the struggle to say that this mind-created idea of who we are does exist and is going to win out against all the forces that are ranged against it. There are (we could say) two substantive drawbacks to the endeavour that we are so committed to – [1] is that “the mind-created self doesn’t exist” and [2] is that “this mind-created self isn’t who we are anyway!” Both of these statements come down to the same thing of course – both come down to very good grounds for not embarking on the project in the first place!
Once we have embarked upon the project then we’re committed and there’s simply no looking back. We’ve ‘signed up’, we’ve ‘enlisted’ and that’s that. There really isn’t any looking back because we are no longer able to see that we freely embarked upon anything – once we’re committed then the project isn’t ‘a project’ at all, it’s just ‘the way things are’. The freedom has gone out of it. The freedom has to go out of it because if we knew that we are free not to play the game then we would know that the game is only a game and so that would be the end of it. We would know that the mind-created self is only a fiction and so we would no longer be absolutely committed to it in the way that we are absolutely committed to it. There really is no ‘looking back’ because the whole point of denial is to say that there was nothing to deny in the first place. The whole point of denial is that we aren’t allowed to consider the possibility that what we are in denial of might actually be true after all! We have turned our backs on this possibility and we’re marching resolutely in the other direction. Denial (as we have said) defines everything for us – we’ve only the one course of action left open to us and that is that we go on denying!
With regard to the ‘impossible struggle’ therefore we really have painted ourselves into a corner. We’ve painted ourselves into the tightest corner there ever could be. The only thing that could get us out of this corner would be to consider the possibility that the self we think we are isn’t real and this possibility is the very thing that we have turned our back on. This possibility has – as a result of us playing the ‘denial game’ – has become invisible to us; it has become something that we cannot ever contemplate. We’re locked into the impossible struggle and we’re also locked into refusing to see that it is impossible…
As soon as we go down this road (as soon as we start playing the game of denial) our future trajectory becomes absolutely defined for us. We enter into what Philip K Dick calls the Realm of Astral Determinism. It has all been decided for us at this point, although we won’t realize it. We have given away all our freedom and as a consequence of this act we are no longer free to see this. We have the illusion of free will when we play this game but that it all it is – an illusion. In reality, what has happened is that we are now on a forced march and we can’t go anywhere other than where this march dictates we should go. It’s a done deal – what’s going to happen is what’s going to happen and there’s nothing we can do about it. The dice have been cast and they were loaded right from the beginning…
From the perspective (or rather the lack of perspective) of the conditioned viewpoint that we’re saddled with when we’re living in the MCVR without knowing that we’re living in it (or playing the game of denial without knowing that we are playing it) this is something that we just can’t understand. We just can’t get it at all. We won’t get it. Without perspective, we just can’t see that we’re not free; with perspective we can see it and – very curiously – as soon as we see that we’re not free we straightaway are. When we’re not free and can’t see that we aren’t then instead of freedom we have something else – we have the virtual appearance of freedom, we have mind-created analogue of freedom. We have the virtual appearance of choice, the mind-created analogue of choice. We can understand very easily how the mind-created analogue of choice works if we just consider the two (apparent) possibilities of ‘getting it right’ and ‘getting it wrong’ within the unacknowledged framework of the system of denial.
Our supposed freedom lies in getting it right rather than getting it wrong, in winning rather than losing. The chance to win rather than lose is the supposed freedom of the game, the analogue of freedom that exists within the unacknowledged framework of the system of thought. Our only possible freedom in the game is the freedom to win instead of lose and this is why we keep on putting ourselves through the rigmarole of it. This is why we keep on trying. But this supposed freedom is of course no freedom at all – ‘getting it right’ within the unacknowledged framework of the system of denial is the very same thing as ‘getting it wrong’ within that framework…
When we ‘get it right’ within the terms of the unacknowledged framework of the SOD then we feel correspondingly good, correspondingly positive but because it is a ‘system of denial’ nothing has really changed – we haven’t really got anywhere and so we aren’t in the least bit better off! Actually, we’re worse off because we’re deeper into the illusion and so the truth is going to hurt all the more when it does hit us. Equally, when we ‘get it wrong’ in the SOD then we feel correspondingly bad, correspondingly negative, but this too is only ‘an illusory development’. Whether we get it right (and feel good) or get it wrong (and feel bad) all this does is validate the FW that we are operating within. Winning validates the game as much as losing does and so the whole thing just keeps spinning around and around like some kind of perpetual motion machine. Samsara is a perpetual motion machine!
This brings us back to the notion of the ‘impossible struggle’. We could say that the impossible struggle is the struggle to find freedom within the unacknowledged or invisible FW of the SOD. We could say the game itself is ‘the impossible struggle’ since it is always offering us the promise of release from the treadmill that we’re on when actually us ‘falling for the bait’ every time is what keeps the treadmill turning. Us striving to obtain freedom within the terms of the game is what keeps the game turning! We could also say however (as we started off doing at the beginning of this discussion) that the impossible struggle is the struggle to promote the existence of who we believe ourselves to be when we live in the MCVR without knowing that we are living in the MCVR. Perpetuating the game is thus the same thing as promoting the self we perceive ourselves to be within the terms if the game.
The problem with this set-up (as we have already pointed out) is that the MCVR does not exist anymore than the mind-created self which exists within the MCVR does. When we are living in the MCVR without knowing that we are then although it is true that we are not this self (and never can be) it will nevertheless absolutely seem to us that we are and so we will enter into the ‘impossible struggle’ with everything we have. Whatever resources we have, we will pour them into ‘the doomed endeavour’, we will pour them into ‘the project that can never ever work out for us’. Things can therefore go one of two ways in life – either we will enter freely and courageously into the fray (into whatever life throws at us) or we will commit ourselves irrevocably to the thankless task of promoting who we believe ourselves to be within the unacknowledged FW of the SOD (the SOD being of course the same thing as the MCVR).
The first possibility – we might say – equals ‘letting go’ whilst the second equals ‘holding on’. There is no problem at all in ‘letting go’ (nothing can ‘go wrong’ with letting go!) but there is – as we have been saying – a very considerable problem with ‘holding on’, the problem being that what we are holding onto so desperately does not exist….!
