There was a movie recently called Six Degrees of Separation and it was about how people are interconnected and just by a very slight wedge they are separated from each other, a very slight degree of separation.
Well, we are all separated from truth by a certain amount of degrees of separation, sometimes a lot, sometimes less than a lot. But what separates us is, very often, incredibly minor, incredibly insignificant matters which have somehow become important enough in our existence to separate us from the truth.
Now, why is it and what holds us in place that grabs us in such a way that doesn’t allow us to move from it, that doesn’t allow us to release ourselves from it, that has this incredible glue power that won’t allow us to be released? Something like fly-paper that’s hanging and we keep flying by and getting caught.
This all stems from what is called, “the dog of desire”. Now a dog will take dried-out bones, with no nutritional value, and he will bury them in various areas that he can find again, and then he’ll go back and find them, take them out of the ground, bite into them, create splinters in the bone, the bone that’s splintered will cut the inside of his mouth, create bleeding, and the dog will think that he is enjoying this bone when actually he’s drinking his own blood. And it has nothing to do with what his imagination is.
We’re something like that; we create situations that we think are of great import, great validity and we chew on them as if they were important, and as if they were delicious, and as if they were satisfying but there’s truly nothing to them. They’re dried-out non-nutritious bone, and we are chewing into our own hallucinations, and we’re making these hallucinations as if they were delicious. It’s a big problem, and it is a major portion of the problem that creates this separation between ourselves and reality.
The desire for things that are not real, and the false satisfaction that comes from things that are not real, and many people can spend an entire lifetime wrapped up in these false satisfactions, and these false desires and in the false belief systems that they’re getting something out of it.
Quite simply, people see fame as an attribute. They see fame as something that does something for them. Now imagine you are famous enough so that your picture appears on the cover of magazines, and lots, and lots and lots of people see the cover of the magazines, and lots and lots of people give you credence for being famous. And then you see the cover of the magazine and you go, “Wow, I’m famous” and somehow you get some kind of psychic thrill from the fact that you’ve become famous. And what is the reality of being famous in the world? What does it do for you?
Well, for a lot of people, after they’ve been famous for a while, they find that they have to escape to somewhere where they’re not known because fame makes people who don’t know you think they know you. Fame makes people who have no relationship with you think they have a relationship with you, and they want to impose on your existence as if they have some right because they feel they know you.
Marlon Brando lived on an island for years, and years and years. Other people escape to foreign countries, escape to ranches that are hundreds of acres large so that they can get away from their “adoring public”.
Why do we need to be adored by people we don’t know, who we don’t adore back? It’s an interesting one-way street; here I am! Love me, love me, love me.
