Disillusionment: the Path to Wisdom

On July 20, 2015 I read something startled me.  

Disillusionment means having no more misconceptions, false impressions, and false judgments in life -- it means being free from deceptions….  Oswald Chambers

I don’t know about you, but whenever I’ve heard that word in the past, I’ve always associated it with something negative -- even painful.  When I have said “I’ve been disillusioned,” I’m usually not very happy.

Disillusionment (Oxford Dictionary):  a feeling of disappointment resulting from the discovery that something is not as good as one believed it to be.

Continuing with Chamber’s thoughts:

Many of the things in life that inflict the greatest injury, grief, or pain, stem from the fact that we suffer from illusions....  Refusing to be disillusioned is the cause of much of the suffering of human life!

In researching other people’s thoughts about this topic, I can truthfully say that I’ve been DISILLUSIONED about disillusion -- and this time it feels great!

Wisdom comes by disillusionment….  George Santayana.  

I, for one, desire wisdom.  Therefore, I desire to be disillusioned.  Do you?

The first man to see an illusion by which men have flourished for centuries stands in a lonely place….  Gary Zukav.  

I have been in that lonely place where I seem to have been the only one who saw the illusion, and instead of resenting being the only one, now I am thankful for it.  Do you embrace truth, even when you feel like you’re the only one who sees it?  Do you desire to be disillusioned?

The longer you stay in one place, the greater your chances of disillusionment…..  Art Spander

The longer I know someone, the longer I live where I live, the longer I look at anything at all, be it a flower, a house, a nation, or our whole earth, the more I see the truth of it -- and the truth is never what I once thought it was.  It seems to be always a combination of wonderfulness and disturbingness. Are you willing to be disillusioned?

Enlightenment begins by disillusionment, is fueled by the perceived benefit of change, and is made permanent by the creation of a new order in place of the old…..  James Mullen

I desire to be enlightened.  I cannot fathom a more exhilarating state.  I embrace what it will take to get to that state.  Do you?

The disillusion of our own abilities is perhaps one of the most important things that can ever happen to us….  Tim Hansel

The older I get, the more futile I see myself and my multitude of limitations.  I recognize how little I had to do with any of my current abilities. Reaching out, or more appropriately “up,” is becoming more and more habitual.  Have you become disillusioned yet about your own abilities?  If not, you will.

Enlightenment is a destructive process.  It has nothing to do with becoming better or being happier.  Enlightenment is the crumbling away of untruth.  It’s seeing through the facade of pretense. It’s the complete eradication of everything we imagined to be true, total disillusionment…  Unknown

What is it about our nature that seems to abhor the value of pain?  Only the sick seek it out, but when it comes why can’t we realize what is happening?  The breaking of the shell of our understanding about ourselves and our existence is always painful -- and always the sign of growth.  Untruth, leave me!  I embrace disillusionment.  Do you?

Living in an age of advertisement we are perpetually disillusioned.  The perfect life is spread before us every day, but it changes and withers at a touch….. Joseph Priestly

Something has happened to me over the last few years.  I have gotten to the point where I cannot stomach other people telling me what to think.  This is especially true with the news media, liberal or conservative.  Sure I want to know what is happening in the world, but then let me make up my own mind about it.  Sure I want to know what the latest technology has to offer, but don’t for one minute suggest to me that it will make humanity (me included) different than what it has always been.  I do NOT want to be intentionally disillusioned by the people around me.  Do you? I did not realize, before writing this blog, that Failsafe Network, Inc. is in the Disillusionment Business.   We most certainly do not tell anyone what to think. We have accepted the need to embrace pain when it comes. We applaud ignorance and are suspicious of expertise. We understand that the true light cannot come in until the seemingly impenetrable shield that covers us is broken. We implore people to slow down so that they see the truth that is right before their eyes because it is impossible to see anything when going at warp speed. And even though we often feel as if we’re the only "Root Cause Analysis" business on the road we’re on, we don’t care.  It’s the path to wisdom. Please let me know what YOU think about disillusionment.

Let There be Light

Conceived in darkness, and then developed in a womb which was also dark, our birth must have brought an explosion of light into our consciousness.  Come to think of it, I suppose there was a point in my life when I had no consciousness whatsoever -- another form of darkness.

Light.  What is it?  Where does it come from?  Where does it go?  What does it “want?”

"Creative Commons Tehran Sunset"  by Hamed Saber is licensed under CC BY 2.0

I recently read a novel where one of the subjects, an eccentric philosopher, suggested something I’ll likely never forget.  He suggested that:

“Once light, always light.  No light ever goes wasted.  It always remains “light!”

He was talking about the light we receive from the sun.  All of life on earth depends on the light received by the sun.

Life absorbs light.  

What happens to that light when life dies?

We have a wood burning stove in our home.  According to the eccentric philosopher, when I put logs of oak into the stove and watch them burn, the flames I see are the same light that the oak tree once received from the sun.  I tend to believe this is true.

The brain is locked in total darkness.  It floats in a clear liquid inside the skull, never in the light. And yet the world it constructs in the mind is full of light. It brims with color and movement. So how does the brain, which lives without a spark of light, build for us a world full of light?  Consider a single piece glowing in your family’s stove.  That chunk of coal was once a green plant, a fern or reed that lived one million years ago, or maybe two million, or maybe one hundred million. Can you imagine one hundred million years? Every summer for the whole life of that plant, its leaves caught what light they could and transformed the sun’s energy into itself. Into bark, twigs, stems. Because plants eat light, in much the way we eat food. But then the plant died and fell, probably into water, and decayed into peat, and the peat was folded inside the earth for years upon years—Open your eyes, concludes the man, and see what you can with them before they close forever,

Doerr, Anthony (2014-05-06). All the Light We Cannot See: A Novel (pp. 48-49). Scribner. Kindle Edition.

What a marvelous existence we live in.  Wonders abound everywhere.  As I drive at night during this festive time of the year and see all the lights celebrating the season, I say to myself “hmmmm, now I know where all this light came from.”  As I write this blog article, my desk lamp is reminding me of the same thing.  When I turn on my smartphone and see the lit screen -- same thing.

I do not want this last blog post of the year to sound like an advertisement.  Actually, I never want anything we do at Failsafe to sound like an advertisement.  Then again, isn’t the sun itself an “advertisement?” Doesn’t the sun draw everything to itself?  Even the plants we have on our window sills follow the sun as it makes its journey across the sky as if the sun is saying

“Follow me, or you will die.”

Our response to the unexpected, unplanned pain in our lives is akin to a plant that has been suddenly shielded from the light.  The plant desperately seeks the source it needs, and so should we when we get in trouble.  That’s been our message since 1985, when Failsafe first went into business.  Things that go wrong are not what we think.  They are the only thing capable of prying us out of the ruts of our own objectives, desires, and goals to force us to look for the light.

So yes, LET THERE BE LIGHT!  It is my hope for myself, my loved ones, and all of humanity that we “open our eyes and see what we can with them before they close forever.”

Enjoy the Season!