by Jeff Fisher

Vernon said one of the main ways to end human suffering is through using disillusionment to rise above our present level of understanding. Disillusionment is simply the experience of realizing that something we believed would make us happy doesn’t do it. This realization will bring up a feeling of disappointment but will also show us where we’ve been fooling ourselves. Using disillusionment rightly gives us the push we need to handle things differently. If we are willing to look at our inner states with blunt honesty, we’ll find out that we don’t really know what will make us happy. Instead, we are constantly projecting our hope into the future and using it to escape the present moment. We tell ourselves, “When I get a better job, I’ll be happy,” or “When I get married, I’ll finally feel fulfilled.” However if and when those things arrive we still see that we are just as unhappy as before.
I used to believe that I could find happiness in friends, money or being in a relationship. However after years of pursuing these, I saw that they were only distractions to keep me asleep and dreaming my life away. This is where disillusionment actually helps. When we realize that future goals don’t automatically bring peace or happiness, we’ll stop chasing things just to escape the inner pain. If instead, we stay with the feeling of emptiness and refuse to fill it with a distraction or a daydream, it will become clear that happiness arriving in some future event is just another illusion, a fantasy foisted on us by the false self. We must get out of our own way if we are ever to know that we are the cause of our own unhappiness.
When I first came to class, I had no  idea that I was the only cause of my own misery. However, after years of being disillusioned, I discovered that no matter how hard I tried to avoid the awareness of my own inner gloom, I could not fill it with material things or by telling myself, “Tomorrow will be better.” The emptiness always remained. What I eventually came to see is that because our problems are rooted in our relationship with time, constantly living in the past or the future, we delude ourselves into believing we can escape them. We assume that the time self will take care of our discomfort, not realizing that the very dependence on time is what keeps the problem alive.
The whole purpose of these teachings is to see through the illusions and dissatisfactions we live with by watching the mind as it continually tries to escape being in the present moment.  As Vernon said, “The kingdom of heaven resides in the space between two thoughts,” because when there is no thought, the “I” self is no longer there to cause us any kind of unhappiness.
So we must continuously work to live in the present moment. One of the ways to do this is to come awake as many times a day as possible. For instance when you open a door, know you are opening it, or when you speak to someone, be aware of the sound of your voice. Continually bring yourself back to yourself, because when we do this we break the habit of unconscious thought.
Also when we see someone who is rude or cruel to another person, see them as a self-punishing human being, which is exactly what they are. Any time we are negative we suffer, no exceptions. So wouldn’t it be an intelligent exercise to become aware when we start to complain, gripe, or blame anyone for our troubles and then to immediately drop the punishing thought/feeling? Even though this will give our ego a painful shock, it must be done in order to break the hypnotic sleep state causing our personal hell.  Once we truly see how much we suffer from these low inner states, we will begin to wake up and discover a new life that is free of disillusionment and pain.  As Vernon stated, “No one consciously hurts themselves.”