The first 20 years of my adulthood, I looked at the world through the lens of Critical Theory, which is a mostly academic discipline of understanding the world and its cultural manifestations in terms of the oppression and marginalization of “minority” groups by a group or groups that assert hegemonic power over a given social/cultural/political space. For example, an imperial power perpetuating a narrative of bringing civilization to “savages” while colonizing the savages’ territory, subjugating the savages, and denying the savages their own narrative. As I discovered, you can literally go to the ends of the earth and beginning of time and not escape this feature of the human condition. All of this was very depressing for me, and I felt as if I had painted myself into a corner. It was important to me to not be a part of that, but there’s no solution to that problem.
Then I found Advaita Vedanta, which is a spiritual path that falls under Hinduism. Advaita says (in so many words) “life is but a dream.” So the effect for me has been an understanding that all of this that we typically call life is a projection, an illusion, and a delusion. What’s false is every manifestation that is “not me” and what is true is that all of this is the play of a universal consciousness. Even our conventional sense of self is an illusion.
So the ignorance is of anything happening in the world. Nothing really happens. It’s all a light show powered by this consciousness. How can one know anything if the entire blanket of what we usually refer to as reality is false?
It’s important to add that the “truth” of my assertion above isn’t understood intellectually. Rather it is on that is realized through observation. While I read about it and listened to teachers to get on the right track, the confirmation of it comes only through my own practice of inquiry. It’s an understanding that is “seen.”
The bliss is coming to see that our true nature is peace, love, harmony, and tranquility. Everything unfolds exactly as it should, and trouble only comes when one carries expectations or when one suffers from the delusion that he or she is the doer of their life. “Life takes care of itself, and I have nothing to do with it,” is what an Advaita master would say. I can say that mountains have moved for me in effortless fashion since I have come to this understanding. In my experience, when I was able to still my mind, the world started rotating around me instead of me struggling to move in the world.