Life. A Great Monopoly Game.

Imagine life as a Monopoly game that you are playing.
In this Monopoly game, everyone is taking it so seriously that they have all become identified with their playing pieces. They have all put their consciousness into their tokens. Someone is the car, someone is the top hat, and they begin to see, think, feel and experience through their own playing piece.
Now, since the players are experiencing the Monopoly game as their absolute reality, the money becomes real and every roll of the dice is a life-altering event. Now, because of this, all of the people take this game very seriously, for if you lose all your money and become bankrupt, you are, in effect, dead... game over.
Now, let us say that one of the players has an insight that they are a human being playing this strange game, and he or she begins to see exactly how odd the whole experience is. No longer, for that person, is a dice roll life-altering, no longer is the money real, no longer does this game make any sense, other than its fleeting entertainment value, it's highs and lows. They have realized that there is another form of life that is outside of the game and its rules.
All the other people, who are still identified with their pieces, still experience tremendous anxiety over the acquiring of plastic hotels and houses, getting ulcers over being in jail, becoming elated at passing "GO", making desperate deals, feeling that they will never "win", seeking security, and inventing all kinds of rules and philosophies in hopes of staying in the game.
But what does this game have to do with who they really are?
Who chose to play it in the first place?
Perhaps we just find ourselves in it. Perhaps, the game is teaching some valuable lesson.
Either way, the person who has become aware of the game, is now in a different reality. They are in the game, but they are not of it. They can now play the Monopoly game if they wish to, or they can leave it at a moment's notice. If they do play the game, they play it without stress, fear or anxiety. To those still within the game, leaving it would appear foolish and valueless. It would appear like weakness or folly.
Could this be the case with what we call reality? Parents who are not aware of this game being played, unknowingly indoctrinating their children into it? Creating a syndrome of taking this mind-created game, ever-so-seriously? Who created it? Should one just accept this without really questioning it?
I feel that we all, at some point in our lives, have observed this "game" for what it is.
There are moments when we have seen the futility, emptiness, the absurdity or repetitiveness of it.
What have our reactions been to seeing this grand illusion exposed? Outright denial? To cover it up it with a previously held belief? Or have we faced the fear that the game holds no meaning and sought to undertake a deeper and deeper investigation into the unknown?
Only one of those responses truly furthers our awareness what we call "truth".
Everyone is moving toward a deeper understanding of life, and while we may exist within a seemingly violent, disturbed and often cruel world, we must observe it rather than react to it. This does not mean that we disconnect emotionally, or become hermits and turn our back on the world, rather, we change the world by seeing the false as false and by seeing the truth as truth. This "seeing" eliminates cycles and patterns of negativity within ourselves, thus bringing order into our own inner chaos that cease to enable the madness of the game to further itself. We see how our own conditioning into the game has created suffering for ourselves, and in seeing the conditioning as false, misleading, and ultimately dangerous, we drop it. Totally.
It is a saying that if you bring order into your self, then you bring order into the world. Is this not a truth? By observing a situation and not reacting to it, we eliminate a potential ripple in the lake of experience. In not reacting, we make certain that we do not allow more negativity or emotional disturbance to enter the world. By reacting blindly to a situation we may fight disturbance with our own disturbance, violence with violence, anger with anger, and are they not cycles and patterns of life that have been endlessly repeated for millennia? However, if we see the truth of this, we realize that we are no longer a part of this unconscious game that has been handed down to us, and we eliminate these endless, unconscious cycles of indoctrination. Living this awareness brings into being an order, stability and harmony within ourselves.

Interpreting What Is

Life happens.
I cannot say much more about it except that there is something that happening both without and within. There is a movement, a giant, unified motion. That is what appears to be life.
Then there is my mind, filled with its knowledge, that interprets everything that is moving both within and without. I think that here is the source of all conflict.
There is what is, and then there is the interpretation that I give it - "I" being my identity which is the sum total of all my past experiences - and that interpretation is not what is actually occurring.
What is actually occurring cannot be known, because it is ever new and never before experienced. That is a fact. The mind, which is the sum total of past knowledge, can never meet the new. This is why life can become rather dull, frustrating and lackluster.
Is there a way to meet the present moment without the screen of the mind?
Only when the mind is emptied, laid aside, can life be met.