The view and the meditation are encouragements to relax enough so that finally the atmosphere of your experience just begins to come to you. How things are really can't be taught; no one can give you a formula A + B + C = enlightenment.

These supports are often likened to a raft. You need to raft to cross the river, to get to the other side; when you get over there, you leave the raft behind. That's an interesting image, but in experience it's more like the raft gives out on you in the middle of the stream and you never really get to solid ground. This is what is meant by becoming a child of illusion.

The "child of illusion" image seems apt because young children seem to live in a world in which things are not so solid. You see a sense of wonder in all young children, which they later lose. This slogan encourages us to be that way again. I read a book called 'The Holographic Universe'...what science is finding out is that the material world isn't as solid as it seems; it's more like a hologram - vivid, but empty at the same time.

Being a child of illusion also has to do with beginning to encourage yourself not to be a walking battleground...the truth is that good and bad coexist; sour and sweet coexist. They aren't really opposed to each other...The Buddha within is messy as well as clean.

We generally interpret the world so heavily in terms of good and bad, happy and sad, nice and not nice, that the world doesn't have a chance to speak for itself. When we say "Be a child of illusion," we're beginning to get at this fresh way of looking where we're not caught up in our hope and fear.

From Start Where You Are : A Guide to Compassionate Living by Pema Chodron, Copyright 1994, Shambhala Publications.
Published by arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc., Boston.