The consciousness inhabiting your body is exactly the same as the consciousness inhabiting my body. We are one. The delusion that we are separate beings comes from identifying with the world of form—with our names, our bodies, our roles, our beliefs, our thoughts, and all of the mental constructs that we have created; but even these are more connected to the universe than we realize.

When we think of something, we create a mental image of it, and our image is then always filtered through our mental perception. We may meet someone one day when they are in a bad mood, we then make a false assumption that this person does not like us. We have created an image of this person, and now every time we meet them, we associate this person with our negative mental image of them. We don’t interact with them as they are in this moment; we interact with how we think they are.

We spend so much of our time lost in thought, trying to label everything as isolated objects and events. Though we fail to realize that our thoughts are incapable of defining anything in its totality. We can think about a situation for as long as we want to, but our thoughts will never know the situation exactly as it exists.

Much of our suffering is caused by our false perceptions and attachment to mental images. We assume things to be true without really knowing whether they are true or not, then create a world of hurt for ourselves and others.

Our perception is our window to the world, and we need to wipe the dust off of our window often so we can continue to see through it clearly.

The majority of people in modern society feel separated—from the world, each other, and themselves. This feeling of separation is a resultfrom we humans attempting to separate ourselves from nature, and consequently forgetting who we really are.