The first step on the spiritual path is to recognize the illusory nature of the world around us.
This illusion must not only be acknowledged, but also logically realized. As you delve deeper into the cognitive sciences and understand how the human brain works, a lot will become clearer. It is the brain that is responsible for the representation that we call reality. A simple example: we see color, but in reality it is only a certain wavelength.
Within this illusion, additional mirages arise when one can mistake a rope for a snake or a mother-of-pearl shell for silver.
The one-sidedness of perception that comes from the egoistic self distorts reality very much. A person, for example, enjoys the sight of a beautiful landscape and experiences existential delight. Meanwhile, even without additional efforts, one can realize that we have before us a kind of more battle, where every species and form of life is in a continuous struggle for existence. They run for their lunch and run away so as not to become dinner for others. Each plant fights for moisture and sunlight, but what is going on at the level of the microcosm, the majority do not think.
A very large percentage of the illusion is created by the spoken language. Objectifying the phenomena and giving them names, we immediately build a completely conventional world, where there is a division not by content, but by name.
For example, a forest, a grove, or even a tree, these are completely unreal objects. People agreed to call a large cluster of trees a forest and a smaller one a grove, but there are no such ontological objects as a forest and a grove. They exist only at the language level and for the convenience of communication between people.
And the tree? There is something called a tree - that's all.
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Are the cows real? The Buddhist philosopher will answer in the negative. There is this particular cow, but in reality there is no ontological object called "cow". It is just that some distinctive feature (a number of features), which can be called cowiness, distinguishes these living objects from a number of others.
Try to analyze your speech. Realize how many conventions and delusions there are. We stop thinking in images and think in sentences. This leads to the transformation of the mind into a guide to the invented world and deprives the consciousness of the opportunity to expand.
Pay attention to every word you say. Count how many of them are said in order not only to describe, but also to convey your idea to the interlocutor. Understand conventional concepts and the words that express them. This revision, with the right mindset, will greatly help in getting rid of illusions. Try to realize that if you look at a picture and do not know the name and purpose of the objects present, then you see the picture in a completely different way than the one who knows everything.
That is why it is difficult to retrain rather than teach for the first time. The mind precedes the existing understanding and interferes in the process of perceiving a phenomenon or teaching. The vessel is full, not empty.
Andrey Vl.