This picture created by Ardis Bow, depicts for me the same thing Adam and Eve confronted: the apple. But when we bite, what we hold in our minds, and in our hearts, makes the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge – that of good or evil. We can create differently. MAYA is a tool of the Physical Plane. It is neither good nor bad, it simply IS! Like the smallest particles affected by quantum fields, Earth took shape as one of the few planets in the Universe which could act as a playground for manifestation of thought; and the most amazing of all, is life itself. Later, (Sir Isaac) Newton’s Apple became a potent icon of knowledge dropping out of that tree onto our heads and giving us a wake-up call of new ideas. In the Michael Teachings, the term is treated with some apprehension. Borrowed originally from Hindu Sanskrit, it is defined as “illusion” or “magic” more like what we imply from the negative poles. Yet, the flip side of this coin in the positive pole, is something akin to makeover. The Artisan Self (Card 2), innately senses this ‘silly putty’ of existence and works with it. However you may see your life shaping up, remember that aspects of reality are malleable. The one you have access to first is your concept of Self. You are not an illusion. You are however a manifestation of forces you have at least some part in shaping.

**Card messages in the Illuminated position.**

+ Manifestation

(imagination, vision, transubstantiation)

In the cycle of birth and death, every incarnation paints a picture for exploration with Maya, the stuff of illusion. The theater of life has these props which provide us with deus ex machina -(devices of the gods). Act from the god within and know you are playing with masks, artifice, and distortion. The attitude here is: “it is what it is.” Take everything at face value. Otherwise, your creations produce samsara – suffering.
Etheric matter is the stuff of manifestation. The essential elements of matter come together when the gravity of emotion is shaped by the mind into a blueprint; and then through action, into form. Holding a thought form will acquire the mass and bring something into reality. Be clear on what you think and how you feel about it. Aligning the two will get you what you desire.
Make no mistake, what you make has lasting effects…somewhere on someone. It could be you. The best thing you can do is to have clear understanding of the steps that went into a manifestation of an outcome or product. Once you can replicate and refine it, you will advance to the next level.
Take everything at face value. Let reality emerge.
Maya is the glue of beliefs and illusions our mind uses to manufacture one’s reality. If those have substance in the material world, you might make a magnificent one.
Holding a thought-form creates attraction that will acquire the mass to bring something into manifestation. Start shaping and refining these with deliberate conscious intent.
Let’s pretend works in stage acting and politics. Don’t be too quick to dismiss it as a tool.
Be clear on what you imagine, then wed it to joy. Fuse them together and you get what you want.
Even science, for all its love of certainty and material proof of process, is stumped by this positive pole’s showcase of Maya in action. It is called the “Placebo Effect”. In many studies crossing every discipline of medicine, when the placebo (false medication) was administered people still healed or recovered in a statistically significant way not attributable to chance alone. Something is going on! Allow for possibilities that you cannot predict to come into play here.
It is what it is. Imagine your world is a creation of your own attitudes and beliefs? This idea is meant empower you, not scare you. What then?
‘Let’s pretend’, works in stage acting and politics. Don’t be too quick to dismiss it as a tool.
Maya is a tool of the Physical Plane. It is neither right nor wrong. Life is like a stew of ideas, spiced with perceptions and simmers in meanings, rendering it all down into a dish called reality. So what ingredients have selectively chosen to make up the dish you are dining on? Besides the stock of facts and the broth of your emotions, what beliefs spice it up or make it bland? Hey, it’s yours to eat. Don’t you want to know the recipe?

Quotations illustrating this concept…

“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.” ~Albert Einstein
“Few people have the imagination for reality.” ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.” ~ John Lennon
“Every great work, every great accomplishment, has been brought into manifestation through holding to the vision, and often just before the big achievement comes apparent failure and discouragement” – Francis Scovel Shinn
“We can’t solve today’s problems with the mentality that created them.” Albert Einstein

Implications of the Reversed Position or Negative Pole

Pull a rabbit out of my hat? Out of thin air? No, miracles are not magic, but it is amazing that for all the demonization of “magic” by various world religions, their description of the miraculous as accounted for by “God’s mysterious ways” seem almost identical in manner. There, illusion which suggests self-deception or erroneous thought forms, and have as an undertone my God is better than your God; seems to me, in style and even depiction, to make the Almighty seem very similar to Gandalf the Gray or sometimes even Sauron. We can never create something from nothing! But it is our choice to believe whether nothing is something (- Card 0). That is the message in this image. Defined in Wikipedia, Maya as a metaphysical concept connotes “that which exists, but is constantly changing and thus is spiritually unreal” (more specifically – not absolute!). Yet, it is also the “power or the principle that conceals the true character of spiritual reality”. When our eyes have dropped all the veils of illusion we erect in our belief systems, it is finally, and nakedly, revealed that what is, is what exists in form. Not the stories we make-up about it. Yet, a secondary reality is about our personal truth. We can have emotions in relation to reality that are unique, energetically substantive, and even beautiful. But that does not change the THING itself, how we feel about something reveals truth about ourselves. The origins of many of our self-karma’s (Card 66) are at least partially based in how we limit a thing because of our feeling and belief about it.

**Card messages in the Shadow position.**

– Illusion

(projection, mirage, scrim, veil, apparition, delusion, scrim curtain, algorithm)

When beset by illusion, we live in denial of what is and operate in a space that sets us apart. In extreme, one can assemble a life of dismal outcomes or glamorous expectations that result in isolation and ineffectiveness. What illusions are you holding and are they separating you from others or the goals you want to achieve?
Give up your illusions and see if you can form some new ones.
Maya is the etheric matter which can form personal or cultural illusions. What are you in denial about that the rest of the world of other people agree exists? You may be right. But it is best to see both views at once.
It is what it is. Imagine your world as a creation of your own attitudes and beliefs. This idea is meant to encourage you, not scare you. If it does, why does it?
The Great OZ hid behind a curtain of mirages. Come out of hiding, you don’t have to know it all. So stop smoke screen.
MAYA and the mind work together to shape perception. Sometimes with personal illusions, sometimes cultural dogmas so pervasive and dense that to see beyond them is nearly impossible. Old ways will not get you different results.
MAYA is a stage tool for the Physical Plane. It is neither right nor wrong morally. It just exists and you operate within it. Life is like a stew of ideas spiced with perception and simmered into meaning. It all renders down into a dish called reality: sometimes delicious other times revolting.
In Pink Floyd’s The Wall, mention of “the worms ate into his brain” was a telling of how doubts and fears undermine our confidence. That very act encourages Ego to build OUR Wall of self-defense brick-by-brick! At the end of the album the judge declares with a rousing damnation “tear down the wall!” Your challenge here is how you go about killing off the worms and whether or not you destroy the wall in-total, or systematically dismantle it knowing that you could recycle some of the useful parts. Remember however, its existence is now public and no longer hidden.
Stagecraft has scrim curtains to present a background with a certain appearance. They reflect to an audience the illusion of a various type of setting or circumstance. Yet, with a change of light, or an alteration of perspective, one can see through the visual make-believe. Keep clearing your eyes and mind of the idea that you see everything. Remember that the curtain is trying to hide something, not reveal it. Strip away, do not add in.
“Look over there” might as well be the motto of the magician performing a sleight-of-hand which distracts you from what is happening right in front of your eyes. An illusionist manipulates your attention on reality rather than reality itself. Notice, if you can accept the irony in this statement, where you have allowed yourself to place your attention. What is it that they did not want you
to see? What benefit to you did playing along with the misdirection give you?
Our Egos always want three things: to be entertained, to gain advantage, and to feel certain. None of these should be held as moral decrepitude, but they are incredibly deceptive and rapacious. But do realize they have roots in earlier stages of maturity development: entertained is Children’s nature (Card 72) and seeking advantage is an Adolescent’s nature (Card 73). And everyone is seeking certainty against fear of the unknown (Card 74). You can have either if you wish; this pole of Maya is simply pulling the wool off your eyes so you don’t pretend about choosing it.
In the modern era, the misdirection is in the ‘fine print.’ Not magic, just magical thinking that somehow you’ll escape the consequences of your ignore-ance. (Spelling intended.) It is hard to deal with modern contracts. It is sad that the paradigm of ‘lie-ability’ is given more credence in courts, than integrity. No matter what you want to tell yourself, your integrity is within your realm to decide. Are you sure you want to go through with this contract? If you do, you are responsible for it.

Quotations illustrating this concept…

Illusions commend themselves to us because they save us pain and allow us to enjoy pleasure instead. We must therefore accept it without complaint when they sometimes collide with a bit of reality against which they are dashed to pieces. – Sigmund Freud
Objectivity has about as much substance as the emperor’s new clothes. – Connie Miller
“Illusion is the first of all pleasures.” – Oscar Wilde
“It is our illusions that create the world” – Deider Cauwelaert
“I looked at life from both sides now, but clouds got in the way, I really don’t know life, at all.” Joni Mitchell, Both Sides Now
If I wish to live in a civilized community, I must act as if man is a responsible being.” – Albert Einstein

Relevance in the Michael Teaching

What do you see in this picture? MAYA is the illusion you project onto it.

MAYA is a Sanskrit work meaning “illusion”. In modern parlance it might better be classified as hologram or virtual reality. Seeming completely real to the senses, MAYA is the material of physical plane stage craft, like the painted scrim curtains in a theatrical set design, they provide an image which allows us to suspend disbelief and play along. MAYA sets the stage and the setting upon which we exchange projections with each other. In such an arena, we are often caught by our own fears, grandiosities, and misunderstandings.

The progression through Soul Age offers us various layers of MAYA to move through. Each stage of MAYA presents real challenges to the Personality to see the parameters and limits to distinguish what is imposed from the material world and which are filters and barriers we accept within our inner world.

Why might MAYA exist? From a spiritualist standpoint the answer can be winnowed down to one word: duality! And specifically the sense of separation: or self and other, is creates. Duality forms the basis of all perception of the animal mind. I/thou or I/it as the philosophers have noted. The first recognizes an inherent similarity of uniqueness and right to exist as oneself. The second, when something is cast as an “it” the relationship is to a thing, and things are to be used, consumed, exploited, feared, and cast away. MAYA is both the mold and the quintessence reflecting the belief and attitude which fills it.

Illusion and Perspective as defined in the Michael Teaching MAYA takes shape and substance in response to the gravity and magnetism of our thought forms. Some might recognize elements of the much noted “law of attraction” in this statement. But whether what is attracted is wanted or not, MAYA will form to the specifications: conscious or unconscious of those items we wish, demand, avoid, or deny. In the same way that steel forms many things: car parts, girders, airplanes, fixtures, tools of all sorts, what they have in common is the material they were derived from.

It allows us to test our experience and “create our own reality”; if not actually then at least metaphorically. MAYA is like being in deep water and your air tanks are filling your lungs with gases that make you delusional. Immersed in the illusion that you are just fine when submerged one might actually be getting entangled in a kelp bed and is strangles by it. Descriptions like these are not so far off base when one considers how often life presents a “drama” and we respond with theatrical posturing: our acted persona scripted from years of practice. Much of what passes for interaction between people or between a person and their actual circumstances is like a movie being projected on a screen. Instead of actually being present, we sit back and watch as our sub-personalities march outward to the threshold and play out their parts as they always have.

In the Michael Teaching, a common statement is: “MAYA has taken you into the grips of Chief Feature (CF) and the negative poles of the Overleaves.” Within the context of Michael’s philosophical approach, MAYA is not wrong, but simply inevitable. It becomes an entanglement and illusion covering what is real and this draws a person into fear; and from fear the cascading effects of CF and Ego take over. Everyone becomes an “it” to fear, conquer, control, avoid, or use. But seeing life and those within it as “thou” is to practice AGAPE or unconditional positive regard for all the people and creatures you encounter during life’s excursion.

Cultural Meaning

Can you imagine what we can manifest? Don’t look too far to see how things have come to this point. Acceptance of the general paradigms of a culture, or religion, or group, or ideological affiliation is an abdication of our thinking and will. They create the reality we live in. At any given moment, relenting to someone else’s power renders one at effect instead of at cause in their lives.

Modern media provides us many an illusion or meta narrative in presenting us staged images as icons which we should emulate or achieve. One might indeed think of advertising as the source of MAYA in every culture. But why is it so successful? Because we enjoy our illusions! They are what we default to when actual reality is not to our liking. They may act as a stop gap crutch to help us limp through a difficult passage. But when we forget that these illusions are merely temporary bolsters of our own imagination, and indeed they are shared by many, group think creates a kind of distortion and perhaps in the extreme negative an abomination.

Yet, we have all the tools and intelligence necessary to create amazing realities from our visions, if we hold to them and eliminate all that is not them.

by Stephen Cocconi © 2011, Updated 2024

For a Motivation Cards Reading or Channeled Consultation call: 209.768-4956 or email Stephen at channeling@themichaelteaching.com

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