The pornography of life
We argue that there is a difference between fantasy and fact. But the difference is not automatic, clear and unambiguous.
One of the learnings from meditation practice is an increased awareness of how we are all the time making stories, inventing or recreating situations where we play out dramas in our minds. And most of the time we are unaware that we are doing it.
Sometimes a day dream becomes more conscious, subject like any creative experience to a secondary process of analysis and cohesion. But most of the time we don’t specially notice the stories we are telling ourselves.
This story-telling is though the process by which we turn fantasy into fact. We are rewriting experience to make a coherent picture that we can appreciate and recognize and say, yes, this is me, and this is the world we are in. Depending on stuff, ‘this is me’ may look good or not, and the world we are in may be more or less benign or hateful.
So what is fact or fantasy?
A fact is a fantasy that we have no desire to contradict.