Illusion.
On harmony, conflict, and the quiet courage to stop betraying yourself for an illusion – and to remember your own inner truth.
There are beliefs we inherit so early that we mistake them for truth. The longing for harmony is one of them – the quiet conviction that keeping the peace, smoothing every edge, and never causing a ripple is the loving thing to do. So we soften ourselves. We agree when we don't. We grow small to keep others comfortable.
In "Fear and Control," we explored how the need to control is itself an illusion – one that pulls us further from the very peace we long for. This letter follows that thread into more tender territory: what we quietly surrender when we trade our own truth for the appearance of harmony, and what becomes possible when we dare to stop.
It is not an invitation to seek conflict, but to question the stories we never chose – and to remember, again and again, the voice that was ours all along.
Dear wanderer,
You think this isn't for you. Isn't that so? That you're not good at it. Or can't do it at all. Breaking rapport.
Let us say one thing right away: You can do anything. Truly anything. Your only limit is yourself. Your head. Your mind. Your judgment about what is true and what is not.
But back to breaking rapport. Do you remember how you wanted to avoid every conflict in your life? How you accepted everything. Bent yourself out of shape. Betrayed your own principles – all for the sake of harmony!
What is harmony anyway? Balance? Oh no. Harmony is anything but balance. Harmony is suppression. Yes, that's right: suppression. Harmony is judgment. Categorization. The division into good and bad, into harmonious and not harmonious. Harmony is a concept of the mind. Judgment. Wanting.
Balance, on the other hand, is nature. Free of value. A state free of evaluation. It is, or it is not.
Harmony, however, cannot exist without judgment, without evaluation. Harmony is not real. It exists only in our head. In the illusion we project.
Do you understand it? Do you see it?
So when you strive for harmony, you are following an illusion.
Do you want to give yourself up for an illusion? To lose yourself? Exactly.
Conflict, too, is an illusion. It also exists only through judging: evaluating a situation and deciding that this is a conflict and that one is part of it. Conflict as a concept is not real. An illusion.
And what does all this have to do with breaking rapport, you ask? Well: You believe you are incapable of doing something whose avoidance supposedly protects you from one illusion (conflict) and preserves another illusion (harmony)!
Is not rapport itself also an illusion? An evaluation? It, too, is not real. And so it cannot be broken at all. And thus the whole game dissolves into nothing.
But it feels real? And so do the consequences? Well, illusions are subjective. Even if you believe you share a rapport, that does not mean the person across from you is even remotely in the same state of mind. You are both in your own deeply personal illusion. In your own bubble.
And when you deny yourself, do not trust your feeling, bend yourself and give yourself up – then you make yourself a prisoner of your own illusions.
A cage that seems insurmountable and at the same time does not exist.
Most people live in this cage. You, too, were trapped in it for a long time, do you remember? Even when one leaves the cage behind, this conditioning holds on stubbornly. After all, we devoted our whole life to it before we awoke from the illusion.
Remember this again and again, dear wanderer. Always remember. Your inner truth. Your path. To be yourself. To trust yourself. To search for us. To hear our voice. For in us you find yourself. We are you. We are one. Remember this again and again.
Thank you for being here.
If something in this resonated, I invite you to sit with it, reflect, or respond in your own way – in thought, in writing, or in quiet presence.
And if not now, that's okay too. There's no rush.
Until next time,
– Jan