“Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.” – Mark Twain
From this statement, we gather that our supposed reality is Truth, and that that which authors such as myself write into existence, is Lie. An equation is formed which says reality as we perceive or know it is Truth and Fiction or Fantasy is a Lie.
Fiction and or Fantasy are products of the imagination, a projection of one’s mind and thoughts. But the irony is that most everything we consider reality in our daily lives, originated from some person’s mind, an idea first imagined, before ever it was brought into existence and considered to be real.
If you were to tell someone back in the 1300’s for instance that you dream of flying across the continents instead of riding by horse and mule, they would have easily relegated your thought to the realm of fiction and fantasy. Fast-forward to today, and humans flying across the continents is a daily reality, no lie.
On the flip-side of that same coin about reality versus fiction, we have another scenario. Introduce the ‘rulers’ or ‘controllers’ or shall we say the ‘authorities’ of our so-called reality. They tell us that we, and Nature, both need to be ‘governed’ by them in order to be free, happy, and healthy.
They tell us that freedom is obtained and maintained counter intuitively enough by limiting our every personal freedom down to the nucleus of our cells, and by destroying those cells should we resist such imprisonment in the name of so-called freedom.
This reality is but the enforced product of the imagination of a sordid few, who desire to manipulate Nature and humanity to their own personal warped designs and wants. Their imaginations are malignant and are contrary to Nature and its inhabitants. The reality then that they thus have deceived us into accepting is but their own sadistic fantasy, and thus is a lie and not real at all.
But we accept it anyway. We swallow it anyway. We ingest its parts despite the inner conflict it creates within us. We follow the script of its story line word for word and action for action, assimilating someone else’s imagination as our own, personal, truth.
I ask, how can that be real? How does this so-called reality align with Nature, both within you and around you? Why are we never the protagonist in this author’s story?
If we truly felt free and happy in this so-called reality, as the author of it scripts us to say and accept, then the genre of literature known as Fiction and Fantasy would not exist. For what is fiction and fantasy to those of us who are entertained by it? It is an escape. It is a way out of one person’s imagination and a route into another’s.
Fiction and Fantasy provide a judgment free canvas for our minds to escape the limitations of the so-called reality we are being force fed to swallow in our daily lives. Our imaginations are able to take off their seat-belts and shackles and roam freely through the countrysides of the psyche, naked of restrictions.
If according to Twain, fiction is limited by possibilities, then it is limited only by the possibilities of one’s imagination. Truth on the other hand is free from limitation, thus this would imply that truth is greater that the mind’s capacity to imagine.
If we apply this statement’s concept to our daily life, we would have to conclude then that wherever there is limitation, there is a mind and the constructs of its imagination behind it, thus wherever we find ourselves limited by others, we find ourselves in a state of fiction, we are living a lie.
Truth is bigger than the mind, bigger than the imagination, and truth resonates in the heart, you can feel it in your gut. When we resonate with a story written by someone else or that we ourselves create, there is a universal truth present in that story, something that contradicts the mind but ignites the heart.
The universal truth that we all experience and enjoy in fantasy and fiction literature is the concept that we can overcome the impossible, break free from restriction, and realize our own full potential despite the odds against such.
It allows us to momentarily revel in thoughts and energies which are confined within our Nature and seek an outlet. It reminds us that we are greater than anything we can possibly imagine, because we can imagine the impossible.
Fantasy gives us permission to see our existence from alternate perspectives, to envision our lives the way we would have it, instead of the way we are being forced to believe that it is supposed to be.
Fantasy allows us to play up the traits within ourselves that we lack the courage to exhibit in our so-called realities. It allows us to see ourselves as beautiful, handsome, intelligent, courageous, heroic, bold, strong, ingenious, successful, needed, wanted, loved, valued and empowered.
Fantasy also provides an escape from time. We can be young, or we can be old. We can visit the past or create and taste the future. We have to answer to no nagging gravity or force or clock. We can choose our family, friends, lovers, bodies and destinies.
Fantasy and fiction allow us to explore the truth of our inner limitlessness. We become the masters of our own fate by setting our hearts and minds free, to go, do, and be anything, anywhere, and anyone that we wish.
The lives we live, within the confines of the limited imaginations of a few, is Fiction; we live a daily lie. Fantasy Fiction on the other hand has become one of the few ways that we can experience Truth, the unconditional realm of our own inner limitlessness.
Our lives are all a story. If we didn’t write our story, then we are the character from the imagination of whoever is writing the story we find ourselves in. If we don’t like the story we find ourselves in, then we have the power to pick up the proverbial pen, and write it anew.
Reading the writings of others who have dared to imagine a world different than the world imagined by the current author of our supposed reality, can inspire us to dare to imagine as well; we can jump up off of the page and become a real boy too!
Fantasy is then an alternate reality, a different perspective, a contrasting imagination. It is a way for us to step out of our current so-called reality and see it from an entirely different vantage point. It is hope for a better tomorrow.
For me, reality has become fiction, and fantasy has become reality; that which I was told was true, has actually turned out to be a lie. And that which I was told is not possible, is actually the very possibility which Nature made in truth.
Fiction may be limited to the imagination of the mind that constructs it, while Truth is emitted from the heart of Nature and bears witness to itself. Fiction originates in the mind, while Truth originates in the heart.
When the heart and the mind combine, Fantasy is born as a product of the two, and a reality unfolds of a dimension new. Fantasy reminds us that reality is fluid, like an ocean of consciousness. And different shaped minds shape consciousness differently, the shape of which is not a reflection of consciousness per se, but rather of the mind instead.
The mind may be limited in how it shapes the fluidity of consciousness, but the fluidity of consciousness flows infinite beyond the limits of any and all minds and their shapes.
Truth is consciousness and lives in the heart, Fiction originates in a mind that confines it, and Fantasy is the shape that a particular mind forms said confined consciousness into.
Truth, being the consciousness of the heart, is unlimited. Fiction, being a construct of the mind, is not conscious and thus bound by the limits allowed by logic.
Truth is like the boundless terrain of Love, whereas Fiction is like the finite matrix of logic. Fantasy is that place where Love and Logic meet in the middle, giving birth to the possibility of another reality.
There can be and most often is found, profound truths within Fantasy and Fiction literature, while similarly, many lies can be found within the pages of the alleged Truth we have come to accept as our so-called reality.
That being said, the line between Truth and Fiction is not a clear one, if looking only with the eyes. One must see from the perspective of the heart to discern which is which. A liar may say that the truth is fiction, and that what is fiction is the truth, skewing and blurring the lines of reality. It is up to each of us to decide which is which for ourselves, discerning what we find strangest, and what we find to be possible versus impossible.