Are you ready to be disillusioned?

Contrary to popular opinion, becoming disillusioned might not be so bad.

Finding yourself disillusioned means that you’re no longer under an illusion of some kind.

What if this means that now you’re able and willing to see what’s really going on? The veil has lifted, and you can see clearly now.

Becoming disillusioned, while certainly enlightening, isn’t always easy. Losing one’s illusions can sometimes feel quite painful. There is a grieving to go through, especially if what you are now aware of came as a shock to you, an unwelcome surprise. One example: learning you’ve been lied to by someone you trusted can feel like a great betrayal.

Another example is realizing as a young adult that much of the history you were taught in school was a lie, and that it willfully excluded many important truths, such as the genocide of the Indigenous peoples of this continent, and 400 years of the enslavement of people stolen from Africa. The American government didn’t consider this information important enough for you and me to know, but definitely wanted us on board with its imperialist creed of ‘Manifest Destiny’, which is what I was taught in grammar school. I remember going completely unconscious in my American history class while reading about this. I know now why I had this reaction - my spirit was responding to a complete lie that was being shoved into my young mind.

When the childhood honeymoon is over.

There is an age in childhood when children understand that Things Are Not What They Seem. Unless other circumstances dictate, it’s at around the age of 5-7 when children begin to realize that adults are hiding something. Worse, they are letting their bad habits and terrible personalities hang out all over the place, while demanding good behavior and strict adherence to the rules from anyone under the age of 18.

Worst of all, there are no explanations offered for this madness. Only the assurance that you will understand it when you’re older. Meanwhile, you do understand something important and frightening, the illusion is up.

For some kids, this happens much earlier, and maybe there never was time for illusion. Anyone who grew up in difficult circumstances, or as a person of color in a white supremacist country, didn’t have as much room for illusion. One would need to know at a very young age what to expect, in order to survive and be safe. People born into privilege are able to hold onto their illusions far longer. Why, some folks make it all the way to their middle years and beyond still under the illusion that it is all about them.

Disillusionment started for me just before I turned 7, when my family moved into a new neighborhood. The energy was so different in this new place, and I didn’t feel like I fit in as well as I had in my old neighborhood. I always knew I’d leave this neighborhood as soon as I could, because its illusions didn’t work for me. In order to become my true self, I had to leave the place where I grew up, to leave childhood’s illusions behind.

The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off. -Gloria Steinem

Letting go of the illusions allows you to be in truth.

Even when you were blissfully unaware, or so you thought, there was still the energy of a lie to get through and deal with. Some examples of this include learning after the fact that the trust you placed in authorities to protect you and your children, was not deserved by them.

Expressions such as ‘what you don’t know won’t hurt you’ and ‘ignorance is bliss’ hint at a kind of chosen unconsciousness. They are also lies we tell ourselves in order to not have to deal with what is actually going on. Yes, the truth can hurt, but lies will hurt more, especially a mountain of them. It takes great courage to see truth for yourself, instead of relying on others to tell you what that truth is.

Seeing through everyone else’s chosen illusions can be daunting, to say the least. In the United States in late 2020, weeks before the most important presidential election any of us has ever seen, in the midst of a global pandemic that shows no signs of ending or slowing down, at least in the U.S., there’s a lot of illusions to wade through. Many of them are purposefully created, by corporate owned media and social media, and it’s more difficult than ever to know who and where you can trust. Illusion/disillusion at its finest.

In order to become who you really are, you will want to welcome the energy of disillusionment into your life. A great question to ask yourself is, “what don’t I know that I don’t know?”. The truth will set you free.

It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.

James Baldwin

• ©Kris Cahill
  Image found at Unsplash