You are being presented with the most far-reaching and radical challenge of your life: to put aside any denial, avoidance and pretence about the way you are and to actively find out what is real in yourself and life, beyond all ideas about what actually is.

We all have ideas about who or what we are and what life is all about -- or not about. We have wants and desires and vague intentions about how we want to experience our lives.

But if we are not fully awake, conscious, then these random and conditioned movements of our minds lead us to create the suffering and dissatisfactions that we experience as our lives.

Actual/Real/Truth: How life, the world, the universe actually is, whatever that may be.

Ideas: Mental creations about life and the world, which we use to build the beliefs that we live our lives by.

Beliefs: Sets of ideas that we consider "true" about our lives and the world, from which we create the content and experience of our lives.

Consciousness: Clear awareness, free of all ideas of "reality". Completely aware of the consequences of ideas and actions.

Identity/Self image: The person, the "me", that exists in the world with name, bank account, job, partner and life history.

Suffering: Life experiences created by a mismatch between ideas of what actually is and what actually is.

Real "Self": The immense and complete being we are, underneath all the filters, ideas and self limitations that give people their sense of identity and meaning.