you can sit and be totally involved with your own mind and be totally uninvolved with everything around you, unaware of forces that are influencing you-forces that are helpful for you and forces that are not helpful for you. This is a profound disadvantage! This is why people are having problems. There is not a problem with reality, but there is a great problem with interpretation and self-absorption. At the very beginning of true learning, then, each person must become aware of their self-absorption-how much they are involved with their own mind and how little they are involved in life. Often it can seem very upsetting or disappointing and even insulting when you find out that you are actually experiencing very little of life and thinking a great deal.