Once upon a time a man was walking home in the dark to his village and as he was walking along he suddenly saw a snake in the road. Immediately fear rose in him. He very much wanted to go home, but he couldn’t risk his life by getting close to the snake. He realized he would have to go back from where he came and wait out the snake.

The next morning, after spending a horrible and cold night on a park bench, the man set off again towards his home. As he got closer to the area where he had seen the snake the previous night he saw that it seemed to still be there, and in the same exact position as it had been in the night before. He kept walking closer to see if the snake could possibly be dead enabling him to go on his way to his village.

As he got even closer he saw that there was no snake! There was a coiled length of rope there in the road. He had experienced fear for nothing. He had slept on the cold park bench for nothing. His wife would be at home worried that he hadn’t arrived for nothing.

It was a rope.

What we think of as reality is merely the mind. Our thoughts are the world we live in, but they aren’t reality. They are thoughts. How many times have you spent hours or days or possibly longer worrying about something that never comes to pass? How many times have you gotten angry with someone for what you imagined they were probably thinking? We react as if we live in a world of snakes everywhere.

How different would life be if we realized there was only rope this whole time.