The Illusion of Requirement

5. The Illusion of Requirement

This Is The Fifth Illusion:
REQUIREMENT EXISTS

The existence of Insufficiency led rapidly and inevitably to the idea of the next Illusion.

If there were enough stuff, there would be nothing you would have to do get whatever it was that you wanted or needed. You would just reach out and it would be there. But that is not how humans decided that it is. They said, there is not enough. So now they faced the question: How does one get enough? How does one qualify?
You imagined that there must be something that you had to do in order to get the stuff of which there was not enough—something that would allow you to lay claim to it without argument. This is the only way that you could figure out how to get everything—including God—divided in your favor without killing and squabbling.

You imagined this to be the Requirement.

You told yourselves that fulfilling it—whatever it was—is “what it takes.” That idea has held firm to this very day. If anything, it has grown stronger. You believe that when you do the things you need to do, you can be the things you want to be.
If you want to be happy, if you want to be secure, if you want to be loved, then there are things you are going to have to do. You cannot be these things unless you have enough. And you cannot have enough unless you do what it takes to get enough—to qualify your enough.

This is what you believe, and because you believe it, you have elevated doing to be the highest place in your cosmology.

Even God says there is something that you have to do in order to get into heaven.
This is how you have it put together.

This is the Requirement.

Mind you, now, all of this is based on The Third Illusion—that you are separate. When there was only One of you, there was always enough, and so, there was nothing you had to do in order to be anything.

And that idea of separation was based on The Second Illusion—that Failure exists. Because God failed to get what He wanted, He separated all humans from Him.

And Failure was based on The First Illusion—that Need exists. God could not fail to get what God wanted if God wanted nothing, and God would want nothing if God needed nothing.

In truth, there is only one Illusion, and all the others are permutations of that. Everything else is an expansion of the only Illusion, with a different nuance.

Thus, the Illusion of Requirement is nothing more than a different take on the Illusion of Need. Similarly, the Illusion of Insufficiency is a different take on The Illusion Need, as is The Illusion of Failure, and so on, through all The Illusions of Humans.

You will see clearly, as you explore each illusion, that each is an outgrowth of the illusions that have gone before. It is like watching a balloon being blown up.

The announcement of your species that there is a Requirement that must be met in order to acquire anything of which there is not enough—including God’s love—has proven to be one of the most significant decisions the human race has ever made. It has resulted in entire lists and sets of rules and regulations, guidelines and procedures, laws of God and laws of man, by which you imagine you must live you life.
Here are few of the things you have decided that you must do in order to have a good life on Earth:

Be a good boy or girl.

Don’t talk back.

Get good grades and go on to college.

Graduate with a degree and find a good job.

Marry and have children.

Be good parents and give your children more than you were given.

Be cool.

Do as you are told.

Don’t do bad things—or, at least, don’t get caught.

Follow the leader.

Don’t ask too many questions, and don’t ask any of the wrong ones.

Keep everybody happy.

Do not include your self in the group of people you are trying to keep happy if it may mean excluding someone else from the group.

Don’t impose on anybody, especially when you get old.

And here are few of the things you have decided that you must do in order to please God and get into heaven:

Don’t do anything bad—and forget about not getting caught, because you will.

If you do do something bad, for God’s sake, beg forgiveness and promise never, ever to do it again.

Be a good boy or girl.

Do not play with yourself.

Do not play with anyone else, either. Not that way…

In fact, do not play much at all. Try to understand that all pleasures of the body are, at best, distractions from what you really came to earth to do, and, at worst, absolute sins against God.

If you must have pleasures, do not enjoy them.

Do not enjoy money.

Do not enjoy attention.

Do not enjoy sex.

Above all, do not enjoy sex.

Never, ever have a sexual relationship outside of marriage and never, ever love more than one person in “that way.”

If you must have sex for any reason other than procreation, be embarrassed, do not freely or uninhibitedly enjoy it.

Do not take money for something truly enjoyable, and if you make a great deal of money, make sure you give most of it away.

Believe in the right God.

For heaven’s sake, believe in the right God.

Beg forgiveness and mercy form God for having been born imperfect, and ask Him for help in meeting the conditions for you to be loved again.


Humans have many other beliefs. These were listed here to give you just a few examples. This is what you have to do. This is the Requirement, and you would do well to understand it.

Who set this Requirement? Who put it into place?

You say that I did.

You claim that the author was God. And since there is not enough God to go around, you have to lay claim to Me in order to justify setting yourself up as the winners in your competitions.

You claim, then, that yours is the One Nation Under God, or that you are the Chosen People, or that yours is the One True Faith.

You lay claim to Me and you do so viciously, ferociously, for you feel that if you can lay claim to Me, you can then lay claim to anything else you desire, in My name.
This you have done for centuries, waving high your holy books, your crossers, and your flags to justify taking what there is not enough of by whatever means is necessary—including killing. You have even gone so far as to call such an event a holy war, seeking to close wounds in your soul while you open wounds in the bodies of others.

You have performed the most ungodly acts in the name of God, and all because you think that I have a Requirement that you must fulfill in order to receive Me, My love, and all the stuff of Life.

As long as you believe there is something that you have to do, you will struggle to find out what it is, and struggle further to achieve it.

Achievement will become your god. Indeed, it already has. Yet, if doing the right things brings you happiness and allows you to go home to God, why has all the striving to do those things felt so unhappy, and seemed so surely to be leading you away from God?

And, perhaps even more important, how will it be determined whether or not all of this was worth it? By what measure, what system, will it be decided if the Requirement has been met?

This is something you did not know. This was the question that humans began to ask.
Clearly, there was a flaw in the Fifth Illusion. This should have revealed the idea of Requirement as false, but humans knew at some very deep level that they could not give up the Illusion, or something very vital would come to an end.

Again, they were right. But again, they made a mistake. Instead of seeing the Illusion as an illusion, and using it for the purpose for which it was intended, they thought they had to fix the flaw.

It was to fix the flaw in The Fifth Illusion that The Sixth Illusion was created.