It’s All Maya—Illusion
What we see and believe as real
It’s all maya, illusion.
My little kitten is filled with fur,
and yet she roams about the home perfectly fine in 72°F weather.
How?
Would I be comfortable wearing a cold-weather jacket
every day inside my own home?
She doesn’t take a bath every day,
but she cleans herself all the time.
And so she doesn’t really smell so bad—
unless you kiss that fur sometimes.
How?
I was listening to Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor.
A neuroscientist who had encountered a stroke
that had taken away
her connection to her left brain circuitry
many years ago.
She was talking about it as her stroke of insight.
She said that once she lost her connection to her left brain,
she felt as if she had expanded to become as big as the universe.
She wondered how she’d be able to come back into her small body
once the connection returned.
We think of everything in terms of ourselves,
in terms of this world—
what we see and what we believe is real,
factual.
But it’s all just a picture,
even if it is made realistic
for us to believe in and live within.
The minute the circuitry inside our brain is lost,
we simply forget ourselves as individuals
and become what we really are—
one with the world.
And yet it is this simple circuitry,
this bundle of nerves
that connects our brain cells together,
that makes us feel big and powerful,
proud and arrogant of ourselves,
of what we have achieved in life,
of what we have become.
A name.
A degree attached to it.
A position at work we got lucky enough to fall into.
Even our individual talents,
skills, and possessions—
perhaps inherited.
Everything we call ourselves,
everything we think we are—
is it really who we are?
If the fur were not on her,
making her look as pretty as she does,
would we still bother to love her,
to have her inside our homes as we do,
and pour all our love and affection on her?
I was talking about my little kitten.
Think about this.
Peace ✌🏽
The piece feels like someone gently holding a small, ordinary moment a kitten padding through a warm house and letting it open into a much larger question about what we call “real.” The kitten’s effortless comfort becomes a mirror for how much of our own experience is built from assumptions we never examine. The shift to Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor’s story widens everything: the moment her left‑brain circuitry went silent, the boundaries of “I” dissolved, revealing a vastness we rarely dare to imagine. The essay suggests that our identity our pride, our titles, our sense of importance is held together by something as fragile as a few neural connections. Even our love, like loving a kitten because she is soft and pretty, is shaped by perception rather than essence. Beneath the gentle tone lies a disarming question: if the picture changes, who are we really. The text invites humility, tenderness, and a kind of quiet awe at how easily the self can expand or vanish. It leaves us standing in that space between illusion and truth, holding a kitten and wondering what, exactly, we are holding.
“It’s all maya, illusion.”
Starting with a kitten and ending with the universe is such a sneak attack. Soft, curious, and quietly dismantling the whole idea of who we think we are.
Gentle but unsettling in that good way that makes you stare at the room a little longer.