Driving through the desert a man sees a mirror like reflection and says "I see water, oh great, I'm so thirsty I can't wait, after I quench my thirst maybe I'll take a nice refreshing swim. Let's see did I bring a towel and some sunscreen? Maybe I'll call up my friends and see if they can meet me. Hey! Maybe I could build my own place by the lake, wow"! So he calls up his wife and says, "Honey I found us a place! There's this beautiful lake out here, we could build a house right on the lakefront." His wife replies, "you know I don't like water, what if there was an accident and something happened to one of the kids? I don't like your lakefront idea, I want a place in the mountains with all that space and fresh mountain air." The man says "let me call you back dear, I've got another call, it's some jerk trying to tell me there really is no lake."
This story is meant to illustrate how we give birth to duality by not recognizing things as the are. The lake is a mirage, in the moment when this "water" is conceived as a real object existing out there, another mirage is created; the subjective "I" who is seeing it. So you have a dichotomy, a dualism with a subjective side and an objective side. The "I" is really just a point of view in awareness and the "water" is just an image in awareness, but the connection with awareness itself in it's natural state begins to be lost in the moment of becoming involved in the points of view.
Illusion always has these sides to it. Sometimes the object side is easier to see than the subject side, because we're more used to seeing external images. Natural awareness can see the reference points arising within itself and just allows them to appear and disappear.
Like the man in this illustration, we have gotten involved in a whole world of conceptualization. The deeper we become entangled, the more we experience separation from our source.
