No, the problems do not go away, but the burden they place on your mind does.

An 'escape from reality' is not called 'entertainment' by modern day standards. We goto movies, out to clubs, out to the beach, for walks, all to 'escape reality'.

That is when loneliness is a reality, or if anger is a reality, or if unhappiness is a reality.

To be even more forceful, reality is what you 'think' it is. So when you are unhappy, you think unhappy thoughts. You then do things to change the way you are thinking. Some people drink. Some go for a walk. Some talk to others. There are a number of ways we each deal with our 'reality'.

But 'personal reality' is different from worldwide reality, or what I might term 'actuality', in order to differentiate between the two. Actuality relates to those things that are happening, that are 'real' despite what we 'think' of them.

Starvation in Africa is an Actuality. It is actually happening, right now this very moment. A tree is actuality. All things that can be touched, tasted, or handled in someone belong, in some form, to actuality. What is said to be a tree in English is another word in French, but it is still defining the same thing: Actuality.

Personal reality may not take into account those things that are happening and that exist outside of our scope of interest. That is why religion can be a break from reality in that it changes the way a person thinks. Changes how they define themselves, how they view themselves. It makes them think they are something else, whether or not what they think is 'actuality'.

For instance, the doomsday cults of note where members kill themselves with the belief that they are going to be taken up on a spaceship or will be liberated into a particular form. It is a good example of 'psychosis' since no one in their 'right' mind would believe such a thing. But that is one person on the outside looking in.

It is much the same with conventional religion. Most people don't like to have that pointed out, as it is an 'extreme' view, but it is 'actuality' regardless of what one may or may not think of it. Religious doctrine does change the way people think, and that thinking process is most often aimed at their environment, their being, and those in being around them.

I may be a little long winded here, but I hopefully you get my point. There are minor degrees of 'escape', just as their are major degrees. We all have a point at which we 'think' that what other people 'think' is 'crazy' or 'outside the realm of normality'.

For some polygamy is normal, for others it is an evil. Still for others marriage and the sex act somehow 'spoils' the spiritual development. We all believe different things, but the reasons why we believe what we believe is the point. Why. Why. Why. That is the answer.

Doesn't make sense? Think about it. Why do we do anything of the things we do? Because it is either necessary, or we believe it to be. So it is with religion.

soul