Thoughts and feelings and the will that ties them together are as much a part of the appearing world as trees and skies and cities. They are as or more opaque to awareness because it gets entangled in them like seaweed or sticky webs. You imagine that they belong to you, that they are you, that you are made of the same stuff. The notion of maya attempts to express this, but fails to capture the supreme innocence of what is at work here.