Category Archives: Busting Loose

Busting Loose

Bust Loose with The Power of Now

2 Comments
Time is an illusion.
Time is an illusion.

One of the main differences between Phase 1 and Phase 2 is that in Phase 1 it doesn’t matter what you learn or how much you “try” to “achieve” higher consciousness. By it’s very nature, every solution in Phase 1 must fail, because we haven’t recognized the illusory nature of our reality yet. And, taken from a Phase 1 perspective – that everything that is happening is real and apart from you – using “The Power of Now” will ultimately not give you the results you want. However, in Phase 2, it gives a powerful example of how to use the process effectively.

Eckhart Tolle’s “The Power of Now” concisely points out the fact that we only ever live in the present. It’s overriding thesis is that our true power is in our present experience – and by focusing our power into the past by dwelling or into the future by speculating ultimately diminishes our effectiveness.

There are some amazing exercises similar to Buddhist meditation wherein you simply feel experience moving through you. To demonstrate how to know you’re in the now, he says just think to yourself:

“What am I thinking now?”

We don’t talk about it much in “real life” where we are often dominated by calendars, time, events, troubling pasts, regrets, and so forth. Yet the the fact remains true that the only real thing is right now. If I am preoccupied with the past, it is my choice to bring feelings and thoughts of the past into the present. If I am concerned or excited about the future, those feelings can still only exist in the present.

Is the Power Really in the Now?

So essentially the past and the future are an illusion. No matter how real they are to you, they are no more real than a highly impressionable book or movie. Furthermore, your memory is not so different than your imagination as it’s widely understood that your memory tends to be selective and can be changed through methods such as suggestion.

I once had a past-life regression and the whole time while under hypnosis I wondered if I was just making the whole thing up. Then I wondered what would be the difference? As Einstein said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”

So if we can assume that the past and future are merely constructs of our mind – ideas that make our living in reality much smoother – is it that hard to extend this idea to now? What if now is just as imaginary as then, or when? What if, by focusing all our power into now, with slogans such as “live in the moment”, we are fiercely reinforcing the idea that now exists? This can’t help but strengthen the illusion – that everything is real and separate. “Now” is a wonderful aspect of the Phase 1 game.

Reclaiming the Power of Now

Robert Scheinfeld also believes that many of the Phase 1 “tricks” include pieces of the truth. So it goes with “The Power of Now” It is true that our power to progress in Phase 2 exists now, but it’s not our ill-focused mind on the past or the future that disempowers us – it’s the logical progression of Phase 1.

Here’s what’s really happening – this entire world is your consciousness. Before playing the game, you decided to have a focal point of your consciousness as a persona. This you commonly refer to as yourself. I’m Chris the limited human being, for example. Along with your limited playground universe that is an extension of your consciousness (even this writing is your consciousness) is your persona’s experience of the passage of time. Thus the key here is the only “time” to experience your infinite nature is “now”

What I’m trying to say is that the belief that “someday” you’ll “achieve” enlightenment or whatever the Power of Now seeks to give with enough “effort” or “knowledge”  is an illusion. And thus what the Power of Now claims – life is freeing when lived in the present unburdened by the past and future is correct. Through this lens, does it make sense to worry about the future?

If you’re having trouble, think of time not so much as passing in a linear fashion. Think of it as an unfolding. Did you know that our tectonic plates are actually like large conveyor belts? That means that every second another piece of new Earth (Eckhart Tolle pun) rises from its center. No piece of Earth is ever in the same place. It’s all subtly moving.

Your consciousness too slowly unfolds as you realize more and more. Time seems to pass because no matter how limited you are – you’re still infinite underneath and new experience will continue to be manifested in consciousness. Nothing is ever the same. Now is simply the leading edge of your consciousness.

Your Opportunity

The opportunity  you – the persona – have is to embrace the call to connect with your infinite nature. By doing this you are telling your consciousness to expand more. And as the unfolding continues while playing the human game, your infinite nature will become more and more fully realized. You will have revelations. You may find your relationships with yourself and others changing. You may become clear.

And eventually, you will begin to know at a very deep level – not just accept – the experience of now as perfect no matter how imperfect it may seem to your persona. Good or bad, angry, sad, ecstatic, bored, hurt, hopeful, distraught – all just unfoldings of your consciousness – only the finest pure experience for the life connousieur that you are. You will understand that “now” – how you feel, what you think, even what you do – has no bearing on the past or the future. And time is just a story your expanded self chooses to live in the unfolding.

Imagine a piece of paper. Crumple that paper up. Though it may seem to be smaller and insignificant now that it is crumpled, if you unfold it, it becomes just the same as it ever was though it seemed when crumpled to be different.

The paper is the Human Game. In Phase 1 your life can easily seem like a crumpled piece of paper. It’s got obvious limitations. It doesn’t seem to change. But the process of awakening and shifting into Phase 2 is the process of unfolding that paper. Once you bust loose, the paper can be made through origami into a crane, a heart, a plane, or a treasure box.

Feeling the Game in “The Human Game”

What I invite you to do is to feel the present through the lens of your expanded self. Just imagine if you were a creator that lived in constant bliss (what Scheinfeld calls joyfulness) and you decided to live in this limited reality. Can you see that you feel two levels of consciousness here? On one level there is your current emotion – guilt for example. One another level there is an absolute non-judgmental feeling of incredible joy that you are feeling just for the fun of playing the game.

Have you ever played a video game where your character is in extreme circumstances? Most games have these kinds of situations. If you were really fighting hundreds of enemies you’d probably be feeling intense forms of fear, rage, shock, pain, and who knows what else. But instead you who is playing the game, are having fun because you just got the game, it’s got the newest best graphics, and it’s not real.

If you die, it’s no big deal. But maybe you’re at the end of the level and you just have to defeat the boss. You’ve played this level many times before and now it’s personal. You experience many similar emotions of distress to your in game avatar. “I almost beat him!” you think. Maybe you throw the controller across the room. This is what happens when we forget we’re playing the game. We take it personally. But that’s the point.

If anything should charge you with purpose it’s this: you came here to experience right now. All the “failings”, “mistakes”, “should-haves”, and “could haves.” Now is not always “happy” and it’s not supposed to be. Just like you’re not supposed to eat your favorite food all the time. The emotions and experiences that many believe you should avoid – as though focusing on the “now” was an instant morphine drip – are exactly what you came to experience. And experiencing limitation (or Phase 1) is part of the unfolding.

In the beginning you can only experience now on one level – the face value of the illusion. The limited world. All of your thoughts, emotions and, actions. All of your attempts to “fix” the illusion. All the conviction you can muster to believe this is all there is. But now you know there’s more than that.

Now you can begin to experience the second level of now. The level of the player, playing you. That is the real and eternal present. That is the “real” now. You’re not a puppet. The player is you as well. Every spiritual experience you’ve had up until this point has been placed there by your expanded self to support you in moving into Phase 2 – to bust loose. And for the sheer joy of experiencing it.

Ever given up something you love? I love Cinnabons and I intentionally don’t eat them often. I do this so every time I will rejoice and remember how delicious they are. In Phase 1, your expanded self does the same with the feeling of bliss or spiritual connection in order to deepen your palette of experience in the illusion.

But now you have the opportunity to move into Phase 2. To see “The Matrix” for the code. To see the illusion for the unimaginable power that created it. This power is you and always has been. If you have made the decision, I urge you to reclaim your power from now. To see it as your expanded self sees it. And as you say “Marco” your expanded self says “Polo.” Only now, you can begin to open your eyes.


Busting Loose, Happiness, Spirituality

What’s Missing? Playing the Happiness Game

Leave a comment

I was journaling today starting with the question, “If I know the truth, then why doesn’t the illusion collapse immediately?” Robert Scheinfeld’s answer to this is simple – it’s not part of the Human Game to win it easily. The fun is in playing a game with challenges and discoveries. Fair enough, but I’m now in the part of the game where I must discover what has held me back – what pieces have been missing.

And after writing about what was missing, the now obvious realization came swiftly after. Ironically, the idea that something is missing, that there is something more to know, something more to be and I have only to find that thing – is one of the greatest Phase 1 illusions there is and one one of my largest eggs to process.

Step By Step

I began with the question “Why must I play Phase 1 games when I already know the mindset of Phase 2?”

After a bit of clarifying, I boiled my question down to “what’s missing?”

I had the direct experience of “A Ha, the thing I’m trying to do is the very thing that’s giving me the opportunity to progress in Phase 2.”

I felt deeply the emotion of missing something, like a part of my body or soul had vanished, and I could never have it back. I sat with this feeling for a couple of minutes, really exploring the terrible existential crisis that I’ve felt a lot throughout my life.

Then I told the truth about it. That it wasn’t real. I didn’t try to change my feeling, merely add a layer of understanding to it. This lessened the intensity a bit, but in no way suppressed it.

I began reclaiming my power. Right now it seems the major shift happens when I tell the truth and open to my infinite nature, not reclaim my power. Nevertheless I felt the judgment draining out of “this feeling is bad.” And as I did, I felt more joyful emotion beginning to come in, and I saw the emotion – this great emptiness – for the pure experience it was.

I opened up to my infinite nature, and while many times this step causes me to expand my brain beyond my personal experience to encompass oceans of cosmic light, this time the focus extended inwards and backwards along my personal timeline. Appreciation of this Phase 1 illusion came along with the expansive perspective.

The immediate understanding that came to me was that this feeling of emptiness, of a missing piece, what Lynn Grabhorn calls, “separation” is the prime driving force of my life, and what I now believe to be the engine of the Phase 1 game. It’s a negative driving force, in that many of my actions have been taken to get away from this feeling.

The Origin of a Feeling

Can you think back to a time before a feeling existed? For instance, back to before you had crushes on the opposite gender? Isn’t it weird to think that something you may be obsessed with now used to never matter? I did this to investigate the beginnings of this gaping hole in my soul.

Beginning in the present, I feel that my direct understanding of the truth and Phase 2 is missing. In one way or another, this search for the “answer” has permeated my life for the last couple of years.

Before that it was the sensation that my connection to abundance was missing – whether it be knowledge of how to make money, ability to acquire money, or straight up luck to find money.

Another huge one before that was in the dating world. I felt that a true part of myself was missing without another person. I still feel this way and must work with the process on this feeling.

It wasn’t until I got back to about third grade that the feeling ceased to be in my experience. When I was a child any negativity was temporary, and everything in life seemed to be in a state of flow. There wasn’t this feeling of hollowness.

Without going into the day-by-day of my childhood one experience after another (created by my expanded self) slowly created the illusion of this incredible lack inside me and also manifested that outside of me in ways like jealousy, inferiority, disillusionment, and poverty. At every point in the timeline it seemed like a cruel force. I was diagnosed with depression. I wondered why others didn’t understand this all encompassing feeling. I watched my friends settle for less when I would settle for nothing but the unequivocal achievement of my dreams – dreams that still have gone unrealized. But today looking back I understand the reason of the pattern. And I’m just now seeing the wide ranging implications of this feeling.

Examples

Money

“I don’t have enough money for the things I want” Boils down to: Something’s missing. In this case resources.

“I don’t have what it takes to earn enough money.” Boils down to: Something’s missing. In this case the knowledge to “earn” money.

Relationships

“I need a relationship to feel complete.” What’s missing? A relationship.

“I need to be more attractive/outgoing/skilled or have more money/status/fame or have better friends/opportunities/job/hobbies in order to have the relationship I want.” Something’s missing. This person feels they aren’t complete enough to “get” a relationship.

“He/she is better than me. I’ll never be as rich/beautiful/successful/charismatic/smart as them.” Translation: Something’s wrong with me. I.E. Something is missing. In this example, it’s an inherent or learned characteristic.

Body

“I really should exercise more. I’d probably feel better and feel better about myself.” Boils down to: I’m not good enough as I am – something’s missing. Is it discipline? Motivation? Respect?

Creativity

“I wish I could draw.” Translation: there is something other people have that I don’t have that allows them to draw and I can’t. A.K.A. Something is missing.

“I can’t figure out how to end this story/get past my creative block/design this house/get this chicken recipe right.” Is something missing? Yes.

“If only I could make money doing what I love.” Something’s missing. It could be many things – drive, enterprenurial skills, a valuable product, etc etc.

Lifestyle

“Maybe I should move to a different town. I could start all over there.” Something is missing.

Spirituality

“If we’re supposed to be infinite, then why don’t I feel infinite? Why do the things I truly desire keep eluding me?” Conclusion: something is missing. Otherwise by spritual law I’d have the life that I want.

“Why don’t I feel fulfilled?” Something major is missing here.

The Happiness Game

That’s probably enough examples. What I’d like to point out is that the missing piece to every one of these confounding problems is an illusion.

Ergo, the process by which we seek to “obtain” these “missing pieces” is also an illusion.

And that means also that the very notion of not being complete just as you are, just as this moment is, is too an illusion. Sit with that a moment. Ok, even if you just had a profound paradigm shift, money is most likely not raining from the sky just yet. Of course not. If you identify with any of these examples or extrapolated some of your own, then you know that this is a huge huge huge egg. What is an egg? Belief + Power + Judgement + Consequences. Think of the consequences of any of these beliefs. For me I’ve always been searching for the “one” and I’ve moved over twenty times just to avoid that feeling of lack, as well as taking drugs, watching TV,  and graduating college as quickly as possible in order to feel “special.” I’m fully convinced that most of my greatest life decisions – where to go to school, who to date, what area to study, what jobs to take – were predicated on avoiding the feeling of cosmic emptiness.

So the power can be reclaimed not just from the feeling itself,(though I invite you to really dive into it once you have a handle on the process) but every choice you’ve made that was informed by the feeling. Every “consequence” And every time you judged each consequence as “good” or “bad” This is a motherload of an egg stash.

What I invite you to contemplate along with this information is that this was an incredible Phase 1 trick, similar to the Money Game. But this is a bigger game in scope than that. It’s the Happiness Game. The Happiness game holds all the power of your hopes, dreams, fears, and nightmares. In your own time, explore each one and realize its truth. They are all illusions, and you came here to experience them first as real, then as the truth.

This feeling, the “splinter in your mind” as Morpheus says in The Matrix, began in perfect time with your process of moving deeply into Phase 1 so that you could begin to move into Phase 2. The sensation that there is something more to life than what you see is the beginning of your journey home. It’s the call to action in your hero’s journey. And this is not to belittle the depths of sadness you may have felt that may have led you to look for “the answer”. But whatever path led you here was perfect for you, and if you’ve had an inkling or an ocean of this feeling – count yourself lucky. There is vast power there.

Busting Loose

Phase 2, Day 12

1 Comment

I said before that my intention was to record my dealings with the process. It’s been almost a full week since my last update, but I haven’t felt like posting about it.

Until now.

Here’s the quick recap: a week went by, no work, some family drama, I spent most days feeling from lousy to downright hopelessly depressed. The process became harder to apply in these times, but I still did it. It gave me about twenty seconds of relief at most. Kinda like a whip it. For a second I could touch the infinite, then it would recede into the background. When good things did happen, they didn’t change my mood. I was definitely in a slump.

A Patch of Sunlight

Robert Scheinfeld compares the process to poking holes in solid cloud cover that covers your entire reality, blocking out the sun (your Expanded or Higher self) creating a gray dismal world below (our limited reality.) By using the process you poke holes to allow some of that light to shine through.

A major hole got poked for me. It was a series of fortunate events (and brilliant minds)

Results in the Hologram

I finally got paid for the work I’d been doing, and was able to pay off all my debt. With the resulting money, I decided to simply buy things and trust that I had enough. I figure building trust in myself is more important than a $27 check bounce fee.

I’ve been working out consistently for about two months now and I’m starting to see results. I’m the most muscular I’ve been in my life which isn’t saying much since I’ve almost always been skinny as a rail.

But here’s the kicker.

The Breath of God

And no, you don’t have to duck a sawblade to make it past. And yeah, Indiana Jones wish he had this holy grail. I wrote the article Breath is Your Guide which is actually a composite of the philosophies of Robert Scheinfeld and Alan Watts and it rang completely true. You don’t have to believe me, but know that somewhere after writing this, feeling its’ message resonate, playing the fantastically immersive video game Mirror’s Edge and reading Steve Pavlina’s superb self development articles – I cultivated a burning desire. Not since before my falling out with the Law of Attraction did I have such a burning desire.

Having my life long dream of making a feature film almost succeed and then crash and burn was more pain than I could bear. Now I desire to make movies once again, as if it’s new again, as if the pain has left me. Replaced with resolve.

After the burning desire, came the resolve, then the conviction of what I must do, and when I must do it, then the illusions of what I thought I wanted fell away, then the path seemed obvious. Then I began to walk it. This all happened in perhaps the span of three or four hours. Writing this blog in this moment in time is part of that purpose.

I felt my expanded self saying “Wake up. the wind is at your back. Fulfill your purpose. Create your dreams. For you are not just you, but you are your dreams waiting for you to live them, you are your purpose holding you steady on your course, and you are the wind that makes your steps lighter, your heart stronger.” It was like I’d been in a coma and now I was spiritually breathing again.

Now mind you, not much has changed in the external world – the hologram. I’m still damn poor, living in my parents’ basement, with no way to make movies easily, in a town where I don’t know anybody. And my mouth is sore because I just got my first wisdom tooth out.

But I’ve seen the light. It’s cold and rainy down here in limited reality (and in New Jersey) but I’ve seen a glimmer of what is to come. And believe me when I say that everything became completely clear. Does the process work? Hell yes.

Busting Loose

Breath is Your Guide

3 Comments

So you’re angry, you were late, you spilled some coffee on yourself – now you have a meeting with your boss and you’re practically hyperventilating. Your colleague tells you it’s going to be ok, just breathe. Hardly good advice, right? Wrong, but not because it improves circulation.

Help Me Obi-Wan

We’ll get to the practical application of breathing, but first some foundational understanding. Ever heard of a hologram? The simplest definition of a hologram is something where the whole is contained in any single part. Before studying metaphysics, my only contact with a hologram was of Princess Leia from R2D2 in “Star Wars.” When I first read that we live in a holographic universe I thought to myself, “we live in a universe comprised of a poorly rendered transparent and outdated projection system?” I thought it was a little too far off out of the jurisdiction of the Law of Attraction.

The neat effect of a hologram is you see the same image no matter where you’re standing, but let us return to what it really means. Something (our universe) where the whole (the infinite universe) is contained in the part (as little as a quantum particle) Think about that for a second. Try to wrap your mind around the entire universe – you, me, the clouds, the sun, the deep reaches of space, the collective unconscious, heaven, hell, purgatory, shangri-la, all of time – contained in a single quantum particle, smaller than the smallest atom. And not just any quantum particle, every quantum particle. The ones that make up the sky, the trees, your skin, and the images on a movie screen. There is a scene in “Men in Black” at the very end where you find out the entire world of the movie is contained in a tiny marble, being played by some alien species on a foreign world. Yeah, it’s like that.

If this is indeed true, then how do we begin to comprehend what an immensely complicated reality we live in? The answer is fractals. You may or may not know that a fractal is “a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be split into parts, each of which is (at least approximately) a reduced-size copy of the whole.” (Wikipedia) They’re also very pretty.

From Micro to Macro Cosmic

Don’t remember geometry? It doesn’t matter. Consider this example: Have you ever been on a hike and while studying the ground, thought to yourself “that looks like a mini landscape down there and I’m a giant.” Conversely, have you ever had the sensation in a plane of looking down at the world, thinking, “it looks like a model earth, and I feel like I’m a giant.” While these examples may have given you a good ego boost, they uncover a piece of the truth: That life, whether you scale it up or down, is essentially the same intelligent process. And the cause of much of our confusion comes from not understanding the world this way.

Let me take you on a journey. If you’ve played the video game Spore you’ll already be familiar with this journey. We start on the quantum level where everything is pure possibility. Every particle contains within it infinite potential to be anything. There is some kind of intelligence involved in unifying and organizing these particles, which I will not speculate on here. Let’s just say it’s about as easy to comprehend as the movement of planets are to an ant.

Moving up we have cells in a body. Not just human bodies, but plants, animals, and every “living” thing in our world is comprised of cells. Haven’t you heard metaphors of the body as a city, complete with “defender” T cells and “foreign” viruses? I use quotes here to exemplify how we anthropomorphize life at any scale into a fundamentally human situation. As we’ll see, that’s not far off. Notice also that cells communicate with each other easily and efficiently.

These cells are organized in some intelligent way, to keep the body or the entity alive and healthy. They live, die, wound, and heal, without us doing anything. Moving up in scale we have the organs in our body, which also act mostly on their own, although we have some control. But again there is some intelligent life force there.

Now we have humans, animals, and plants as entirely self sufficient and “separate” beings. They are also symbiotic beings that exist in an intelligently (some would argue) organized way. They feed themselves, clothe themselves, maintain orderly societies complete with rules, and distributed tasks. They also live, die, wound, and heal. They move along veins of roads and communicate via complex interconnected electronic networks, not unlike our nerves. If you could only fly as low as earth’s stratosphere, take out of context, the pulsing interconnected systems of lights might be a similar sensation to us viewing the synaptic storms in our brains.

Moving further out, we have our planets, the solar system, and everything beyond. Though many believe that life exists only on Earth, we already know that our universe is constantly expanding. We also know that the distance between atoms is huge compared to the size of the atom – much like the distance between our planets. And do not electrons orbit other atoms in a similar way to how our Earth orbits the sun? Moving further, what evidence is there to refute that our planets and solar systems are simply atoms of something much larger?  Can a cell in a body comprehend the internet, or the stars?

This is where our brains start to hurt. But just try to imagine it. The entire known universe to us as just a little quark in a universe much larger, and possibly exactly the same as this one. If you’re having trouble, take some LSD. But then the process continues. Fractalization, by definition extends into infinity. The process goes both ways. What’s to say that there aren’t things infinitely smaller than a quantum particle? That inside a quantum particle lives a whole universe of it’s own, more expansive than our known universe and time? If this doesn’t tell you that reality as we know it is an illusion – an endless feedback loop extending into infinity – I don’t know what will.

Our thoughts work the same way. For those of you students of the Law of Attraction, you will remember the concept that whatever we focus on expands. Of course it does. Our universe is constantly expanding in all ways towards the infinite, how could our thoughts not naturally follow suit? This explains why when we’re down we remember bad things that happened to us or reframe former possibilities to limitations.

Life’s (Not So) Secret Message

Wow, that was a cool head trip, but how do I use this to make more money, improve relationships, or achieve goals? The answer is that every scale of our great fractal universe has blatant messages of how to “improve” the symbiotic system. I will address one of them here, the one I believe is the most universal.

Back to our cells. They run healthy when they receive nutrients from food, water, and most importantly, oxygen. Oxygen, if you think about it, is a constant life giving force. We breath in oxygen to nourish our cells and keep us alive. Then we expunge our Co2 back into the air to also keep us alive. There is a natural inflow and outflow. This extends to every scale. Life/death, ebb/flow, trough/crest, day/night, sound/silence, light/dark, action/reaction, space/matter, finite/infinite. Life is in a continual natural state of inflowng and outflowing. It can’t not be. If any simple fact is universal to all planes of existence, this is it. This is the secret magic life gives to us when we’re born, though we don’t even know it.

Naturally this extends to manifestation. What happens when we don’t breathe in? We die. What happens when we don’t breathe out? We die. But what happens when we want something really badly? Do we wait around for it to happen without doing anything? Is this any different than holding our breath in? Or do we do do do do do to “make” it happen? Is this any different than only breathing out? Yet we wonder why things don’t happen for us.

I read a passage once about someone who was aimless. They didn’t know what they wanted. And the answer was simple and sums it up: “Want what life wants.” We are all life, playing our part in the endless creation of the infinite reality. We all breathe in and out. Next time you want something, do this. Consider everything you do as breathing. Have you breathed out the Co2 and gone and test drove the car of your dreams? Have you breathed in and waited in total faith that an opportunity to buy that car would come? Most likely not, you were too busy breathing out, straining your manifestational ability by depriving it of vital nutrients. If you did breathe in, did you then breathe out by taking action on the opportunity? When you completed the action, did you breathe in and appreciate it?

This can be applied to anything. Breathe in and out your creative process, your workout, your money. Do you hoard money? It’s time to breathe out. Do you do too much for others? It’s time to breathe in. Do you watch too much TV and wish you would write? It’s time to breathe out. Do you force yourself to stick to a schedule? It’s time to breathe in.

I’ve saved the most special nugget of wisdom for last. You know those desires you’re just aching to have manifest? Are you breathing in or out? Because every one of us is destined for the dreams we have. This is what life wants. This is what it’s all about. As much as you hold it in, sooner or later something will force you to breathe out, or you’ll die. Maybe you won’t actually die, but you’ll live a half life. You will be a shadow where there was light. But just as we’re surrounded by oxygen that is ever life giving, so is the same for the energy that charges up and magnetizes manifestations. Some call it love. Other’s call it god. I call it your birthright.

Busting Loose

Phase 2, Day 5

Leave a comment

Finally! Some success! I say this as though I’ve endured long years of backbreaking labor to get here. When in reality it’s been only 2.5 months since I moved to New Jersey and only 6 short days since I began using “the process” And this is also considering that the ultimate result of the process is to not depend on the hologram for happiness, and to in fact bust loose from it.

Today the results came in three incredibly noticeable ways.

Morning Pages

The morning pages are amazing. They are the uncensored self bursting through and creating. I actually can’t wait to do them tomorrow. I’d say the allure of them is it’s completely free. For instance, in this blog, though I do talk about a wide range of topics many of which are personal, I still have to censor and edit what I say. I have to put my complete thoughts into coherent sentences, consider things like flow and word count, and make sure I cover my topic as objectively and lucidly as I can. In free writing I can switch topics, write just for the sound of the words, expunge my deepest emotional pains, and be more honest and clear with myself. Clarity is produced by the morning pages. I can’t recommend them enough to anyone walking an artistic or spiritual path. And doing this gave me inspiration to write about other things.

In addition to the morning pages, I’ve decided to go on a reading diet, as I tend to numb, distract, and ultimately sabotage myself by reading. I’m planning to do this for at least a week. Right now, I’ve found clever ways to rationalize checking my email and facebook just as often. I figure baby steps are in order, as I’ve already freed up a lot of time by not reading movie blogs.

Bills

Bills have always been a pain for me. I usually am in some sort of denial with causes me to pay them late, because I really don’t want to pay them at all. Well in the process of internalizing money as the breath of life (spend and it will come back to you just as naturally) I was actually looking forward to bill paying this time. I wanted to see if it was possible to reframe something as negative as bill paying.

Well the act of paying the bill didn’t feel nearly as negative, but all the busywork involved (finding the number, calling, figuring out which extension, waiting on hold, etc) felt just as negative as it usually does. But I felt much more secure this time in “spending” money to pay bills and being able to believe for fleeting seconds that I was simply sending money into the ether where it would naturally come back.

Negative thoughts also accompanied my analysis of how much money I would have left over. I’m starting to believe that focus is the action that solidifies reality in the quantum sense. If our observation remains fuzzy, then it’s possible for things to magically appear, but if it remains fixed on a certain object, then that object stays locked in a quantum stasis. Maybe this is why truly a watched pot never boils.

Fear ultimately won over faith here and I carefully calculated (focused on solid reality) the numbers such that I wouldn’t pay more than I had in my bank account. I will try to look at things more “fuzzily” in the future.

There is however, no sense of lingering dread associated with bill paying at the moment like there was before. And any time I recognized negativity I applied the process. And the process so far has given me the ability to at least detach my current emotion from its’ trigger and let me feel a temporary (like 5 seconds) sense of unconditional love towards the hologram.

Expanding Social Life

The lack of this has been a major factor in the mounting resistance I’ve felt in the past couple of months. I’ve mostly been hanging out with my parents, which is cool, but it’s like going to school to be a filmmaker and learning only about the boom mic. There are so many more people out there to meet.

Tonight I went to a comedy club which turned out to be free, a great show, and a great place to meet people or take people you’ve already met. The icing on the cake (and what restored my faith in this experiment) was that I met a girl who happened to have just moved here two weeks ago from a place I had been before (Madison, WI ) and who happened to live four blocks from me. I was in New York, an area along with New Jersey comprised of some fifteen to twenty million people. And on my first night out in the city, I met a girl with similar spiritual views who not only lives in my city in Jersey, but only four short blocks away!

Synchronicity anyone? Yeah. I think this is working.

Busting Loose

Phase 2, Day 5

Leave a comment

I feel as though I’ve hit a brick wall of resistance.

The process is seeming more and more silly and as time goes on it feels less and less effective and I’m not seeing many real world results that I wouldn’t normally see.

However, deconstructing this sentence leads to many valuable insights. “More and more silly” means that resistance towards the legitimacy of this process is building. In my experience, resistance is created with progress, not the cause of it stopping. In fact, resistance is necessary to progress, as yin is to yang. As gravity is to flying.

“Less and less effective” means I’m trying to quantify this process with my rational mind. Certainly that is the point of this blog, but the process of opening to a spiritual path is understood to be non-linear and non-rational. So this argument doesn’t hold water either as the very act of creatively observing something limits the possibility of the results of that creation to the reality created in that moment by the observer. More to the point, the act of attempting to measure progress with a scientific system towards a non-scientific goal is a fundamentally futile act. With quantum physics at work, I’m fairly convinced that keys can actually disappear and reappear which is why I lose them, and success can appear out of the blue and completely transform my life.

The counter-argument here is that I’m assuming to atleast experience more internal congruence and peace until I see results in the hologram, and that these internal states are indicators of the process “working.” “I’m not seeing many real world results that I wouldn’t normally see” is a statement that implies that there is a difference between “normal” results and the results that I’m experiencing on this spiritual path. These things I can’t know, as I so far have not been able to exist in two simultaneous realities to compare and contrast. The question, “what would I be experiencing now if I didn’t embark on this spiritual path five days ago” is like asking “when is the universe?” That is, it doesn’t make any sense at all. There is only now.

This doesn’t conflict with the intention of this series of blog posts – but it does conflict with my expectations. My intention is merely to chronicle my emotional states, any weird synchronicities, and my application of “the process” over as long a period of time as I continue to use it. My expectation, however, is that something extraordinary would be happening, not intense confusion. But perhaps this is me not noticing the emotional states of confusion and uncertainty for their miraculous nature. What I do know is that something inside me tells me to keep going, so I will.

Science as Faith

Another thought comes to mind – the idea of scientifically documenting a spritual path. In essence, I am attempting to use science to hedge my bets, or more to the point, replace faith as a means of comfort. I think to myself, “as long as the data is pointing in my favor, I can relax” long before I think, “I am the creator and as the creator, I can effortlessly achieve my dreams.” As I’ve said, I am a results driven person – still in many ways steeped in the Phase 1 idea of responding to the hologram as the all encompassing reality. Seems like if I truly believed in Phase 2, I wouldn’t have the slightest shake in my faith that I had immense power to live in immense joy.

It would be like living on a tropical island with a soulmate lover, supportive and laughter-inducing friends, and zest for life that was insatiable, all while a black and white TV in the corner (the hologram) played continual reruns of tragic news stories.  Eventually, my focus would be on the absolute joyful nature of my existence that the black and white TV would be taken to the good will and I’d win a brilliant wall sized LCD display of beautiful places, inspiring speeches, passionate art, and a deep exploration of the world. But how do I shift my mind from its continual investment in the TV and the driving need to know the outcome of each tragic story? How do I see the wonder of the tropical island where I already am? Some say meditation but right now that brings up only resistance.

The Artists’ Way

An incredible book by Julia Cameron which recommends, among othter things, going on a reading diet. This is a radical idea for a voracious reader and knowledge sponge like myself. It actually seems brilliant. To stretch the above metaphor, my obsessive need to read and be in the know quite possibly is my obsession to watch the Black and White TV and turn up the volume to drown out the lulling sounds of the ocean.

By contrast, doing the opposite would be like turning down the volume on the TV set to hear the birds, the sigh of my lover as she sleeps, and the rustle of her skin against the bed sheets. Hearing the subtle drops of rain on the window pane. Sure I might watch the TV without volume, but eventually I’ll grow bored and start watching nature outside. Maybe seeing that glorious world will compel me to act?

Well I’m going to try it. No reading for atleast 1 day. If nothing else it will give me plenty of fodder for the process.

Busting Loose

Phase 2, Day 2

Leave a comment

Today was a rather emotionally turbulent day.

Morning

In spite of using the process when I was waking up and using it multiple times once I had awoken, I couldn’t shake this emotional weight that I felt. I didn’t want to get out of bed, and finally I had to because I had places to be.

Driving in New Jersey traffic in the rain and a couple of low blows (GPS suddenly not working for all of Verizon) brought me to all new levels of anger and rage, causing me to shout the words of the process like I was damning the gods I felt were punishing me. Living and believing that I am the sole creator of this hologram allowed me to really let loose with my anger. But I felt only fleeting moments of levity.

However, I did appreciate the value of my money and I felt much less worried about spending it than I usually do – knowing that I was simply expressing appreciation towards my creation and would come back.

Afternoon

Despite my feeling of being rushed, everything worked out in a way that I couldn’t have planned. I even called a coworker at exactly the “right time” to get a tie that otherwise I would not have been able to get.

I felt very positive once I had gotten to work – and all was forgotten. Then the evening dragged on but I greatly appreciated getting paid and tipped on top of it. I was also greatly appreciated for my contribution to the team and my abilities, something I cherished and really drove me to do as best I could.

Night

I had sort of forgotten about the process by now, being mired in the amount of activity at work, new things to learn, rules to follow. And now I was in a bizarre situation with a couple coworkers and a bar after work. Usually I don’t like to go to bars since it often makes me very depressed. But I only felt it at the time for fleeting moments, much like I did the levity earlier. I had definitely forgotten the process once I had drank and really zoned into the words my coworker’s were saying, the pieces of themselves they were revealing.

I also felt very unworried about money for paying the bill. I only had a little hesitation in choosing a drink based on price. Actually, I think this is one of the easier aspects so far of Phase 2 for me to latch onto. It’s hard for me to feel infinite when I’m so incredibly limited and feel so unfulfilled, but it’s easy for me to pay for something that I have the money for and not feel like the money is going away. Certainly it’s a shift in how I think, but the shift has been rather effortless. It also helps that I’ve been making a lot more money as of late.

After Midnight

This was the oddest phenomenon and what was most odd about it was how close I felt to an infinite being. I had just had a positive and connective experience with a spritual young woman who drove me home. I was in a very open mood and, as I stood in front of the church rectory where I lived, I simply did not want to go inside.

There was a very soft rain coupled with a warming wind (for a cold autumn night) The rain felt like mother nature was massaging my skin (and I definitely wasn’t that drunk) but I had a perfect buzz. Just a generally all over feeling of well being. It felt like a blissful, leaf covered midnight wonderland. Crunchy and wet. In that moment I wanted to be there forever. And of course the process came back to me. And I used it, which amplified the feeling. Is this what connecting to source feels like?

In the beginning of the day it seemed like everything was wrong, that I was completely delusional for believing I was any closer to “the secret”. By the end of the night my faith was renewed.

I’m starting to believe this oscillation between intense emotions is going to continue. Maybe it will become even more extreme as negativity bursts open the door for positivity to flow in. Like the intense satisfaction women are supposed to feel after an unimaginably painful childbirth. Or maybe not…

Busting Loose

Phase 2, Day 1

1 Comment

So after (not) much deliberating I’ve decided to take the plunge. To put my money where my mouth is, or rather my behavior where my mind is. I’m moving into Phase 2 so I can give the world’s first step by step account of the path to enlightenment. After much searching on the sidelines of the truth, getting glimpses of it behind all the obstructions of my beliefs, I have finally made it to the launch pad. The world will never be the same. Or it will and I will have conducted a fantastic experiment.

Skeptical?

My aim is not to persuade those who don’t agree, but rather to provide a step by step account of what happens to believe this journey is possible, inevitable, and above all, the truth. Think of it like a journal about sleep deprivation or a radical diet. But it’s a limitation deprivation and a life diet.

A Confession

This isn’t technically day 1. I was introduced to these concepts just last week by my good friend and after it ignited my interest, I found all the free stuff regarding “Busting Loose from the Money Game” that I could get a hold of. Even so it was difficult to get a complete picture of Richard Scheinfeld’s vision without having read the book. I finally got a copy of the book last night and began reading. I voraciously finished it this morning (yeah I slept in there) and decided once and for all to go on what he calls the great treasure hunt of Phase 2.

My Path is Unique

Since the basis of this journey is that I am the sole creator of my holographic universe - see my article on “Unplugging from the Matrix” , it may seem weird that I’m deciding to share this information with a “fake” universe and that it would be a huge waste of time. Well, firstly, see my article on “Quantum Physics and Your Friends” to see that this presupposition is and isn’t the case. And secondly, one of the missions of Phase 2 is to do what you feel compelled to do, and I feel compelled to write. So even if you are all imaginary, this is still more than worth it.

Having said that, I’m going to narrow the focus of this blog to only situations that pertain to Phase 2 vs Phase 1 thinking, application of “The Process”, and any changes that appear internally or externally.

The Process

As I said I’d been practicing the process for a little under a week now so I’ve had it memorized: experience discomfort, tell the truth about who you are (as the creator of all in this reality), reclaim power, and experience your true self. I noticed a couple of things in his book that I couldn’t glean from the cliff notes I found of a seminar of his, things that served to fill in this model of reality well.

The process doesn’t actually end at feeling infinite, although the brief feelings I’ve had are great. They are sort of a wash of well being. But here’s the test (sort of like re-multiplying to check the result after doing long division.) Re-run the external or internal trigger of the discomfort (for example, an unfavorable conversation) and see if the same emotion is provoked. If it’s lessened – success! Immediate results that the process is working!

This is similar to Anthony Robbins’ submodalities that he talks about in “Awaken the Giant Within” Many others talk about installing new beliefs to counteract old beliefs and use similar processes such as EFT tapping or Reiki, or even Yoga or meditation. Robbins’ is the most practical of the sort. He tells people to call up a bad memory and view it like you’re watching a movie. This isn’t a stretch. But then, by changing the visual and auditory nature of the movie you change your feeling about it. So to lessen an emotional trauma you can make it black and white, shrink it, or turn down the volume in your mind. Robbins does this because he presupposes that you can’t access emotions directly and must use a mind-image surrogate, much like how you can’t move the arrow cursor on your computer screen without using a mouse. This is a little bit like using a sponge to sop up the water that’s running out of a hose instead of…turning the hose off.

The other methods I mentioned also deal with alleviating the symptoms of negative or limited beliefs like taking aspirin for a headache instead of eating less sugar in the first place. The process on the other hand, deals with the root problem. More on this later.

A Shift in Perspective

“You supply the food and I’ll supply the perspective” says Anton Ego in “Ratatouille”. Get ready for something hard to swallow. Cause and effect as we deal with them in Phase 1, are backwards. We believe ideas, people, and events cause the desired object of manifestation, when in reality the opposite is true. A new car instantly appears in your hologram in the future. Then that new idea in the hologram causes a rippling effect backwards through time to where you are now. This is how coincidences happen. I don’t know if I can handle the scope of what all the new things appearing and the effect of their backwards rippling is having. It may be the very reason I’m experiencing all that I am now.

I read this book at 24 which is the first time I was exposed to this idea. But my mind was primed to understand it and be willing to believe it (if I was any younger I would have thought this was a crock of shit frankly). The events that primed my mind and their effects briefly are as follows:

Two months ago: Losing all my money driving across the country. This opened me up for new ideas, starting over with nothing to lose…

Three Months ago: Reading Alan Watts book, “The Book on the Taboo of Knowing Who you Are”. I was introduced to the idea that who we are and what we experience are the same thing expressing itself in different ways.

Four months ago: Tripping on LSD at Lake Tahoe. I knew that I had to leave my hometown in California and that I must leave my past – people, experiences, and beliefs – behind to be happy.

Six Months ago: My first feature film – a lifelong dream - crashes and burns. I don’t finish it. This shows me that the Law of Attraction does not actually work.

One year ago: Begin first feature film with full conviction that I create my own reality using the rules of the Law of Attraction.

Three years ago: Read “Think and Grow Rich.” Watch “The Secret” and “What the Bleep:” My love affair with New Age, Metaphysical, and Self Help books begins. Begin studying the wondrous Law of Attraction.

Eight Years ago: Watch “The Matrix” I think, wow – wouldn’t it be cool if all of this world was fake and once we knew that, amazing possibilities would exist? A small part of it rings true with my soul.

Nine Years ago: I have the random thought, “There seems to be a greater pattern going on in life when I look at my past. There has to be some kind of design to this.” I decide to change my views from atheism to spirituality and belief in a higher power.

I’m sure I could go on and on in either direction, but it’s clear that there is a pattern here that is not random and has specifically led me here. I’d also like to point out that as the pattern moves closer to it’s origination point right now, the “random” events seem to come with greater frequency.

Let’s Talk About Feelings

I’m a results oriented person. I know that’s Phase 1 speak, but it’s true. I enjoy all this time diving into contemporary and ancient spritual texts but I’d really enjoy a much more successful and enjoyable life – money, a fantastic relationship, travel, compelling creative pursuits, leisure time, etc. Though most of these spiritual practices are supposed to make your life “better” there is no real solid measurement system for what a better life is. And since there’s no useful measurement system, it’s difficult to tell if anything is happening or “working” Generally, I’ll only stand on my head reciting the national anthem so many times without results before I’ll stop and go surf the web.

Furthermore, if something does “happen” and life gets “better” then it’s hard to tell whether it’s just been a good day, or if you’re magically creating your reality. Pretty much the only way to tell if things are getting better is if they are getting better consistently. However, most of the time external things don’t get better all that fast and it’s hard to notice subtle changes over time – like noticing your hair growing until it just seems longer or weight loss until you just seem thinner.

With the process, there is a useful measurement system, one that provides the ability to know if you are getting results whenever you apply it. The brilliance of it is it’s an internal measurement system, like the Abraham-Hicks emotional guidance system but unlike that this is focused on transforming (or draining) emotions of their power and thus reclaiming it, instead of shifting the emotion altogether, which is as useful as saying “don’t think of a pink elephant” or “stop being so angry”

If you feel better about the thing that gave you discomfort (a bill, a twinge of jealousy, or the aformentioned unfavorable conversation) after applying the process then it worked. I have tried this on numerous things so far. I’ve been applying the process around 10-20 times per day. It takes only about 60 seconds and I’ve done it while doing other stuff, such as driving, working out, or talking to someone else. Subjects of discomfort include traffic, relationship dissatisfaction, guilt, embarassment, past hurts, lack of money, lack of self esteem, feeling like I should do something when I don’t want to, and many more.

Internal Results

After applying the process, almost unequivocally the feeling I have is one of incredible well being, even when thinking about the thing that previously gave me discomfort. It’s not euphoria, but something more subdued and constant. This is a rather odd phenomenon. Imagine having a fear of heights and then all of a sudden appreciating the fear as an aspect of your limited self while feeling completely benevolent towards it. This has happened with me for even incredibly painful memories and sensations. Not, however, pain itself. I have not transcended pain like an Indian swami, but it did offer me a little relief from a toothache. When the process didn’t work, it still relieved some of the intensity of the emotion. I’m still not happy about not having money, but I’m not incredibly worried like before.

Most times when I apply it, it’s precursor is an external trigger, but thankfully I’m usually in a private situation where I have some time to apply the process. For instance when I looked at a picture of an attractive woman in a magazine and felt loss or yearning. Less often have I used the process while out and about or in the company of others. People would generally think I was nuts if I was to say out loud the statements of the process so I relegate it to my thoughts. This hasn’t lessened the effect however, except when reclaiming power it’s helpful for me to say out loud with force “I reclaim my power NOW” to improve my conviction and belief in the statement. Especially right now since this is all so new and my conviction is shaky at best.

I’ve already begun to see results in emotional stability and less worrying thoughts plague me in my downtime (when I’m not enthralled with something like a book, writing, working, or talking with a friend on the phone) On the flipside, I’ve felt more intense emotions surface. It’s like they were waiting for me to have the capacity to deal with them. I’ve found myself crying once every couple of days, maybe multiple times a day. But then I apply the process and the sadness goes away. It’s very cathartic.

The reason I’ve been having less negative thoughts is because many stem from the way I thought of the world in Phase 1. But thinking about it in a Phase 2 mindset makes the problem obsolete. For instance, right now I owe someone money and I haven’t worked in a couple months. I’m working now but I still haven’t been paid, and the guilt I feel for not paying them is heavy and only increases in pressure over time. However, in Phase 2, I’m the only one creating this hologram so I’m feeling bad about not paying myself, which doesn’t make any sense. If I went through a day and didn’t pay myself money (whatever that means) I would not care at all. I certainly wouldn’t lose sleep over it.

Another example is the feature film above that I left unfinished in California. Usually when I don’t complete something I feel like a failure, and this is no different. In Phase 2 however, the whole project can be viewed as simply an illusion that I wanted to play with at the time. Now I don’t feel compelled to work on it and would rather do other things with my life. After all, a board game that I bought and enjoyed playing doesn’t become a cause for alarm when it sits on a shelf.

Actually most of my behaviors stem from belief structure embedded in Phase 1. I check my email religously when in fact it doesn’t exist. I worry about what others think of me, though I created them. I don’t want to spend money for fear of not being able to get more, even though money is as intrinsic to my true expanded self as a head is to a body and its’ supply is unlimited.

And here’s the biggy. I began studying the law of attraction because I wanted to live an extraordinary life like a movie star billionaire astronaut. Now that I’m embarking on this journey I realize that my sole motivator for my unending spiritual quest is simply a falsitude of the Phase 1 experience. This is not to say that my dreams are null and void, but merely that proactively trying to change the hologram to reflect my dreams is completely futile. It’s like trying to shave the mirror to get rid of a beard. They say your expanded self (the infinite part of you) knows what’s best for you. Leaving life to unfold is taking a tremendous amount of faith but it’s nice feeling like I don’t have to push the “do do do” boulder up the mountain of life anymore. All in all, I believe this is the real deal.

Results in the Hologram

The amount of work that I have has drastically increased for the moment.

Last week I may have secured a job in video at a corporate facility that allows me to travel.

The same corporate facility (where I was catering) sent all of us home with free boxes (like $300 worth) of ice cream because they needed to clear out their fridges, twice. I’ve also received a platter of sandwiches from my job and many drinks from a Starbucks vendor there for free (because they didn’t want to take them downstairs)

I saw three sunbows (rainbow without rain) yesterday inside, and one today in the sky. I’ve only seen one before in my life.

Today I was being fitted for tuxedo pants, and they claimed I was a 34 waist 34 length. I’ve been a 32 34 since I was fifteen and it’s been very diffcult to find pants. I’ve been trying to gain weight and it’s finally working! And now I can find pants too!