Life on earth: the virtual-reality video game

I thought I’d share a little mental technique I like to use when going about my day. I like to try thinking of everything in this world as being like a virtual reality video game, where the bodies I see are just the characters in the game.

I’m sure you’ve heard of those internet games (I think ‘Warcraft’ is one of the more popular ones, or used to be) that people play from all over the world, where they battle people who are all playing the same game from their home computer.  I’ve never played any of these internet games myself but I kind of understand how it works.  As I understand it, you sign on to the internet site where the game is, you login, perhaps choose a character, and start playing.  You’re character fights other characters in the video game and your goal is to get as many points as you can or whatever…

But now imagine that instead of just watching your computer screen, you actually put on a special headset that makes it seem like virtual reality.  So now, it actually seems REAL.  It is as if you are looking through your character’s eyes, hearing through their ears, and perhaps in the future they’ll have virtual reality “body suits” where you actually feel physical sensations that mimic what the character would be feeling.

So let’s suppose that you and a bunch of friends all over the country start playing one of these virtual reality video games, but then you get so addicted to it that you actually FORGET that it’s just a game!  You totally forget your real identity and start thinking that you’re actually the character in the video game!

Well, that’s what this world is like!  We are all like these perfect, infinite Spirits (you could even picture us as glowing bodies of light if that helps) who have all collectively agreed to play a video game called “Life as an Innocent Victim”.  We all then forgot we were just playing a game, and now we get really scared when our character is being threatened.

Another similar metaphor that I sometimes find even more helpful is this:  Imagine that you and all of your friends go to a movie and then when the movie starts, you each start identifying with a different character in the movie.  You then all get hypnotized by the movie, forgetting that it’s just a movie.  You and your friends’ faces are transfixed to the screen, each thinking and feeling along with one of the characters in the movie.

Suddenly, you yourself wake up from the hypnotic state and realize it was just a movie.  You look around the movie theater, and in the dim light from the screen you see all of your friends who you totally had forgotten about.  You had been so caught up in the drama of the movie, but suddenly lost interest in it and now are looking at your friends who are still into the movie.  From the look on their faces, you can see they are completely tranced out on the movie, and having all the emotional reactions that they’re character is having.

You see they are experiencing a lot of negative emotions, so you want to help them.  You want to go over and wake them up and say, “Hey man!  Wake up!  It’s only a movie – it’s not real!”, but they don’t want to be woken up.  Without coming out of their hypnotic daze their arm just pushes you away, their face still transfixed to the screen.

You might see that one of your friends is identified with a character in the movie who’s about to die.  You see your friend is frightened, but you yourself know that he’s not really going to die himself – it’s just the movie character who’s being threatened.  You hope that after that character dies, your friend will wake up and stop watching the movie, but no… after that character dies, your friend quickly finds another character in the movie to identify with.

I’m sure you can see the parallels with the Course’s teachings that I’m pointing toward.

The helpfulness that I see in these types of metaphor is that it can help you relinquish all of bodily fears and concerns, both for your own and others bodies.   When you see a body getting hurt or even killed in the world, you can possibly remember that that body is actually just a character in a movie, one that your brother has identified with and is hypnotized by.  It wasn’t really your brother/friend who got hurt, just the dream/movie/video game character.

And yet, your brother is YOU!  There’s no one else out there that you need to wake up but yourself.  Going back to the movie theater analogy, it might be more helpful to actually say that when you wake up from the movie, all of your friends wake up simultaneously!  You and your friends are really One Mind.  It’s kind of like saying that everyone you see is really your Self, but in a past life!

Think about these ideas, and practice seeing things this way.  I think you’ll find, as I have, that seeing this way makes forgiveness SO much easier to practice.

Everyone I see is ME in a past life.

I love this idea.  The Course teaches that we see only the past.  And if everyone we see is really just a thought that we projected, then each “person” I see is “me”, living in a past life.  This points towards the truth, yet we rarely think of it that way because we are so addicted to identifying with the person we think we are in this lifetime, or even to the “soul” that has lived many lifetimes.   

To flesh out the metaphysics of this truth, and understand it on a deeper level, consider the following teachings of the Course…

In that original, insane moment of seeming separation, the Son of God splintered into billions and billions of fragments, each fragment becoming housed in a body.  It doesn’t matter whether that “body” is one that we’d call “animate” or “inanimate”.  Within this dream, every fragment of the Christ is seemingly housed in some form.

Also in the original unholy instant, all the scripts of time and space were written.  We as the decision making part of the mind, joined with the ego and wrote a COLOSSAL movie full of separate “lifetimes” for each of these bodies.  At the same instant, the Holy Spirit corrected all of these scripts, providing the Atonement principle that the separation never happened.  We, then, as the one Son of God would always have a choice as to whether to watch these movies with the ego and stay in “hell”, or with the Holy Spirit and return to where we never left in Heaven.

Now, it SEEMS, as if the one Christ Mind splintered into billions of fragments and that each of these fragments would identify with a particular body.  For example, I (referring to the fragment of the Christ Mind that I am) at this point in the dream, am identifying with a body named Erik.  When Erik dies, if I haven’t forgiven all my unconscious guilt yet, then I will be reborn into another body (and this other body will likely be human, but not necessarily.  It could be a rock for all I know…)  And before Erik, I was identified with probably hundreds, if not thousands of other bodies in my so called past lives.

But the point I’m getting to here is that even though it seems like I’ve only identified with a particular string of bodies (all my past lives), the truth is that my True Identity as Christ has identified with ALL bodies at one point or another.  Therefore, everyone I see is one of my past lives.  The reason why everyone is a past life as opposed to a ‘present’ one is because as the Course teaches, everything we see is in the past.  The dream has already been corrected.  It’s long since over, but we still cling to an old memory because of our fear of the Present.

So perhaps you’ll find, as I have, that it can be VERY helpful to keep this idea in mind as you go about your day.   Everyone you see is YOU in a past life.  You’ll be more inclined to forgive and be kind, which is the true measure of progress with this Course.

Peace…

Enlightenment: getting in “my” own way

I had a humbling realization a few minutes ago. It wasn’t an entirely new realization; I’ve had it before, but each time it occurs it seems brand new, as if it never had occurred to me before.

The realization I’m speaking of is this: All I’ve ever done from my own intellect has merely gotten in my own way.

This is something that must be clarified. It would be easy to contest this idea, but in the moment of Truth, it becomes quite evident that all my past intellectualizing was truly nothing more than hallucinating. In fact, I think the two words are synonyms. Intellectualizing = hallucinating.

In the state of true Awareness, what the Course calls the “real world”, and which could also be called “enlightenment”, it is clearly seen that there was no “I” or “me” to begin with. There is only an experience of an “I”, but that experience is simply the hallucinations. Therefore, anything that the “I” does to try to enlighten itself meets with failure. It is simply spinning its wheels.

The moment of enlightenment comes when the “I” simply gives up and says, “I don’t know.” Instantly, the Holy Spirit can then shine through the mind and shine away all the illusions.

I’ve had this experience many times, but the ego still attracts the mind. I think that enlightenment can occur in any moment that we choose against choosing, or decide against deciding. In that moment, the “I” that we identify with sees its own illusory nature, gives up, and the experience of enlightenment is had by the impersonal awareness.

Yet, this doesn’t mean that the person is now enlightened. I would never say that I am enlightened, because number one, that would be impossible – persons do not become enlightened… they just disappear in awareness. Secondly, until ALL of the unconscious attraction to the ego’s guilt has disappeared through the process of forgiveness, “personhood” still returns again and again.

So while “I” continue learning and enjoying books like A Course in Miracles and talking about it, I now have yet one more experience of realizing that none of it matters. It SEEMS like it’s my intellectual understanding of the Course’s nondualistic metaphysics that is what’s waking me up, but deep inside, I know that’s another illusion.  The only difference is that this illusion was a helpful one.  It was an illusion that I gave myself in order to make the awakening process less fearful.

The Real World & Disneyland

I was hanging out with my friend Errol several weeks ago in California, and we went to visit a good friend of his who happens to be living in a tent by choice. Errol had spoken very highly of this man – Stu is his name – and how he was very awake and really “got” that he was a Son of God.

When I first saw him, he looked like any other old homeless person you might see on the street. He was very dirty, unkempt, smelly, and even had a red stain on his otherwise white mustache. Probably a tobacco stain, though I never asked.

My first reaction was very egoic – I noticed a split-second judgment followed by a fleeting experience of repulsion in my body. But then I felt myself open up and receive him like any other brother in Christ. He turned out to be one of most entertaining, interesting, and enlightened people I’d ever met!

The three of us got into some heavy philosophizing about life and spirit. He wasn’t speaking using Course terminology, and said many things that my inner ANAL-ytical, spiritually superior “Course in Miracles” ego voice wanted to react to (in a very nerdy voice, “Hmm, THAT does not sound like the Course!”) but fortunately I didn’t pay too much attention to that voice and was able to just melt into the love and exuberance behind everything he was saying.

It seemed clear that he saw the world in a radically different way than most of us – probably partly because he lives in a tent full-time and has no worldly attachments in the literal sense… but also because he just happens to have opened himself to God more than most. I had many profound realizations from talking with him, but one of the things he said that really stuck with me was this (I’m paraphrasing):

“When you learn to live without fear, everyday life becomes such a rich and marvelous experience. Just walking around town is better than Disneyland!”

As I noticed myself getting really attuned to what he was saying, I began to really have the experience that he was pointing to.  When he put it that way, I truly felt like I was on a totally different plane of consciousness, just enjoying the infinite Mystery of all I saw around me!

He was referring to what the Course calls “the real world” – which isn’t another world obviously, but simply how we will experience things when we no longer see through the eyes of the ego. To attain this experience, we must learn to question our belief that we are here in a body. A good affirmation I use to remind myself of this sometimes is the following. Maybe it will help you as well…

I am nothing but non-local Awareness, dreaming of a bunch of mere symbols that mean nothing. All I see is empty and meaningless, with no effect on my eternal oneness with God.

My first poem

I’ve never really considered myself a poet – at least not in the traditional sense. But several weeks ago, I was in California driving to visit my good friend Errol, when I was suddenly inspired to create the following poem:

In a world of symbols,
Where nothing makes sense…
And nothing to guide you,
but your inner sense…
Are you peaceful, or in doubt?
That’s the only way to tell
Whether the decision that you made
Was for Heaven or for hell.

My career as a “professional forgiver”…

For several months, I’ve been feeling a desire to shift from my current career as a group hypnotherapist… to something that feels more aligned with my passions, such as teaching A Course in Miracles.  Now, I realize that there is nothing inherently more “spiritual” about formally teaching the Course to others than there is in any other career.  I realize that the source of my discontent in my current career has nothing to do with the career itself, but only with my mind’s belief in separation.  The only “career” that can truly make me happy is that of being a “professional forgiver”… and this of course can be practiced just as equally in a career as a hypnotherapist (or any other career for that matter) as it can teaching forgiveness.

So yes, yes, yes… all of that is true, but…

Well, I just can’t seem to shake this desire to teach the Course to others, or at least something more closely aligned with forgiveness principles.  Hypnotherapy is great – at least it has healing as its overt purpose – but I’m getting tired of just helping people stop smoking and lose weight.  I feel that I’d enjoy working with people in a wider context than that of simply helping them modify their behavior.

I think the biggest problem is that every time I start getting motivated to create a new career, my deceptive little ego will jump in masquerading as the Holy Spirit and say, “Yes, but you must not believe there is no hierarchy of illusions, otherwise you’d just stay with your current career.”  This always makes me have to stop and think.  Because I know that has some merit to it, but then again, it’s not necessarily true nor helpful.  Obviously I still believe in a hierarchy of illusions, or I wouldn’t be here!  But that doesn’t mean I can’t use magic solutions such as changing my career to be happier.

So finally, I decided to stop taking that thought seriously, and I’ve decided to just surrender to my desire for a career change.  I’ve spent about the last six months practicing forgiveness on my discontents as a travelling hypnotherapist (and just did so again) so in this moment I feel quite peaceful about the direction my career will take, either way.  I honestly don’t know whether I’ll continue being a group hypnotherapist for several more years or not, but it’s becoming clearer to me that the problem I seem to be having is just a smokescreen set up by my ego.  It’s preventing me from looking at the problem of my belief in separation, and that, of course, is the only problem I need to concern myself with.   And since the resolution of that problem is the only thing that can bring me real happiness, I can be equally happy in any career as in any other.

But that said, it seems highly unlikely to me that I won’t venture off into some new ways of expressing myself in this world, as long as I appear to be a body. Besides, I sense that there are other careers that would challenge my forgiveness-applying skills much more than they’d be challenged if I stayed with what I’m doing now. Obviously, that’s not for me to judge, but it feels good to look forward to new, challenging forgiveness opportunities that will allow me to undo more unconscious guilt and thus experience more of the Love of God within.

For now though, my primary forgiveness lesson is in not judging myself for doing little to nothing with my life for the time being.  I’ve decided to stop setting up new hypnotherapy seminars for a little while, and simply be a stay-at-home monk for a few weeks.  I have enough money saved up to pay the bills for at least a couple months, so I’m feeling relatively okay with just sitting around like a bum all day reading my Course books and meditating!  When I remember the truth that this is just a dream I’m watching called “Life of Erik”, then I feel completely okay.

My ego jumps in every so often and tells me how afraid I should be of the future, that I might end up never going back to work, and having to default on all my debt, blah, blah, blah… but I’m grateful to have learned what a illusory trickster the ego is.  All of my egoic concerns are meaningless – even when they seem VERY serious – and I’m learning from this phase of my life how to simply be still and do nothing else.  It is requiring me to really examine with the Holy Spirit all my old beliefs about “responsibility”, “making money”, “being successful”, “living a full life”, etc..

I’ll end this post on this one thought that came to me a few weeks ago, which brought me more peace around this issue than any other insight I’d had before.  I was sitting on my coach vacillating between very peaceful meditation and very UNpeaceful worries about what to do career-wise to make more money to pay the bills with… when I had these insights:

The only job I need to fulfill in order to ensure my continued Abundance and Prosperity is the “work” of forgiveness.  My Abundance is a direct result of my forgiveness work.  Forgiveness is therefore the only job and career I need to stay engaged in.  If I focus only on that, I will always receive complete Abundance, lacking in nothing I need.  Nothing but forgiveness is required of me.   I need do nothing else.  Forgiveness is, and always will be, my only responsibility.

Ahhhh… what a relief!

Everyone is already enlightened but me!

There’s no one out there.  Everyone has already awakened except for me.  This, I’ve found, is part of the ultimate spiritual paradigm for accelerating my own awakening.  As long as I believe there are others out there whom I need to help awaken, I’m projecting my own need onto an illusory world of bodies.  No one else needs to awaken but me.   

The truth of this can only be understood when you realize that the universe was over long ago. It happened in an instant, and was corrected in an instant. I like Kenneth Wapnick’s analogy of the video tape library in his book, “A Vast Illusion: Time according to A Course in Miracles”. It’s like all the scripts of time and space, in that one instant when the universe was miscreated, were recorded onto a huge library of DVD’s. On these DVD’s are all the scripts that the ego created where shit happens and we react to it, as well as all the scripts that the Holy Spirit corrected where the same shit happens but we forgive it.

Ultimately though, it’s all over, the universe has already disappeared, but I’m still choosing to stay asleep and watch these DVD’s in my mind. Therefore, when I see people in the DVD’s whom I judge as being egocentric – one of my roommates, my girlfriend, someone in my family, a politician, or anyone – my ego reaction is to think that they need to learn forgiveness and wake up. But the truth is that they’ve already woken up – I’m just choosing not to see it! Instead, I’m choosing to watch an old DVD that shows them before they had woken up! In other words, I’m choosing to see a dream full of unenlightened people because of the ego gratification it gives me. It has nothing to do with reality. Seeing all these “unenlightened” bodies out there keeps me focused on thinking that I need to enlighten them, but it’s a lie from my ego. The truth is that the entire Sonship is already awake, but I (the split mind) am still choosing to watch old re-runs.

I think it’s also important for me to remember that not even ‘Erik” needs to wake up. The DVD that shows him waking up is one has already been written, but I as the decision making part of the mind am still choosing to watch an older DVD’s where he is still struggling because it feels “safer”. Once I fully accept the Atonement, I’ll finally skip to the video showing my enlightenment, before choosing to stop watching all these stupid DVD’s altogether! ;-)

The recognition of this all this is the essence of true forgiveness. I’m recognizing more and more now that all I’m seeing is untrue, that the separation from God never happened. This allows me to forgive both the dream and me as the dreamer for what I never did, and accept that there is only innocence here in God. It was all just a laughable mistake that I made, and it had no effect on eternity. Finally, at least, I’m learning to join with the Holy Spirit and laugh it all away…

“What should I do?”

I got briefly sucked into this question again earlier tonight when I was trying to decide whether to call a friend of mine back tonight, or whether to wait until tomorrow to call her. I started weighing the pros and cons, trying to figure out which choice the Holy Spirit was guiding me to take, before I realized the foolishness of my thoughts. In that moment, I had the realization that there is never any “right” choice when it comes to the choices on the level of form in this world (choices of behavior).   

It’s such a classic ego trick to make us think that we must make decisions on this level and that the decisions we make matter.  Now, of course, from a worldly perspective they sure SEEM to matter, but I’m not interested in the worldly perspective anymore, for that is the perspective the ego WANTS me to stay interested in.   Some might think that would make me become irresponsible (for I’ve often worried that myself), but deep down I know that when I focus on the spiritual perspective, my worldly decisions will always be what’s best for all, in spite of appearances to the contrary.  Besides, we truly have no way of ever judging what’s best for another or ourselves, so we are deceived if we even try.

Nothing that we do here matters, for “we” aren’t the person who’s here in the first place.  We are merely watching a dream character within a meaningless dream that is long since over.  The person we think we are is no more “us” than is the actor in a movie that we’re watching.  Therefore, we have absolutely no control over what the character does in the movie.  It’s not us!  It seems like it’s us, and that we have control, and that it matters what this character does, but all of that is an illusion.  The belief that we have control over what our bodies choose to do in this dream is what keeps us stuck here, by preventing us from considering the only REAL choice we ever have: to interpret our experiences with the ego or with the Holy Spirit.

Another way of resolving the problem when you are seemingly stuck in trying to make a tough decision I’ve realized, is to realize that no worldly outcome is better or worse than any other.  They are all equally meaningless.  They can all be seen as equally good or bad, depending on which inner teacher you are interpreting them with. This takes all the pressure off, and makes the process of deciding seem a lot easier.

Once we fully grok that nothing we do here matters, then we no longer will have any concerns about the future.  It is only our concerns about what might happen to our bodies or personalities that cause us to get trapped into the “What should I do?” conundrum.  We can stop worrying by realizing that no matter what happens, it has no power to take away the peace of God from us.  We can realize that even if something absolutely horrendous happened – like getting raped, tortured, or murdered, to use the most extreme possibilities – it can always be used as a forgiveness opportunity.  And as challenging as those situations would be for most of us to practice forgiveness on, it still is true that through the eyes of the Holy Spirit, they are no different from any other forgiveness opportunity.  If we get upset, it’s only because we wanted to become upset.   I realize this is a radical viewpoint – and I certainly wouldn’t recommend going out and looking for any of those types of forgiveness lessons! – but radical viewpoints are what we need if we truly want to awaken.  

I think the simplest way to look at all this is just to remember that there is truly only one answer to the question, “What should I do?”, and the answer is always the same… you should forgive.