Leap! Is reality an illusion - A Quantum Awakening Movie

We think it's concrete. We think it's reality and it's not. There is no
physical universe. It's all being made up. It's all smoke and mirrors. It's all an illusion that appears real.
But illusion is is a great word because if you look at the word illusion, it says ill is in you. You are experiencing through form or
through the illusion, you experiencing a reflection of yourself. Nothing means
anything. It's all mystery. What we find is an atom doesn't actually exist. It's elementary particles. Those
elementary particles are actually potentials for existence. Reality gets created through acts of observation.
You know, whatever an atom is made of, it's not made of matter. That's becoming clear. The perceptual error that's happening is
because of something going on inside of me. You know, now I'm not here to say that events in a dream don't appear to
happen, but that doesn't mean that they're real. The actuality of what's going on is much of how we perceive this reality is an
illusion. So, what does it look like to go beyond the illusion of reality?
That inquiry can change your life. There really is no me and there's no you, there's no we. There's just that
experience of unity and oneness. If you're an infinite god-like being with
all this power and wisdom and abundance and you want to play a game, you can't just play Tiddly Winks. You'd be bored
to death. It's like in the Wizard of Oz when you look behind the curtain. It's
that. And the ultimate challenge was, can I convince myself that I'm the opposite of
who I really am? You know, it's just something that's coming from your own unconscious mind, a projection that
you're viewing with your conscious mind, and you made it up, and then you forgot that you made it up. If we've been
thinking a certain way for 30, 40 years, is it a matter of just changing it, right? Then as long as you think the illusion is
real and you're the opposite of who you really are, there's going to be problems. With an appropriate change in
the perception of how this is actually going on, you can resolve your case of
mistaken identity. You'll feel better. You'll enjoy things more. You'll enjoy sex more. Off the
charts, amazing things become possible. Answering those questions enables us to enter what reality is.
What if it were true? Would
you want to make the leap? For thousands of years, numerous
philosophers, visionaries, and spiritual leaders have described our reality as temporary or elucory. How could it be
possible that all around the world and through the ages, a similar story has been told? Today, we still witness this
concept through modern-day media. The books related to the topic of our reality being an illusion are endless.
Over 6,000 years later, we're witnessing a reemergence of what could be viewed as the oldest idea in recorded history. Why
would this concept be reestablishing itself in the human consciousness? Now, in 2006, without yet knowing one
another, we each began researching this ancient idea that our reality is an illusion. I was raised in a practical
non-spiritual bluecollar world. My family's motto was live a responsible and practical life. In early adulthood,
I began having direct psychic experiences. Not being able to discuss this with my family and friends at the
time, I explored and developed my abilities on my own. After 20 years in this mystical world, I knew there was
more than meets the eye. But I sensed I had still not reached the core of what was really happening here. I have a
heavy science background. My father taught science for over 40 years. I began my research by looking to science
to answer some of the tougher questions. Quantum mechanics tells us that the classical rules of physics break down at
the level of the very small at which point it becomes apparent that matter is not made up of smaller units of matter.
All matter is just energy. At this level, electrons pop in and out of existence. Once I understood the basics
of quantum mechanics, the question that haunted me was, how can I prove anything is real? While we both dove deeper into
our research, we met and instantly became friends. With our extremely different backgrounds, we decided to
form a partnership and pursue the nature of reality as a team. We were inspired to document our research and shifted our
primary focus to contemporary illusion supporters. We initially believed it would be difficult to find many people
that had journeyed into this realm. Through modern-day access to information, we tracked down key people
in a variety of fields that we believed would be able to help answer the questions that had formed inside of us.
These people rarely if ever communicated with each other. Many possess key pieces to the puzzle. While none of them
entirely subscribes to our interpretation, one puzzle piece led to the next. And what we discovered will
challenge even the most skeptical. Being a science guy, science seemed like a logical place to start.
Quantum mechanics is a description of reality right off the bat. So they do
this whole thing about the wave particle duality. And you know, is it a wave or is it a particle? Well, it's neither.
It's whatever it is. The electron's the electron. They discovered that things didn't occur
in smooth flows. And the basic quantum quantum means an amount. It's the Latin
for amount. In order to uh communicate that with something that we can understand, we call it a wave or a
particle because we have mathematics for a wave. We have mathematics for a particle. We experience them in the big
world. So we can lay them on the small world and say, well, sometimes electrons a wave, sometimes it's a particle. What
is it reality? In reality, it's the electron. And Max Plank found that energy didn't
come as one smooth flow of energy. It came in units, quantum of energy.
This is the basis of quantum theory is that everything is everything comes in discrete amounts. What quantum physics
found was when you get down to the quantum that cannot be divided anymore.
Quantum physics has opened the door to our recognizing that we've left something out and it's mainly this thing
called the observer effect. The fact that when I observe something, I alter what's being observed. When you start
then applying that to physics, everything changes. And so the whole of quantum physics is really seeing the
fallout of that change from thinking that the world is continuous to seeing that it comes in discrete amounts and
then the mathematics changes. Everything changes from there. Like we connect the dots between our observations with
speculations and theory about what's happening when we're not looking. What we find is an atom doesn't actually
exist. It's elementary particles. Those elementary particles are actually potentials for existence. When we're
dealing with quantum physics, we're not dealing with reality in terms of objects. We're dealing with reality in
terms of fields of possibility. Matter is the way the mind interprets things.
And we know that there's no such thing as solid matter.
An electron for example need isn't in a particular state. It has a potential to
be observed in certain states of energy or position and we don't know what that
is until we observe it. We're at the level where we can perceive it directly. So we lay all this
interpretation on it. How you interpret that, nobody knows. There's about seven
schools of quantum physics. Now we're looking for something called the God particle. It it's named after a
physicist whose name is Higs and it's called a Higs Bzon. It's a small very small particle which we believe is the
is the kernel or seed particle out of which every particle can comes into
existence with all the different masses that particles have.
And these little seed particles have almost no mass at all. So we're looking at something being created out of fields
which are now things themselves. It is a bit like religion. It's well it's more
fixed belief systems which happens all through human life. We have a belief about reality what's true and we hold on
to that belief and we defend it at all costs. I think we get more attached to our beliefs about the world than
anything else. We, you know, we'll let go of money, partners, lifestyle easier
than we will let go of our fundamental beliefs. In fact, there was the physicist Max Plank who said, "Science
changes not because scientists change their minds, but that the old scientists
die out. Science perceives funeral by funeral." You know, we hold on to our
beliefs about what reality is, whether it's an illusion or not, whatever it is. We hold on to those more strongly than
anything. And then, as I say, do anything we can to defend those beliefs.
As you've just heard, at the atomic level, there's nothing there. If matter doesn't really exist, then where do we
go from there? For me, I began questioning how my perception affected my reality. Perhaps my perception is my
reality. If nothing exists like I think it does, then do I even exist?
Having come from a more mystical background, I enjoyed learning what science was discovering. Our
understanding of what our world was continued unraveling, and the question staring us in the face was, "Is our
entire reality an illusion?" Some people believe our perception is the illusion,
while others believe our entire reality is an illusion. Let's first take an in-depth look at how our perception is
definitely an illusion.
So, is the world really an illusion or is it my perception? That's the illusion. If we step back a little bit and look
around, this experiencing that we're all having from moment to moment is as real
as it gets as far as we know. where I step back a little further and say what is the actuality of what's going on as
much of how we perceive this reality is an illusion but my perception is my reality right and
yet my perception is always changing based on who I believe myself to be idea that we see the world each of us as
human beings do not see the world as it is we see the world through a window a
muddy window a distorted window of our own beliefs associations ideas opinions
about the
The world as we perceive it is constantly shifting and constantly changing according to our beliefs and
the decisions that we make not only about the world but about ourselves. That's why one person can perceive an
event completely different than another person because they're perceiving it through their own lens. So the question
is are those lenses reality? is what's being perceived reality or is there a
deeper reality um behind all of that that is creating what we perceive moment
to moment. The world is real but only to the extent that you experience it. It's
all happening within you. That's what counts and that's what matters.
There's a Serbian proverb that says two men looked out of prison bars. One saw
mud and the other saw stars. Both mud and stars exist. Both are real.
Both are illusory. And that's part of the paradox of our lives. What you are is a inherited and conditioned neurology
meeting life. Having that lens on a situation that gets interpreted by your brain and then you reacting to it with
an appropriate change in the perception of how this is actually going on. You
can resolve your case of mistaken identity. The world is viewed through perception, through a field of lenses.
And because it's all from where we're sitting in any given moment, whatever environment we come from, whatever
family we've come from, whatever experiences we've come from, we view through those lenses. And so then
everything becomes a reality based on what we come from in the past.
In this reality that we're living in is a Newtonian world and Einstein's laws
apply at the very massive level and at the very minute level in the experiencing of this living in the
unwinding chain of cause and effect. This is a Newtonian experience. And
that's why you have to make sure that you look both ways when you cross the street cuz we may all be made of quantum
particles at the end of the day. But in misexperiencing at this moment, they're
very densely packed and that car's bumper will affect you if you step out
in front of it. Well, your perception is going to give you your experience. You know, you're you're living your reality
through your thoughts. Okay? You have a thought and that thought is going to give you a
perception and that perception is going to determine your experience and that
experience is going to determine your belief and that belief is going to reinforce the original thought you had.
The whole idea is to go beyond thought. Perception is just another thought.
So from the conventional view certain things are true. Accidents happen. Death is real. We are separate individuated
beings physically, emotionally, mentally separate from one another. That can be demonstrated.
But from a transcendental viewpoint, we couldn't be anything but one. That which
is never born never dies. We are the witness of it all. Pure awareness or consciousness.
From the transcendental view, no accidents, only lessons. Perhaps it's all predestined. Who knows? This world
is real. This world is illusion. Both of those things are true.
So, it's clear that your perception creates your reality. Look at a rainstorm. The cyclist could view the
rainstorm as a ruined day, while the farmer sees it as a blessing. While everyone interviewed believes your
perception is an illusion, the vast majority also believe that our entire reality is an illusion. Let's take a
look at what these people have to say about our world literally being an illusion.
So the question is it all an illusion is a very interesting one because it can be
interpreted on so many levels. Now Albert Einstein said that you know a
person's experience is kind of like an optical delusion of consciousness. The idea of illusion comes uh essentially
from the Hindu tradition. Uh Maya, the word Maya that uh the world uh is not as
real as we think it is. According to many great thinkers, you know, from the Dao to Plato to a course
of miracles, that which is reality does not shift or change. Uh reality is a
constant where nothing in this world is constant. It's something that's been talked about
for thousands of years. There's been different names for the fact that this whole thing is an illusion. And there
was no evidence at all. It was just it was taught it's not real and it's an illusion. That what we thought was real,
there's a lot more to it than what we originally thought. The reality that you perceive right here
is a outward projection of your internal state. Our true reality has nothing to do with
what we're seeing. And so what does it look like to go beyond the illusion of reality? that the first
thing you have to understand is what the world is.
The world is not a place. The world is a state of mind.
This thing that's left out of the equation, this observer. Who is the observer? What is the observer? Is it
just me? I, Fred Allen Wolfness, that's the observer. It's really simple. Nothing in the
physical universe or what used to be called, interestingly enough, the real world is real. It's all made up. It's
just part of the illusion. There's nothing here. It's all smoke and mirrors. It's all just a movie made to
appear real. I mean, it's just off the charts that we could have created this illusion, make it appear real, and make
ourselves appear to be the opposite of who we really are within it. The universe began when nothing became
aware of itself. This infinite being, this god-like being that has more power, more wisdom, more
abundance, more creativity than you can possibly imagine on your most optimistic day. And this infinite godlike being
decided that it wanted to play a game which is what I call the human game.
Life is an illusion doesn't mean life is without purpose. Life is an illusion
doesn't mean that there's no point in being here.
There's a huge point in being here and that's to create. That's to experience
life. And life as a game is an old old motif.
We complicate the world and we make this illusory world. And it's a very hard
thing to get your mind around because everything feels very real. I feel very real. You look very real to me. But what
I'm really looking at is my experience of you is taking place on an internal level. So if I'm having some kind of
concern about you, if I want something to change on the outside, I don't mess with the outside. That's like trying to
wipe my mirror clean when I need to be shaved. What I need to do is look on the inside of me. Change me and son of a
gun, magically, miraculously, the outer changes. And that the last thing you want to hear
is that it's all an illusion. In fact, that probably makes you angry
to hear it because what you're experiencing is so powerful.
If you're an infinite god-like being with all this power and wisdom and abundance and you want to play a game,
you can't just play Tidling Winks. You'd be bored to death. If that kind of a being is going to play a game, it's got
to be an ultimate game. It's got to be an ultimate challenge. And the ultimate challenge was, can I convince myself
that I'm the opposite of who I really am. So in order to do that, you've got
to create this artificial world, this illusurary world, and pop yourself into
the middle of it. And in this illusurary world, you've got to convince yourself you're the opposite of who you really are. So that's where this whole illusion
thing came from.
This world is just a story. And on one level,
the story is very real feeling. We're all having a human experience. On
another level, it's just a story. Then you don't have to take any of it
too seriously. And if you don't take any of it too seriously, it means that you're much more capable and well
equipped to enjoy the ride.
Most people perceive that they are living as this body. They perceive they
are that they are limited to the body. They perceive that they are living a
world of separation, a world of duality. But when you understand the truth behind
the form and you understand in truth you are the formless you are one. You are
one energy. When you understand that that is who you are then love is the
experience and the expression of your life. The truth can be heard in the dream. The truth is not in the dream
ever. You know, if you just remember that one thing, you'll save yourself a hell of a lot of time.
The way I look at it, there is a huge difference between thinking about
something and analyzing something and having a direct experience of it. And
from where I sit, there is no proof, there is no evidence that would really convince anybody that this whole thing
is really an illusion. It doesn't matter who's talking. It doesn't matter how credible they are. It doesn't matter how
scientifically objective it was proved. World is not being done to you. The
world is actually being done by you, right? It is not coming at you. It's
actually coming from you. You know, it's kind of like reversal of the way that the world traditionally thinks. And when
you go to a position of being a cause instead of effect, then you're no longer a victim. we perhaps look back at at
this much as we might when we wake up from a dream. Um, and yet the
interesting thing is is that when you were in that dream, it seemed perfectly real and therefore it was perfectly real
because it's really our awareness that makes something real, not the tangible proof.
It's simply about changing your experience back to what you really are. I'm not into like giving up, you know,
the romantic walks on the beach and the beautiful sunsets and the the lovely art and, you know, music. I've been a
musician my whole life, you know, and uh I enjoy listening to music more today than I ever did.
Life is a game we play as if it matters. So there's that sense of the transcendent that whatever we think is
going on, there's a bigger picture going on much beyond our understanding. It is
only when you are limited and your awareness is limited to knowing yourself as being the identity that you have fear
come up that you have judgments come up. How can you have judgment if it's all
you? How can you judge something if you're responsible for everything that's taking place? There is no judgment.
There is only acceptance.
You know, it's only a dream. You don't have to worry. You know, what you're seeing is not true. You know, it's just
something that's coming from your own unconscious mind, a projection that you're viewing with your conscious mind.
And you made it up. And then you forgot that you made it up.
As you've seen, many of the guides believe our reality is an illusion. In 428 BC, the philosopher Plato created a
simple metaphor to explain what he thought reality was. It's called the allegory of the cave. The basic premise
is to consider each of us has been a prisoner in a cave since birth. We're chained facing a wall. Behind us is a
fire. And between us and the fire, puppets are moved around. The puppets create shadows on the wall we face. And
we believe this to be reality. As you can see from your perspective, the prisoners had very limited knowledge of
what reality was. Now consider if the prisoners were freed, they would discover their
perception had been incorrect. They would believe now that the cave is what reality is. Again, from your
perspective, you know there's still more to discover beyond a cave. In the late
1500s, William Shakespeare said, "All the world's a stage and all the men and women merely players." Had Shakespeare
discovered something about the true nature of our reality. Perhaps a modern-day combination of these
metaphors will help us discover what reality is. Numerous contemporary philosophers have described our reality
as that of a movie. What if our reality is much like a movie? Could we be some
sort of actor playing out a script here? Or maybe a spiritual being having a human experience? What if our reality is
much like a Hollywood movie? Suppose that you were in a movie theater and
you're watching a movie about something really cool and you think to yourself, I'd like to do that. So, imagine that
you're sitting in the seat in the theater and you get up and you jump into the screen and you become one of those
characters in that story up on the screen or you become a new character that just got written in and whatever
the scene was in there that was taking place, whatever it is, you know, a sporting event or a business thing or a science fiction or whatever it is, you
become part of that movie and you're convinced that you're the character that you're supposed to be in the story and you're convinced that everything in that
environment in that world is real and you play there for a And then when you're done, you pop back out of the
screen and you sit back down in the seat and you're in your normal life again. To me, that's what's really happening. We
are creating these stories. We are creating these what I call total immersion movies with these very complex
story lines just like Hollywood does. And we create these elaborate special effects to make it all appear real just
like Hollywood does. And then we throw ourselves in the middle of them to have these amazing adventures for the pure
fun of it. And that's what I really think is going on in what I call the human game.
You know, if you were in a movie theater and somebody up on the screen started yelling at you, you wouldn't take it
very seriously, you know. Well, that's that's what this movie can be like, too. you know, somebody in the movie can
start yelling at you and you can just kind of like go like, you know, and not take it seriously at all because there's
nothing there to be taken seriously. The world is an illusion. It's a projection
of a false idea. And that false idea is an idea of
separation. When the mind is healed, there's no need for a world to project upon. The only reason we need a world is
to have a screen upon which to project. So as we go through the forgiveness and
the guilt is healed, we no longer need something to project upon.
So it's just an illusion that we put out there a screen, a movie screen to
project on. You know, if I was in a movie theater and uh I wanted to change what was up there on the screen, it wouldn't do me
too much good to mess around with the screen. I mean, yeah, I might appear to change it temporarily, but I'm not
really changing the nature of it. If I want to change what was on that screen, then I would have to remember something.
I I would have to remember that there's a projector and that the projector is hidden. You know, it's in the back of
the theater. And if I really wanted to have a permanent impact on what's on that screen, then what I would have to
do is I would have to change what's in that projector. You know, only then would I be dealing with the cause
instead of the effect.
Wow, that's an amazing way to look at your life. What if your life is truly an intricately detailed 3D holographic full
immersion movie experience?
We're about to go deeper into our inquiry about the nature of reality. We'll take a look at several interpretations of questions such as who
are we, why are we here, and what are we experiencing. We were astonished at the
similarities of the answers we received.
A lot of people ask the question, who am I or who are we? And I think the more we
we enter into this reality, this experience of of of of full awareness,
we realize that there's only one thing going on. There really is no me and there's no you. There's no we. There's
just that experience of unity and oneness. That's why uh mystics rarely
try to explain reality because it's beyond explanation. Oneness cannot be
understood by a mind uh that that is caught in the web of separation. The
only way to understand oneness is to be released from the web of separation. And then oneness which is really the same as
truth simply is present all around you and you see it and perceive it as what it really is. The one, this one infinite
energy manifested itself in its own imagination into billions of parts and
it gave each part thoughts and thought through thought you perceive that you
are separate from this one energy from this one infinite love
and your whole journey of coming here is to realize and remember again who you
are so you can become infinity again. So are we here? Are we really even here?
Yes, we are. But we are here as one infinite energy. The whole idea of separation and that
there's no there's you and there's me and you're over there and I'm over here. That's just your reality. But in
actuality, there's just one. There's one energy and we're all experiencing
through that one energy.
So the age old question, who am I is is actually a very important one. It's a
big mystery how anything is in the first place. Where did it come from? Why is it here? Why should we be able to talk
about it as if it was hoham when actually it's oh wow g whiz.
You're this infinite being who's right here in infinite land, which I just call it for the fun of it. And then you
create this whole artificial universe that we call the physical universe, this playing field on which we play the human
game. And you create, words are difficult here, but you create a version of yourself to pop into this illusion
and be convinced that it's the opposite of who you really are. I call that the player. And you're the player of the
game. And then behind the scenes is who you really are, who just like in Hollywood, you know, is writing the
script, doing the special effects, doing the filming, creating the illusions, popping you into it, just like the director of a movie in a sense. And I
call this part of you your expanded self. So there's the player of the game and there's the expanded self. We create
the illusion of this split. It's not two beings. It's one gigantic being, but we
create the illusion of it being split into parts. Cuz when you're playing the game and you're convinced you're the
opposite of who you really are, you have no awareness of the fact that you're really creating it all and it's all coming from you and your consciousness.
We're here to to wake up because we have the reflection
uh in our projections. Otherwise, we would never know what we were thinking.
You know, the purpose of looking out there at the world and seeing the horror and the chaos and the insanity and the
suffering and the pain is so I can see what's going on in my mind. It's not out
there. There is no out there. there is only in my mind and it appears to be out there.
In every moment, you're making a choice. You're either making a choice driven from love or a choice driven from fear.
The thing is though, most people are not making a choice. They decide to not make that choice. And that is a choice driven
from fear itself. If who you are is love, then doesn't it make sense that
you're here to experience, to be, and to do, and to have what you love? We're
spiritual beings having a human experience. And so what that means is is that most of what we see around us is
based on material information. And so what we're doing is we're learning we're learning how to get back to that
spiritual foundation which I think everything stems from love, harmony,
peace, uh growth, um expansion, evolution. And when we get to that
place, we understand that it's all unity. Um, I choose
to believe that I chose everything in my life that is going to happen to me
before I was born on some level. Do I know that's true? Haven't the faintest idea. But I'm going to live my life as
if that were true because I live differently that way. Instead of a victim, I go, "Well, if I chose this on
some level, I might as well make the best of it." I think that we have come here to
to experience love at its depth. I think that for me, you know, love is the essence of spirit. And that that energy,
that essence is what you see in a newborn child's eyes. It's what you see in the first time that you know you're
falling in love with someone. You know, why am I here? I am to awaken. I am here
to awaken to my potential, to my possibilities. And the truth is for me I'm here I believe to awaken to my own
divinity to awaken to my own connection or even merging with the divine. That
means that Joe Vitali as his personality is is here to dissolve into God. You
think that who you are is only this body only your identities then you live in a
world of duality. You live in a world of separation. You don't feel in your heart that you're one with everything.
You're not here to create something outside of you. You're here to find who
you are and express that outside of you. The great spiritual teachers are all
saying that you are behind your ego. What I try to teach people is that you are not your thoughts, you are not your
feelings, you're not even your body. You're behind all of that. My favorite phrase to use is that the whiteboard is
the essence of who you are. So if you imagine a whiteboard, there's nothing there. It is white. And we start to
write things on it. We write down my name is Joe. We write down I am an author. We write down I am bald. I write
down, you know, my size, my weight. I write down the things I like. I play guitar. I like cigars. I write all of this stuff. That's all ego stuff that's
helping me get through my day. I'm having fun with that. That is wonderful. But what's more important and who I
really am is the whiteboard.
There's only one reason to be here and that's to be all the way here. to be
just here. That's why we're here.
It seems apparent that you are part of something much bigger than just your skin suit. You are not your thoughts,
your feelings, or even your body. You are the experiencing of living. Could it
actually be that you are an infinite being that came here to hide your power and pretend to be limited in order to
play the ultimate human game? And if this is true, why don't most people know
about it?
The reason that most people don't realize that it's an illusion or if they've been told it or they've read it
somewhere and it kind of resonates with them or they think it's crazy or whatever it is, they don't allow themselves to really get it or have a
direct experience of it is because they weren't meant to.
We want it to be real. And we want it to be real because we want to be real.
There can't be a separated me without a world. They both are dependent
upon one another. So we don't want to hear it that we really really are
imagined. We've imagined ourselves by the design. We are supposed to forget
that because they don't want to hear that this I'm an illusion. This is an
illusion. We're in a dream. It's no surprise that people run away from it.
So what? So what if it is an illusion? We still experience being here and have to deal with daily life and it seems
very real. At this point, something within us told us this was true. This idea resonated with each of us. It
didn't make sense to our rational minds, and we weren't sure what to do about it. So, we kept asking questions.
On one level, we know that it's it's not
um real, but it doesn't do any good to say it's not real.
The response is the loving thing to do. What is the loving thing to do? Who we really are beings overflowing with love
and appreciation for ourselves and everything. So you don't all of a sudden become cold or insensitive or not care
about people, but it does shift your perspective in other ways. When you expand to the point that you get the
truth of what's really going on, you know it's an illusion. You know you're making it up. You know it's a game. And you know it's ultimately to play and
have fun. Um you look at things differently, but you still participate and you take the actions that you feel
motivated and inspired to take in your day-to-day life. It doesn't mean when you awaken to the actuality of what is
that you stop feeling. You are in duality. You are having an experiencing
of living. You just don't resist it anymore. You ride you ride the waves up
and down as life takes you. And in many ways, you get to experience life much much more fully.
Well, if you know that everything is an illusion and you see somebody that's struggling or you have a kid that's
struggling, you're just going to kind of say, "Oh, it's just an illusion. I don't need to do anything. They're not real. They're not whatever." That's not the
way the game is. You know, when you're in a movie theater watching a movie, you don't just say, "Ah, that's not real.
That's not happening." You believe it's happening. You get immersed in the story. And when you're living your life,
even if you know it's an illusion, you're still interacting. You're still an aggressive participant. If my son
fell tomorrow and cut his leg and it was bleeding, I wouldn't just sit there and say, "Well, that's not real. You can
just bleed. We don't need to do anything." We'd go clean it up. We'd go put a band-aid on it. If I passed
somebody in the street that was in a car accident and they were bleeding or I saw a car accident, I wouldn't just say,
"Ah, that's not real. Too bad. I don't have to do I would call the police or whatever it is if it wasn't already
being handled." But that's part of the game, you know? You're in the game. You're in the illusion. It's made to appear real. And so you play the game.
It's not good enough just to say none of this is real. This is all an illusion. Because the fact is you have made it very real. And your experience
regardless of what you say with your mouth is that this is real. And and you don't get out of that by just denying
it. You get out of it by embracing it fully. You get out you get out of the illusion by wrapping your arms around
the illusion and loving it with with every bit of energy you have. I have two small children in my
illusion. On one level, they may be illusions, but they're illusions I'm very inspired to treat as real.
Discovering the nature of this reality has not made me numb to the love I feel for these creations. It's actually
enhanced my appreciation of everything I experience here. My perspective on reality has changed. But as James
Twimman said, you get out of the illusion by embracing it.
And this question of whether we need to do anything to wake up
is paradoxical because ultimately no. It's the it's the letting go of all
doing that allows you to wake up. It's the letting go of holding on to whatever you
think you should be, how you should be, where you should be going, what higher states are about. Letting go of
everything. There comes that complete ease and relief that we're looking for. I think that's what so many teachers are
pointing towards. And letting go is in just about every spiritual tradition. Whether you see it as forgiveness,
surrender, non-attachment, it's all about releasing, letting go. Cuz the
holding on is what we're doing. The letting go is an undoing of holding on.
It's a releasing. So it isn't a doing. And yet this is
where the paradox is. There's a lot of things you can do which may help you do
the not doing. The one thing that we need to do is change our minds. We don't need to do
anything out there. We don't need to change behavior. We don't need to fix
other people. We do need to change our minds.
Even the crucifixion is the clue. The crucifixion says nothing you can do physically with your hands can help you
realize what is true. So hammer them down. Nowhere you can go with these
feet. No sacred sight machu anything will help you know what's true. Might as well hammer them down. Okay. Now, now
you start to have that experience. Be with what's happening with you in the moment. And while you sit in there, the
heat of your emotional body is going to come up. The the fear, anger, and grief that you have been running away from by
your doings and by your going into different places, these will come up. And as if you when you allow yourself to
sit in this, it will awaken your feeling capacity to the point that you can realize what you are and where you are.
That heaven is now that you already died. People go that this is death,
right? This is not death. It's a physical shift of the experience.
No, there isn't a world to save. What you want to save is what you're experiencing within yourself. And again,
when you change the internal state within yourself, the outside starts to change. There is a great benefit from
trying to make a difference in the world. But that difference doesn't come from the outer prompting. It comes from the inner prompings. You want to pay
attention to what's going on inside of you. When you feel inspired to do something that looks like it's making a
difference in the world, it's making a difference in your world, you're doing it from the inside. For me, I want to
pay attention to the divine's inspirations, the divine's uh nudgings from within me to do something. I don't
want it to come from the media. I don't want it to come from other people. I don't want it to come from other egos. I don't want it come to come from my own
ego. I want it to come from the divine. When I act from that internal state, then I start to change the world. The
world is totally fine the way it is, but we will grow and see more spirituality within it as we awaken within us. Cuz I
don't think the world needs saving. I I really feel like the world is doing fine. I I think that it's us that we
need to put our attention on shifting and changing the way in which we think and the way in which we look at things.
Is there anything that we really need to do in our lives? Do we need to save the world? Here's the interesting thing and
it's very difficult for a lot of people to accept especially if they're very involved in save the planet or solve
this problem or correct this deficiency or whatever it is games and what we call the physical universe and all the
invisible aspects of it like chakras and everything else. I call that the physical universe. It's just a playing
field on which people are playing all kinds of very sophisticated games. None of it's real. None of it's really
happening. It's all just games. So everything that you see around you, everything you see in the news, it's all
just a story that you're making up in your mind, it's an illusion that you're creating and convincing yourself it's
real. So no matter what the problem is, no matter what the problem with the world is that needs to be saved or
corrected or fixed, it's just a game. So, if it would be fun for you to play that game and solve that problem, you
know, solve the global warming problem, solve the pollution problem, uh, make recycling, you know, a mainstream thing,
all these kinds of things, solar energy, whatever it might be. If it'll be fun for you to play that game, you can play
the game for the pure fun of it. But is there a real problem that needs to be corrected? Is there anything that must
be done in the world or else some terrible, tragic, whatever? No. It's all made up. It's all stories. It's all
games and you can go there if you want, but you don't need to and there's no problem. And the really interesting
thing is I remember reading an article when I was a kid. The significance that it had on me was it was kind of tracing
things back throughout history. And there were all these times in history where there were these really serious problems and everybody was worried that
if we don't fix this da da da, something terrible is going to happen. And then just as mankind, so to speak, was like
just pushed to the brink where that thing was about to happen, all of a sudden somebody popped out and solved the problem. You know, the disaster
never happened.
Another
way to consider your reality is much like a video game. Is there anything the character in the game needs to do? Not
really. If it's fun for him to feel trapped and limited, he can do this. But who is the character in the game really?
The video game is such a great analogy. Consider you create a video game. You
build the screen, the computer, and write every line of code that makes the game come to life. Marveling in your
creation, you move the character around in this virtual world and you think to yourself, "I wonder what it would be
like to experience life as the video game character." We'll call that character Martin. The next thing you
know, your awareness shifts and you are Martin in a 3D hologram. And to make it
seem much more real, you choose to forget that you're also the programmer who created Martin and the whole game
itself. Now, inside the game, you're experiencing life as Martin, and you've
gotten so wrapped up in it that you actually think Martin's reality is reality. As the player in the game, this
allows you to have a huge array of experiences that aren't possible outside the video game. Perhaps this analogy
gives you some insight into your own life and what's really going on here. The interesting thing was that in our
own lives, we found we were often having experiences that didn't seem like fun.
People tend to suffer when they resist the actuality of what is. We are here to experience duality. The ups and downs,
the joys, the sorrows, the pains, the pleasures. And for those who don't understand that, it's a lot like
resisting the weather. You get sunny days, you get cloudy days, you get thunder and lightning and rain. And you
can resist them, but all you will do is suffer cuz it's not going to change the actuality of what is
question is why do we believe in suffering
and then we project it and see it out in the world.
So the the suffering that we see out there again is the suffering in my mind.
A mind that's split in two that has two different thought systems in it is in
conflict all the time. And the way it looks when you look out there is
sickness, pain, suffering and death. We suffer because of ignorance. We
suffer because we don't know our connection to the one. We suffer because
we don't know the connection that we have to that presence within ourselves.
It's not out there. It's in my mind. That's the effect. The cause is in my
mind. I don't know why people suffer, but I have seen the gift of adversity.
Uh I often ask people in my seminars, please show me your hands if you've
experienced physical, emotional, or mental pain in your life. Of course, everybody kind of chuckles because it's
a rhetorical question. Everybody raises their hand. And I asked them, would it be true to say you're a little bit
stronger, a little bit wiser, and maybe even more compassionate and have a
better sense of perspective having gone through that pain? And everybody nods, "Yeah, that's true. I haven't seen
anybody shaking their head yet. I think it's in the challenges of life that temper our spirit that forge our
character. A large amount of our suffering is our own creation
which comes from the fact that we interpret something in a way that makes us feel bad. I draw a distinction
between pain and suffering. For example, if I hurt my finger, I may feel pain. Whether or not I suffer over it is a
question of how I interpret it. Another simple example I often use, you know, stuck in a traffic jam. We may suffer,
we may feel a lot of stress, etc. Someone else could be sitting in exactly the same traffic jam saying this is the
least stressful part of driving. You have exactly the same situation. One person suffering, another person not
suffering. It's nothing to do with the situation. It's to do with the way inter we interpret it.
But suffering happens when the mind resists what is teacher Byron Katy uh is very articulate
in this talking about the law of surrender and the law of acceptance. Learning to take life as it is. And when
we can learn to do that and make it over our way and learn to flow with life, swim with the current of the river, we
suffer less. But whenever we go into this shouldn't be that way people should be different
and resist what happens that's when we start to suffer mentally
we stop saying is God punishing me was I a bad person why is this happening to me
we go this happened I roll up my sleeves and move on with life which is more empowering wish I hadn't lost my job or
I lost my job what will I do Ignorance
of the way life is is what ultimately creates suffering for us. Well, if you
talk to a lot of people, they would say that there's a lot of suffering in the world. And a lot of people are poor and they're suffering and there's illness
and they're suffering with this or they're suffering with that. And if who you really are is an infinite god-like
being with more power, wisdom, and abundance, and joyfulness, and ease than
you can possibly imagine. And that's who you start out as. And you're going to convince yourself you're the opposite of
that. You have to create the illusion of suffering because who you really are doesn't
suffer, can't suffer, and you expand to a certain point back into who you really are. None of these things exist because
you start just experiencing joyfulness or pleasure, happiness, peace, whatever you want to call it, all the time, no
matter what's going on. And you see the illusion of it. And that illusion gets collapsed and you begin to live more and
more and more and more in your natural state, which is joyfulness no matter what.
For the longest time when I looked out and I can see TV shows, newspapers, the
media, uh neighbors, friends, family suffering, I would feel that and say, "Boy, there is a lot of suffering in the
world." But then as I've grown into a new perspective, a new awareness, I've
looked and see that that suffering I've noticed is actually in me. I'm
experiencing and projecting suffering. I'm imagining that they're suffering. It's quite possible that the people who
are complaining out there that I thought were suffering are actually enjoying their drama but I was perceiving it as
suffering. So what I have to do is look within myself and the suffering is there. When I disconnect that then I see
peace. I see people having fun with their drama. Even though they may not call it fun, they're having fun on one
level. Most likely on an unconscious level but that's all because we still need to awaken, myself included.
Our experience has been that the world is an illusion and when you resist your true nature, you will experience
discomfort. But once you expand into a place where you get beyond the intellectual and have a direct
experience of who you truly are, you're able to zoom out and watch the events of your life unfold with less and less
attachment. Is it an easy process? It hasn't always been for us. But the more we wake up to who and what we truly are,
the easier it gets and the more joy and peace just seems to show up. If we're something much greater than
what we've related to all these years, what about the you we used to think we were?
Identifying with mind, body, emotions, personality, and circumstance as who you
are is ego. Uh it's kind of like an individual idea.
What would it be like if I went off and tried this on my own? That eye is the
ego. That eye that thinks that it has a personal identity, you know, changed everything because before that you had
just perfect oneness. When you see through the illusion of conscious will, the ego
basically dissolves as you become the everythingness of your experiencing. The ego will always
want to understand before it thinks that it can change what it understands. And yet that is in itself what becomes
one of the greatest blocks for for our ever changing because the ego wants to understand what it has made up which
isn't true. You think that everything is separate. That's where your ego will kick in.
That's where you'll be living as your thoughts. Your ego is fear driven.
Well for me the ego is a safety device. The ego is our persona that helps us get
through the day, but it's serving you. It's helping you survive. It's helping us get some things done.
Oh, the ego, you know, edging God out. Um, the ego
really I I really think that the ego gets birthed out of a um uh thinking it has a
job and the job is to protect us. The job is to take care of us. But it's so
enscconced in separation and fear and doubt that it starts guiding us down
these paths where we're blinded. I mean, it's really interesting to me that we walk down streets and refuse to look in
the eyes of another human. But that's ego stuff saying, "Oh, they're dressed that way. Don't look at them. They they're that color. Don't look at them.
They're, you know, they're they've got this strange kind of vibration. I mean, it's like that's all ego stuff that that
doesn't let us know that every single human being wants the same thing. We want to love and be loved and we want to
be safe and secure and we want food for ourselves and for our children. We want to live in harmony. So, what would stop
us from remembering that when we see other people, that's the ego cuz it's
going, "Oh, no, you I need to keep you safe from whatever." But it's not true.
Ah, the ego, the internal brain chatter. With this mischievous little thing running in the background, can we ever
find happiness in life?
Can we find happiness in this world? My message, my biggest, most passionate,
heartfelt message is absolutely yes. It's right here. It's right here in this
moment. I and so many other people have chased happiness. We thought it was going to be in the the next book, the
next business deal, the next uh the rush of income, the next car, the next relationship, the next house. I mean, on
the just keep just keep saying whatever it is that you want and it chases you down the road because you think when I
get that I will be happy. It's the grand illusion. As soon as you get it, you're happy for a nancond. Then you go, what's
the next car? What's the next house? What's the next relationship? and you're running down the road again.
Happiness is here where you are, as you are, who you are.
I once was a complete devotee of happiness. Uh, I wrote much about it in way of the
peaceful warrior because I saw that so many of us pick symbols of happiness. Oh, if I only
graduate from college, I'll be happy. Well, college graduates find out that's not true. Maybe for a little while. If
only I find my soulmate. If only I have children.
You know, if only I had children, I'd be happy. If only I didn't have children, I'd be happy. If only I made more money
and had a great career. All these things, but what life teaches
us as we experience these things is none of them make us happy stably. We have moments of happiness, moments of
sadness. Emotions pass like the weather. Sometimes this, sometimes that.
But I used to think happiness was the key because all those things we thought we needed and wanted really represented
happiness. All we really wanted to be was happy. Cuz if you're happy, who cares if you live in a hub somewhere?
So I thought that was the key to everything. Find a way to be happy. That's what my mother told me.
We can't find happiness in the world by looking for happiness
where it can't be found. Um we never find it.
Um, if we seek for happiness in an illusion, which the world is an
illusion, then what we'll have is an illusion of happiness every moment.
I I think to just look around us, to
look in the eyes of another human being, to look at the the sun, to look at the trees, the animals, I mean, it's
everywhere. It's everywhere. the miraculous nature of of the divine. And
yeah, you see that it cannot help but bring you joy. Is the happiness that
comes when you know none of this is real. None of this can affect you and
that you're you're free. The mind is free. And when the mind is free, it will return naturally to its home.
So now we know happiness is all around us. It's been said that looking for happiness is like a fish in a lake
looking for water. When we discover who and what we truly are, we're flooded with joy. People spend their entire
lives searching for what will make them complete. If you ask almost any parent on this planet, myself included, what is
the number one thing they want for their children, they almost always reply with, I just want my children to be happy.
Each of us is someone's child. So, you've heard a lot of people from numerous philosophical backgrounds
talking about the nature of reality. Right now, you're most likely in one of three places. You could be thinking,
"These people are crazy. How do I turn this thing off?" For some of you, it resonates, but you're not sure why it
matters in your daily life. While others may be thinking to yourself, I know this is true. I've always known it to be
true. Regardless of where you might be at this point, let's take a look at how you can benefit from these ideas.
So many people will ask me and they'll say, "So what? So now I know. Great. How does this actually benefit me? Now that
I know it's an illusion, what can I do about it?" Well, the first part is that at least you have some awareness. you're
you're awake. And once you now have that awareness and you're awake, it's very hard to go back to being ignorant. Of
course, we say ignorance is bliss. And believe me, there are times when I wish I didn't know any of this stuff so I could go back and say, you know what, I
really am just victim of the world and it's all because of them that this is happening. But the truth is, it's because of me. The benefits of seeing
life as an illusion or the world as an illusion is that you don't take it seriously anymore. And when you know
that, then you're free. Feel the peace that comes without the need to judge
anything but just to be.
It's it is not more complicated than that. That is how the business of
awakening occurs. When you see through what is not, when you see through the illusions of of most of humanity, you
are then free to fully be the experiencing of living. When you start to enjoy this unwinding chain of cause
and effect instead of resisting one side of it, um life is a lot more interesting. like the literal fact that
the camera that we were supposed to do this shoot with was stolen yesterday. When you guys woke up in the morning and
the camera was gone, nobody actually freaked. It was very interesting. Everybody just was on to the next thing,
borrowing a camera, finding a new place to do the shoot. We end up doing the shoot here, which has turned out
wonderfully well. And when you don't resist it, life is a lot more enjoyable because it it's the everythingness of
what you are all the time. Benefits are first of all, you get the very thing that you're looking for. You get
happiness. You want to be happy. You're searching for happiness. You take on the belief you are now happy. The other
thing that happens is that when you're in this moment, you realize the miracle of this moment. This moment is an
astonishing miracle. I used to not know that. I used to not believe that. And I sometimes still forget that. But when I
realize that, oh my god, this is it. This is it. I I'm chilled right now. I
got electric shocks going up and down my body because I'm realizing this is the moment of bliss. This is the moment I've
been waiting for. When you start realizing that, you are living a life of uh awe and wonder. Your life takes on
this degree of miraculous quality that is almost indescribably delicious. you
enjoy life more when this happens. Now, a lot of people think it's about giving up uh things in this world. I contend
that you can enjoy this world more, not less. And I know that it's good for me.
Uh that's why you should do it unless you know you just want to stay separate and and miserable and depressed and die.
When you see the world as an illusion or when you see the form or when you understand or experience the form
outside of you to be formless, then the world outside of you is not
determining how you feel. For most people, the world outside of them is determining how they feel every day.
True freedom is when you're free from that and you can live the life that you love to live. And you expand to the
point that you have absolute certainty which nobody can identify with by
thinking their way there. This is a place that you have to expand to and have a direct experience of. When you
have a direct experience of that, it is the most amazing, extraordinary, freeing, joyful, I call it creative
ecstasy place that you could possibly live. So why would you want to go there? Because to use very limited language,
fun beyond your wildest imagination is there. When you get to the point that you have absolute certainty of what's
really going on and that you're creating it all and can create anything for the pure fun of playing, no limits or
restrictions, that's beyond anybody's wildest imagination of what they could do while playing this human game kind of
a thing. And to me, there is no better game in town. Just to use the word better. You know, I said before there's
no judgment to this, but I preferred that game is an awesome game to be able to play.
We've discovered this is an empowering context to live your life from. Is it the truth? Our own direct experiences
have shown us that it is. Now that you have this information, you get to choose
your truth for yourself. A pretty simple question, actually.
Do you want to be free? Do you want to experience nothing but love?
You don't have to consider whether it's possible or impossible. You just have to
decide whether or not you want it.
And that's a far more difficult decision than you now can recognize.
But if you do, once you make that decision, there is nothing that can
prevent that from coming to your awareness. Nothing.
Most of us are like children when a parent's trying to wake them to go to school, to get up for their day, and
they just want to sleep a little more. Most of us human beings want to sleep just a little more. Please don't wake me
yet. To know that there is another option here. And to know that none of this is
real is an extraordinary release. We're playing this fool's game. We stay
in drama. We stay unhappy. We don't get the results that we want. We don't get the happiness that we want. We have to
look past all of that and go to what's real, which for me, the whiteboard, divinity, God, the universe, that
source. You can choose to say with your mind today, tomorrow, all you want that the world is an illusion. And it is. But
really, what's most important is that you live the reality of who you are. And
when you do that, then the illusion that you perceive wherever you go just falls away and you're left with an experience
that the world will never understand. The experience of who you really are. There is absolutely nothing I can
convince you of to be true here. There's nothing I can tell you or teach you
because this that we're talking about here
can't be understood by the mind. It can't you can't convince the mind of it. You can't make an argument for it that
will somehow come out to, oh yeah, that's that that sounds right. No, it won't sound right. It'll sound off and
you'll have all kinds of excuses and arguments about why it couldn't possibly
be true or work in your life. But just to listen
and to see if something strikes a chord as being true.
If something is recognized, reccognize.
It means you've already cognized it. You've already seen it. You've already known it. I'm just reminding you.
Things like this movie are really meant to be just another tool to keep reminding us of our truth, that we're
whole, that we're complete, that we're loved. Your experience is the truth while you're taking someone else's
experience. For example, that's why they say if if you meet Buddha on the road, shoot him. Because if you meet Buddha,
he's he's so radiant. You want to have his experience. Then who's going to have yours? It's only through our own
experience. What the mental body does is it wants to find someone else's experience, someone else's model,
someone else's system and then that causes the schizophrenia that we're living in at the moment in humanity of I
have my experience which is going on in this moment and then I have an experience which is given to me by
someone else by an out authority that is told that I'm told whether it's a religion or politics or a science or
quantum physics or whatever anyone's story is cuz these are just stories about the vibrational You know, Jesus
told a fantastic story, right? Buddha told a fantastic story. Um, uh, Muhammad
told a great story. Einstein told a great story, right? These, we're just all telling stories. No, but the best
story that you can tell is the one that comes out of your experience. If you tell that story related to what's
unfolding with you, and then you may