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, our memory is not so different than our imagination as it’s widely understood that our 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. Complete 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.

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. Crumpling 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 our 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-judgemental 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”, “could haves.” Now is not always “happy” and it’s not supposed to be. Just like you’re not supposed to just 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.

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.

I originally created this blog to provide value to those who have and haven’t read Robert Scheinfeld’s book and I believe that will still hold true, but this intention was misappropriately applied. The result ended up being watered-down articles that intentionally withheld information about the busting loose process in effort to cater to a wider audience that may see Scheinfeld’s assertions as too radical.

Quickly, doing this froze up my own creative process, since I found myself marginalizing the very real and very important Phase 2 journey into it’s own insulated category, scarcely referencing this inherently interconnected sequence of realizations in other articles and thus rendering all other advice to be useless, especially for those looking for more information about busting loose.

This is like reading a book to a classroom while intentionally not reading every fourth page and expecting those in the class to understand the story and receive value from it.

So from now on the focus of this blog will be the Phase 2 Journey, practical applications of the process, and every effort to help others bust loose while doing so myself. The subjects will still be as – if not more – wide ranging.

This is very exciting. In doing this I’ve busted loose from own writing game, and it is my intention that you will receive genuine value from all articles to come.

The Law of Attraction is not complicated. It doesn’t take an entire book to understand. Put simply it is the fact that like things attract each other. The things relevant to us are thoughts, emotions, people, and events. Yet the repercussions of this claim are great. First of all, it presupposes that we create our reality. We are in some way responsible for what happens to us. And furthermore, that we have some degree of control over what manifests in our lives. For instance, if we think about a new car and feel the emotion of having the car, that it will manifest in our reality. Most importantly, this philosophy rests on the idea that it is a fundamental principle of how the universe works, like gravity, or photosynthesis.

These three ideas alone, based on four simple words are the foundation of thousands of books, websites, coaches, conversations, and just a couple movies. This is a modern day gold rush, a mad frenzy to understand, practice, and capitalize on a resource. But instead of exchanging gold, we are exchanging information. And instead of moving out west, we are all attempting to move up in consciousness. For everyone who does this, I commend you. And it is not my intention to deter you from your spiritual journey. My intention is to put the Law of Attraction in it’s proper context. In truth, it’s a piece that is often mistaken for the whole.

If this was the whole truth, we’d all be having the time of our lives. We’d hear these words, do a bit of visualizing, intending, wake up, and suddenly walk from our normal humdrum lives through a portal to a living dream world. That’s certainly what I believed would happen when I came across this. But just because there is a law of gravity, it doesn’t mean we can fly.

In reality (mine anyways) the Law of Attraction is the most gorgeous, juiciest red herring this world has ever seen. But it’s no one’s fault. The Law isn’t trying to put one over on you. The Law is, just as you are. It’s simply a step on the path some must walk. But it’s merely a scaffolding around true consciousness. The fact is, if you were enlightened you could read a phone book and experience nirvana.

So Why the Confusion?

Most people aren’t born with an inherent understanding of the law of attraction. Just like any set of beliefs we must learn and adopt them. And usually they aren’t the first beliefs to be adopted. Parents and society reinforce common spiritual beliefs like one god, multiple gods, gods of nature, gaia-type lifeforces, enlightened men-deities, irreducible and indescribable concepts like the Tao, ghosts, reincarnation, karma, and no spiritual realm whatsoever. Some will move between multiples of these beliefs before they arrive at the Law of Attraction.

My path was in order: atheism, Christianity, spiritual-non-religious, Law of Attraction, Vedantic Hinduism (total mind-trip), and now I’ve arrived at something altogether different and deeper: a philisophical and spiritual unification. This is also not considering my dabblings in Ninjitsu, Zen Buddhism, Taoism, and Feng-Shui which were sort of somewhere between Law of Attraction and Vedantic Hinduism.

All of these have something in common. Be they religions or philosophies they must have a set of beliefs which are usually contained in some sort of sacred text whether they are written or oral. Whether you subscribe to the Bible or the Tao-Te-Ching, Vision Quests or Think and Grow rich It is understood that you must follow the principles, paths, commandments, and rituals in order to get the results you desire. If you want to go to heaven, achieve nirvana, go to shangri-la, become enlightened, or be financially free you must not deter from the rule books of your faith, lest you face harsh consequences.

Even the most wishy washy religions and philosophy atleast decree that if you do not embrace their viewpoint then you will not receive their rewards. Atheists don’t get away from this either. If they don’t live in a spiritual world with rules, they live in am material one with rules. The Constitution is another such rulebook, forcing all who live in America to obey the laws of society or recieve punishment. I’m not arguing that any of the above rules are bad, or practicing them hurts your life or makes you a horrible person. I’m also not arguing that they don’t add something significant to lives of those who practice them, and in some cases are necessary for us to coexist. But it’s evident that no matter who you are, you approach spirituality from a cause and effect mindset. It’s simply how you are wired, conditioned, and raised.

Enter the Law of Attraction. You digest the information. It rings true in your soul. You think, wow, there is so much more to this world. For the first time, you may experience a feeling of power or control over your destiny. You are swimming. You feel blessed. You feel a true connection with god or the universe. You are a follower. And after this temporary high, the followers are divided into two categories: Those for whom the philosophy works and for those whom it doesn’t. And this happens for a very specific reason.

Those who succeed would have succeeded just the same without it. They’re like someone who’s born wealthy opening a successful business. It didn’t really matter. They would have been rich anyway. These folks are the one’s who go on to sell the books, coaching programs, audio tapes, seminars, and LOA Hats (ok I made that one up.)

Those who don’t succeed usually work with it for awhile. After all, it grants them more freedom than any dusty old religion. Or maybe it’s a fantastic addition to their current faith. Perhaps they try out different methods or interpretations of the Law. They meditate, affirm, emote, and try with the force of birthing to believe that it is working. Maybe they didn’t follow the rules well enough, they think. Once they scrutinize, memorize, and internalize every facet of the manifestational process, they wait. Maybe I just need to allow it more, they think. Maybe I don’t really want what I think I want. After all, if this is the Law, then I should have what I want. They may stay here their entire lives. Or they may give it up, concluding that it’s a bunch of self help nonsense.

The former tend to become the evangelical Law of Attraction types. These are the ones that shift all of their energy towards polarizing their thought process. Think positive! All you have to do is think positive, and the rest will take care of itself. This is probably true, except for the undeniable fact that to be human is to experience a wide range of emotions, including negative. Yet they surround themselves with fellow yes-men, false optimism, and zealous discipline. They may also have completely incongruous vices or some other negative outlet that they tend to gloss over. For them negativity is as sacraligious as a false idol is to a Christian.

The latter go back into the roiling soup of humanity, lost amidst a thousand and one opinions on how to live. Maybe the media takes them in, teaches them to fear the world and buy things to be happy. Maybe they find something else that works well enough. It’s not their dream, but they live on. This is the harsh truth. One more mirror in the great hall of mirrors in our world. This is not ad copy. This is not a sales pitch. This is the trap of the Law of Attraction.

Where do we go From Here?

Let’s return to that emotion you felt when you watched “The Secret” The one that made you light, made you feel somehow more connected, like there was more going on in this world. That felt so real. Or maybe you’ve heard God speak to you. Or maybe you sat in nature and were completely at peace. Or maybe you read a passage and had a revelation. That felt real. It was. While we were busy rushing around and mining for gold, we missed the gold of the grass and the streams. We missed the gold that lined our doorsteps and that covered us while we slept. But most of all, we missed the gold that was in our hearts.

This certainly sounds like something you’ve heard before. The best things in life are free. Live in the now. You are perfect as you are. If it were me and I had just run the gamut of all things Law of Attraction I would take that answer as a cop out. And if I were to end the article here, it would be. But I’m here to tell you why it’s not and what to do about it.

If you fit the description of any of the believers that I have mentioned, then you have made one glaring miscalculation. You placed the answer outside yourself. Because of our hard material interpretation of reality including the sensation of the passage of time, we tend to see things in cause and effect relationships. If we are desiring enlightenment from this perspective then we subconsciously believe that we must seek it. Seek and ye shall find, we think. The problem is that, by decree of the Law of Attraction, seeking attracts more seeking. We hold a carrot in front of ourselves without knowing it and go on a wild goose chase indefinitely unless we shift our very being from seeking to knowing.

This line of thought seems slippery because how do we quantify, measure, or exact a state of knowing? If I don’t know how to drive a car, I’ll crash it if I try. If I don’t know what it’s like to experience oneness then I’ll sit squinting my eyes while reciting chants until the sun comes up. I’ll let you in on the real secret. Every one of us has an immediate path to knowing. It’s free. You don’t need a thing besides a desire to access it. This is why some people are just successful,  why the Law of Attraction seems to work unquestionably for some, and why people who never gave a damn about spirituality can achieve their dreams and change the world. And the lack of this understanding is why when people who “are in the know” try to explain it to people who aren’t, it’s as indescribable as the feeling of being in love. You just know, they say. Exactly.

What do they know?  The truth, with a capital T. Not the truth of the JFK assassination or whether aliens are real. Their truth, the place of understanding that holds their purpose, their happiness, and their wondrous life in waiting. Once entered, flowing through them will be the force which fosters ideas and passions that resonate with their soul, organizes a congruent life to match, and opens the doorway into the higher consciousness only touched by few. The Law of Attraction does work, but how well does a magnet work when it’s covered in dirt? The dirt is your buried truth, waiting to be uncovered.

In my article Quantum Physics, Your Friends, and the Truth I argued that the way we are all infinite creators is that we’re living in different dimensions and our realities are overlapping. If this is true, then each of us has our own core set of beliefs (or rules) for acheiving an abundant and extraordinary life. This is why I can only show you the door. But the path to the door is the same for all of us.

If this has resonated with you, then maybe some of the dirt has been cleared away, and you can see pieces of the truth glinting through. In your own time, ask yourself “Is this my truth?” Ask it about your life, your health, your relationships, your home, anything and everything. After all, you alone are responsible for your reality. Write it, ask it, confide in someone you trust. Ask yourself to reveal the truth. Make a commitment to be aware of the truth. Seek it in yourself, and you will find it.

When you find yourself thinking, or rationalizing. See if it resonates. If you feel it in your soul that what you are doing is what you are meant to be doing, than this is your truth. If not, then you were meant for something better. It may happen slowly. It may happen fast. You may be hesitant to let go of the things that obligate but not resonate. But your higher self has waited for this moment and once you make the conscious decision to know your truth, you will be assaulted with insights, people, and experiences that wash away the dirt. All tailored specifically for you and your journey into abundance of every kind.

However, once you know, you can never go back to your days of blaming, settling, hoping, or wishing. You have been welcomed. May the truth set you free.

As I’ve already stated, it’s almost impossible to explain, so I’m not going to venture to try right now, but I do want to use quantum physics to show just how interdimensional our reality is, how it unifies many opposing theories, and how you can better understand your friends.

Big Brother is Watching…Sort of

The perplexing nature of quantum physics is based on one simple (and scientifically proven) fact. By observing something, the observer changes that thing. In Back to the Future, Michael J. Fox, merely by observing his parents, changed their entire reality, which became the basis of the rest of the plot.

The end result of this line of thought is that everything is constantly changing in the entire universe, because there is nothing in the universe that is either not observed or not the object of observation. This is a rather outstanding claim, and if you can prove to me any different, then I will change this article, cite your proof, and credit you with being far smarter than me.

But even if I tried to disprove myself with something like black holes, the logic still remains sound.  A black hole is something that bends matter and time, so you could argue that it exists outside the observable universe and that anything observed about it immediately disappears into a singular point in space, or that this being the case, it’s impossible to observe it at all. And I would agree with you. That you can’t observe it with your eyes. But certainly you’ve thought about it, perhaps seen pictures representing it. Your consciousness has extended to it.

And even if you’ve been hiding under a rock and somehow got a computer and the internet in there, something else in the universe has to have considered a black hole existing, and therefore observed it.

Even if before quantum physics existed in human thought a meteor destroyed the earth rendering all known sentient beings dead and devoid of observational ability, at some point a sun must have extended light throughout space to reach the black hole, and thus interacted with it, and thus changed it.

So this means that all of consciousness in the universe is constantly interacting with itself, and never at rest. And since everything is constant flux, then there is infinite possibility to create anything.

In a Rut?

At the most sub-atomic levels, quantum particles can disappear, reappear, or exist in multiple places at once. But what does it matter if don’t have any money or my relationships with my friends’ suck? I’ve never personally seen someone create something out of thin air. So why is it when I try to apply The Law of Attraction it doesn’t work but it works for others? If love is the basis for the universe, why is it that people who are evil can become successful? If we can create anything, then why don’t we?

The root question here is that If reality is so malleable then why does it seem so constant?

A Shared Hallucination

Humans need to categorize and generalize things. It’s simply how we survive and how our brain works. This process is the foundation for how we remember things. For example “that’s not a good bar” vs “three times out of four I haven’t enjoyed the experience of going to this bar for unrelated reasons so though there exists a good probability that I will not enjoy it this time but also a very good probability that I will.” This idea extends to the foundation of language, thought, observation of the world, learning, and even terrible things like racism. As we get older, we tend to smooth over inconsistencies in life to keep consistent beliefs about reality, especially if those beliefs are tied to our identity.

Cool psychological insight huh? But it extends to our ability as creators as well. Though we may feel like it traps us, there is a fundamental need for consciousness to have a medium with which to communicate with and explore itself (besides oneness). If you tried talking to me, and I tried communicating using only movements from my eyes, we would not have consistent or understandable communication. This is a funny example of lack of solid medium, but what if I needed something like water, and I’d been paralyzed from a fall, only able to use my eyes?

Our senses, for the most part, form this shared medium of communication. Of course if we’re standing in the same room, we can see each other, hear our words, maybe touch each other’s skin. And for the most part, language allows us to consistently describe the sensations in mutually understandable words and concepts.

But how am I to really know what the sensation of being you is like? Certainly we have similar characteristics, but this is only my perception according to my senses. If I were to live with your brain for a day, would red still look like red, would trees still look like trees, would touch feel anything like touch as I know it? We can’t ever be certain, but to compensate for this fundamental lack of true knowledge of being the other, we meet halfway. We develop forms of communications, forms of organization like time, space, day, and night, smiles and frowns, societies and rituals. We do this because we must to survive, and it’s in alignment with the ultimate goal of pure consciousness: to fully explore itself.

Reality seems so constant because we create it to seem that way from the very depths of our being. We love gravity, solidity, pain, and limitation, because it allows us to experience the world together. But all it really is, is an illusion. An illusion that we put so much investment into, that it becomes real.

One Creator or Many?

If I create my own reality, then how do other people play into it? This is where the train usually derails. Of course all of this makes sense. And you may even believe in the idea that you are consciousness creating the world as a dreamer creates a dream and lives in it. Or you may believe if you sin, you’ll go to hell. Or you may not believe in a higher power at all. Here is the true reality. All realities are true.

How can this be? Because every one of us is a creator, right? And every one of us has infinite creative potential, right? It’s not like there is a limited supply of manifesting power and it’s divided between all humans like rolling dice for stats in an RPG. So then if I’m creating the belief that I can create my reality, this is true. And if you’re creating the belief that you take the hand you’re dealt and you have no power, than this is true simultaneously.

How can it be one way and a different way at the same time? Quantum physics. It’s not a crutch. By observing something it changes. We are all different observer-creators. We all have exactly the same power to create our reality – infinite. And that’s why he says “she started it” and he says “she started it” and they’re both right.

Each of us lives in our own reality that we shape by interacting with quantum particles. Each of us lives in a different dimension. We don’t think this because we choose not to. We choose to experience a shared medium for expressing ourselves. Why are there so few traffic accidents when there are so many cars? Why do some see a rainbow when others don’t? Why can an innocent person be proven guilty? Why is the Chinese word for crisis also the word for opportunity? Why does the Law of Attraction work for some and not for others?

We are dancing in and out of each others’ quantum realities all the time in the greatest creative whirlpool of imagination that we’ve ever experienced. If you have really taken this to heart, consider this: Go for your dreams. Or listen for your truth. Because all of us are right. All of us have a piece of the truth.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Luckily I have only used these tools for good, and thus even bad trips have been incredible learning experiences. Instead of a Zen Koan, Buddha should have just dropped a couple tabs on those disciples.

General Effects

LSD’s universal effects are a temporary altered state of greater interconnectedness and a feeling of great clarity. The visuals are the most immediately noticeable effect. The best way to describe them is a fractalization of reality. The longer one focuses on an image in their vision, the more complex that image becomes. The image keeps on breaking up into to more and more pieces and the idea keeps being more connective, eventually connecting to all things. Depending on how much acid one takes, vision becomes fluid and merges with consciousness. In fact, fractilazation happens in consciousness exactly parallel to its happening in sight. This will result in a phenomenon like the following:

I see a tree. Immediately the form of the tree starts shifting, barely discernable at first. ”Maybe it’s just the wind… ” Then it continues shifting, possibly becoming more expansive in my vision, or possibly feeling like it’s composed of a million pieces and a verdant whole at the same time (parallel and paradoxical ideas are par for the course in an acid trip) At the same time thoughts about the tree might flow like, “Wow, that tree is more amazing right now.” “Trees are fantastic and they cover the Earth.” “It’s almost like the Earth is giving love to the sky with the trees.” “This tree has a soul and I can feel it.” At this point I might feel the physical warmth of the tree, especially if I touch it. I might feel my hand merging with the tree and see the world in slow motion. I might see visions of the ancient world where vegetation ruled. “Trees are consciousness just like me, but they exist in a different time dimensions.” “Maybe other people exist in different time dimensions…” and so on.

All of this is happening without great effort. This is also based on the fact that I have a predisposition to love trees. Your trip would be obviously different, but expansion in vision, clarity, awareness, and your consciousness would be a dominant theme.

The Journey

Once expansion in both realms of vision and thought reaches a critical mass, then the lines between them begin to blur. You start to not know if you’re seeing what you’re thinking or if you’re thinking what you’re seeing. Reality becomes a wondrous feedback loop where every new thought is inspiration and every new vision is enchanting. Similar to the idea of the intelligent field supported by quantum physics, reality becomes malleable moment to moment. But the shift is no longer smoothed over by your conscious mind – the building blocks of our universe seem to lay naked in all their glory.

This feedback loop is intensified and made more glorious with other people. Acid synchronizes minds of those who take it together, where they feel into each other and often talk for long periods of time about the same thing just for the sheer joy of talking about it. Often times simply uttering a word opens a vision and a shared hallucination where they cocreate imaginary worlds and see them with great acuity. This phenomenon is easier in the dark, where pesky reality doesn’t get in the way.

Music too, offers the a similar portal into imagination while at the same time the world exists as music manifested. Everything seems completely perfect, a wondrous multi-dimensional symphony of creation, light, and sound. This is simply a personal observation, but I believe that since we are all one, we all have the capacity to go where I’ve described whether through connectedness or loss of identity, or both.

This pertains to my theory on why some people have bad trips, because they are afraid of the parts of themselves that come out and simultaneously afraid of losing themselves. They are afraid to experience their psyche when projected externally and see the world where they are truly part of the world, as a wave is part of an ocean. When peaking the line between our conscious interpretation of reality and reality itself becomes blurred and easily resembles Alan’ Watts view of the universe. You can see how this could create a nightmare as well as a dreamworld. Yet, this is closest to the state of oneness that I’ve achieved for an extended period of time, and that is the goal of most spiritual quests.

For those of you thinking “Whoa this might be too intense.” Never fear. The very nature of our mind to continue moving across different lines of thinking often leads us back to solid, unchanging reality. This gives the feeling that all of the incredibly mind-bending effects come in waves, when the actual phenomenon is similar to focusing on something in the background with your eyes, thus blurring the foreground and vice versa. The background is sober reality and the foreground is LSD reality in this example. It just happens more gradually, in a span of minutes. Personally, I’ve never felt like I’ve lost myself or had my judgement compromised. There was never a fear of jumping off a cliff because I believed I could fly. This isn’t PCP.

The Journey as Destination

I’ve always had trouble grappling with the idea that we should enjoy the journey of life. I spend so much time not seeing the whole picture, being confused, aggravated, and lost that it’s easy for me to wish to experience oneness all the time. LSD results in a feeling where you’ve already arrived. There is nothing to do except that which brings you utter joy and most things do. Everything is perfect, everything makes perfect sense, and you find yourself laughing at all the little inconsistencies in life.

You see time as you would see the Earth from a plane. The sheer beauty of it is overwhelming. Everything pulses with life and you think what a magnificent being you are to be having this experience. The entire puzzle is revealed, as though life was a hurricane and you finally reached the eye. It’s at this time where the greatest insights may come to you. Where you may deepen a personal relationship with someone, find out things about yourself that were there the whole time but you overlooked them, or receive an answer to a question that prior to this confounded you.

Lynn Grabhorn, in “Excuse me Your Life is Waiting” claims that all we have to do is feel the emotion of having the thing that we desire and it will come to us by universal law. Manifestation is furthermore strengthened by the feeling that our life is complete exactly the way it is. Paradoxically, this allows us to be open to receiving new things.

I’ve always had trouble feeling what it would be like to have something that I don’t have or accept my imperfect reality bereft of objects and emotional states that I desire, but LSD bridges that gap. LSD allows me to be simultaneously completely content with everything I am and everything that has happened in my life, and opens me to a whole new world of experience. It is this state that is widely talked about among practicers of the Law of Attraction and I believe this state of oneness and openness is the precursor to fundamental change in mindset, perspective, and even one’s fortune in life.

The Downside

The two main problems with acid (other than it being illegal and notoriously hard to find) are its temporary effects and it’s forcing of expansive consciousness even when one may not be ready.

I have always used acid as an aid for spiritual understanding. Thus I have used it at crucial points on my journey to investigate the nature of the universe. Lessons I have learned include the vastness of our universe, the incredible force of friendship, the value of self-worth, and even the need for patience and to let life unfold exactly as it will. Before this I was attempting to race ahead of life like someone who attempts to fly beyond the curve of the Earth while it recedes just as fast. I believe that the good of LSD comes when it is used for good, and that it may be detrimental if used for the wrong reasons. I’ve tried it in a host of non spiritual ways from going to the DMV, a job interview, or laying brick. This is as useful as getting drunk and trying to do Calculus.

The main problem, however, is for those who benefit. For those who seek lasting change, this will not grant them that. This will grant them a temporary opportunity to see what enlightenment could be like. The enlightening feelings are deep core sensations. The thoughts that spring out are like plants growing out of the richest dirt. While tripping, it feels like you’ve always known the knowledge that you suddenly have, and that you always will have access to this way of being once it’s over. Though I’ve taken acid quite a few times, I always trick myself into believing this is the end of my journey. Now it all makes sense and life will be a perfect unfolding of my glorious discovery.

This is not what happens. Acid has a slow comedown, so the effect is very subtle at first. But eventually all of these sensations become more dull, and you find yourself reaching for realizations that came like breathing before. The effect is similar to what I imagine Jim Carrey experiences in “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” as his memories of a loved one are slowly erased. It’s like your memory of your connection to your higher self and the source of abundance is slowly erased as hard reality sets in. Eventually your spiritual experience becomes nothing more than a shadow on your thoughts. Your new understanding may stick with you throughout the night, but eventually all will seem back to normal. You find yourself thinking, “force of friendship? self worth? I could have read that in a self help book. What was I on?” But like those who’ve claimed to have heard god speak to them, this experience was real. It really happened.

The only trace that it did happen are the occasional acid flashbacks I experience. These aren’t nearly as crazy or all-encompassing as other experiences I’ve heard about, but they are quite fun. Most often they happen when I look in a mirror, and my face will distort and change shape. I even might look like different people by focusing on different parts of my face. It’s only happened once where this happened while I was looking at someone else. These flashbacks seem to be encouraged by drinking, smoking pot, or both. It’s often when my mind is in some kind of altered state. Usually I think something to the effect of “Woohoo! Free acid!”

It’s not quite addiction, but I’ve found myself at times wanting to return to that Garden of Eden of consciousness.  Wanting to live where I had access to that kind of perspective, like I had the view of one who flies over the land at their leisure and sees only the good, where the sun streaks across the waves in the ocean that gently ebb upon sparkling sands that sweep up against mocha cliffs crowned by great fields of wheat colored grass. In short, where everything is just as it should be.

And maybe it’s a shortcut to where we’re all going, like we’re in line at Space Mountain at Disneyland and we see the rollercoaster through the glass but the wait to get on is still an hour. But like that analogy “real life” seems so empty in comparison. More than anything, LSD has further stoked my burning desire to be in this state all the time without drugs. It’s not an opium high, or a drunken buzz, or a heady bake, or even a coke-addled hyper reality. It’s what true beingness is. It stops cold the treadmill of our stark “do do do” mindset and bursts the walls around us to the world beyond. It’s the “Power of Now” in pill form. I’m fairly convinced that world peace is possible with enough LSD.

But it’s a crutch. It’s a consciousness steroid. Great for a snapshot in time. But for the long haul, I’ll just have to go to the gym of spiritual development.