THE PLAYER MODEL
This is your first opportunity to find out “Who am I not?”
You are not your Infinite I. You are not the one who is choosing the wave frequencies from The Field and creating your experiences.
You are not even infinite. Your body, mind, intellect, and everything associated with them are part of your holographic universe. They aren’t real, much less infinite.
Your Infinite I is the “I Am,” and you are the “I think” part of the equation.
If you can really get this at the beginning of your cocoon stage, your metamorphosis will be so much more fun and easy and enjoyable. However, right now your ego – the false personality you’ve constructed over time – is probably screaming in your ear that this is all bullshit and to close the book quickly and stop listening to this lunatic; because your ego wants you to think you’re something you’re not, something “more,” something “special” that is in fact immortal. That way, as long as “you” never die, it doesn’t have to either. But that’s exactly what needs to happen in the cocoon: you and your ego must die just like the caterpillar.
I realize every religion and every spiritual teaching I’m aware of in the movie theater – including the New Age – preaches that you are really a spiritual being (your “soul”) having a physical experience (in your body). Even Robert Scheinfeld, who was my mentor and fellow scout, said your Infinite I (which he called your “Expanded Self”) is “the sun of who you really are;”1 and if everybody says it, why shouldn’t you believe it?
Because it isn’t true…
…and it is perhaps the greatest error inside the movie theater that prevents all Human Children and Human Adults from becoming butterflies.
As an astronaut on the moon, would you say you were really Mission Control, in charge of the mission?
If you were the right tackle on a football team, would you say you were really the quarterback calling the plays?
If you were a trumpet player in an orchestra, would you say you were really the conductor?
I’m sure you’d like to think you are your consciousness, that you are the “I Am;” but the simple fact you’d like to think you are your consciousness is evidence of which side of the equation you are actually on.
In the end, all that can be known and said to be true is that your Infinite I is the one on the other side of The Field who is creating all your holographic experiences for you, and you are not your Infinite I; and, really, that’s all you need to know.
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What’s the big deal? What’s the problem if we want to think we are our Infinite I’s, the one creating our holographic experiences?
If the astronaut on the moon thought he was Mission Control, what do you think would happen to the mission?
If the right guard on the football team thought he was the quarterback, how many games do you think that team would win?
If the trumpet player in the orchestra thought he was the conductor, what do you think the symphony would sound like?
But more importantly, every moment you spend trying to be your Infinite I is a distraction from the real job you were created to do. Now that you’re in the cocoon, the sooner you can stop trying to be your Infinite I, the more time you will have for finding out who you really are.
Let me use another analogy to make sure I’m being clear about this. If an Infinite I saw the Atlantic Ocean and decided it wanted to go swimming, it might first wonder about the temperature of the water, and then decide to create a big toe on its right foot to test the water before taking the plunge. The job of that big toe would be to have the experience of immersing itself in the water of the Atlantic, and then sending back its feelings to its Infinite I through the feedback connection.
You get the picture. You are the big toe. You are not the whole body, or the brain, or the consciousness. You are the big toe.
If this were the case – if you were the big toe – would you go around telling everyone you were actually the Infinite I? If you truly understood why you were created and your role in relationship to your Infinite I, wouldn’t you be satisfied to do your specific job and do it well, and not try to be more than you are?
But as long as you constantly try to claim you “really are” your Infinite I, can you see you become more of a pain in the ass than a big toe?
Your Infinite I has shown an infinite patience while you have tried to take its job away your entire life, and in the process ignored and denied your actual purpose for existence. But even that wasn’t “wrong,” and worked perfectly for your experiences while in the movie theater. It just won’t work well in the cocoon.
Some of this has to do with the ego, and some with being told by all religions and spiritual teachings we aren’t good enough exactly the way we are, that we’re more than “just” a big toe. If we didn’t feel such shame about who we are, we wouldn’t need anything “better” or “higher” to be or become. When you’re finished with this process in the cocoon, you will know who you really are and be totally satisfied with that and not need to be anything else. “Serenity of being” is what I call it.
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Maybe you don’t believe there is anything other than yourself and your own mind creating all your experiences – nothing “higher,” no soul or spirit or anything like that. Perhaps while in the movie theater you rejected any concept that suggested some “higher power” was at work in your life. Denying the existence of your Infinite I is as much of an error as thinking you are your Infinite I, and in direct conflict with quantum physics and the human brain studies. It may have served you well as a caterpillar, but not any more. However, I don’t blame you or judge you, especially since the “higher power” everyone was trying to convince you existed made no sense in the way they portrayed it. As Philip K. Dick said in his novel, Valis, “The Creator is insane.”
But there is no doubt something (what I am calling the Infinite I) is on the other side of The Field creating you and your holographic experiences. Frankly, it is only your ego that would like you to believe differently, to think you – on this side of The Field – have the power to create anything. You will have a direct experience of this truth in the cocoon, if you can allow yourself to see it.
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If you are not your Infinite I, then what are you? And exactly what’s your relationship to your Infinite I?
The best answer is that you are a “Player” – and so am I – a Player created by your Infinite I to play a game, which it loves to do. (In the next chapter we’ll start talking specifically about the game you’re playing.)
Shakespeare told us over four-hundred years ago: "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players.”2 Maybe we could have paid more attention.
I have suggested, and will suggest often, there are “hints” and “clues” all around us in plain sight about how this holographic universe works. One of them is the computer video games that have become so popular.
If you’ve never played a video game, you should. They can provide some very deep insights along with a lot of fun. I recommend going to Pirates of the Caribbean Online, which is free from Disney and a good example of what I’m talking about.
Most sophisticated video games, like Pirates, begin by creating a Player to represent you in the game. In Pirates, you can create a new Player from scratch, choosing the gender; the shape of the body; the height; the skin tone; all sorts of designs for the face; the shape of the jaw, lips, and cheeks; the eye color, eyebrows, and shape of the eyes; lots of choices for the nose and ears; the hairstyle and color, including a beard and mustache; and then all combinations of clothing. The last thing you do is choose a name for your Player.
I still marvel at this technology! It seems as if you could create an infinite number of variations of Players from all the different choices.
Now go back to Pirates and create another player (they let you create two for free). This time, however, imagine yourself as an Infinite I who wants to play and express itself creatively, and you want to design a player who will be your representative in this adventure, since you can’t go inside the game and play it yourself.
The point is that you – and I – were created by our Infinite I’s and custom-designed the way they wanted us to look, down to the bridge of our noses. They even gave us our names. (For those who might still believe what we were taught in school that our appearance is the sole result of DNA inherited from our parents, I recommend The Biology of Belief by Dr. Bruce Lipton.)
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Am I saying you are totally “separate” from your Infinite I? No, not at all; not any more than a big toe is “separate” from the rest of the body.
A big toe has its separate function, its specific job to do, but it is part of the whole. A big toe, however, would never think it was the whole body. That would be delusion, which is what all Players in the movie theater suffer from.
Instead, a big toe is constantly connected to its body, and happily and willing receives commands from the brain. In the same way, you – as a Player – are constantly connected to your Infinite I; and as soon as you stop trying to be something you’re not, your connection to your Infinite I will get a lot clearer.
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By now you know I like to let you read quotes from other people who are saying essentially the same thing but in different words, to give you another perspective. In this case, I’m going to bypass quantum physics and go instead to metaphysics.
Darryl Anka is a channel, and the entity who supposedly speaks through him is called “Bashar.” Here’s what Bashar has to say on this topic, which I really like even though he uses the term “higher self”….
“Most of you are familiar with the idea that you have a physical consciousness – a personality as a physical being – that you relate to as ‘yourself.’ But then there is this mysterious idea of the ‘higher self.’ Simply put, most of you understand or at least intuit that the so-called ‘higher self’ is … non-physical. Even more simply you could say that there is a vibrational frequency above physical reality – just beyond physical reality – in which resides what you might refer to as a ‘template’ for physical reality or upon which your physical experience is constructed.
“It might surprise you to know, as personality constructs – as physical minds – you do not conceive of any ideas. The personality does not conceive of concepts. It perceives concepts; it does not conceive them…. The ‘higher self’ conceives; the physical brain receives; the personality mind perceives. That’s all it does. Any idea, any inspiration, any imagination ‘you’ have ever had doesn’t come from the physical mind portion of you; it comes from the ‘higher self’ portion of you through the receiver – the brain – and is translated by the brain into a vibration that the physical mind then perceives as a reflected reality.
“This may sound at first somewhat limiting, but in fact it’s very, very freeing, because you can all stop thinking! You can all stop thinking you’re in charge. You can all stop thinking that you have to think of everything. You can all stop thinking you’re the one guiding the ship. You’re not. You are just looking at the road. You’re just experiencing the path….
“The reason you get into trouble, the reason you feel stuck as a physical mind is because you have been taught to believe that the physical mind is the one coming up with all this stuff. And it’s not. So when you try to manipulate it, it doesn’t work, because the physical mind is not designed to create those concepts. It is only designed to perceive the effect of the creation of [your ‘higher self’] through the receiver, the physical brain.
“This allows you to lighten up your load, stop carrying so much baggage, stop trying to do your ‘higher self’s’ job, and just do your own. That’s why so many of you are so tired; it’s because you’re trying to do a job you weren’t designed to do. That’s exhausting! Stop! You were not hired to do that job. Your ‘higher self’ already has that job and it’s working for you perfectly…. Just do the job you were designed to do, which is perceive.”3
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Apparently Bashar, or Darryl, can mix metaphors as well as I can! “You can all stop thinking you’re the one guiding the ship. You’re not. You are just looking at the road. You’re just experiencing the path….” – ship, road, path….
So let me say it this way: You are not the one driving the bus. Your Infinite I “hired” you – created you – to sit in the back of the bus and perceive and react and respond to the scenery as it goes by, and that’s all. But you haven’t done the best possible job at that either, since you’ve spent a lot of time up front trying to take the bus driver’s job away from him.
You do not create the scenery (your holographic experiences); you do not choose which scenery to look at; you do not decide what direction the bus will travel. All those jobs belong to the bus driver, your Infinite I.