Who am I not? You are not the bus driver. You are not the one creating your reality. You – on the same side of The Field as reality itself – have no power to create anything, as a matter of fact.

When you finally surrender and accept this fact, it should actually come as quite a relief. After all, we worked very hard while inside the movie theater to create our reality – a reality we wanted – thinking we did indeed drive the bus and were responsible to decide what direction it took and what scenery we would see; and, of course, it didn’t work. At least we didn’t create a reality we really wanted.

Now we can sit back and relax and enjoy the ride, allowing our Infinite I’s to do the driving and know our only job is to react and respond to the scenery – to the experiences that pop up in front of us. “Go Greyhound, and leave the driving to your Infinite I.”

* * *

A few people, when they first hear this, react angrily – almost violently – to the whole idea, thinking I’m suggesting they are nothing more than a puppet or a slave of their Infinite I, who pulls all the strings and the Player dances accordingly. Nothing could be further from the truth. That, in fact, would defeat the entire purpose of the game the Infinite I has created you to play, which is coming in the next chapter.

In order for the game to work for your Infinite I, you, as a Player, must always be free – must always have free will – not to choose or create which holographic experiences you have, but how you will react and respond to them. In fact, this is why you exist as a Player, to use your free will to choose your reactions and responses, and to experience the feelings associated with those reactions and responses. It’s the feelings the Infinite I wants from you; and if you didn’t have free will to choose your feelings, the whole point of the game would be moot.

So you are far from being a puppet or a slave, manipulated by some Infinite I you can’t see and are not even sure exists. You are an integral Player in the game, performing a valuable and unique service to your Infinite I. Think about it… if your Infinite I has to focus on driving the bus all the time, wouldn’t it make sense it would create a part of itself, a representative of itself, to sit in the back of the bus to be the one who could focus solely on the scenery, and then send the feelings from the reactions and responses to the scenery back to the Infinite I through a strong and constant connection?

Do you think the astronaut on the moon considers itself a puppet or slave of Mission Control? Do you think the right guard on the football team considers itself to be a puppet or slave of the quarterback? Do you think the trumpet player in the orchestra considers itself to be a puppet or slave of the conductor?

Obviously not. They know their role and execute it willingly.

Another analogy just occurred to me. At DisneyWorld, Pirates of the Caribbean is a real amusement ride – as compared to the online version I spoke of earlier. You sit in a little boat and are taken on a journey through a number of different scenes and experiences, all of which are designed to give you an inner experience, which can range from joy and excitement to fear and tension. The path of the journey and the scenes you see were created by the designer of the ride, and you don’t choose where the boat goes or what experiences you encounter. Your only job is to sit in the boat and enjoy the ride, reacting and responding to what you see in any way you want; and, of course, no reaction or response you might have could ever be “wrong.”

All the designer of the ride is interested in, and wants, are your feelings to the experiences he has created for you; but I have yet to meet anyone who thinks they are a puppet or a slave of the designer of Pirates of the Caribbean.

It’s only your ego, feeling threatened, that is resisting the idea of being a Player for your Infinite I, coming up with this “puppet” and “slave” argument. It also has to do with being unwilling to relinquish control. Apparently we all want to be the one in control of our life, the Master of our Domain, even though we’d have to admit we haven’t done a very good job of it so far, since no one seems very pleased with the reality they already have.

But that’s exactly the way it was supposed to be as long as you were in the movie theater. You had to believe – as every religion and spiritual philosophy led you to believe – you were the one driving the bus. It was perfect for that purpose.

You’ve left the movie theater now and want to become a butterfly. An important and essential part of that process is giving up the need and the desire to be in control – to let go of the steering wheel, to be willing to do the job you were created for and not try to be the bus driver.

* * *

“Okay, okay. So I’m not a puppet for my Infinite I. I still want to at least be a co-creator of my experiences,” my friend insists.

I want to be very careful with this one, because in a sense we are co-creators – but not the way we normally think of that word. However, it’s possible our reactions and responses to one experience can have an impact on the next experience we have.

If my Infinite I is driving the bus, and I’m sitting in the back reacting and responding to the scenery that goes by my window, I might have a particular reaction or response my Infinite I finds especially interesting and wants to explore. So it might turn around and drive by that scene again, giving me the same experience; or it might drive by another similar scene to see if I respond the same way. You could say my reactions and responses to the first experience helped to “co-create” the same or similar experience later.

For instance, if I react with fear to something in my hologram, my Infinite I might decide to send me another very similar hologram to see how I would react the next time. Maybe it was fascinated by my fear, when it knows there was nothing to be afraid of in the experience it had created for me and wonders why I was so terrified. Or maybe it wants to give me the gift of discovering for myself there is nothing to be afraid of. Or maybe it just wanted to feel my fear again vicariously (which we’ll discuss in the next chapter).

Going back to our example of the Pirates of the Caribbean amusement ride, if the designer were trying to create a successful ride, I assume he would be very interested in the reactions and responses from the participants to the scenes he created for them, and their feedback would play a role in his evolving design – the path the boat took and the experiences they had.

There are all kinds of possibilities. The point is that our reactions and responses to certain experiences might influence the experiences we are given in the future. So I guess you could say, technically, you were “co-creating” those future experiences with your Infinite I as a result of your reactions and responses to the present experience. But that’s stretching the definition of “co-creator” as far as I am concerned; and it doesn’t have to happen that way at all. Your Infinite I is always free to create whatever future experiences it wants for you, regardless of your reaction or response to the present one; and you are never in any way part of the actual creation process of any experience itself.

Unfortunately, that won’t make my friend very happy, because he wants to be a full-fledged co-creator of his experiences to satisfy his own ego and maintain the illusion of some semblance of control over his life.

* * *

I consider L. Ron Hubbard to be both a genius and a madman. Some of his Scientology techniques for letting go of the past can be quite workable for a Human Adult inside the movie theater. But ultimately he committed an “overt” (a wrong action) by telling his followers, “The supreme test of a Thetan is the ability to make things go right.” (“Thetan” was his word for the soul or spirit.)

Consider Hubbard’s two most “Valuable Final Products,” John Travolta and Tom Cruise. I wonder… in light of the family tragedies and professional pitfalls, do you think they feel like they are “making things go right” all the time? How do you feel when you’re told you’re “less than” if you fail to meet some arbitrary spiritual standard?

Inside the movie theater, not everything can “go right,” ever; it was designed that way. John Travolta and Tom Cruise are no different from any other Human Adult who can achieve a few spectacular things in some areas of their lives, but can never get all their ducks in a row at one time as long as they belong to a group in the back of the theater.

Not only is “making things go right” a judgment that keeps Human Adults stuck in the movie theater, but as you now know, a Player has no ability to make anything happen at all. A Player’s only job is to react and respond to what is happening in the holographic universe created for them by their Infinite I.

So you can stop working so hard trying to control your life, trying to “make things go right,” trying to create and manage the holographic images that make up your reality and your life. It’s not possible, it’s a waste of time, and it will wear you out and leave you thinking you’re a failure.

We spent a lot of time as Human Adults in the movie theater taking responsibility for things over which we have no control, and denying or ignoring those things over which we do. The 12-Step program is very close to the truth when it prays:

“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.”4

You cannot change your holographic experiences, since you did not create them.

You can change your reactions and responses to them.

You’re in the process of gaining the wisdom you need to know the difference.

You can relax now and enjoy the ride; you are not responsible for creating your reality, for making things go right in your life, for you or anyone else. You are only responsible for your reactions and responses to the life your Infinite I creates for you, one moment at a time; and it turns out every single one of your reactions and responses as a Player – even the ones you might consider “bad” or “wrong” – have been valuable and cherished by your Infinite I since you were born.

Let me repeat that because it is so important: Every reaction and response you have had to every moment of your life – the holographic movies created for you by your Infinite I – has been “right” and perfect. You have never done anything “wrong” or made any mistake – ever. Your Infinite I wants each and every feeling you send to it, no matter what that feeling is.

I can say all that, and you might understand it right now intellectually – or not; but you will spend the next two years in your cocoon processing it until you have it on a cellular and emotional level as well – until you feel it as well as know it.

However, I imagine it might all make more sense if you know what game you’re playing. So…