Since the first half of the Human Game is intentionally the opposite of the natural state of an Infinite I, it takes an enormous amount of power to create it and keep it going, like a rollercoaster in an amusement park….
The first thing that happens when you get on a rollercoaster is that you go up a big hill – and for many people, the higher the better. But getting up this hill requires us to defy all natural laws, like the law of gravity. It takes a lot of power to pull us up that first hill; and on the way, we go through all kinds of “inner experiences.” In many people, fear is the most common; others have a wide variety of responses, from excitement to panic and even nausea.
I would resist that first hill with everything I had. I didn’t like it, it didn’t feel good, it wasn’t natural, and all I wanted to do was get out of there. But I also knew what was coming, the fun just over the crest of the hill.
Likewise, going as much as possible into limitation and restriction produces the same reactions as going up the first rollercoaster hill – you don’t like it, it doesn’t feel good, it isn’t natural, and all you want to do is get out of there. So we resist the first half and wonder why we’re having these experiences. But it’s supposed to feel like that; that’s the Game.
Another reason I like the rollercoaster analogy is that we can never experience or appreciate the ride to come if we don’t first go up the big hill.
Also like the Human Game, a rollercoaster has two “halves” – you go up the hill in the first half, and down the hill in the second half. If looked at objectively, the first half is no “better” or “worse” than the second half. In fact, the second half could not exist without the first half. So there can be no “judgment” that one half is better than the other.
More importantly, someone riding on the second half of the rollercoaster is no more “enlightened” or “better” or “more advanced” or “ascended” than someone going up the first hill. They’re just at a different point on the ride.
Therefore someone like me, near the end of my cocoon stage, is no more “enlightened” or “better” or “more advanced” or “ascended” than someone still inside the movie theater. I’m just at a different point in my metamorphosis, that’s all, having already experienced much of the ride that comes after the top of the rollercoaster hill.
The last reason I like this analogy is that it reverses how we normally think about limitation. Rather than going “down” into limitation, or “down” into the depths, the first half of the rollercoaster is “up.” So instead of saying we hit “bottom” in our lives, it’s better in my mind to say we reach the pinnacle, or the peak, or the apex of limitation, when it’s then time to start the second half of the Game. For me this also helps take away the judgment.
The day I told you about, sitting in my apartment, realizing I had no job, no money, no this and that, was my moment at the top of the rollercoaster hill – a brief moment of seeming weightlessness, when you’ve stopped climbing that interminable and awful first hill, when you can let go of all the resistance you had going up but have not yet started the ride down. This is the moment of no judgment, the moment of clarity, the moment of complete objectivity. This is a very brief moment when you can be appreciative you made it to the top, and even appreciative of the climb itself. You’re not even looking ahead to the next part of the ride, but simply suspended in space and time.
And then you walk through the door in the back of the movie theater and the second half of the Human Game begins. (How’s that for mixing metaphors!)
* * *
Basically, the second half the Human Game is the opposite of the first half. (Some of these will be discussed in more detail in later chapters.)
1. The Player knows what it has been calling “reality” is not real at all, but a hologram created by its Infinite I to play the Human Game. This Game is being played by consciousness, in consciousness, and for consciousness; and in fact “there is no ‘out there’ out there,’ no independent objective reality.
2. The Player knows once it has moved into the second half, all holograms experienced by the Player will be totally in support of its metamorphosis into a butterfly, rather than toward more limitation and restriction.
3. The Player knows it can never and will never experience anything in any hologram its Infinite I has not created and wanted to experience, and that its Infinite I has written and approved the script being used by anyone else appearing in the Player’s hologram. No one in the Player’s hologram can ever do or say anything its Infinite I has not requested.
4. The Player knows its focus changes from thinking to feeling. In the second half there is nothing to analyze, dissect, or understand – never any reason to ask “why?” Thinking and studying are now only the result of an inner curiosity to expand one’s knowledge instead of being required to figure out the world or make a Player “better” or more “enlightened.”
5. The Player switches from "giving its power away" to make a hologram real, to "taking its power back" from it. When holograms appear that cause any kind of discomfort, it is an indication that the Player assigned some power to that hologram to make it real while playing in the first half, and this is the opportunity to recognize the hologram was in fact not real at all and reclaim that power from it.
6. The Player leaves behind any and all judgment of anyone or anything in any hologram at any time, such as “good” and “bad,” or “right” and “wrong.” As Rudyard Kipling said in his poem, If: “If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster, and treat those two imposters just the same….”
7. The Player knows there is never anything that needs to be fixed or changed or improved in the holograms it experiences.
8. The Player changes from being “proactive” to being “reactive.” There is nothing the Player ever again needs to “make happen.” Being “reactive” means that when a holographic illusion that appears “out there” seems to require a decision, a response, or an action, the Player takes it (as long as it does not include discomfort). Or, when the Player feels an internal motivation or impulse to act, it does. In other words, the Player follows its inner excitement as long as it is fun and brings total joy.
9. The Player lives from moment to moment, one day at a time. There are no goals, no planning, no targets, no objectives, and no agendas. There is no past and no future – just “now.”
10. The Player develops a deep love and sincere appreciation for its Infinite I, for itself as the Player, and for all the first half holographic creations, even though at the time of the experience they may have seemed less than joyful. The Player marvels in awe at the beautiful, perfect, and miraculous job the Player did in the first half to convince itself it was real, and that the holographic world it saw around it was real.
11. The Player has the “knowing” and the complete trust its Infinite I will take care of all its needs (including money), and there is no reason to worry about anything. The Infinite I would not create a hologram it wanted the Player to experience if it did not also give it everything it needs for that experience.
12. The Player wakes up each day looking forward with curious anticipation to the experiences its Infinite I will create for it that day; and the Player buckles up, relaxes, and enjoys the ride.
* * *
At the risk of overkill, I would like to offer two more analogies (or are they metaphors?) to ensure I’ve expressed myself well.
Actually, I mentioned one before, which I now want to expand on….
Imagine a Greyhound bus driving down the highway. At the wheel is an Infinite I. The Infinite I realizes it cannot drive the bus and fully enjoy the scenery along the way at the same time, so it creates a Player to sit in one of the seats and enjoy the scenery for it. In fact, the Infinite I realizes it can create forty different Players, if it wants, to occupy all the seats in the bus and get forty different viewpoints of the scenery. (If this surprises you, read Chapter Twenty-Six, “One Player per Infinite I?”, in Part Three of this book.)
There is a wire connecting the Infinite I in the driver's seat to each of its Players in the passenger seats, like an Ethernet connection. Through this wire the Infinite I downloads a holographic movie to each of its Passenger/Players, which is then projected on the window next to the Passenger. But rather than just seeing the 3D movie that is projected on the window, the Passenger actually becomes immersed in the scenery and part of the movie itself.
Each Passenger can only see out its own window, and therefore each Passenger has a totally unique experience. As it reacts and responds to the scenery it sees, it sends its feelings back up the Ethernet wire to the Infinite I, which can then experience the scenery vicariously through this Passenger.
The Passenger's job is not to drive the bus or decide what pictures it will experience. Its job is simply to have the experience and the feelings that result from it.
Does this make the Passenger "separate" from the driver? Yes, in a sense. It has to be separate in order not to think about driving the bus so it can fully experience the scenery. But no, it's not "separate," in that it was created by its Infinite I as an extension of itself and is always connected to the Infinite I through the Ethernet wire.
Is it “wrong” to feel like we are separated from our Infinite I’s? Absolutely not. That’s the way the Game was designed to work.
Our problem as Passengers is that we have been trying to drive the bus, trying to decide what experiences we will have, mainly because we have had experiences in the past which we judged to be "wrong" or "uncomfortable," and decided we wanted to avoid those experiences in the future and so tried to take over the bus driver's job. Or we had experiences in the past we liked a lot and wanted to repeat.
Any Passenger who truly accepts their role as a Passenger and lets go of any judgments or beliefs about the scenery it experiences can sit back and relax and totally enjoy the ride. There is also tremendous relief in realizing, as a Passenger, no reaction or response it has can be "wrong" – that every reaction and response of each Passenger on the bus is valuable and desirable and wanted by its Infinite I.
* * *
The second analogy has to do with one of my favorite games, a treasure hunt. In fact, I considered calling this book The Great Treasure Hunt, and using that as the main metaphor, because that’s what the Human Game really is.
In a good treasure hunt, someone hides something and then makes up clues for the players to try to find it. The game excites me so much because it combines mental acuity – figuring out what the clues mean – along with obstacles to overcome, and in some cases physical demands as well in the process of finding the treasure.
In the Human Game, it was even harder. We didn’t know we were playing a game; we didn’t know we were looking for a treasure or what the treasure was; we didn’t know all the experiences we were having were perfect for the game; we didn’t know there were clues we were being given from time to time, nor what the clues meant. We even got stuck during the treasure hunt, stopping in one particular location or situation or experience and staying there, never getting to the treasure itself.
In short, most of us didn’t have a lot of fun.
In fact, many people get really pissed at their Infinite I for putting them through such drama and conflict and pain and suffering in the first half of the Human Game; and yet those same people seem to enjoy a good treasure hunt, where they have only hints and clues and many obstacles to overcome before they can find the treasure. No one gets pissed at the designer of a good treasure hunt, do they?
Very few people I know get angry at their parents for bringing them into this world as a defenseless, helpless, totally dependant baby. But they rage at their Infinite I, for some reason, for creating them to play the Human Game.
“That’s all well and good,” you might be saying, “but I didn’t agree to being a Player for my Infinite I. I didn’t agree to go through years of pain and suffering so my Infinite I could play some kind of sick game for its own entertainment!”
Maybe; maybe not. But this anger, while seemingly justified on the surface, is full of judgment and blame. It’s also not true. Your Infinite I did not create your pain and suffering; your resistance to your experiences did. We will talk more about this later.
The important thing is that it’s all over now. You got to the treasure chest and opened it. There was a note inside saying, “It isn’t real; it’s just a game;” and now you’re on your way back to the starting line to claim your prize.
There is only one problem. The only way to get back to the starting line is to fly; and on your way to the treasure, you picked up a lot of baggage at each of your stops – too much baggage and too heavy to fly with as a butterfly. So now you’ve got to let go of all that baggage, which in this case is the personality you constructed along the way – your “self,” your ego.
* * *
Now that the two halves of the Human Game make more sense, you might be asking, “What’s the point of all of this?”
The point is, what are you going to do in your cocoon? What’s going to happen now that you’re playing the second half of the Human Game?
During the first half, you encountered numerous holographic experiences which, based on the fears we will discuss later, you judged as “bad,” “wrong,” “worse,” “evil,” or just plain “undesirable;” and you tried everything in your power to change or fix or improve those experiences. In doing so, you assigned power “out there” and made the holograms seem real.
As time went on, you formed beliefs and opinions about the experiences, about other people, and about the world around you. Those judgments and beliefs and opinions, in fact, defined who you believed you were. They became part of your “self,” the layers of false identity called the ego.
Now it’s your job to reverse that process.
Every judgment you made while inside the movie theater of “good” and “bad,” “right” and “wrong”, “better” and “worse,” good” and “evil” – both as a Human Child and a Human Adult – are no longer valid.
Every belief and opinion you held was based on a false premise – that the movies you were watching were real – and are therefore untrue.
Every attachment you made to these judgments, beliefs and opinions created a new, false layer of identity you believed was who you really were.
So now you’re going to be given the opportunity by your Infinite I to revisit all those judgments and beliefs and opinions and, this time, change your reaction or response to the experiences that created them. In the process you will be able to let go of the layers of false identities that make up your ego – and the fears underlying them – and make your way toward the true answer to “Who Am I?”
How this happens is relatively simple.
In fact, you don’t have to do anything. It’s much better if you don’t try to make things happen any more. Your Infinite I will create everything for you, as it has always done. All you have to do is become fully conscious and aware of your reactions and responses to your experiences on a moment-to-moment basis, and be willing to look at them in the present time honestly and without justification. This means you have to stay awake with your eyes open, and not in some meditative sleep or altered state of consciousness.
But this is no cake walk. It requires high mental acuity, and includes deep emotional and even physical demands.
Basically, you will “re-live” or “re-visit” many of the key experiences from your past, which means the movies that surround you in the cocoon for the next little while will look very much the same as they did in the movie theater. Some of the characters involved may be slightly different than the first time through the movie, but the basic theme is the same or very similar.
This time, however, you have the choice of changing your reaction and response to these experiences by seeing the power you assigned “out there” to make your holographic universe seem real, and then letting go of the judgments, beliefs, and opinions you formed as a result. This will be a good start, and then it’s on to the next experience.
I want to be clear that you don’t have to go searching in your past for an experience to process. Your Infinite I will re-create these experiences in the present for you to deal with in the here and now. This is not psychotherapy designed to discover your mother didn’t breastfeed you long enough, or to overcome a dysfunctional family history.
It’s about “what is, now.”
It’s about letting go of the fears that dominate your thoughts in the present and about the attachments to your “self,” the layers of false identities, the personality construct called the ego you think is you.
It’s about a war with Maya, the Goddess of Illusion, as Jed McKenna would say.
It’s about finding out who you really are.
It’s about discovering what is true.
It’s about becoming a fully realized “no-self” with serenity of being.