Over the next several questions we’ll unfold a story of a young boy playing an imaginary game of pirate. The imaginary structures in this story will give you a glimpse into the deepest mechanisms of space and time and show you how those structures relate to your own mind.
This is the background information a master needs to know to overcome the forces of nature—including gravity—and walk on water.
Knowing isn’t enough; continuous application is the key to mastery
To know about the universe’s imaginary structures is one thing; to use that knowledge to overcome the “persistent illusion” as Einstein called it takes will-power, focus and discipline. It’s not enough to know you’re being controlled by these ancient structures of mind underlying spacetime; you have to want to understand their mechanisms and then do the work to overcome them.
Forces of nature are continuous. Gravity never sleeps; its force is in place 24/7/365. In order to overcome the forces of nature your mind must become continuously disciplined. Single-pointed, as the Buddha would say. The same disciplined thinking that helps take companies from Good to Great, author Jim Collins says.
Go through this pirate game metaphor slowly and rigorously, and everything you need to learn how to walk on water will be revealed. Once you can accurately visualize your situation—having in your mind the blueprints to the prison—overcoming it is far easier.
A little boy playing a game of pirate is observed by a researcher
Imagine a young boy named Jason is playing an imaginary game of pirate in his living room. A perceptual psychology graduate student, Ellie, will be observing him as part of her thesis on the structures of mind as they relate to imaginative play in children.
As part of her experimental procedure, Ellie is not allowed to talk to Jason, nor he to her. She will sit at the kitchen table and take notes while he plays in the adjacent living room.
Ellie told Jason he can play anything at all he wants, with one condition: He can’t use any of his toys in his game, just regular household objects in the living room. She wants to see the full power of his imagination in action.
Observation Set #1: Energy—the capacity to cause change by force
Since Jason isn’t allowed to use any toys in his game, he’s going to have to recruit some props from the living room. He leaps up on the sofa, grabs a couple of cushions off the back, and stacks them up. He stands in front of his pillow stack and appears to be turning and twisting the top pillow as he leans from side to side.
Ellie’s first observation is that Jason has changed the location of the pillows. Thus he has granted himself the capacity to cause change to his reality. We will define this as energy; the perceived capacity to cause change. (See Question #4 about how there is no such thing as change in an absolute universe like Heaven.)
Ellie observes Jason has not asked his mother for permission to change the arrangement of the pillows on the sofa. His power to cause change is thus unilaterally assigned in this fantasy.
We can observe the same thing about energy; it does not ask permission to change the physical status of something else; it is a unilateral cause taking unilateral action. The energy released by the atomic bomb didn’t stop and politely knock on the door of the citizens of Hiroshima, asking for permission to annihilate them. It was a unilateral cause taking unilateral action, not arising its action in conjunction with the whole.
Thus energy makes change by force; it doesn’t create life by arising it in conjunction with the whole. This is the difference between being “made” and being “begotten.” To be made can cause others suffering and loss. A child is born and it’s “another mouth to feed” in the eyes of the world. Too many deer are born into a certain ecosystem, and the herd starves to death slowly in a harsh winter. So instead of letting them suffer, a “deer harvest” is authorized and local hunters are brought in to thin the herd, much to the outrage of animal rights protestors. The situation is corrected by the intervention and may remain stable for awhile, until the next natural cycle of gain and loss gets out of balance and the madness continues.
In this example the part has become the death knell to the whole—evidence of the dualistic influence of the ego in the constructions of nature. The ego will continually attempt to vacillate you back and forth between the good of the whole versus the good of the part, when in reality their fate is forever intertwined and cannot be separated, much less one set against the other. Part vs. whole is an egoic fantasy in which its partial kingdom (spacetime) is “set against” the kingdom of God (Google John Donne’s poem “Batter my Heart Three Person’d God.” It was after this poem that physicist Robert Oppenheimer named the first test site of the atomic bomb “Trinity”).
This part vs. hole egoic perception is like believing a drop of ocean water is set against the ocean, or a sunbeam set against the sun—two metaphors used in A Course in Miracles.
A master is a changless agent
Energy and change cause a vicious natural cycle based on the perception of lack and loss. The master recognizes this cycle as a product of the ego and its belief in partiality. The master steps outside of this cycle of change, transcending it entirely. He doesn’t manipulate it.
The abandonment of wholeness creates a fractal trap—an endless, cycling, changing regress to which there is no logical solution (i.e the deer herd problem.) The master doesn’t play in fractral traps; doesn’t manipulate change, accommodate change, respond to change or become an agent of change.
Change is not real according to the laws of God and those laws are the only ones that will allow the master to entirely transcend the forces of nature (See Hawkins’ Power vs. Force assumption in Question #20). Multiple theologies across many faith traditions and many mystical accounts characterize God as “changeless.” Once you get that energy is the inversion of this true, eternal attribute of God, then the universe makes a whole lot more sense. It’s a unilaterally defined fantasy; just like Jason unilaterally defining the sofa as a pirate ship and the pillows as his steering wheel.
As adults we fascinate ourselves with change. An entire industry has grown up in the workplace helping people “deal with change.” As a child, did you really dream about growing up to spend your days dealing with change? Of the top ten things humans truly desire from life, change doesn’t make the list (see Yehuda Berg’s The Power of Kabbalah).
How does a master deal with change? The same way a mother deals with a monster under her child’s bed; by demonstrating through her actions and attitudes that the monster is simply not real. Certainly by not showing any emotional connection to it, or glamorizing it, or climbing under the bed and creating a “new discipline” called “monster management.”
Certainly not by becoming a “monster agent” intent on spending her days “masterings the subtleties of monster management.” Change is a perceptual illusion based on partial information. Failing to view the universe as a whole (which Einstein indicated creates our optical delusion of an individual self) we see its various expressions as partial, and thus changing.
Just like someone that didn’t know a car could accelerate might become fascinated with this “change” in the car; after all the velocity is changing when the car is accelerating. To Henry Ford—who envisioned that “change” as part of the total essence of the car—the idea that a car can accelerate doesn’t change its essence one bit. Only by abandoning total awareness of any essence does one become enamored with change.
Take the eye of the hurricane with you and the wind goes away
The master doesn’t glorify energy and change by making them real. To make them real is like sending someone out to endlessly study the ultra-complex comings and goings of the winds in the wall of the hurricane (which is what the study of non-linear dynamics, or chaos theory is about) Contrast the likelihood of mastering that complexity by sheer mental effort (our most powerful supercomputers can’t even predict the weather 100% accurately three days from now) versus learning how to stay anchored to our true reality which is the peaceful eye of the storm.
The ego will toss the intellect a bone of understanding (see there’s patterns in the chaos!) then use that as a thread to lure you into a realm way more complex than the human mind could ever hope to fathom. Seek and do not find accomplished! The ego’s mantra, A Course in Miracles says. You are lost in the storm.
Who would you rather have navigating your ship? A captain that can stay calm, focused and centered, or one who is continuously giving away his or her power to change by making such a big deal about it? Every little wave and ripple becomes an endless opportunity for pointless study, while the ship veers off course.
Understanding that the calm goes with them wherever they are (it’s holographic), the master learns that no matter how hard the wind is blowing, the truth is they have the power to make it stop (which Jesus actually does to the amazement of his apostles.)
Teaching people to focus on the shifting winds of change simply gets them to focus on that which takes away their power versus having them learn to stay wholly centered in their changeless, peaceful core. The guards came to take Jesus away in the Garden of Gethsemane and Peter—fearing change—drew his sword and cut off the ear of the high priest’s servant. Jesus, ever calm and centered, reached over and healed him. Change is a vicious cycle that never ends; a fractal trap. Wholeness doesn’t change. Wholeness is always with you. The Grace of God (the calm, centered, changeless eye of the hurricane) is holographically with you no matter where you are. Your port in the storm is not a place, it is your real Self and it is closer to you right now than your jugular vein no matter how complex the fantasy of spacetime gets in your mind. It is absolutely non-chaotic, non-patterned, non-shifting. Do not build your house on a foundation of shifting sands, but on the changeless, eternal peace of God that is forever with you. This is the truth that sets you free from a lifetime of neurotic accommodation to the endlessly perceived winds of change.
Center yourself in peace for the solution that heals all
Time to turn in your badges, change agents, it’s time to become changeless agents and provide true solutions that elevate all and threaten none. When you stop what you’re doing, center yourself, then ask the Holy Spirit for guidance—then wait for the answer—you will get a solution that is not created from the world’s level of partial thinking, but arises from your unbroken connection to wholeness. Consider viewing Carl Sagan’s movie Contact from this perspective. Einstein said we need to solve our problems from a level of thinking that is higher than that which created the probelm in the first place.
This wisdom from your higher self comes from the calm, centered connection to the whole, not from partial ego information based on energy and change (Eckhart Tolle writes about the amazing solutions that benefit all when you stay calm and centered and allow these solutions to arise.) Indian philosopher J. Krishnamurti wrote:
Meditation is to find out whether the brain, with all the activities, all its experiences, can be absolutely quiet. Not forced because the moment you force, there is duality. The entity that says, “I would like to have marvelous experiences, therefore I must force my brain to be quiet,” will never do it. But if you begin to inquire, observe, listen to all the movements of thought, its conditioning, its pursuits, its fears, its pleasures, watch how the brain operates, then you will see that the brain becomes extraordinarily quiet; that quietness is not sleep but is tremendously active and therefore quiet. A big dynamo that is working perfectly hardly makes a sound; it is only where there is friction that there is noise.
The master achieves a single-pointed focus in the calm, changeless center that transcends the forces of nature.
Energy creates the pairing of opposites
Energy makes trade offs where one loses and another gains. True creation is not a trade off and does not create loss of any kind, but only continuous gain.
The yin/yang symbol is a classic statement of the fallacy of energy; the white side diminishes where the black side gains and vice-versa. Paired opposites in a perpetual cycle of gain-loss; a sure sign of duality that has nothing to do with Spirit or Heaven.
Spirit, God, Heaven and your true Self all have no opposite, are not divided into paired opposites, do not ebb or flow and do not require another to lose so that they may gain.
Energy is divided into paired opposites. We use the phrases “positive energy” and “negative energy” all the time. God just is. There is no “negative is” or “un-is.” A master transcends the opposites by realizing that the totality of absolute reality has no opposite. This totality is the truth that sets the master free from the forces of nature. Anytime a master sees, experiences or hears about paired opposites, he dismisses the pairing as unreal.
The devil is not the opposite of God, a point made clearly by C.S. Lewis. Fist you have to take the Crazy Step—embracing the belief that there is an opposite to wholeness, an “infinity plus one” idea—then you can start imagining paired opposites. The knowledge of good and evil is a classic example. It is the embracing of paired opposites along a spectrum. Now suddenly benevolence is just one position along a sliding scale; instead of being the totality of all that is.
As Dr. David Hawkins observes, we do the same thing with light and electricity. We pair light with dark and say night is the opposite of day. In reality, night is the absence of the one, true physical entity—light. Dark is not standalone thing like light is. You can’t buy a darkness flashlight, flip it on, and make your room darker, as Dr. Hawkins says. Neither does a closed, dark box make the room darker when you open it, as Pastor David Mohn says. That’s because darkness is simply the absence of the one true force—light.
We delineate electricity in a circuit into “on” and “off,” again, paired opposites. But there really is only one true energy there—electricity—there is no separate, standalone force called “offness,” as Dr. Hawkins says. When you flip a switch from on to off, “offness” doesn’t flow down the circuit and replace the electricity. Electricity is simply cut off. Just like darkness does not flow into a room and replace the light.
Energy doesn’t ask permission; it joins via force, not invitation
Sunlight doesn’t ask my permission to warm my skin, nor does it ask permission to give me a sunburn. The transfer of its electromagnetic energy to my skin is not a permission experience. Neither does the sun ask permission to hurt my eyes when I look at it; evidence that energy is not a holistic, multilaterally agreed upon experience but a unilateral extension of force.
Like gravity. Gravity does not ask permission to pull us to the bottom of the sea. In the Bible story, Peter wanted to walk on water, and he partially succeeded, but he got scared and started to sink (see Matthew 14:22-33).
“Holistic energy” is an oxymoron; energy transfers itself freely without any holistic consideration for the entire system. A ball flying through the air with kinetic energy doesn’t ask permission from the window before shattering it; nor from the young boy who will have to do chores to pay for it; nor from his father who will have to give up his Saturday afternoon to fix it; nor from the young girl who steps on a glass shard and cuts her foot, nor from her mother who then has to run to the store because they are out of Band-Aids.
Similarly, the condition brought about by energy—change—is also not a permission experience, but is a unilateral extension of force. Conditions in the world don’t ask the permission of humanity before they change. The weather doesn’t ask our permission before it changes into a tornado or a hurricane. Dirt on a hill doesn’t ask permission of the village beneath it before turning into a rampaging, deadly mud slide in a rain storm.
Thus we see an important spiritual truth about energy; energy is the perceived capacity to violate the free will of others. Thus a master knows energy is not of God, Who always respects and preserves the free will of His creations.
A true master has no concern for energy at all. Does not manipulate it. Does not use it to heal. And does not confuse it with life.
God is the only source of all life and does not use the capacity to change to create it.
All true life arises (is begotten) in conjunction with the whole; with all that is. The whole gladly and universally embraces the creation of all life and welcomes it into reality.
Energy creates by the unilateral extension of force; via change which may not be welcome at all. Energy kills; God is the God of the living, not the dead, as Jesus says. The same well can’t produce bitter and sweet water, the Bible writer James said. God is the “fountain of all holiness” Christian theology teaches. Suffering and death are not holy, despite how much the ego will try to convince you otherwise.
As Baruch Spinoza said, God is of one substance (love). Being only of one substance, he cannot create something made of a second substance (energy) that then creates a third condition—suffering—which leads to a fourth condition, death.
Love creates only love; never suffering or death. “That which suffers and changes is not my Self,” the Buddha said. Energy is change and certainly causes suffering. Ask the people in the burn unit of your local hospital.
Energy is not your Self, doen’t create your Self and is not part of any reality to which your Self belongs—i.e. Heaven. Energy is part of a nightmare caused by the inversion of God’s laws. E=mc^2 may describe energy in spacetime, but there is nothing natural about it. It is a perversion of your true home.
Energy violates free will and thus is not of God. As A Course in Miracles indicates, we exist wholly inside the mind of God. If God can violate our free will then we are simply a mental puppet in His mind—an inert plaything—and we are no more alive than a dummy on the arm of a ventriloquist.
To violate the free will of another is, ultimately, to kill them. If God can take away our free will, then what power do we really have, and do we really exist? How would our eternal life not be a constant hell of fear and anxiety about God changing His mind about our worth and simply willing us out of existence?
The Bible paints God as a being one must continuously walk on egg shells around, or risk incurring His deadly, random wrath. Nothing could be more distant from the truth. God is rock-solid, eternal, unchanging love, maximally expressed, Who, by definition, includes His children as the completion of His essence. If they go, He goes. It’s that simple. That is His eternal commitment to His children, and is the foundation of their eternal peace in Heaven.
God’s laws create an absolutely benevolent holographic construction; one for all and all for one
Energy is an obviously dualistic construction that violates the benevolent holographic construction of Heaven. In ultimate reality, what happens to the part happens to the whole; one for all and all for one. That’s the true reality of a non-dualistic, absolute universe. Truth is union.
If we’re all non-dualistically bound together in perfect togetherness, how can something happen to one of us that doesn’t happen to all of us? The Christian study guide Foundations makes the analogy that Heaven is like a perfectly pure glass of water; one drop of cyanide (a metaphor for sin) would poison the whole thing.
That’s an good metaphor for an absolutely benevolent holographic construction; one drop of force and the whole thing is poisoned. Which is why force (and energy) is simply not allowed to become real in Heaven. You can imagine it all you want—you’re living in a universe built on imaginary energy—but it will no more become real according to God’s laws than a flying elephant will become real according to the laws of nature.
Energy is an obvious violation of the benevolent holographic construction. In an exchange of energy, object A causes an effect on object B that does not create that same effect on object A. Via an energy transfer, the sun causes a plant to wither and die, but the sun does not also wither and die in the process. Thus cause and effect are separated; a dualistic construction.
Energy—which as Gary Renard observes is nothing more than projected thought—creates a relative hologram, in which parts of that hologram perceive themselves causing effects on other parts that they themselves do not experience. By expending energy, someone can torture and murder another and not experience that same effect on themselves.
That’s evidence of the mental projection that causes a relative hologram.
In an absolute hologram like Heaven, the fate of the part and the whole are inseparably bound as one; what we can define as absolute interdependence (see Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People for an examination of interdependence.) Hence the metaphor of the perfectly pure glass of water; it’s wholly interdependent.
The Buddhists say it is nonsensical to consider the part without the whole and vice-versa; a principle called dependent origination. No part can be considered arising without the totality of experience to which it belongs.
In a relative hologram like spacetime, the part and the whole can experience different effects. An animal can die without its entire ecosystem dying, for example. The fate of the part and the whole are separate. In a relative hologram, we have independence, in which one can exist independent of, or outside of, another. This is the first illusion which a dualistic construction requires; you can’t have energy without perceived separation.
Energy violates free will and thus, the spiritual bottom line is that it is the mechanism of death. The perceived belief that the changeless, living and eternal can somehow be changed by force against their will, even killed. It is a violation of truth; a lie. The real you cannot be changed. The real you cannot be forced. And the real you cannot have your will violated.
There is only one will in Heaven; that’s what absolute togetherness means. How can a “separate thing” violate your will if there is only one will? Think of a stadium full of 60,000 screaming fans all willing one thing; hit the ball over the fence so we can win this game.
Energy has absolutely nothing to do with Spirit.
True power—love—never forces anything. By definition it is an invitation to voluntarily join in a mutually agreed upon experience of togetherness. Energy is a unilaterally defined experience of change against the will of another.
Energy exists in levels; Spirit is a maximal expression of love that has no levels (see A Course in Miracles). Energy comes in little packets called quanta; Spirit is formless and does not exist in packets. Energy can be described by an equation: E=mc^2; Spirit is non-mathematical. Energy is dependent on time; Spirit is timeless. Energy exists in space; Spirit is spaceless. Energy can diminish: Spirit cannot. Energy can harm; Spirit cannot. Energy can kill; Spirit cannot.
The sun forces my skin to get warmer; my skin has no choice in the matter. If I lie outside in the hot sun long enough, it will kill me. That is not love, (which is of God), that is force, which is of nature, as clearly delineated in Dr. David Hawkins’ book, Power vs. Force (see the Hawkins’ Power vs. Force Assumption in Question #20).
Having to protect yourself against anything—at all—is evidence you are living inside a fantasy based on energy and force.
In our next several questions, we’ll keep going on our pirate game and take it step-by-step to see how the master separates the rose of God’s love from the thorn of natural force.
