I feel like such a sucker for thinking so much about the topic of winning the lottery, but I can’t help it - it embodies everything I care about, in a poetic sense.  Perhaps I just use it as an excuse to think about hard topics? ;-P

I was laying in bed, throwing my orange ball up at the ceiling, debating with myself about the morality of winning the lottery.  If I could find a way to win, would it be cheating?  What overall goal am I aiming for, and is this goal moral?  Am I just doing it because I want to escape the rat race of living paycheck to paycheck?  Or is there an honest and healthy reason for my obsession?

I can’t lie to myself… I know that part of me desperately wants to transcend society’s dependence on money.  By winning the jackpot, I will essentially free myself from years of burden and conformity required by society in order to pay for the necessities of life.  But free myself to what end?  What would I do with my time, once liberated?

There is a divine balance to reality.  Any push away from truth creates a perfectly calculated, equal and opposite push towards truth.

If my theories are correct, then society has made a gamble against truth.  Society has taken the stance of “random things happen, and sometimes it’s just coincidence”.  The lottery embodies this assumption by society.

But if the assumption is false - if things happen for a reason, and there is an underlying meaning in everything - then I should be able to win the lottery.  Not for the money - but for the point of demonstrating the falseness of society’s assumption.  After all, who am I to say that I am right, and society is wrong?  What evidence have I presented society with?  As far as society is concerned, I’m just a peebrain with a blog :-).

So, my goal is to demonstrate to society that the assumption of “random things happen, and sometimes it’s just coincidence” is false.  Now maybe I am wrong - maybe society’s assumption is correct.  In which case, I won’t win the lottery, and my failed demonstration can be used as evidence that some things are random.  Of course, that’s not the outcome I believe will come to pass :-), but reality will be the judge of that.

Now - I believe that this goal is moral.  My goal is rooted in revealing truth - whether I’m correct or incorrect.  However, does this answer the question of what to do with the money, once I win?

Yes, I believe it does.  Now that I’ve defined my goal, and my goal is moral, I can more easily see what follows.

After demonstrating that society’s assumption is false, I must spend the money on discovering the truth.  It’s the only moral way to balance out the situation.  I can’t take advantage of society’s ignorance, then disappear with the money to lead a selfish life of abundance.  Once I win, it will become my responsibility to spend the money on restoring balance.

So, let it be known:

If I win the jackpot, then I will use the money to research the topic of both how society allows itself to become deceived, and what the truth actually is.  I will create an organization in order to accomplish this research.  I am announcing this because, in the event that I win, I want to ensure that everyone keeps me honest.  I am human, and I will definitely be tempted to just pack up my bags, and live a peaceful private life.  However, since I know that using society’s ignorance for my own personal gain is immoral, I want to declare my intention publicly.  I will do everything in my power to remain faithful to my word - but, if I start to flake out, then I hope those reading this proclamation will remind me of my obligation.

Oh boy :-P.

Being human, we like to divide reality into different sections.

There is day time, and night time.  There is the weekday, and the weekend.  There are people with lighter skin, and darker skin.  This mentality of cutting reality in half has a name - it’s called: duality.

Dualistic thoughts can be very useful.  After all, if I want to drive from Maryland to Georgia, it’s good to know whether I’m on the correct road, or incorrect road.  However, a lot of times we use dualistic thinking incorrectly, or trust in it too much.

The problem is this: There is one, and only one, reality.  Thinking dualistically is in direct contradiction to that ultimate truth.  Is it ever really a weekend?  No.  It’s just the continuous stream of time.  If you go to mars, are there weekends there?  No.  Therefore, a “weekend” is not something that is a part of reality.  It’s just a human thing we do - we divide reality arbitrarily, and label the divisions.

How does this affect us?  Well, there’s a popular thought that is dualistic in nature, that I talk a lot about: “If you want to become good at psychic abilities, you must practice.”

Hiding behind this thought is a partitioned reality.  Now, that doesn’t mean the thought is useless.  Clearly there is some truth in there, because people who practice psychic abilities do become more proficient.  But ultimately - the thought has some inherent falsehoods because it’s reliant on cutting reality in half.

There are a lot of cuts the thought makes, but the one I want to discuss is that it divides experiences into either natural or supernatural.  Encoded inside of “practice psychic abilities to get better” is the thought that your current experiences are mostly “natural”, and if you want more “supernatural” ones, you need to practice.

This is the falsehood inside the thought.  An experience is neither natural or supernatural.  An experience is just an experience!  Reality doesn’t go around, observing events, judging whether something was bizarre or not - humans do!  Reality doesn’t give two shits, and just does what it does.  This division between everyday life, and some awesome and profound paranormal experience, only exists in our mind.

Usually dualism isn’t too bad.  In some cases it can be very dangerous, like racism, religion, or selfishness.  Dualism serves the purpose of helping us understand things in human terms.  But it’s vitally important to remember that when we are thinking dualistically, it’s only out of the necessity to break things down to our level, and NEVER a reflection of how reality actually functions.  Reality isn’t dualistic.  Reality is one.

Only use dualistic thinking in order to serve yourself.  Never enforce your arbitrary divisions on reality itself.  Reality doesn’t care about whether YOU think an experience is natural or supernatural.  So get over it, and start seeing the beautiful in the ugly, the love in the fear, and the supernatural in the natural.

I have a secret to tell everyone about psionics… others have figured it out already, but it’s time I let everyone know officially…

All techniques are bullshit.

You don’t need articles, you don’t need guidance, you don’t need answers, and you don’t need belief systems.  The only thing you need to do is look inwardly.

Now maybe that sounds like I’m the one bullshitting at this point :-).  Maybe I am! ;-D

Emotion is the name of the game.  Emotion is the currency of will power.  The only door that needs to be opened is understanding what you feel and why.  And the only way to do that is to look inside yourself.

The only benefit I can provide to you is simply putting into words what you already instinctively feel.  And maybe (if I’m lucky) I can also give you clues as to why you feel the way you do.  But ultimately - you don’t need me to do so.  It’s all inside yourself right now, at this very moment.

If I had malicious intent, I could play your emotions, and convince you that you need me.  This is what the vast majority of society does.  We go around, deceiving others into thinking they need us, and allow ourselves to be deceived into thinking we need something external to ourselves.  But ultimately, that’s not true.  There is nothing external to ourselves that we need.

Now some nit-pickers might argue that we need food, or oxygen.  No, we don’t.  Our bodies need food and oxygen.   Or maybe you’ll argue that we need love and attention.  We certainly need love - but must we look externally for love?  And we certainly don’t need attention - that’s your ego talking.  Be careful with how you define those words too - they’re certainly vague enough to cause confusion :-P.

The reason that all psionic techniques are bullshit is because the only purpose the techniques serve is to manipulate your emotions, in order to generate will power.  The techniques are 100% dependent on how well they can stir up emotions in your current belief system.  Techniques don’t produce results.  Emotions do.

Therefore, to become good at psionics, you must understand both what you are feeling, and why.  The better you understand yourself, the better you can recruit your emotions to serve your goals.  The only way to accomplish this is to dig inwardly.

Somewhere, under the layers of self-delusion and confusion, there exists a God-like being.  Stop searching outside of yourself.  Stop feeding your ego.  Will you passionately dig for truth, or will you be yet another victim of mind?  This is the greatest secret of psionics.

Hidden behind the idea of “practice” and “success” is this idea of separation.

If we want to become a great baseball player, then we clearly need practice. Becoming a great baseball player takes some natural talent, but like other skills, it mostly takes dedication, training, and repetition.

A lot of times I will equate psychic abilities to other normal skills. I might say that, just like becoming a great baseball player, if you want to learn to be psychic, then you need to practice it as if it were any other skill. Don’t treat it special. Don’t think of it as something mystical. Treat it as if you were learning anything else.

I like this method of instruction for a lot of reasons. The main reason I like to equate psychic abilities to other normal skills is because it breaks down the association between psychic abilities and religious beliefs.

It would be silly of me to be religious about playing baseball. While some great baseball players are certainly religious, and some might even claim that their religion has helped them become so great - one thing is certain: You don’t learn to hit homeruns by closing your eyes and believing in some mystical force. You hit homeruns by practicing. Maybe religion plays a role in motivation, but the actual skill needs to be developed, and the only way to do that is to practice.

Likewise, when I talk about psychic abilities being like any other skill, my real goal is to break this mental association between psychic abilities and personal religious beliefs. I might instruct someone to treat psychic abilities like any other skill, but what I’m really instructing them to do is to drop their insistence of explaining something unknown using religious ideas.

There is a slight problem with this though. Psychic abilities aren’t like other normal skills.

Normal skills need to be learned. The skill is external to yourself, and through training and practice, you slowly learn to perform the task correctly. The information on how to perform the task is external to yourself. Someone else created the game “baseball”. You must learn what they created. The information is inherently external.

Psychic abilities are not external. Psychic abilities are inherently internal. This is where the analogy breaks down. At this point, psychic abilities are not like any other skill. They are not something created by someone else, that we must learn the rules to. They are inside ourselves, at this very moment. We are psychic creatures - right now.

We are not all baseball-playing creatures right now. Some of us learn to play baseball, others don’t. But we are ALL psychic creatures.

It’s important to think of psychic abilities like any other skill in order to break our addiction of explaining unknown things using religion. However: once that addiction is correctly broken, we must deal with the reality of the situation. Psychic abilities are not like other skills. Normal skills are external to ourselves - something that we must engage with the world around us to learn. Psychic abilities are inherently internal.

Put another way: a newborn child, whose destined to be the greatest baseball player of all time, must at some point learn the rules of baseball. But a newborn child, whose destined to be the greatest psychic of all time, doesn’t have to learn anything. In fact, they may already BE the greatest psychic at the moment they are born.

So the next time you find yourself looking externally for answers on “how to be an awesome psychic”, remember that you are psychic right now - it is something inside of you at this very moment. The real question is at what depth do you understand your own true nature.

Ernesto e-mailed me a question:

“As of now, I have just finished reading your incomplete sequel to your first E-Book. It left me feeling empty as your new website does not talk about all of the “Psi” phenomenon discussed in your first. I wish you could publish a blog in which you finish expressing the ideas of your sequel. Do you still practice Telekinesis and Psi Balls? Do you have any new ideas about how they function with this new broader outlook?”

One reason why I don’t talk about some of my current beliefs is because they sound insane :-P. Part of me would rather quietly hold on to my bizarre beliefs, and work on them in private, than to express them for everyone to read and criticize. Keep in mind that a lot of my friends in real life and co-workers read this blog, and my name is attached to every post, so I feel an increased burden to tone things down :-P.

Another reason I don’t talk about my current understanding is because it’s not clear. I don’t see it clearly in my mind, so I have a hard time explaining it. I’ll start to write a sentence, but it won’t feel correct, so I’ll try again. And again. Ultimately, the problem is that I haven’t “figured it out” in my own head, so I won’t write about it.

But for this post - sure, I’ll give it a shot:

The biggest belief that I struggle with is that it is my understanding that reality is a dream of some sort. And I hate saying that because it’s very cliché, but I’ve yet to find any other explanation for what I’ve observed.

I’ve outlined this belief in past posts: Everything is Meaningful, and I am Probably Insane.

The basic idea is that the things we experience in reality have deeper meaning. Just like in dreams, where certain metaphors drive the experience, these same metaphors are also the driving forces for what we experience in reality.

The reason why I believe this is because I’ve been tracking it in my own life. I have these experiences which are too bizarre to be labeled “coincidence”. I see the metaphors, sometimes while the experience is happening, other times after the fact. I can predict what’s going to happen by looking at what the metaphor requires. A lot of the time I’m correct (though I will be honest, I am not 100% :-P).

Now of course, the same old arguments can be brought up, that I am biased because I’m looking for meaning, or that I’m a sucker, or whatever. Those arguments don’t really bother me, because I know I am very honest with myself, and that no one is more critical of my own thoughts than me. But, from an outsider’s perspective, they do seem like legitimate complaints. One reason I don’t like discussing my beliefs is because I’ll have to argue these worn out positions with people who don’t care as much as I do. I’ve put years of blood sweat and tears into my current beliefs, constantly challenging them from every perspective I can think of, testing reality, forcing myself to drop incorrect beliefs (at the expense of my ego and pride), etc. It’s very frustrating to argue with someone who is just trolling around because they have nothing better to do.

Now, the question that I’ve yet to answer, is how deep do these metaphors go? On the surface, it might seem like I’m just arguing in favor of basic psychology. I’ve observed these metaphors manifesting themselves in reality - not just in my own head - so at a minimum I’m talking about something more than psychology.

Right now I’m divided between three basic explanations:

#1. Reality itself is governed by these metaphors. Reality is a dream. Science is derived from this dream. Examples of this theory are cited in the above links: Everything is Meaningful, and I am Probably Insane.

#2. There is an underlying physical reality that is governed by science, but there is a mental reality governed by these metaphors that co-exists with this physical reality. This would mean that the metaphors are a result of the mind, but that we see manifestations of these metaphors in reality because of large scale unconscious telepathy. I talk about this idea here: Current Understanding of Intention Manifestation.

#3. Something I haven’t thought of.

If explanation #1 is correct, then reality is a free for all. There are no rules. Psionics, and all belief structures, are now easily explained. This sounds a little outlandish, so I tend to side with #2.

If explanation #2 is correct, then there is a very large question. How does this “mental reality” affect the physical reality? In this explanation, macro-psychokinesis is not explained.

Most likely, explanation #3 is correct. But since I’ve yet to think of it, I don’t know how it works :-).

Now, the next question might be: how can we determine which is correct? What would be a wonderful test that would clear a lot of this up?

Well, winning the lottery.

The lottery is void of mind. If this “mental reality” exists, then the lottery would not be a part of it. Therefore, intention manifestation wouldn’t work on the lottery (which is my experience). So, according to my experiences so far, #2 looks like it might be correct.

However, the problem with #2 is the question of macro-psychokinesis - i.e., how does the “mental reality” affect the physical reality? Is the physical reality deterministic? Where does free-will fit into this?

If #2 was completely correct, then you couldn’t use psychic abilities to win the lottery. Yet I have already succeeding in breaking the mathematical odds, and other psychics have won the lottery as well. See: Psychic Wins Lottery, I Won, I Won… Again.

So, #1 doesn’t feel correct, and my experiences back it up because I failed to win the lottery using intention manifestation.

But, #2 is also incorrect to some extent, because I have succeeded a little bit in winning the lottery, and others have done better than I have.

So, in conclusion…

In my last eBook, I talked about belief systems, and how we can succeed with psychic abilities using drastically different belief systems. The question that I had at the end of that eBook was basically: how can that be?

My answer to that question is that reality is some form of dream. I haven’t posted a lot on this subject because a lot of the revelations have been very personal as I inspect the metaphors driving my own life.

The next question is: to what extent do these metaphors affect reality? Either reality is a dream, and physical reality is derived from that dream (#1), OR there is a physical reality, and a mental reality, each governed by different rules (#2).

Judging from my experiences, and my intuition, I believe that #2 is probably more correct. However, then the question becomes: how is macro-psychokinesis possible? I.e., how does the mental reality affect the physical reality?

At that point, a good test is to attempt to win the lottery (something completely physical), using mental means (psychic abilities). This will get me lots of money, play into my own life metaphor, and help answer these glaring questions about how reality works.

Any questions?

A lot of times it feels like I’m living in a story.  Like reality is just a play - a scripted sequence of events - and we all just play along.

When I talk to someone, I’m simply reading my lines.  And they return with their lines.  The dialog has already been created, and we simply walk through it.  Just acting it out.

Even the supposed “zany” or “random” people follow a predefined script.  They say the funny things they’re suppose to say, and everyone else laughs like we’re suppose to laugh.

Sometimes I do wonder whether life is deterministic or not… but I think just the fact that I’m contemplating such a thing proves that it’s not.  I don’t know about anyone else for sure, but I do know that I am aware.  I am aware of this moment.  I can cut right through it.

One thing that makes me curious is to think about my memory.  What am I working with?  What is in my head?  What is my earliest memory?  I mean… how did I get here?  When did I first become aware?

It seems like I should be able to scan back in my memory, and remember the moment when the I - the me - first arrived.  But instead it’s just a gradual blur.  Was it always like this?  Am I just in a state of perpetual amnesia?

*shrugs* Thoughts…

I’m a big advocate of learning to communicate with your subconscious mind.  How does it work though?  Are we really speaking with our subconscious mind?  How can we test it?  What explanations are there?

I believe our minds have a function to “tune into” a personality.  We can do this in a minor way, by simply asking ourselves, “What would Bethany think about this?”  But we do this in a major way all the time - I believe our current personality is simply a result of this “tuning” process.  When I act things out, I am asking myself the question of, “What would Sean think about this?  How would Sean react?”

Now, you may complain that what I’m describing is very unlikely, because we ARE our personalities.  How is it that we tune into ourselves?  I AM Sean… I don’t ask myself, “What would Sean do?”, I just DO what I want to do.

I disagree.  If I tell myself that I am Sean, then I run into some problems trying to explain some things.  However, if I tell myself that I am something else, and I tune into the Sean personality, then a lot of things make sense.

How does channeling work?  How do people have multiple personalities?  How do we communicate with our subconscious?  If my personality changes over time, am I still me?  Ultimately: who am I?

Have you ever become fed up with your personality?  How can that be?  Who are you at that moment… your personality, or the something that’s fed up?

This idea of tuning into a personality solves a lot of questions.  In channeling, the psychic starts to behave as though they are some other personality.  We can easily see how that’s possible in the theory I’m outlining.  The psychic simply tunes into the desired personality, and acts out whatever that personality decides.

For people with multiple personalities: one explanation is that they can’t lock onto one personality like the rest of us have, and their tuning process is out of control.  They involuntarily jump from personality to personality.

For communicating with the subconscious, I offer a similar explanation.  We build this idea of who and what our subconscious is, and then we tune into that.  The question becomes, “What would my subconscious think about this?”

This explanation offers some solutions to common enigmas.  For example, if I can communicate with my subconscious, and you can communicate with yours… and we both ask our subconscious about something, and they contradict each other… then who is right?  Who is wrong?  What is the explanation for how the subconscious mind can be wrong about something?  In the past, I offered the explanation that there was a miscommunication (which is still possible), but now I offer another explanation as well: we have simply tuned into different personalities, and the personalities disagree.

You may ask: how is it that we receive psychic information from these personalities?  The subconscious is more than just a personality in our head… it can deliver psychic information that can’t be known otherwise.  The same argument holds for channeling.

I offer the explanation: we are psychic.  We already have the information.  We simply need the personality to express the information to ourselves in a format we agree with.  Our beliefs about reality force us to experience the information through the personality instead of experiencing it directly.  After all… why do we ask our subconscious about things?  Because we believe the subconscious knows something we don’t.  We tell ourselves that we can’t possibly know some factoid, so we must experience it through communicating with a personality outside of our own.  We tune into the personality that best represents our definition of what “subconscious” is, and prepare ourselves to receive the information we already know about.

WWJD?  “What would Jesus do?” (for a klondike bar?).  Another example of personality tuning.

Finally, I want to share this link that I’ve had stored away for a long time.  It’s an exercise for “borrowing” someone else’s genius.  Basically, the question becomes, “What would a genius think?”, and develops an exercise for tuning into this genius personality.  http://www.winwenger.com/borrow1.htm

I may write on this topic some more, because I feel as though I’ve just skimmed over it.  Any questions, feel free to ask.

Personal liberation is great.

But I get stuck. See, it turns out that everyone is already free. So if I sit here and say that I can help free you, then I’m lying. You are free.

But I see a lot of people using their freedom to enslave themselves. Then they cry because they are enslaved. What am I suppose to do? Help them to stop crying? The only way to stop them from crying is to get them to realize they are already free. But to get them to realize they are already free, they must free themselves from their own enslavement. So I have to tell them that they aren’t free. But they are.

If I tell you, “The only way to become free is to strive for truth in all things”, then that is nice. It’s a nice little statement, which is very useful. But it’s a lie. And very hypocritical at that… I’m lying about striving for truth!

But if I tell you, “You are already free”, it is true. But it’s not useful to you. You are suffering, you feel enslaved, and you want to be free. What good is it to know that you are already free? If anything, that makes it worse!

So I must do the compassionate thing… I must lie in order to help out. Everyone is free, but a lot of us don’t realize it.

So how do you free yourself? Fuck if I know :-).

Personal liberation is one of those things you gotta do for yourself. There’s a lot of bullshit out there… including this post :-). Some idiot thinks he has things figured out, and wants to share his distorted perspective with the world. That’s life. Every person you see is expressing their personalized slavery. So join them if you want… though I wouldn’t recommend it :-P.

People who make sense only make sense because they reflect the things that make sense in our own head. Someone doesn’t help us or hurt us… we help and hurt ourself. The person is only a reflection of this self-process.

So how do you free yourself anyway? I suppose the best way would be to stop taking shit so seriously. And don’t take that advice too seriously either :-).

It’s one big contradiction. If I tell you how to free yourself, then how can you be free of my instruction? Teaching is enslavement. If I give advice, then are you free to not take my advice? Or do you feel compelled to take my advice? If you don’t take my advice, you are enslaved, and if you take my advice, you are enslaved. Good luck! (don’t worry, there’s a third path :-P).

Avoid people who know what they’re talking about. They ruin truth. I’m sure I’m guilty of it… sorry :-P.

Oh goodie :-).  A provoking topic.

Everyone takes jabs at religion.  It’s pretty easy to attack something people believe in, no matter what that belief is.  I encourage people to believe in things - even if your belief is incorrect (which it most likely is :-P), then at least you stood up for something.  That’s better than believing in nothing, and acting cynical.

However, I will now be hypocritical, and attack religion.  There are a lot of things about each religion that I disagree with, but there is one specific thing that I adamantly disagree with that exists in most religions.  It is the belief that their path is the only correct path.

To believe that your path is the only path that can lead to God or truth is ridiculous.  In fact, it denies God.  Each human is on their own path, and if you believe in God, then you believe that God put us on these paths.  To claim a path is “wrong” is to deny God’s intentions.

A sharp person will read the above paragraph and see how much of a hypocrite I really am.  If I’m preaching that no path is wrong, then how can I claim that religion is wrong?  I can’t.  I’ve just bitch-slapped myself.  Ow.

If there was one rule I could etch into the universal unconscious mind - one rule that people should just fucking follow no matter what - it would be this: No Killing.  Fuck love, fuck understanding, fuck compassion… let’s just focus on one thing.  No Killing.  Period.  Could we do that?  But I am a hypocrite.  The act of “etching rules” is in fact killing, in disguise.  Oh enigma!  That’s two bitch-slaps.

“Wrong”?  Who am I to say something is wrong anyways?  At best, I can tell others what I personally think is right… but even that doesn’t mean that it is right.  I’ve disagreed with myself more times than the community at large has.  I’ve change my beliefs and opinions so many times… when can I start preaching?  Where do I begin?  The second I start is the second I change my mind, and have to disprove what I’ve just proven.  Those that listen just inherit my struggles on top of their own.  Eek!

However, if I try to convey this observation to those that have yet to observe it, then I’m a victim of my own palm.  And if I do nothing, then my realizations are worthless.

Where is the illusion?  I’ve found it.

Truth cannot be conveyed.  Any attempts to teach truth to someone else is an immediate failure.  This sentence fails.  Truth can only be attained by the self.  No one else can attain it for us.

Is religion wrong?  Or does mind make it wrong?  If I can change my mind on what my favorite movie is, then can’t I change my religion as well?  Who is right?  The me that is religious, or the me that is anti-religious? 

Bahaha :-).

There is a deeper meaning connecting all of our life events together. Everything in our lives happens for a reason, and that reason is tied directly with our core being.

Now… I understand that when I start talking about “deep meaning”, that it sounds sort of spiritual and mystical… but please realize that I’ve come to this conclusion based on what I’ve seen. It’s the only logical conclusion I can come to based on the evidence I’ve been presented with. This isn’t a spiritual realization - this is an observation. Everything does have meaning.

Reality is just like a dream. When we dream, all these symbols and archetypes mesh together to form a strange experience. We wake up, and we might brush it away… or we might look for the deeper meaning. If I dream about building a tree house, this could mean that I’m trying to build an emotional sanctuary to escape to, in order to get away from my problems and feel at peace. There’s meaning. Reality is just like this.

For example, in my car I have two small rubiks cubes hanging from my rear view mirror. The heat made the stickers curl and fall off - so now they are just blank cubes. The rubiks cube represents difficult - but solvable - problems in my life. The stickers falling off represents that I won’t solve these problems in a conventional sense. I will solve the problems by transcending the rules of the game. The stickers fell to the floor in my car, and made a mess. This represents that by transcending the rules, I will create a mess as a result. The stickers had been on the floor for weeks in my car, and yesterday I finally took the time to pick them up and throw them out. This represents that I have finally cleaned up the resulting mess, and everything will work out.

Now - on the surface it just looks like I had some rubiks cubes in my car, the stickers fell off, and I didn’t clean it for a while. Who cares. But when you start treating things as if they have deeper meaning, then they start to actually have deeper meaning :-P.

You may argue that it’s my mind that’s creating this deeper meaning. That reality is random, and I’m just seeing something that isn’t there. You are correct - in a sense. You are correct that my mind is creating this deeper meaning. But the mistake is thinking that reality is random.

Reality is a mirror. There is no better way to put it. In fact, I was at the book store and I read a story highlighting this exact observation. I picked up a “random” book, and started reading “random” pages, and “stumbled” upon the following story (which I will attempt to recall from memory):

A dog entered a room. He spent some time in there, and upon leaving, he was gnarling, barking, growling, and overall just filled with anger. Another dog entered the same room. Upon leaving, he was happy, wagging his tail, with a huge smile on his face. What was in the room? It was a room of mirrors. THIS IS REALITY.

Some might argue that this is no big deal. I mean… everything has meaning. That’s great and everything, but ultimately - so what? That’s nothing new. I disagree with this apathetic response.

This is a big deal. The reason it’s a big deal is because it’s true :-P. This isn’t some philosophical inquiry about how reality might function. This isn’t some pot head drunk moment of clarity. It might come to the same conclusion - but the path is very different.

This is observable - 100% of the time. This is you reading this post. This is me writing this post. This is the keyboard under my fingertips. This is the fan next to my monitor. This is my roommate’s cats. This is my car. This is my relationships. This is my mother and father. This is my bed. This is my job. This is my body. It’s a reflection of myself. I am looking at myself. And therefore, all I can see is deep meaning.

So what’s the practicality of this observation? How does this realization actually help me? How can I actually use it in real life?

Well, for one, I’m going to use it to win the lottery :-P. I may go into the “how” in another post.

Ultimately, this realization helps me become a better person. By looking around me, I see where I am. Who I am. And the small problems that spring up in my life are reflections of problems in my own mind.

For example - I went through a time period of playing chess a little while ago. I bought chess books, studied chess, and tried to improve my chess skills. Looking back, I see deep meaning associated with this. I was attracted to chess for a lot of reasons, but one of the main ones was because I felt a lot of personal responsibility for where I was in my life. Chess intrigued me because in chess - you make all your own moves. No one forces you to move anywhere. The only difference between me and a Grandmaster is how we move. It’s not like poker, where we have to play the “cards were delt”. It’s not like trivia, where our knowledge dictates our success. It’s not football, where our physical strength is what counts. In chess, it’s a simple game, where we have to combine our intuition with our calculating abilities to make simple moves that win. That resonated with me. It’s a reflection.

By studying chess, what I was really trying to do was study the laws of reality. Figure out the game. Use intuition and reason to win.

Now - how does this observation help me? Well - let’s look at chess. For one person to win, another has to lose. As with most games. If I felt a strong connection with chess, and knew that my interest in chess was a reflection of my desire to learn the laws of reality and “win”, then I can see a problem. The problem is that in reality, I don’t have to make someone else lose for me to win. Everyone can win in reality. But if I feel that I must make someone else lose in order for me to win, then that uncovers an unhealthy belief that needs to be dealt with. So - by seeing the interest I had in chess, I can quickly see that I need to inspect my beliefs about the duality of winning and losing, and figure out why I feel that I need to make others lose in order for me to win. And once I root out the problem, I will stop resonating with chess, and become uninterested in it. Which is what happened.

That doesn’t mean that you can’t play chess :-P. Chess means different things to different people, at different times in their life. When I was younger, I used to play chess a lot. I played against a computer. That probably had a completely different meaning at the time :-P.

I’ve outlined two examples in my life on how simple things have deeper meaning (rubiks cube, and chess). I’ve made these observations in dozens, if not hundreds of things in my life in the past month. I am amazed at how everything fits together seamlessly. When we see one or two connections, things become curious. But when we start to unravel the entire web of meaning, then it’s … simply amazing at how accurate of a mirror reality is.

By looking at our interests, we can predict problems that will arise in different areas of our life. Why do we resonate with something? Are there some unhealthy reasons for why we enjoy what we enjoy? How will these unhealthy beliefs filter through to other areas of our lives and create discord? If I can predict all of this, can I start to actually create a better reality by making small - and seemingly unrelated - decisions in my life? Can I win the lottery by being nice to my roommate’s cat? (or am I just insane?! :-P)