The Play within the Play

Creation is already finished because there is no time in eternity. There is no time in eternity because there is no beginning and no end.

All is in this moment now. The sequence of events is just a story. A story dependent on time. The story is created by limits of perception, and whatever assumptions you carry. This defines the range of your story.

It is all the same story, just different versions. The creation is finished. All possibilities are already made. What you pull from the hat is up to you.

The hologram contains itself in all its parts. The Big Magician and the little magician are mirror images. It is up to you to decide what piece you play. For it is all a play.

You are the stage and the actor, the stagehand, the set designer, and the costume director, the writer and the audience. What part don't you play?

It is a play within a play. The big stage and the little stage are one and the same. The yin and yang are all in balance. The entry and exits, stage right or left are provided. What entry, what exit will you take? What part will you play?

You audition every day with every thought and every feeling, writing the text that is yours to play. You the star. What did you write today?

For you will act the part of every thought and every feeling, if not today, tomorrow. And as the author of the play, you will reap the joy or pain of being in it, reading every line, acting every part.

The world's a stage, but we are not just actors in it. We are the play within a play. Having written our part, today, or yesterday, consciously or unconsciously, we will play it. Every entrance, every exit, we rehearsed it, and we will play it to the bitter end.

And if you do not like the play, and you do not like your part? And if you say, "What did I do?" Be patient. You will see the play from every angle, of every part, and from every member of the audience.

At play's end, on your last exit, your life will play in golden light, and you will know every assumption you ever held, every fleeting thought, every feeling, and what effect it had.

Now and forever your story will be told, revealed in eternal light.

I Subjective

I. The first cause. I, the awareness of infinite potential, the first cause of all things. I, awareness in which all things appear.

I am. I am that which is all things. I am all things seen and unseen. I am that.

I subjective, the only One, decree all that follows into form. And all that flows from me into consciousness, I am.

All that flows from I, says, I am. All created beings say I am. Yet all remain only the One I am. I, having created all that is, give my "I am" to each.

The great sages know I am. They do not crave for this I am, or that I am, but only I. Like Moses, they can say, "I am has sent me."

All that appears, I created. And all that appears, appears within my consciousness. Your interpretation is but an angle, a cut portion of what I have made, of what I am.

Everything that is seen appears in my consciousness. For I alone am all consciousness, whether it be abstract thought, or physical manifestation, I am its creator.

You who say, I am man, have forgotten who I am. The feast is on the table and you are satisfied with taking crumbs.

Do you wonder from where your longing comes? Do you? It comes from me, the I of you. For at your very heart, I am.

Before you were, I was. Before time, I was. Before now I was. In the future, I am. For I Am always. For me time does not exist.

Your longing is to know I. The I of your I am. Your longing is to know I deeper than this or that form. For your true I, is formless awareness. I am that Awareness.

As there is only one cause, all that follows is of the same substance. Like is attracted to like. So your longing is mine. Your longing is to return to I. The One.

Your longing is justified. I hid myself in you. And you could not have this longing if you could not find me.

I am I. And that I is hidden in you. I am hidden as not this, not that. For I am formless, and everywhere. Closer than your breath, nearer than your heart, I am.

Your longing is but the proof of my existence. Trust your longing. Trust the proof. You have run from your longing long enough. Know your longing is me. I am here.

Comparative Notes to Ron Marson's Observations

1. Ron: Loving 'nothing' paradoxically places me in the flow of life, serving the need of each new moment. Attending to 'nothing' serves up a beautiful, conscious, creative, joyful dream.

Maury: What is joyful, loving, of good report, why not? It's better than the alternative. If everything is a dream, then the dream is reality. What is realty other than what is? So, if all is a dream, then the dream is reality. If God is love, then that is the truth, and anything that strays from that is untruth.

2. Ron: 'Nothing' first appeared to come and go as peak experience. Now it appears as continuous background, always here. These are ways my mind experiences 'nothing' in translation. Perhaps it is better to say 'nothing' simply IS, neither continuous nor discontinuous.

Maury: I don't often have the experience of nothing. In an ecstatic state I experienced that I was not there, and because I was not there, I did not know how I could stay there and still have me? I had to let it go.

That state was absolutely ecstatic. I certainly saw no way to remain in that state and be in the world. I knew that I would not be able to work. There would be no reason. All was already complete. When the state left, I felt an emptiness, but not nothingness. I felt the absence of the Oneness, in which, I as Maury, was not.

What you describe as nothing is similar to what Nisargadatta spoke of, "the nothing that is everything." Nisargadatta said something along the lines of "When I am nothing, then I am everything, and when I am everything, there is love."

What I experience is either more or less of The Presence. When there is more presence, I feel good. When there is less Presence, I have doubt, uneasiness. I Am is complete presence.

3. Ron: My experience of self (mind) is of discontinuity, a blinking off and on within 'nothing'. 'Off' is free attention untranslated by mind. 'On' is conditioned attention mediated by mind. Off/on can be noticed cycling up to several times a second, and over much longer periods too. Free attention (off) of short duration it is more subtle than subtle. Free attention (off) of longer duration is flow ('doing' God's will).

Maury: I don't know about blinking on and off. I do know that years ago my mind was very, very busy. I wanted nothing more than to slow my thoughts down, but I could not. It was painful. I believe I was trying to outrun my painful emotions by out thinking them -- an impossible task. After rigorous Gestalt work, and the experience of the pain, my mind quited down. Now my mind is mostly quiet.

My meditation has always been reading. When I find a book I resonate with, it is a joy. As I've progressed, fewer and fewer works do that. The pathless path does have levels of understanding and awareness. The path is unique to each, and each must travel their own path. And yet, there is the Presence that travels with you, and beside you, until you realize that it is within, and never left.

4. Ron: Everything moves in and out of 'nothing'. Everything turns out to be the dream. 'Nothing' turns out to be reality. This is immediate and obvious anytime I STOP (turn off) and look.

Maury: Again, if everything is a dream, then the dream is reality. I am willing to agree that all is in the mind of God, his dream, his dreaming. And we are in God's dream. And as we are part of the hologram, we also are the Sons of God, and our dreams become reality as well. We are one and the same. The same substance, the same dream.

5. Ron: In 'nothing' (stopping, off) there is no story of I, no past, no present, no future, no opposites, no guilt, no fear, no experience, no becoming, no drama, no life, no death, no nothing. Everything still appears, moving in and out of 'nothing' (as quantum physicists say).

Maury: At some level we get the sense of no past, no future, nothing to do -- we are touching the stillness of the ground of being. If we are in that state permanently, ready to stay there, I am not sure that one would remain in the world for long. That merging would probably be the signal that we were done with this personal drama in apparent physical life. At that point, most would just leave the body as there would be nothing more here to do.

6. Ron: The way I seemingly choose to suffer these days is wanting more of 'nothing.' How sweet these never-ending antics of my mind, working to keep me safe and secure and separate.

Maury: I think the longing for God is not a chosen suffering. I don't think we purposely choose suffering. I think we suffer because we don't know how to let go and let God. It takes awhile to get there. I do think that we are born with the pull towards God. It's like we come here in a cloud of forgetting. It's designed that way.

The longing is inborn as we know we have forgotten something. But we don't know what we forgot. We don't even know where to look, or how to look. But, we can't help looking. It's like thirst. If we didn't need water, there wouldn't be thirst. If we didn't need food, there wouldn't be hunger. How is the longing of God any different? The longing is the proof!

As we find our unique path, we begin to know the way. Each person's path is different. Just as all roads lead to Rome, so all paths lead to God. We, each of us, just need to find our path, our way, and put all that we have into following that path. And when we get to the end, we find that we are the path, the truth and the light.

Conscious Creativity

I felt some conundrums immediately after writing the piece "The Reflective Universe. Just so you know, I had been reading Neville Goddard during the previous days. http://nevillegoddard.wwwhubs.com

I can only respond by saying that duality and non duality are aspects of the same One. Perhaps I am beyond ego to a great extent. I have less suffering than when I was completely identified with my ego. Either way, as long as I am on this earth, I have a body to deal with. It requires food, shelter, and some satisfaction of desires. With less ego, my desires may be less, but none the less, some remain.

So, being that there is a body here, and desires, why not the best possible existence? Even if this is a dream, an illusion, why not the best dream, the best illusion possible?

If this is all in the mind of God, and I am part of that mind, then like the Source, I also have the ability to create. In fact I can do nothing but create! The problem is whether I do it consciously or unconsciously.

The major issue for me is that the creating is continuous, God's creation, and by extension, my creation. What I believe tends to manifest, whether it is believed consciously, or believed unconsciously! Since the creation appears, created by both my conscious intention and unconscious intention, hadn't I better create to the best of my ability, rather than passively let what still is unconscious in me create willy nilly all kinds of crap.

Most of this world is created by our unconscious. Why? Because we are mostly unconscious! The creating doesn't stop because we're unconscious! It's there and it creates. In fact, I may not even know what all I project from my lack of consciousness.

I could of course, spend all my time trying to bring up everything in my unconscious. I could spend all my time observing the effects "out there" so I could see what is "in here."

But, it seems to me, that the easier way to affect my life in the world, would be to at least spend time creating what I do know to be good, know to be true, know to be kind, know to be helpful, etc. Why not actively create all the good I can, rather than passively accept what I may be creating unconsciously.

I think anyone that has gone deep spiritually, realizes that "all there is, is Consciousness." In the case of me and you, there is also the unconscious. The curse of all of us is the "unexamined life." To know thyself is the great commandment. I suspect though, that we could pursue this commandment all our life and not get to the bottom of it.

Meanwhile, I could regret what I was still creating due to what remains in my unconscious. But I feel that rather than being harsh with myself for what I still do not know about myself, my time would be better spent consciously creating what I have come to understand as good. "Whatever is kind, whatever is just, whatever is beautiful, think on these things."

I can know that all is One. Being human, I don't necessarily always behave with that knowing. I can know that duality and non duality are aspects of the One. But I can still behave as if duality was the only truth.

If God is the creative force of the universe, and I am made in God's image, then I too am a creator. I do not believe that God is an unconscious creator, and I don't want to be an unconscious creator either. Am I not more Godlike if I create? Am I not more Godlike if I consciously create?

Duality is a way of experiencing the world. Non duality is a way of experiencing the world. I experience both, mostly on the duality side. I do however know that both are experiences. Since I experience physically being here, and I can experience both good things and bad things, why not create the best I can? Why not choose all the conscious good that I can, to the best of my ability and understanding?

To passively accept whatever my unconscious creates doesn't seem like freedom. If I create my own world, consciously or unconsciously, I choose to do it consciously -- at least to the best of my ability, and with humility.

The Reflective Universe

The reality of our universe seems very static, unmovable, until we discover that our beliefs work at a deeper level than Newtonian Physics.

Beliefs can remain unconscious for years until life brings them into focus. Our life as it is, is a reflection, like a mirror when we walk in front of it. When we see what life is reflecting back to us, and we don't like it, it's a wakeup call.

We often don't know what we believe until they are reflected in the reality around us. Beliefs are abstract, often unconscious, and therefore not ponderable, until our actions bring them into sharp focus.

Perhaps Newtonian Physics is only the base structure on which we begin our journey. We learn the basics quickly. We see quickly the basic laws of gravity, and the simple concepts of up and down. We learn to manipulate physical objects with our hands.

The world changes slowly when we use force. Force uses a lot of physical effort. But when we learn that there is a deeper reality, which works at a deeper level than Newtonian Physics, we enter the Quantum world, a world of possibilities.

The world of possibilities begins with belief and imagination, with faith in things unseen. We learn to create with imagination and feeling, another world, alternate situations, with different results. Persistence in this moves the physical universe around like a play thing, a toy.

We are given a perfect example of the user's manual every night when we go to sleep. The dream state is very real and entirely believable. It is the perfect reminder every single night that a virtual world is possible and entirely believable. No different, while we are in it, than our waking state.

We wake up once every morning, but we forget to wake up during the day. Day to night is no different than birth and death. Only the length of time is different. Yet we open the manual every night, experience the truth it, and immediately forget it upon waking in the morning. Just as the dream state is virtual, so to is our so-called daytime life.

We simply don't wake up as easily from our daytime dreaming. We are still asleep in our daylight ours, and the days turn into a lifetime, with death the only waking from the dream.

But do we have to wait that long? Can we become awake in the dream, and like lucid dreaming, create a life that is not unconscious, not the program we inherited unconsciously from our parents, our family?

The world seems very real, and normal consciousness knows it takes a lot of energy to change it even a little bit.
But there is another power available if we wake up that takes a lot less effort. It is conscious imagination, conscious creativity. It works at the Quantum level, and has a power multitudes greater than Newtonian physics.

So, what is our responsibility when we begin to have glimpses into the actual state of affairs: to the virtual reality that is our life? Our responsibility is to wake up. And the only way to wake up is to use the manual.

Some people play with lucid dreaming. But this doesn't go far enough. If we are in a dream state, believing it entirely different from our sleeping dream state, then we are missing the message. We need to wake up to the fact that our daily life is a second dream state, and that the our nighttime dreaming is just a hint.

So our responsibility is to play with our waking dream state and learn the rules? There are a few.

1. Use your imagination to create an alternate picture for the universe to mirror. You don't have to discover and change all your old beliefs, just make new ones.

2. Get into and experience the feelings of newly imagined results. Make the feelings real.

3. Expect your new result. Relax, you do not need to know how the new results will come about. Just watch for the signs. They will appear everywhere, out of the blue.

4. Know that the mirror is flawless. As the signs increase, and the results increase, you know that the power of belief is real, and that the virtual world is yours.