Divine Protection

Yesterday evening was a very intense time for me. Looking at things from a Phase 1 point of view, I heard some disconcerting news that had negative implications for my financial future.

I dealt with the situation by telling myself the Truth about it, as I understood the Truth from a Phase 2 perspective. That is, the so called problem was an illusion. According to my beliefs, my Expanded Self has popped the situation into my hologram to give me an opportunity to use the tools that will bust me loose from the limitations of Phase 1.

According to the Busting Loose model, everything that shows up in my hologram has been placed there by my Expanded Self. Furthermore, my Expanded Self will never place into my hologram anything that is too much for me to handle. However difficult my so called challenges are, they always will be ones that I have the capacity to deal with.

Interestingly enough, this is similar to a notion that I have heard with respect to Phase 1 teachings as well. There is a saying that God will never give me a cross that is too heavy for me to carry. In thinking about that, I'm reminded of a poem from the Phase 1 world. "Lord" is not a term that I am wont to use these days but, otherwise, I resonate with Mary Stevenson's "Footprints in the Sand."

One night I dreamed I was walking along the beach with the Lord. Many scenes from my life flashed across the sky.

In each scene I noticed footprints in the sand. Sometimes there were two sets of footprints, other times there was one only.

This bothered me because I noticed that during the low periods of my life, when I was suffering from anguish, sorrow or defeat, I could see only one set of footprints, so I said to the Lord,

“You promised me Lord, that if I followed you, you would walk with me always. But I have noticed that during the most trying periods of my life there has only been one set of footprints in the sand. Why, when I needed you most, have you not been there for me?”

The Lord replied, “The years when you have seen only one set of footprints, my child, is when I carried you.”

The Law of Attraction

I have tried a number of different self-development approaches, including visualization. These approaches rely on me to be proactive. They go something like this. I picture something I want.

Let's say, just for example, I want a house. I am encouraged to visualize in as much detail as possible what that house looks like. Perhaps I'm encouraged to draw the house. Perhaps I'm encouraged to cut out photos from magazines and paste them onto a vision board.

Then, having done that, I'm encouraged to hold the vision of that very specific house in my mind. The hypothesis is that, if I visualize effectively enough, the house will be manifested in my life.

I do not believe that. Rather, I believe in the Busting Loose model.

According to the Busting Loose model, there is no effort that I, the Player in the hologram or illusion, can put forth that will create anything. It is my Expanded Self who creates everything that shows up in my life.

In the Phase 1 world, there are many sayings that are True. When we're immersed in the Phase 1 illusion, however, we often miss the Truth in those sayings. One of these sayings that I recall and that I believe to be True is, "Man proposes; God disposes." In the case of that saying, "man" represents to me the Phase 1 Player, and "God" represents the Expanded Self.

Living in the hologram, I (the Player) can run around and do all kinds of stuff. I may think that I achieve results, but in fact all of those results come from my Expanded Self.

For example, I may submit myself to a certain kind of medical treatment, and I may appear to be healed. However, the health practitioners who appeared to treat me and the modalities that they appeared to use did nothing to create the result that I call "feeling better."

It was my Expanded Self who created the result and who used the health practitioners and the treatment modalities to create a storyline that felt plausible to me, the Player. If my Expanded Self had preferred, she could have created the outcome of healing with the snap of a finger, so to speak.

In the example of the house, mentioned above, I know a woman who lives in a beautiful house that overlooks the ocean and that exactly fits the vision she had when she participated in a workshop in which she drew her dream house. She believes that she succeeded in getting the Law of Attraction to work for her. According to my belief system, though, she got the house because her Expanded Self gave it to her, along with a storyline that felt plausible to her.

The Busting Loose model does not involve long term planning. Playing the Phase 2 Game involves living in reactive mode. You get up in the morning, you ask yourself what you want to do, and you do it. You trust your Expanded Self to figure out where your life is going.

There is one qualification that may be helpful to someone who is new to the Busting Loose material. You may be asking yourself about logistics that involve the future. For example, I currently am in discussions with my sons, who live in Calgary, about whether or not they will visit me in Nanaimo over Christmas, which is more than three months away.

According to the Busting Looose model, it is fine to issue or accept invitations to future events and to put into place arrangements that will enable you to participate in those events. However, at the moment that you make the decision whether or not to issue or accept the invitation, you live in reactive mode. You ask yourself whether or not you want to participate in the event, and you issue or respond to the invitation accordingly.

If you agree to participate in a future event and, before the event takes place, you no longer want to participate in it, you contact anyone who may be affected and tell them you have changed your mind. Robert Scheinfeld reports that, since he has been living in reactive mode, the number of occasions on which he has cancelled engagements has been small. He says his experience is that, if he was living in reactive mode when he made the commitment, more often than not he feels like fulfilling the commitment when the time comes.

I must admit that, for me, the notion of reactive mode seemed seriously weird when I first encountered it. Actually, I'm still getting used to it. It is so very different from the proactive approach, which I've believed in for decades.

This blog is an example of my new life in reactive mode. I woke up one morning, and felt it would be fun to create a new blog. I chose a name, created the blog, and typed the first post. The next day, I typed another post. The day after that, I typed yet another post.

I have no idea whether or not I will publish a post tomorrow. If I do publish a post tomorrow, I have no idea what it will be about. I have no idea how long I will maintain this blog. I have no idea in which direction this blog is going and to which other things, if any, it may lead.

You have got to be kidding !!!

One of the most difficult things for me to believe about Robert Scheinfeld's Busting Loose model was his assertion that life was a game. He often refers to it as the Earth Amusement Park.

He claims that we are Expanded Beings with infinite power, infinite knowledge and infinite wisdom. Essentially he's saying that we are God or, if you prefer, god-like beings.

According to Robert, one day I was hanging out in Infiniteland, as he calls it, and mused, "Hey, I wonder what it would be like to be limited." I then created a reality in which I would be limited, and parachuted myself into it.

This premise is akin to the concept of the holodeck, if you're familiar with the Star Trek : The Next Generation television series. Through voice commands, Starfleet personnel were able to conjur up very realistic simulations into which they could enter. For entertainment, they could recreate a historical period and place that appealed to them. For example, I remember an episode in which Captain Picard popped himself into the world of his favourite fictional detective.

In the Star Trek episodes, Starfleet personnel knew that they were in a computer simulation. The simulated characters, however, believed that everything was real. When there was a threat in the storyline, the simulated characters genuinely felt themselves to be in danger, and experienced all of the emotions that went along with that.

Now, coming back to this world ....... To convince the part of me that became the Player in the Earth Amusement Park of my "handicaps," my Expanded Self had to make the illusion of limitation look extremely convincing. It takes very sexy special effects to persuade an infinite being that he or she is limited. That massively successful lie is what Robert refers to as the Phase 1 Miracle.

To pull off the Phase 1 Miracle, my Expanded Self plonked me into this alternative reality as a vulnerable baby who was dependent on others for food, warmth, mobility, emotional nurture, and so on. If the Phase 1 limitations were going to be locked in properly, the special effects had to be pretty darn good. My Expanded Self created adult care givers who "abused" me and "neglected" me enough to ensure that the part of me that was the Player in the Earth Amusement Park experienced psychological wounds.

I must admit that this is one of the concepts that has been most difficult for me to accept as I have studied the Busting Loose material. If I am to believe this, then it follows that war, murder, rape, torture, poverty, famine, revolutions, dictatorships, natural disasters, sickness, stock market meltdowns, unemployment, and all of the other so called "bad" things in the world are illusions.

At first it seemed absolutely crazy for an infinite being, who could enjoy infinite power, infinite abundance, and infinite joy to volunteer to experience pain. Why would anyone take on suffering if he or she didn't have to?

But, when I stopped to think about it, I realised that, even in the world that is familiar to us, some people volunteer to take on challenges that strike most of us as insane. Just watch the movie called Touching the Void, and ask yourself why on Earth anyone would want to do alpine mountaineering.

Even at a much simpler level, why have children always designed games in which they have created limitation? Why do they tie scarves over their eyes and play Blind Man's Bluff or Pin The Tail On The Donkey? Why do two people tie their legs together and compete in a Three-Legged Race?

I must conclude from all these examples that we human beings enjoy challenges. We'll even go so far as to create them when they don't exist.

As time has passed, I have come to accept that infinite beings are like us Players here in the Earth Amusement Park. Infinite beings also find fun in challenges. I have come to believe that they too take them on voluntarily.

The time eventually came for me at which that was the only explanation that could make sense of the human condition. Without that premise, I would consider myself to be in a crazy-making set up.

Back in my Phase 1 days, I used to say, half jokingly and half seriously, "Stop the world; I want to get off." If my belief in the Busting Loose model has done nothing else, it has helped to make it fun for me to be here.