Money Game

One of the subsets of the Human Game that historically has generated a lot of fear in me has been the Money Game.

According to Robert Scheinfeld, when you bust loose from the Money Game, you will have direct experience of your infinite abundance. You will have absolute certainty that you'll have enough resources to go on whatever rides you like in the Earth Amusement Park.

Robert claims that, when you bust loose from a given limitation, you will know you have reached the busting loose point. Furthermore, there will be no going back. You permanently will keep the power you have gained in that area.

I suppose busting loose is like riding a bicycle. Once you know how to do it, you always know.

According to Robert's experience and the experience of other Phase 2 Players of whom he is aware, busting loose from the Money Game does not necessarily result in your becoming a billionaire (although it doesn't necessarily preclude that possibility either). How your own busting loose journey will unfold will depend on what will be most enjoyable to your Expanded Self.

Apparently many Phase 2 Players experience what Robert refers to as "just in time delivery" of the money they need to play the Human Game in the way that they want to play it. Robert says that, once you bust loose from the Money Game, you have what he refers to as Cosmic Overdraft Protection.

I have not reached the Busting Loose point as far as the Money Game -- or any other arena of life -- is concerned. But I do seem to have had what Robert refers to as "cookies." They are experiences that provide you with a hint of what life will be like after you have reached the busting loose point in one arena or another. One of the purposes of a cookie is to reinforce your faith in the Busting Loose phenomenon and to motivate you to continue using the Phase 2 tools.

Back in December 2008, I became aware that someone whom I knew was in difficulty and needed money in order to get out of a pickle. Although I could not afford to help them out, I felt drawn to offer them the money that it would take to get them over the hump. If an accountant or a bank manager or anyone else from the mainstream financial services industry had looked at my situation and had seen the amount of money I was giving away, they would have said I was committing financial suicide.

Well, actually, they would have thought I'd already gone off the deep end when I'd separated from my husband and implemented my dream of buying into a cohousing community in Coastal British Columbia back in August 2008. But, as far as they would have been concerned, that gift of money in December would have been the straw that really would have broken the camel's back.

Once you enter Phase 2, part of the process involves living in reactive mode and doing what you feel inspired to do. For a Phase 2 Player, the assumption is that your desires are messages from your Expanded Self. Although my confidence in the Busting Loose principles still was wobbly back then, I listened to my impulse, and provided the financial assistance that I felt drawn to provide.

Another desire that I could not afford to fulfill was to travel to Africa in June and July 2009 to participate in a family reunion to celebrate my mother's 80th birthday. But I thought, "Damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead," and started making enquiries about air tickets.

Within a couple of days of committing to provide financial assistance to the person who was in difficulty, I heard that I would be receiving some money. I already knew that a distant family member whom I had never met -- a third cousin twice removed or something like that -- recently had died. A new piece of information was that she had been wealthy, a fact to which she had not hinted while she'd been alive. In her will, she had named my mother as one of the beneficiaries of her estate. My mom, in turn, was kind enough to distribute much of the money she received to her children and her favourite charities.

The amount of money that came to me from my distant cousin was enough to reimburse me for the money I'd given to the person who had encountered a significant challenge and to cover the costs of my trip to Africa in June and July 2009.

Then early this year, 553080 BC Ltd, the real estate development company that has built the Pacific Gardens Cohousing Community project, ran into financial difficulty. 553080 BC Ltd was forced to ask its shareholders, of whom I was one, to give whatever assistance they could afford. This could be done by purchasing debentures, which was a way of lending the company money.

This time the amount of money that was required was more than had been needed in the other case I cited. Again, I could not afford it. As the amount of assistance that was needed this time was larger, I felt even more afraid than I had felt in the previous case. But again I felt inspired to give money, so that's what I did.

Shortly after that, the executor of our distant cousin's estate informed my mom that a previously unknown asset had been discovered and that he would need to distribute the equity amongst the beneficiaries. Astonishingly, the value of this previously unknown asset was larger than the value of the originally known estate. My mom again shared the proceeds with her children, still more charities, and her grandchildren as well. This time the share that I received covered the loan that I had made to 553080 BC Ltd.

More recently, I had been wondering how I was going to furnish my apartment at Pacific Gardens Cohousing Community when we finally got an occupancy permit and I was allowed to move in. Construction costs had increased, and we shareholders of 553080 BC Ltd were being asked to pay more for our apartments than we had expected. The increase in the asking price of my apartment would swallow up the budget I had earmarked for furniture and decorating.

At the beginning of September 2009, a couple of days before the City of Nanaimo granted Pacific Gardens Cohousing Community an occupancy permit, I heard I would be receiving still another windfall. My mom told me that the executor of our cousin's estate had told her he would be releasing money he previously had held back for estate taxes. After all tax bills had been cleared, he found that there was money left over in the holdback account. He shortly would be distributing that money to the beneficiaries. My mom told me that she would divide the money amongst her children and an additional charity. When she told me what my share would be, I was delighted to realize it would make the difference between furnishing my apartment with Salvation Army specials and furnishing it with what I wanted.

The part of my brain that was informed by my old paradigm -- what Robert Scheinfeld calls Phase 1 residue -- went into overdrive. It screamed at me not to spend my windfall on something as frivolous as decorating. It told me I should be adding the money to my tiny nest egg so that I could use it on a rainy day. But the thing is, I want to spend the money on decorating, so that's what I'm doing. I might add that I'm enjoying decorating.

In the meantime, the trolley that's propelling me through the Money Ride in the Earth Amusement Park continues to lurch over bumps and careen around corners. I regularly experience heart stopping moments. In the storyline, 553080 BC Ltd is far from being out of the woods.

Although I feel sucked in by the drama, I also believe that it's an illusion. I just keep plugging away, living in reactive mode and using the Phase 2 tools that I have faith will propel me to the Busting Loose point.

If nothing else, I find that living in the now is more fun than living in fear of future horrors that may or may not transpire.

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.

Down the rabbit hole

My entry point to the Busting Loose material was an audio archive of a telephone interview with Robert Scheinfeld that I heard on one of T. Harv Eker's websites. That was in August 2008. At the time, I was trying to escape from a feeling of financial insecurity and powerlessness, and was immersing myself in Eker's book, "The Secrets of the Millionaire Mind" and related workshops.

What Robert Scheinfeld said in the interview seemed to me represent a quantum leap that left the Millionaire Mind material in the dust. Robert's message deeply intrigued me. At the earliest opportunity, I bought his book, "Busting Loose from the Money Game." I stayed up late, and read it all in one go.

The book, in turn, fascinated me so much that I ordered the Money Game DVD set and watched it during a marathon weekend. By this time "fascinated" did not even begin to describe how I felt. I joined the Phase 2 Player Community website, and listened to the archives of the audio Discourses that Robert publishes once a month. Those hours and hours of Discourses still did not satisfy my appetite for information about the process for accessing Phase 2 of the Human Game.

Around that time I seized the opportunity to register for Robert's five-day workshop entitled "A Path to True Joy" in Sedona, Arizona in October 2008. There my understanding of the Busting Loose process expanded to some extent, I met some interesting workshop participants, and I delighted in the physical surroundings of Sedona.

Most of all, I enjoyed meeting Robert. He struck me as personable and sincere. I was impressed with how approachable he was. For example, his workshop was small, and he took his meals with us participants. This made it feasible to chat with him one-on-one.

From the amount of time and money I invested in absorbing Robert's teachings, you probably can tell that I resonated very strongly with his philosophy. Nonetheless, I found that embracing Robert's message required a leap of faith that was beyond me at the time. It was as if I was standing at the edge of a canyon and someone was asking me to jump across it. My legs froze, metaphorically speaking. Instead, I did it the slow, arduous way. I climbed down into the bottom of the canyon and up the other side.

Even after the significant level of commitment involved in participating in the "Path to True Joy" workshop, in many ways I continued to live in the Phase 1 illusion, gripped by its limitations, terrors, sorrows and frustrations.

But, somehow or other, I clung onto my faith in the existence of the True Joy state. Even during moments of despair, I implemented the practices that Robert advocated. I felt bound by the Phase 1 limitations, but I implemented the Phase 2 Process anyway.

Over the month of August 2009, a year after I'd first encountered Robert's material, I felt an expanding sense of having reached the opposite edge of the canyon, panting and perspiring so to speak. I do not feel as if I have reached the Busting Loose point as such. However, the bonds of Phase 1 feel as if they have loosened sufficiently that I have an unshakable faith that such as phenomenon as Phase 2 exists.

I now regard myself as a committed Phase 2 Player, even if I have not reached the Busting Loose point.