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.