Q&A

First, you might want to listen to a 2-part podcast Stephen made with James “JD” Sangster on his Higher Consciousness Radio…. Part One, Part Two.

Then. here are some commonly asked questions Stephen has received over the years, with his answers.

Let’s start with a Brief Explanation of “The Model.” (To download a .pdf of this page, click here.)

You can also download a PDF file of the “Rules for the First and Second Parts of the Human Game” by clicking here, and a PDF file of “How Life Apparently Works in this Model of a Holographic Universe” by clicking here.

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TOPICS (click on a topic to skip to that question)

~ Why is Life like a Ride?
~ How can I get out of the First Part of the Human Game and into the Second Part?
~ Are all judgments actually “bad”?
~ What’s the best process to use to let go of my judgments?
~ If I let go of all my opinions, beliefs, judgments and fears, will my holograms change?
~ Without my opinions, beliefs, and judgments, who am I? Won’t I be boring to other people?
~ Doesn’t it get lonely outside the cave?
~ But A Course in Miracles says…
~ You speak about Non-Duality, but isn’t your concept of you as a Player separate from your Infinite I a duality?

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QUESTION: What does Bill Hicks mean when he says “life is a ride”? I don’t get it.

ANSWER: Hopefully you’ve had a chance to experience a ride in an amusement park at some point in your life – maybe when you were young. But I don’t mean a Merry-Go-Round or Ferris wheel or roller coaster. I mean a ride that you sit in and it takes you through a tunnel where you experience different things. “Pirates of the Caribbean” at DisneyWorld, DisneyLand, or EuroDisney is the best example I can think of.

(If you haven’t experienced “Pirates,” maybe you went through a haunted house one Halloween, or even a Tunnel of Love.)

What happens in “Pirates of the Caribbean”? You get into a small transport (a boat) and enter a dark tunnel. Soon you begin to see scenes all around you; and if you set your imagination free, you can start to feel like the scenes are real and you are part of them. (This is easier for a young child!)

The designer(s) of the ride have intentionally created scenes to evoke some kind of reaction in you. Sometimes it’s excitement, sometimes it’s amazement, sometimes it’s joy, sometimes it’s fear, sometimes it’s surprise, sometimes it’s anxiety, sometimes it’s panic.

The designer(s) of the ride want you to have these feelings – that’s why they created the ride – and they receive their own pleasure by experiencing those feelings vicariously through you. In fact, they keep designing and re-designing the ride to create the best scenes to produce the optimum reactions, whatever those reactions might be.

To get the full effect of the ride, you have to forget the fact that everyone you see during the ride is an actor or a robot, reading a script or following their program.

At some point, if the emotions and feelings get too strong, you might even want the ride to be over, to escape out of the tunnel. But it’s not the designers’ fault if someone on the ride takes the whole thing so serously that they don’t enjoy the experience – all parts of it.

Okay, so why is life like a ride, like “Pirates of the Caribbean” – if it isn’t already clear?

You start off by getting into a small transport (a body) and enter a dark tunnel (the birth canal).

Soon you begin to see scenes happening all around you, and the scenes seem very real, and you feel like you are part of the scene. This is what I have called the “holographic 3D total immersion movie.”

You start having experiences – all kinds of experiences – and you start reacting and responding to them with all kinds of feelings.

But just like “Pirates,” you don’t create those experiences. You don’t decide what scenes you are going to encounter. Your Infinite I creates each and every experience for you as the “designer” of your ride, down to the smallest detail.

You don’t decide where the boat goes, what scenes you see, or who appears in those scenes, or what happens in those scenes. Like “Pirates,” you’re there for the ride.

How you react or respond to what you see is entirely up to you (free will).

And when you get to the end of the ride, you’re going to realize that it wasn’t real. It was just a ride.

At least, that’s what Bill Hicks found out, along with a lot of the rest of us….

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QUESTION: How can I get out of the First Part of the Human Game and into the Second Part?

ANSWER: You can’t – at least not until your Infinite I is ready for you to, and then it will happen without your having to “do” anything.

But I suggest you watch Dr. Bruce Lipton again in Part Five of the Workshops series. He is very clear that it is our beliefs that filter how we see what’s “out there”- and I add that it’s our judgments that cause all our pain and suffering, since they determine our perceptions and therefore how we react or respond to any experience.

Let me give you an example…

If you’re playing Pin the Tail on the Donkey, do you judge the blindfold that you’re wearing to be a “bad” thing? Of course not. It’s part of the game, and there wouldn’t be a game that was much fun without it.

If you’re trying to break open a piñata filled with candy, wearing a blindfold and swinging a stick, do you judge the blindfold to be a “bad” thing, or wish that the stick were “better”? Of course not. They’re part of the game, and there wouldn’t be a game that was much fun without them.

When you can see – perceive – all the limitations and restrictions of the First Part of the Human Game in exactly the same way – part of the Game, and part of the fun – you will be ready to move into the Second Part of the Game. But not until then.

As long as you judge the experiences you perceive in the First Part of the Game to be something you want to “get out of” – as you say – you still have some work to do to uncover the beliefs, judgments, fears, and layers of the ego that view those experiences – which you are still resisting – to be anything less than perfect.

Basically, you will be ready for the Second Part when you can look back at all the limitations and restrictions you experienced in the First Part – and probably all the pain and suffering you had as a result, since most people react or respond that way to the limitations and restrictions – and know, deep in your head and heart, that they were all absolutely perfect experiences, that they were all part of the game (if you could have only seen them that way at the time), and express your sincere appreciation for them all.

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QUESTION: Are all judgments actually “bad”? I mean, look at Assad… how can you not judge that he’s a monster for killing his own people that way.

ANSWER: I realize this is a tough one….

But first, no judgment is “bad.” That’s a judgment in itself. Judgments are perfect in the First Part of the Human Game, because they create so much limitation and restriction.

However, if you want to play in the Second Part…

Let’s take Assad as an example….

I’ve said that we’re living in a holographic 3D total immersion movie. Like any movie you watch, there is a main plot, and perhaps a number of sub-plots. If you’re living in Syria, Assad is probably your main plot. But if you are just reading about him in the news, he’s a sub-plot in your movie.

Remember, Assad isn’t real, unless you make him real by your beliefs. Likewise, the events going on in Syria aren’t real, unless you make them real by your beliefs. (And, difficult as it may seem, this is true for anyone living in Syria as well.)

But perhaps your Infinite I has created Assad and the violence in Syria as a gift to you for you to see where you have given power “out there” to make something in your hologram real, and for the opportunity for you to change you mind and your perceptions about that.

Assad is an actor playing a role in your movie (and maybe other Players’ movies), and he seems to be playing his ROLE as a monster very well. If there’s any judgement to be made, it would be that he is doing a fantastic job at the part his Infinite I volunteered him to play.

So, yes, all judgments lead to more and more limitations and restrictions. And if you want to play in the Second Part of the Human Game, you will be given lots of opportunities to spot your judgments and let go of them, through various plots or sub-plots in your holographic 3D total immersion movie.

However, if you run across a judgment and decide you are correct in that judgment, and want to hang on to it, that’s fine. (There’s no judgment here about that!)

But you should know that it will simply keep you chained in Plato’s Cave. That’s entirely your choice.

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QUESTION: What’s the best process to use to let go of my judgments?

ANSWER: I can’t tell you that.

I mentioned four different processes in Part Five of the video series. You could also read Chapters 13 and 14 in my book that talk about what worked for me.

But rest assured… if you ask, and if it’s time, your Infinite I will create the best process for you in your hologram. It might just show up one day, so be aware of what appears in your movie.

There is one very important thing I didn’t mention, however – that you have to begin listening carefully to all your thoughts, and to everything you say, and be constantly on the lookout for your opinions, beliefs, judgments and fears.

There isn’t likely to be anyone else around you who will spot these for you and let you know about them. If there is, you’re very lucky! So don’t get defensive and resent their observations.

But it is entirely up to you to take full responsibility and monitor your own ego and the thoughts it generates which you verbalize, or not.

If you’re serious about wanting to let go of the limitations and restrictions of the First Part of the Human Game, you should sincerely want to become aware of all the opinions, beliefs, judgments and fears that you carry as a result of your reactions and responses to your experiences.

Your Infinite I will help by creating experiences for you similar to the ones when you first formed these opinions, beliefs, judgments and fears, allowing you an opportunity to let go of them and change your reaction or response to those experiences.

But it’s very easy to simply ignore the thoughts you have, or say or do the same old thing you’ve always done, especially when there’s no one around to call you on it or point it out to you. Your ego will also be encouraging you to do what you’ve always done, whispering in your ear that “this is really not an opinion,” or “this judgment is valid – hang on to it.”

So you’re on your own in this, and you have to be your own “spotter.”

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QUESTION: If I let go of all my opinions, beliefs, judgments and fears, will my holograms change?

ANSWER: I don’t know. I’m not creating your holograms. That’s up to your Infinite I.

But I do know that you can’t let go of any of them because you want your hologram to change, because you want something “out there” to be different than it is.

There is nothing that needs to be fixed, changed, or improved in your holographic experiences. If you are letting go of your opinions, beliefs, judgments and fears because you want something “out there” to be different (like someone else changing their behavior), it still means you’re judging the experience, and it won’t work. Your Infinite I can see through that.

I can only say that my holographic 3D total immersion movie changed dramatically when I let go of my opinions, beliefs, judgments and fears; but I didn’t care whether it changed or not. That wasn’t my motivation for running the process. It was simply a very surprising and exciting by-product.

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QUESTION: Without my opinions, beliefs, and judgments, who am I? Won’t I be boring to other people?

ANSWER: Maybe you’ll be boring to your old friends when they no longer hear you spouting off; and maybe you won’t have as much to say at cocktail parties without all your opinions and beliefs to lay on other people.

But who cares? You shouldn’t. You’re not doing this in order to win a popularity contest.

You’re doing this because it’s your opinions, beliefs, judgments and fears that have determined your reactions and responses to your experience, and caused all your pain and suffering.

You’re doing it for your own joy and excitement and peace of mind.

And maybe you’ll find out that you want a new group of friends instead who support your process.

Now, who will you become? That’s an interesting question. Without all these layers of the ego determining your identity, you may be surprised who you find out that you are.

That is what is meant when we talk about “no-self.” This is a process of letting go of all the things that have made up the “self” in the First Part of the Human Game – what Bashar called the “Personality Construct” – and arriving at “no-self.”

It doesn’t mean that you no longer exist. In fact, the opposite is true. YOU finally DO exist as who you are, without all the false layers of the ego getting in the way.

It’s an exciting discovery!

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QUESTION: Doesn’t it get lonely outside the cave?

ANSWER: No, not really. At least not for me.

Of course, I’ve only been outside the cave for less than two years (2012), and I’m still flitting around like a butterfly enjoying everything from a totally new perspective – amazed at the game, digging the ride, in awe of the beauty of the movie set, marvelling at how the whole thing works…

Maybe I’ll eventually get bored or lonely. I don’t know.

And maybe I am trying to entice more people out of the cave through my book and these workshops. Maybe I would like more playmates to go on this part of the ride with me. It’s possible.

What I can tell you is that I have no interest, no excitement, no desire to spend a lot of time around or enter into extended conversations with people still inside the cave who just want to talk about the cave, or today’s cave soap opera plots, or their latest beliefs about how life works inside the cave. There’s nothing “wrong” with any of that, but the cave doesn’t do it for me any more.

Let me put it this way…

Inside the cave, the only game we knew was Tic-Tac-Toe. We spent every minute of our lives engaged in Tic-Tac-Toe, trying to figure out how to win it – which is not possible, as anyone who’s older than 2 or 3 knows.

But it was the only game in town, or so we thought. So we kept believing that if we were just a little smarter, or more clever, or more determined, or meditated more, or ate only organic food, or learned how to visualize or manifest better, or changed our DNA to 12 strands, or discovered the sacred geometry used to build the cave and all its features, we could figure out a way to win.

In fact, a lot of self-declared gurus made a lot of money and got a lot of attention whenever one of them would come up with a new strategy to win at Tic-Tac-Toe. Everyone wanted to try this new “technique”; and of course, they all failed in the end…

…because Tic-Tac-Toe is not winnable. It’s not designed to be winnable. Period.

When you leave the cave and see what’s been going on inside from a new perspective, you cannot help but laugh very hard and very long.

And outside the cave you discover that there’s a new game, much more fun, more exciting, and more winnable than Tic-Tac-Toe. I’ll call this game “Sudoku,” just for the sake of this question.

Anyone outside the cave is mostly interested in exploring this new game of Sudoku, and not very interested at all in talking about Tic-Tac-Toe any more. So when someone wants to engage me in conversation about Tic-Tac-Toe, I might politely listen for a little while – mainly to see if there’s an opening to invite them to leave the cave.

But I will not waste my time talking about Tic-Tac-Toe, or how difficult it is, or some new discovery about how the game actually works and how the lines are drawn and the Os and Xs are made, or some new strategy to win it. It’s not that I judge Tic-Tac-Toe to be “wrong.” It’s not. It’s perfect for the First Part of the Human Game, because it creates nothing but more and more limitations and restrictions.

Nor am I interested in defending Sudoku, or proving that it exists, or trying to convince someone else about the virtues of Sudoku, or arguing about which game is better. I just want to play, and Tic-Tac-Toe is not the game for me anymore.

So there are not a lot of people I interact with, but that’s really very okay with me. Just being outside the cave provides more than enough stimulation and excitement and joy.

And there are other people who have left the cave and are flitting around like butterflies, too. I’m not really alone, although there’s a common understanding that we really don’t have much to say to each other when we meet. We’re too busy enjoying playing a new game.

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QUESTION: But A Course in Miracles says…. But Nassim Haramein says….

ANSWER: I would caution you about trying to fit these new models into your old belief systems. It won’t work. It’s like learning that the Earth is round; but even though you now understand – and can see from all the evidence – that it’s round, you still believe that you’ll fall off the edge if you get too close, because you have read that or heard that or been told that by some source, some authority you have given power to ‘out there.’

You have to be willing to let go of all those old beliefs before you can truly understand and incorporate this new information into your life. You simply won’t be able to keep your old beliefs and reconcile this new information at the same time. That’s why it is recommended that you start spotting your opinions and looking for the beliefs underneath, and processing them; and spotting your beliefs and looking for the judgments underneath, and processing them; and spotting your judgments and looking for the fears underneath, and processing them; and spotting your fears and looking for the layers of the ego underneath, and letting them go.

My experience has been that once I’ve let go of my old opinions, beliefs, judgments, fears, and ego, I can go back to A Course in Miracles, for example, and read it again, and lo and behold, it says something entirely different than I read the first time – and very supportive of this new information.

However the problem is that many of the “New-Age” theories were written by people trying to explain what life is like when you arrive at the Pacific Ocean (using my metaphor from Butterflies Are Free), but they never made it to the Pacific themselves.

Someone inside Plato’s Cave might think they have discovered something new about how life works, but in fact they are merely discovering more about how life works inside the cave – like how the fire works, or how the shadows are created, or how the sounds are produced (“Sacred Geometry,” “Holofractographic Universe,” “The Law of Attraction,” etc.)

I’m sure Nassim Haramein, for example, is sincerely thinking he has discovered the deepest secrets of the Universe. But it’s clear to someone outside the cave – someone who is actually standing in the Pacific Ocean – that most of these new “discoveries” are simply the latest attempts to find a way to win at Tic-Tac-Toe (the game going on inside the cave), which become totally irrelevant when you leave the cave and discover for yourself that it was just a ride, and it wasn’t real.

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QUESTION: You speak about Non-Duality, but isn’t your concept of you as a Player separate from your Infinite I a duality?

ANSWER: I hope I never said or suggested that a Player was “separate” from its Infinite I. In fact, my analogy of the Big Toe says exactly the opposite: a Player is an aspect of its Infinite I and always connected to it.

What I was trying to emphasize is that a Player is NOT its Infinite I, just as a big toe is not the whole body; and it would behoove us not to try to be something we aren’t.

David Bohm had a great analogy to explain “non-duality.” He said…

Imagine an aquarium with a fish in it. Put one video camera facing the side of the aquarium, and another video camera facing the end of the tank, each hooked up to a monitor in a separate room.

As you observe just the monitors, when one fish moves, the other moves instantaneously in a corresponding fashion.

If you did not know what you were seeing and only watched the video monitors, you could think you were seeing two different fish who happened to be moving at exactly the same time (duality). But in fact, there is only one fish that you are watching from two different perspectives (non-duality).

This is what happened in the physics experiments of Dr. Alain Aspect (1981-82, using the Bell Test Experiment). For example, when you send two twin photons in different directions, and then change the spin of one, the other one changes its spin instantaneously. This is what Einstein called “spooky action at a distance.”

But Bohm’s analogy suggests that we are simply looking at the same photon on two different video monitors.

What this means is that everything in your hologram is connected, is non-dual.

This doesn’t mean, however, that “we are all one,” as the New Age would have us believe. For an explanation of that, please see Chapter 25 of my book.

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