ON BECOMING A BUTTERFLY
So why doesn’t my Infinite I simply download a healthy holographic body for me and take this pain away?
It could; I know that. But that’s not the point of the transformation in the cocoon. It’s all about the process, and my process is not over yet. That’s why I don’t want my Infinite I to take my pain away until I’m finished.
I have run Robert’s Process hundreds of times on this body egg over the last two years and uncovered a number of judgments, beliefs and opinions. For example, as a result of my Christian upbringing as a Human Child and later beliefs in New Age spiritual theories as a Human Adult, I judged the body itself to be “bad,” that it was “wrong” – unspiritual – to have a body in the first place. I always thought I’d be better off without a body, that it was more of a hindrance than a gift, something to “rise above,” an indication I had dropped down a level or two from my innately immortal soul.
After my car accident I gained a lot of weight because I couldn’t move easily or exercise; and eating good food is one of my great pleasures in life. Eating without exercise; not a beneficial combination. So I still carry some of that extra weight, and I think of my body as “fat” – and I say that, unfortunately, with shame and as a judgment and not just a statement of fact.
In short, I cannot yet express full and sincere appreciation for my body the way it is, or even for having a body at all. Clearly there are more judgments, beliefs, and opinions for me to process in this egg.
I have uncovered some of the fears associated with my body as well. One is the fear that if I don’t have a perfectly healthy body, people are going to discount the scouting information I’m offering. I’ve done exactly that myself in the past, especially in judgment of all the celibate “holy men” and teachers and gurus and saints: “How can he talk about world peace when he can’t even create a peaceful relationship with a woman?”
So in my mind I hear people saying, “How can he talk about serenity of being if he’s in pain and can’t even heal his own body?”
A lot of this also has to do with vanity. I admit I’m vain; it’s one of the layers of my ego I haven’t fully gotten rid of yet. I have always taken pride in my appearance, probably too much pride. I still like it when people tell me I look ten years younger than I actually am. I had fun signing autographs when I was a “star” drummer in my twenties; I enjoyed being asked for my autograph when I was in my thirties by people who thought I was Tom Selleck, and then again in my fifties by people who thought I was Kenny Rogers; and for years I was sure Carly Simon was talking about me in her song.
Another fear I uncovered had to do with dying. When I wrote in the last chapter, “I have no fear of death,” this is true. Ever since I started believing in reincarnation over fifty years ago, I have not feared death; but I was still afraid of dying, still resisted a long, drawn-out and painful death. When my Infinite I decides I have finished my role as its Player, I prayed, I want to go quickly.
I watched live with great empathy as people jumped out of the World Trade Towers on September 11th and fell one-hundred stories to their certain death. I could feel the choice they made not to stay inside and slowly burn alive, but to end it quickly and painlessly. That’s how I wanted to go.
So as long as the judgments about my body and the resistance remain, the pain will too. I know that; and even though I have done a lot of work on this body egg, there is obviously stuff left inside to process. In the meantime, I am doing my best to appreciate the pain, to thank my Infinite I for the gift, for the opportunity the pain gives me to process all these judgments, beliefs, opinions, and fears, and let go of the associated layers of the ego. I have honestly gotten to the point where I don’t want the pain to leave until I’ve finished processing whatever is there inside the egg.
* * *
In the last couple of weeks, since I started working on this chapter and processing the pain, I have run into one of the most key beliefs about the body, and about life in general: the belief in the “law of cause and effect;” and it’s powerful – a very core belief for everyone in this holographic Human Game, it appears.
But it’s too early in my process to say much more than the so-called “law of cause and effect” is simply another belief system formed inside the movie theater and a function of the hologram itself, like space and time. Clearly the diabetes associated with one of the multiple personalities discussed in the last chapter is not “caused” by some malfunction in the body, since it disappears as soon as a different personality takes over.
However I’m not prepared at this point to give a scouting report on the “law of cause and effect.” That, it seems, will have to wait, and may be the subject of another book altogether – the final stages of my cocoon.
* * *
Meanwhile, since I know all pain is the result of judgment and resistance, I have to ask: What am I resisting? Becoming a butterfly?
Yes, truth be told, I am. It doesn’t feel like it has anything to do with fear of being a butterfly, however; or at least I can’t see it that way. When I think of being a butterfly, sailing around on my beautiful catamaran, it is a most wonderful picture full of excitement and joy, with no twinge of fear I can find. I look forward to it with great anticipation.
I am also not aware of any lingering fear of non-existence.
But just as it’s possible not to be afraid of death and still be afraid of dying, perhaps buried very deep is the fear of the final stages of the cocoon, of not knowing what becoming a butterfly would mean in my relationship to the people I love – my children and grandchildren, most specifically. (I know they’re not “real,” but I love them anyway!) Am I really ready to let go of everything, unconditionally, if that what’s required?
One of the problems is that other scouts who could provide any clue of what is required in the final stages of the cocoon – especially in relationship to other Players whom I care for so much – are few and far between.
Jed McKenna doesn’t talk much about family or wife or kids. He mentions having lunch with his sister….
“Visiting your sister and having lunch shouldn’t be a confusing ordeal, but it is. Is she really my sister? What does that mean? We share some history and acquaintances, such as childhood and parents. Are my parents really my parents? Genetically they are related to my body, but the person who lived my childhood is no longer here. The past I share with this person is about as real and important to me as if I’d read it in a brochure…. I’m an actor playing a role for which I feel no connection and have no motivation…. Actually, it’s not really confusing. I possess not the least shred of doubt about who and what I am. The tricky thing is that who and what I am is not related to this pretty, professional, salad-eating woman across from me… I have some residual fondness for my sister and if she died I’d be saddened to think that she was no longer in the world, but the simple fact is that our former relationship no longer exists. Okay, so why am I telling you this? Because that’s what I do. I try to hold this enlightenment thing up for display and this seems like an interesting aspect of the whole deal. How do you relate to the people who were most important to you before awakening from the dream of the segregated self?”1
That’s not very encouraging.
The last time I saw Robert Scheinfeld he had a wonderful family and what looked to be a very close and loving relationship with his wife and two children. Then he talked about a “dark night of the soul” that involved his family, so I’m not exactly sure of that situation. It doesn’t matter, though, because I don’t think of Robert as a scout who’s close to becoming a butterfly, as I will explain in Chapter Thirty-Three in Part Three of this book.
Jesus may have been a scout; he may even have become a butterfly. I find the allegoric symbols of his life, especially his crucifixion (the death of the caterpillar) and his emergence from the cave (his cocoon) three days later, to be fascinating; but that will have to wait until the next book. The point is that all the evidence suggests Jesus had a wife and child; but that after he became a butterfly he never saw them again, since they went to the south of France and he went to live (and finally die) in a community in Kashmir.2
There may be other scouts who have maintained so-called normal family relationships with ones they loved after they transitioned into a butterfly, but I don’t know their stories.
So there is the chance that once you complete your transformation into a butterfly, real communication with Players in the cocoon or the movie theater is no longer possible, which is why we don’t hear from any butterflies or read their books. It may be that you have to take the last step in the cocoon on total “faith,” without anyone to let you know what it’s like, as Harrison Ford did in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade when he had to step out from a canyon wall and risk falling into a deep gorge, not knowing there was a camouflaged bridge that would take him across to the other side. (Watch the video here.)
So whether it’s out of fear or excitement, I have to admit I’ve had the thought I would like to postpone my final transformation into a butterfly and stay where I am in the cocoon for a while. Perhaps this is my own thought; perhaps it has been put there as part of a hologram by my Infinite I. I don’t know yet.
However, I am excited and very curious about a game I see developing, if I’m reading the ripples in the Universe correctly.
I have a lot of friends, and am witnessing many thousands more Human Adults who seem ready to break out of the movie theater and transform into butterflies. The situation in the Earth Environment also appears to be getting more intense, like a rubber band being stretched to its limits before it breaks. How much more pain and suffering and limitation and restriction is required before millions of Players surrender, understand it is their own judgments and resistance causing that pain and suffering, and are willing to begin processing the false knowledge and layers of ego that are part of life inside the movie theater?
I think it would be a cool game to play to see how many Human Adults can be encouraged to enter their cocoons and then guided safely through their transformation into a butterfly. Everything that’s needed is in place now for a mass exodus from the movie theater, and the trail has been blazed. There are even some “hints” and “clues” the Earth – itself a Player in the Human Game – might be ready to transform as well.
* * *
There have been experiments done with rats, putting them in a water maze and observing them finding their way out. It seems “each new generation of rats learned to escape quicker. After ten years, the latest generation of rats could escape ten times faster than the original rats. Interestingly, rats of the same lineage in other areas of the world also escaped ten times faster, a phenomenon which cannot be explained by any localized instruments.”3
Perhaps I’m simply one of the first generation of rats to find their way to the Pacific Ocean, and perhaps those who come after me will find it much easier and faster.
But it means I’m just a rat like everyone else; and I don’t want to leave this book without paying tribute to all the rats who came before me and made my maze a little easier to navigate, and especially to all those other rats who died trying to find their way out of the water.
Then, maybe, if Rupert Sheldrake’s theory4 of morphic resonance turns out to be correct, all the rats who come after me will escape ten times faster, without so many wrong turns, and this process will spread throughout the world until a critical mass is reached and all the rats turn into butterflies.
How much fun I have mixing metaphors!
* * *
What’s it going to be like when I finally finish processing the layers of ego with my body?
All I can do is speculate, because I don’t personally know anyone who has actually become a butterfly. I know there must be some, but I have no idea who they are.
Jed McKenna – whoever he might really be – claims he emerged from his cocoon and then…
“I spent the next ten years trying to make sense of this new world; a non-world in which a non-I nevertheless seemed to reside. The waking dreamstate. It was like the world had turned from hard solidity into shimmering mirage. I could still see the world I had always known, but I could not find its substance. Whatever I reached out to touch, my hand passed through. Whatever I thought about dissolved in my mind. Whoever I looked at, I saw through like vapor, myself included. I looked at my own character, and it was like a face you see in a cloud for a second before it’s gone.
“My reality now is the awakened, untruth-unrealized state, and it’s the same for me as for anyone who comes to it. There are no masters or novices here. There are no teachings or beliefs; no Hindus or Buddhists or Jnanis or Advaitins; no masters or yogis or swamis; no discorporate entities or higher level energies or superior beings. Awake is awake. Everything else is everything else.”5
Keep peeling away layers of an onion and what do you have when you get through? Nothing. It isn’t that you peel away the layers and finally get to the onion. You get to the no-onion. The same thing is true for the self. After peeling away all the layers of the ego, you get to… no-self.
Jed says it takes about ten years to get used to living as a no-self, to get accustomed to being “awake from the dreamstate,” to operate without false knowledge and a false ego. I don’t know about that, because I assume he’s talking about living those ten years after emerging from his cocoon as a butterfly. First, I’m not certain it’s true he’s a butterfly; and secondly, I won’t know until I get there. I do know it is a very different way to live – a very wonderful and joyful and peaceful and exciting way to live – and even where I am now takes some getting used to.
* * *
There were a lot of questions I had as I blazed this trail to the Pacific Ocean, and in the next part of this book I want to share some of the answers I came up with based on the information I found along the way. But before I go….
I began this book talking about Plato’s Cave, that a Human Child is like a prisoner who is chained and can only see the wall in front of them; that a Human Child believes the shadows it sees on the wall are real; that when a Human Child realizes it is not really chained at all, it gets up and walks to the back of the cave and sees the fire and the men on the walkway that create the shadows on the wall; that this new Human Adult begins to recognize that the shadows are not real; and that a few Human Adults will eventually walk through the door in the back of the cave and out of the cave entirely.
Then I switched metaphors and said this Human Adult, once through the door, will enter a cocoon, where it will undergo a process of transformation, letting go of its judgments, beliefs, opinions, fears, and layers of ego that it believed itself to be as a caterpillar.
I have said I am near the end of my cocoon phase, standing at a point overlooking the Pacific Ocean, poised to become a butterfly, and that anyone who wants to can join me here.
I have achieved this serenity of being by a strong will and determination to find the truth, a lot of hard work, a lot of processing, and a lot of support from my Infinite I. I did it by following my discomfort – physical and emotional – to locate the judgments, beliefs, and opinions I had formed during my time inside the movie theater. I did it by going further to expose my fears and embracing them, especially the fear of non-existence. I did it by identifying the layers of the ego I had created and throwing them away, one by one, until there is virtually nothing left. I did it by letting go of the self that wasn’t true and finding the no-self that was.
Anyone who wants to can stand where I am standing now. Anyone can reach the Pacific Ocean and emerge from their cocoon as a butterfly. I am not special, I am not any “better” than anyone else, and I certainly am not any more “enlightened.” “Enlightenment” is a word that belongs inside the movie theater, in the first half of the Human Game, since it automatically carries a judgment with it – a judgment that one state of being is better (more “enlightened”) than another.
I’m simply near the end of the rollercoaster ride, reporting back to those still going up the first hill and those just at the top ready to take the plunge, trying to give some clarity and some encouragement about the ride to come and how much fun it can be.
If you’re still inside the movie theater, my best advice would be to realize it’s just a game, that it isn’t real, and – now that you know the true source and reason for all your drama and conflict and pain and suffering – to let go of your resistance and relax and learn to appreciate and enjoy every moment of every experience you’re having. Remember you’re on a rollercoaster, and that going up that first hill is an essential part of the ride. The more you resist that hill, the more needless pain and suffering you will have.
If you’ve walked out of the movie theater and are starting off in your cocoon, hang on for the ride of your life; and if you meet me on the road, it means I’m still playing the “scout.” So kill me6, and then go further.