Last night I went through a huge spiritual shift that I believe is going to completely change the way I live my life from this point forward.

To properly explain what it was I need to provide a bit of background of how it came about.

I’ve always had an incredible thirst for knowledge and wisdom.  Although I’ve slowed down lately, I used to devour books on many topics from personal development, to finances to health and nutrition to spirituality and beyond.  Over the last 15 years I’ve easily read well over 1,000 books.

One of the benefits to reading all those books is that you get exposed to an incredible variety of different opinions on many different topics.  Instead of just reading one opinion by one person, you get to expose yourself to different points of view and then you get to choose the “best-of-the-best” from all these different opinions.

As I’ve mentioned in the last few posts I’ve been going through some incredible shifts in my personal life in the recent while, and it’s been both a very enlightening and incredibly frustrating time for me as well.

Yesterday my frustration reached an all time high, and out of that sheer frustration I finally became aware of the mental battle that has been plaguing my consciousness all this time.

The Downside of Reading 1,000+ Books

Although there are some incredible upsides to reading books, and being exposed to a variety of different opinions on different subjects, there are also some possible down sides to consider.

One of those downside is that by being exposed to so many different opinions, you can become paralyzed by seeing the truth in all of them.  For example, let’s use losing weight as a quick example.

I have read many books by nutrition and diet oriented authors who are convinced that the secret to losing weight is through diet.  They acknowledge that exercise plays a part in the equation, but more than 90% of the solution to them revolves around nutrition and diet.

I have also read many books by exercise oriented authors who are convinced that exercise is the key to weight loss and that dieting doesn’t work.  They do acknowledge that eating fruits and veggies is better than filling up on Twinkies, but they are convinced that without exercise diets don’t work at all.

The challenge with this type of situation is that you can get into a mental battle of trying to figure out who’s right and who’s wrong, because you see both sides getting results, instead of just picking one direction and going with it.

Exercise and diet may not be the best example because they can actually be combined and done simultaneously to achieve optimal results, but what if you read 20 different opinions on diet alone and they were all equally convinced that they had the right answer, but they all had different paths that can’t be merged together into one.

For example, what if one diet book was convinced that the secret to weight loss revolves around completely cutting out animal protein from your diet, while another claimed that animal protein is exactly what will help you to build muscle and burn fat.  And what if another book said that protein is irrelevant and that the real issue is chemicals found in food, while yet another said that the chemicals don’t matter as long as you count your calories.

I’m sure you can see that after a while, each opinion you hear actually adds to the confusion of things rather than adding clarity to your life.

In fact I can visualize inviting 20 or 30 diet experts to my house and assigning them the task of creating one single “ultimate” solution to a “perfect diet”.  If I locked them in a room and told them that they must all agree on a single solution, kind of like how a jury must agree on a verdict, I would be willing to bet that a war would break out.

I can see huge debates would ensue, and massive arguments, and after a few hours we might even see fights breaking out and chairs flying across the room etc.  I may be over exaggerating a little bit, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that happened.   Putting twenty “Gurus” in the same room sounds more like a recipe for disaster rather than a recipe for clarity.

Well, now imagine having a few hundred “Gurus” in your head, all arguing who’s right and who’s wrong.

The Opposing Opinion Conflict

Besides having too many opinions floating around in your head, there is an even worse situation that can happen that can be very draining on your energy.  The most energy draining situation you get into is when you are exposed to two equally believable, yet totally opposite points of view on a situation.

For example consider these two beliefs:

(1)    “Penny wise, pound foolish.”

(2)    “A penny saved, is a penny earned.”

Seemingly they are both correct.  The first belief points to the challenge of being penny wise, but pound foolish which means that you are focusing way too much of your energy on minor things, like trying to save pennies while at the same time that is causing you to lose money on a much bigger scale.

One example of this is wasting your time trying to figure out the best time to fill up your car with gas.  Instead of just going to a gas station and filling up when your car needs gas, you spend boundless amounts of energy keeping track of the best gasoline rates and only filling up when “gas is cheap”.  We all know that one person who will drive 100 miles out of town to fill up his gas tank with gasoline that’s 10 cents cheaper than the one closest to his house.  By the time they get back home, they’ve already burned through any savings they generated and they’ve wasted their time as well.

But if we consider such actions to be a waste of time and energy, then why do we also believe in statements like “A penny saved, is a penny earned?”  In this case the belief states that we should always try to save money, even if it’s just a penny because all those pennies eventually add up to a lot of money and it’s not about the penny but rather about the mindset of being a “saver” instead of a “spender”.

Anyone who believes in this belief will cite examples of how nobody in America saves anymore and we spend way more money than we make, and that is why we’re in this huge economic downswing because we’re all living beyond our means.

Now this sounds logical, until we throw in yet another common saying, which is “You’ve got to spend money to make money”, and that really starts to screw things up.  That belief also makes sense, so what’s the truth?  How do we save money if we first need to make money which first requires us to spend money?  And how do we save money without being penny wise and pound foolish?

I’m sure you can see how the “opposing opinion conflict” can be even more paralyzing than the “too many opinions” conflict.

Over the years I’ve become pretty good at resolving these conflicts in my mind.  Every time I read a book or take a course on anything, there is a period of adjustment afterwards where mind assimilates the new information and compares it against what I already know and I work through any conflicts to come out with more clarity than I started with.  I usually resolve any opposing opinion conflicts by using my intuition to make the final decision when my logical mind can’t decide which is truer.  If in doubt, I go with my gut.

However, what I realized yesterday is that I’ve had a pretty major “opposing opinion conflict” battling itself out in my mind for years now related to spirituality and I wasn’t even really aware of it until yesterday.

Let me explain.

Does Reality Exist or is it All Just a Dream?

If you’ve seen the movie “The Matrix”, you’ll know what one of the main ideas behind the movie is that reality isn’t really real.  The movie builds on the idea that what we consider to be reality is just an illusion.  In the movie, Neo is awakened from the computer generated world of the matrix into what we would consider the “real world”.  Of course, by the time the trilogy is over we’re left wondering if the so called “real world” that Neo was awakened to is really real, or if it’s just another illusion.

This idea that life is an illusion is not a new concept.  I’ve read new age spirituality books that talk about the concept.  I’ve read religious books that talk about the concept.  I’ve seen countless movies that explore this concept.  I’ve even read books and seen DVD’s from some of the brightest minds in quantum physics that also talk about this concept from the scientific point of view.  What these quantum physicists confirm is basically what spiritual teachers have been teaching for thousands of years – that this “reality” that we supposedly live in is just an illusion.

“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistant one.”

– Albert Einstein

Ok, so if reality and life is just an illusion, a dream, then what is the meaning to life when it is just an illusion?

“Nothing I see in this room means anything.”

– Part 1, Lesson 1, A Course in Miracles.

A Course in Miracles teaches us that nothing in this life means anything.  It is all an illusion.  A dream.  It is not truth, so it cannot have any meaning because it doesn’t exist.

It is this kind of thinking, this kind of energy, this kind of philosophy that summarizes the first “Spiritual Path” that I’ve been exposed to.  The path of awakening.  The path of realizing that nothing in this reality is real.  That everything is not only an illusion, but that it is also meaningless.

It is the path of transcendence, the path of letting go of the three dimensional life we live here on earth and trying to transcend it to a new way of living.  It is a path of letting go of “meaningless” material things and embracing spirituality.

I will call this the path of “Transcending Life”.

Although I believe the “Transcending Life” path to be true, I consider it only a half-truth.

Let me explain.

The Real Meaning Behind this Illusionary Reality

There is another path that is seemingly at odds with the first path.  The second lesson in A Course in Miracles hints towards this path:

“I have given everything I see in this room all the meaning that it has for me.”

– Part 1, Lesson 2, A Course in Miracles.

This second spiritual path, which I’ll call the “Mastering Life” path, acknowledges the fact that we live in an illusionary world, and that this world is but a dream.  However, this second path doesn’t use that realization to automatically assume that life itself is meaningless.  Instead it awakens us to the realization that the only thing that is real is our consciousness, and it is our consciousness that applies meaning to the three dimensional world we experience here on earth.

Because consciousness is real, the meaning that we apply to this illusion we call “reality” is real as well.  The only thing to realize is that nothing in this illusion has any meaning in and of itself, it only has the meaning that we choose to give it – consciously or unconsciously.

This “Mastering Life” path acknowledges the spiritual nature of this life we live here on earth, but instead of trying to transcend this life, it embraces our life here on earth.

For example, instead of looking at the body and declaring that it is meaningless, an illusionary shell that we should try to transcend, what if we looked at the body as a meaningful and beautiful vessel for our spirit / consciousness to reside in during this lifetime.  Instead of unconsciously attacking, destroying and abusing the body through neglect, bad diet and lack of exercise, what if we instead mastered the body?

As spiritually aware beings, we know that we are not our bodies, and I believe that it is that awareness that some of us – including myself – turn into an unconscious desire to destroy the body.  What if all the abuse and neglect we put our body through, eating crappy food, and everything else we do that is bad for us is just our way of rebelling against this “shell” we find ourselves trapped inside as spiritual beings?

What if instead of trying to transcend the body, stripping it of any meaning, we instead attempted to master the body, making it one of the most meaningful things in our earthly life?

What if we ate healthy foods, stretched, exercised and took care of our bodies instead?

The same thing can be said about our finances.  We know that money isn’t real.  We know it’s all just an illusion, and I believe many of us try to rebel against money and anything to do with our finances.  We spend money faster than we earn it.  The minute it comes into our lives, we go into a shopping frenzy trying to get rid of it.  Most of the time we spend it long before it even comes into our lives, getting into piles and piles of debt.  What better way to declare money as meaningless to us then to spend so much of it that we get into tremendous amounts of debt so that we will never have any of it no matter how much we earn, right?

Well, what if instead of rebelling against money and trying to strip away any meaning from it, we instead embraced it and poured all the meaning our consciousness could muster?

Does the thought of adding meaning to money make you uncomfortable?  Haven’t we been told that money is the root of all evil?

What if we saw building wealth as a spiritual path?  A path of mastering yet another aspect of our lives here on earth, no different than mastering the ability to take care of your body, or driving a car.

What if we did that in every area of our lives?  What if instead of trying to strip away all meaning from everything here on earth as a way to supposedly “Transcend Life”, we instead put our energy towards “Mastering Life”?  Instead of taking away meaning, we added meaning to those things that our consciousness felt inspired to add meaning to?

What if this “dream” we’re in is not some accidental mistake that we should try to awaken from as quickly as possible, but rather a deliberate “dream” that we can enjoy the experience of.

Examples from Fantasy Worlds

Let’s dive into a couple of quick examples from some of the fantasy worlds we’ve created here on earth recently.  One of those examples is going to a movie.

When we go to a movie, we know that the movie we are watching is fake.  We know that those are not real situations that we are watching on the big screen – they are actors playing their roles.  We know that there are computer generated special effects being added, and we know that those actors aren’t really flying across the screen.  However, can we not enjoy a movie even if we know that what we are seeing is not “real”?

Have you ever been to see a movie that you really enjoyed but you went to see it with some idiot who wouldn’t shut up about how the movie was so fake?  Didn’t you just want to slap that person for not seeing past the special effects and actually experiencing the story itself?  Are you doing the same thing with your own life?

Another example of this is video games.  I used to play World of Warcraft quite regularly.  I’ve always enjoyed playing video games and in my opinion World of Warcraft is the most engaging, immersive and addicting game ever produced.  I have spent hundreds of hours playing that game, and I know people who have spent thousands of hours playing it.

Now, here’s the thing – the character you play inside the game of Warcraft is not “real”.  It’s a digital avatar that is made up of pixels.  So why do so many people spend thousands of hours leveling up “fake” characters?  Why do they get all excited about getting a “fake” piece of armor?

Well, as I mentioned before, technically speaking nothing is real.  Nothing has any meaning to it.  So while some may argue that playing a game of tennis in “real life” is a real experience, while playing the game of Warcraft is “fake” – I disagree.  Neither of them are real.  They are both only as real as the meaning you associate with them.

Consider this.  One year a friend of mine was rather broke, but he wanted to give me a gift for Christmas.  This was back in the day when I used to play Warcraft a lot, so for Christmas that year he gave me a set of daggers inside the game of Warcraft.  He mailed them to me using the game’s internal mailing system with a Merry Christmas note attached.  What’s funny is that out of all the gifts I got for Christmas that year, his is one of the only ones I remember.  Those daggers may not have held any “real” value in the “real” world, but there was a lot of meaning to them.  I have also received gifts of Warcraft gold before and other pieces of armor.  All of them had meaning to me.

Mastering Life as a Way to Transcend Life

What I realized yesterday was that I had some major conflicts inside my mind.  A part of me was totally focused on the transcending life path.  Every time I tried to do something in my life, I would always have this voice in the back of my mind telling me that it was a meaningless pursuit.

For example, if I wanted to lose weight, I could do it as part of a competition or some other process I attached meaning to, but as far as doing it just to be healthy I saw no meaning to it – at least not at the subconscious level.  I was unconsciously running the “Transcending Life” subroutine in my mind.

Same thing with money.  I know when I’m focused and mentally clear, I have the ability to manifest money very quickly, but then a part of me keeps sabotaging my success around money, because unconsciously I was fighting the idea of having lots of money.  It’s like part of my mind kept wanting to get rid of money from my life before I could attach any meaning to it, because money isn’t “real” so I shouldn’t attach meaning to it right?  That wouldn’t be very “spiritual” now would it?

I even stopped playing video games because I started seeing them as meaningless.  I used to want to drive a nice car, but then I convinced myself that cars are meaningless too.  Well, if you start thinking this way then your entire life becomes meaningless.

When I burned my goals last week I wanted to see what it felt like to let go of the past like that, and I really loved it.  It was so awesome to let go of old desires and to embrace new ones.

However, when I sat down to really think about what I wanted to accomplish in my life moving forward, I ran into this challenge of seeing no meaning in anything.  I tried thinking about my health, finances, relationships, spirituality, personal development etc. and I tried thinking about what I would want to accomplish in those areas of my life but I couldn’t think of anything that had any meaning to me.

It felt like I had effectively stripped away any meaning to my life.  That did not feel like the right place to be.  Intuitively I knew that this “Transcending Life” path was not the right path for me – spiritually or otherwise.  I decided to meditate on it throughout the day and after about 6 hours of sleeping and meditating, I finally had the insights I am sharing with your right now.

Maybe I needed to go through this process of eliminating any meaning to money, health, fun, and other parts of my life.  But now that I’ve been there, I know that it’s time for me to embrace a different path.  One where I’m not trying to “wake up” from this dream reality, but rather to embrace it and love life and the meaning I choose to give to its different parts.

Besides making the decision to attach meaning and master different areas of my life such as improving my health, building wealth and the other areas I mentioned before, I have also realized that even the more “Fantasy World” based aspects of my life such as playing video games, painting Warhammer figurines, or even playing with RC Cars have just as much meaning in my life as I give to them.

At different points in my life I used to enjoy those kinds of activities, but I mostly cut them out of my life because they weren’t “real” and therefore I started to see them as a waste of time which could be spent on more important/realistic things, but now I see that there is no such thing as “more realistic”.

The only thing that is real is consciousness.  Everything else is an illusion.  Our consciousness can make something real by giving it meaning, but there is no such thing as something being “more real” than something else.  Doing your taxes isn’t any more real or any more meaningful than watching a movie.  Unless of course you choose it to be.

So what I’ve decided to do now is to live my life according to the “Mastering Life” path.  Instead of shying away from life, to embrace it and live it to the fullest.  I believe that this is the true path to transcend life anyways – by mastering it.

Here’s a quote from a journal entry I made yesterday shortly after coming out of meditation.  I don’t know where it came from, but it spoke to me at a core level, and it warmed my heart.  Even reading it now, it makes me want to cry.  Maybe it will speak to some of you as well.

“What if the way to transcend life is to master it?  To embrace the fullness of life from every angle, the good and the bad, the meaningful and the meaningless, to embrace the pleasure and the pain, to live life like it means something.”