Cup your hands over your ea rs and notice how muffled th e world
is. Put on sung lasses and notice how dim the world becomes. Turn
off the lights at night and cautiously, with small steps, try to
navigate a room in your hou se you are very familiar with . When
you take your hands away from your ears, remove your sunglasses,
and tur n on the lights, your awareness of everything aro und you
expands. Waking up expands reality even more. YOUR EXPERIENCE:
 
 
 
 DAY 3
 
All biological organisms have their own unique
bandwidth of sensory experience. Experience defines us all, and since we are tuned in to only one
bandwidth of reality—call it the Me Channel—our identit y is also
narrow. Other living things are tuned in to different bandwidths,
giving them an existence we can barely imagine. But humans can
change the channel at will. Reality is only as narrow as our
awareness. Wh en you wake up, you are tuned in to the entire
bandwidth. Then reality is unlimited. For Today
Take a mome nt to listen to  the birds singing. Each bird is
telling its story. Birdsong communicates information from parent
to c hick, announces the limit s of territory, attracts a mate , signals
danger, and identifies which  species the bird belongs to. Notice
that you do not understand a single thing on Bird Channel. If it is
winter o r you hear no birds, consider a dog sniffing the air. A dog’s
nose can tell i t who has wa lked by, what was on that person’s
shoes, and when the incident occurred. Notice that your nose
gathers none of the information that comes across Dog Channel. YOUR EXPERIENCE:
 
 
 
 DAY 4
 
Our physical body is also a perceptual experience. The Me  Chann el tells you th at you have a body. The body you
see and feel, th e sensations that come through the nervous system,
the locations of pleasure and pain—these signals are constantly
broadcast on the Me Chann el. The body is not a thing; it is a
confederation of perceptions. Your mind unites these frag mented
perceptions int o a coherent im age in time and space. If your mind
didn’t do that, the Me Channel would just be transmitting noise. For Today
Take a momen t to perceive y our body directly. Close your eyes
and sit  quietly. Let your attention roam from sensation to
sensation. Lift your arm and feel its weight. Rub your fingers
together and feel their softne ss and the texture of the skin. Hear
your breath and your heartbeat. It doesn’t matter how many
signals you pick up, or wheth er your body feels nice to you or not
nice. You have contacted the real body you have. The experience of
the body is  the body. Everything else is mental interference. When
you wak e up, you will accept and enjoy the experience of t he body
for itself, which is blissful. YOUR EXPERIENCE:
 
 
 
 DAY 5
 
By itself each perceptual experience is a unique,
evanescent, ungraspable, momentary sensation. Our
senses take snapshots of reality. Life gives us a constant flow of perceptions that we live by. The
five sen ses are the pipeline through which everything flows. But
it’s not like a continuous flow of water from a faucet. Sensations
are muc h more like rain, whi ch falls one drop at a time. W e make
sense of life using fleeting t houghts and sensations. We ignore
how ev anescent every perception really is—each sensation starts
to fa de as soon  as it is noticed. Every thought has already v anished
by the time it registers. By w aking up, we stop ignoring what is
actually happe ning all the time. The need to turn fleeting
sensations into a running movie or story fades away. For Today
Put a grain of s alt or sugar on  your tongue. Notice how the  taste
starts to diminish after the first strong taste sensation. Pay
attention to how your saliva ry glands quickly reacted and how
your throat wanted to swallow. This puts you in touch with how
brief and temporary experien ce is. But here’s the real point. Try to
taste what was on your tongue before  you  pla ced the  salt or sugar
on i t. You can’ t. That taste, which you probably didn’t ma ke note
of w hen it occu rred, has fled forever. Fleeting perceptions  are the
texture of life. YOUR EXPERIENCE:
  
 DAY 6
 
The only constant in every snapshot of perception is the
presence of being and awareness. Snapshots don’t take themselves—there has to be a
photographer behind the camera. No matter how many thousands
of photos a professional photographer takes, he is the constant
behind the lens. His job is to  look, arrange the setting, p lace the
lights, focus, and decide if the image satisfies him. You do the
same with reality. Your senses deliver snapshots of raw data,
which change in endless ways. The only constant is you, seeing,
arranging, turn ing random bursts of perception into so mething
you can relate to. Most of this happens automatically, but when
you wake up, you see what you’re doing. Then you hav e much
more freedom to create. For Today
Get bac k in touch with the b asic units of experience. Sit for a
moment and be with your simplest experience of light, warmth,
the sme lls wafting your way, the taste in your mouth. Relax into
the experience . Notice each sensation spontaneously, w herever
your att ention wanders. The more you are able to relax, the more
effortless wakin g up will be. Waking up in itself is a totally  relaxed,
spontaneous state, open to whatever happens here and now. YOUR EXPERIENCE:
 
  
 DAY 7
 
The stringing together of perceptual snapshots creates a
sense of continuity, the same way a movie is created from
the rapid sequence of still frames. When the invention of motion pictures revealed that our eyes
can be fooled b y stringing together a series of snapshots at  twenty-
four frames per second, a d eeper truth about reality was also
revealed. The human brain w orks by the firing of neuron s. Each
firing is  a burst of energy, followed by a pause, then the ne xt burst. The bursts slice reality into bits of information from the five
senses. When a train races past you, you are not seeing it in
motion. You are seeing bursts of information in your brain that
give the illusion of motion. Likewise, you don’t hear con tinuous
sounds. The con tinuity of your life is  a necessary illusion. We have to
see the world in motion so that we can live in motion, no t frozen
bits of sensation. Right now you are experiencing pictures and
stories created in your mind through the same piecing-together
process. When you wake up, these pictures and stories will  be seen
for wha t they are: artificial constructs of the mind. You will live
from th e “real” reality that is beyond pictures and s tories—
consciousness itself. For Today
Sit in front of a moving image on your TV or computer—this
can be anythin g, from people walking around to a news or sports
event. Focus on something m oving across the screen from left to
right. In reality there is no person moving across the screen; not a
single p hoton of light is movi ng across the screen. Instead, burstsof color are ha ppening, each one totally stationary. By s tringing
these bursts in a sequence, th e illusion of motion is creat ed. Now
notice how hard it is to see the actual process taking place before
your very eyes. Your mind m ust see motion because, since you
were bo rn, the world has been a series of pictures in moti on—this
is how conditioned you are to accept an illusion as reality. YOUR EXPERIENCE:
 
 
 
 DAY 8
 
The physical body and the appearance of the physical
world are created in the mind as constructs from
sensations that are intermittent and ephemeral. In daily life we do not investigate how the mind creates a three-
dimensional world out of random, meaningless bits of sensation. Starting with the simple world a baby experiences, everything gets
more an d more complicated. A newborn cannot focus on its hand,
which l ooks like a pink blob floating in the air. In time the blob
becomes a hand attached to the body; it acquires a name; it
develops many  skills. Medicine studies it down to every tis sue and
cell. This buildup of knowledge occurs in the mind and is created by
the min d. A naked hand has  no story to tell; it has no developed
skills. E verything a hand can become when it belongs to a skilled
painter, sculptor, circus performer, chef, or welder is mind-made. The same goes for the whol e body and the physical world. We
construct virtual reality so that we can have the pictures and
stories that are necessary for being human. For Today
Take a  sheet of ordinary 8 ½ × 11-inch paper and poke a
pinhole in the center. If you hold the paper close to your eye, you
can see the wh ole room through the pinhole—this is your mental
picture of the room. Now hold the paper one or two inch es from
your eye, until you see only p arts of familiar objects—just pieces of
lamps, chairs, windows, and so on. Try to walk around the room
seeing only these bits and pi eces. It is quite difficult. Deprived of
the picture your mind makes , the room is a disconnected  jumbleof fragmented images. Reflect on how you have used the mind to
construct the familiar three-dimensional world you accept at face
value. YOUR EXPERIENCE:
 
 
 
 DAY 9
 
The appearance of the body and the world are activities in
consciousness—verbs, not nouns—constantly and rapidly
changing. When you enter a room, go to work, or take a stroll outdoors,
the objects you see appear to be fixed and stable—but they aren’t. Your b rain is constantly firing to keep the illusion of stability
going. Your five senses cooperate by turning photons into pictures
and air  vibrati ons into recognizable sounds. In other words, you
are constantly  making the world. An ever-changing, endless
process is taking place in your awareness. Therefore, the outer
world is an ever-changing, endless process wearing the disguise of
fixed, stable objects. By waking up, you see past the mask of
matter, reconnecting with the creative process that makes the
world. For Today
Look at  a photo of a friend, family member, or celebrity. Now
turn it upside down. Notice  that you cannot recognize the face
anymore. A hitch has occurred in your brain, which is conditioned
to r ecognize faces only righ t side up. There was a process to
recognizing a face; the face itself is meaningless. Or imagine
placing a photo on a turntable and setting it spinning (you can try
this on a lazy Susan or a record player). Notice that you cannot
make sense of the photo wh ile it is revolving. The movin g world
has no reality until the min d constructs it into a human  world. Constant change acquires the illusion of stability and nonchange.YOUR EXPERIENCE:
 
 
 DAY 10
 
The mental construct of the body and the world is the
product of centuries of conditioning. In daily life we accept the world as a given. Trees, mountains,
clouds, and sky are simply th ere. But these are merely the scenery
of v irtual reality. Everything i n the world beyond raw sens ory data
is r ooted in mythology, history, religion, philosophy, culture,
economics, and language. Raw sensation is overlaid with this
complex conditioning. As a result, the body and the world we
perceive have been interpreted in advance. They exist as
extensions of the human drama. By waking up, you step out of the
drama to be who you really are. You see that virtual reality is a
kind of hand-me-down, which you no longer have to settle for. For Today
Here is a simple exercise in perception. Contemplate the letter
A . When you set eyes on it, you saw a simple sign made with three
short strokes of a pen. Bu t those strokes have no i nherent
meaning, as you can instantly determine by turning A  on its side
or u pside down. The meani ng of A  is emb edded in it. It is an
ancient meanin g, going back to the Phoenician alphabet. M ixed in
is the Hebrew letter aleph , which stands for the beginning,
creation, and God. A  is syno nymous with one, which connotes
individuality a nd the start of  arithmetic. A  is  a de sirable grade in
school, and if you earn enough A s, y ou are like ly to be well -
educated and end up prosperous. If a sing le lette r of the alphab et carries so much history a nd so
many implications, imagine how complex the fabric of the human
world i s. We inherit a weal th of meanings that hold the worldtogether but also become a burden. (Think of all the trouble
caused by another letter of the alphabet, I .) YOUR EXPERIENCE:
 
 
 
 DAY 11
 
The mind itself is nothing other than conditioned
awareness. Each of us was born into an interpreted world. Pre vious
generations spent their lives giving everything a human
meaning. Every newbo rn grows up by learning the ropes, and
once you can navigate the world—walking, talking, making life
choices, forming relationships—you find your place in virtual
reality. At some point you w ould like to have your own unique
experiences. “I want to be me” is a powerful incentive. But the  only way to have an e xperience is to use the mind , and
everyone’s mind is totally conditioned. It had no choice. By
learning the ropes, each of u s sacrificed “I want to be me” in the
name o f “I want to fit in.” Mo re than social pressure was at work. The rules of v irtual reality require us to accept a shared set of
pictures, stories, beliefs, and  habits. By waking up, you get to be
yourself beyond the rules. The “real” reality is always new and
original. For Today
Today the challenge is to ha ve a thought that is totally your
own. Su ch a thought cannot echo anything you’ve heard s omeone
else say  or anything you’ve re ad in a book. It can’t be couc hed in a
familiar phras e. It must not grow out of memory, becau se then
you would only be repeatin g the past. Faced with this  simple
challenge, you can see how ti ghtly the conditioned mind holds you
in its grip. The re are well-tried escape routes, like imagination and
fantasy, which get around the rules by not matching reality. Thereis anoth er escape route, waking up, which allows you to be here
now. In the eternal now the conditioned mind has no place. YOUR EXPERIENCE:
 
 
 
 DAY 12
 
Virtual reality is a web of relationships. The physical world is all abo ut relationships. Around them we
create stories. A Christmas tree tells a story; the tree the
ornaments are hung on is re lated to other evergreen trees, which
leads back to the plant kingdom and the origins of life. There is
nothing in the world that can be seen without being embedded in
relationships spreading out in all directions. This web of
relationships is the invisible net that holds everything together. Tangled inside the web, we create endless stories in an ongoing
movie. But how do you get out of th e web? Humans dream of a realm
like Heaven that allows the relative world to drop away forever. Heaven may be a dream, but a world beyond isn’t. By waking up,
you find yourself in that world, which is consciousness itself. Beyond all created things lies the womb of creation. For Today
Let your gaze roam the room and pick any object at ran dom. Now in rapid succession, think of as many words as you can in
thirty se conds that relate to t he object. Let’s say you chose  a table
lamp. Words related to a tab le lamp: light , lightning bug , torch ,
Statue of Liberty , lamp beside the golden door , freedom ,
immigrants , Germany , Nazism , Hitler , World War II , an d so  on. Notice t hat the flow of words  spreads out on its own, going in any
and every direction. By a sim ple exercise in word association, you
have woven one strand of the web that creates the known world.YOUR EXPERIENCE:
 
 
 DAY 13
 
The mind has entangled us in a virtual reality of our own
making. In creation myths around the world, God or gods stand apart,
looking down on the world th ey created. For humans, however, we
created virtual  reality and then stepped into it. The pu rpose of
virtual reality was to allow us  a double role, as both the authors of
our own stories and the actors who play them out. The two roles
are mind-created, and keeping them separate is confusing. When
trouble arises, people ask themselves, “Did I do this to myself?”
without being able to answer. Entangled in virtual reality, w e find it easier to simply go along
and pretend we play only one  role, the actor. Yet the role of author
is fa r more im portant. Unfortunately, how to be an author has
been lar gely forgotten. Life is too confusing already. By waking up,
you clea rly see  your role in the creative process. You are no longer
helpless or a victim, any mor e than Romeo and Juliet are  victims
of Shak espeare. They came to life in their author’s awareness, as
you come to life every day in yours. For Today
Put yourself back at the creat ive center of things. The next  time
you order food or ask to s ee something in a store, fra me the
situation this way: I had the thought that put this situation in
motion. I put the thought into words. The words caused another
person to undertake a new action. That action prompts another
action by the cooks in the kitchen (or the manufacturer who
made the goods in a store), who are earning a living to create
their ow n stories, and the sum total of these stories is humanhistory. Therefore, at every  moment, my thoughts are at the
creative center of history . This is more th an a new way  to frame a commonplace act ivity. It is the truth. You are the creative center of things, ever and
always. YOUR EXPERIENCE:
 
 
 
 DAY 14
 
The body, mind, and world, when seen directly and
without interpretation, are actually one activity. Even though we busy oursel ves with a thousand things a  day,
seeing the world as one th ing comes naturally. To a devout
believer, the one thing is Go d’s creation. To most scientists, the
one thing is the physical u niverse. But these are conditioned
responses. Believers cannot consult God to confirm their belief,
and scientists cannot confirm where time, space, matter, and
energy come from. What if you look at the world directly, without
a co nditioned response? Yo u would see that the one thing is
awareness constantly modifying itself. Body, mind, and world are
experiences in consciousness. This alone can be verified. Experience is the touchstone of reality. When you wake up, it
becomes the only touchston e you need. You join the play of
consciousness and revel in it. For Today
The play of consciousness embraces all of creation. Today you
can join the game as an enjoyable experience. Take a moment to
do s omething that makes yo u happy—it could be lunch with a
friend, appreci ating the trees and sky, watching children on the
playground. If  your enjoyment comes from eating ice c ream at
midnight, that ’s perfectly fine. Whatever you are doing, re lax into
your en joyment and notice it. Enjoyment is the easiest w ay to be
here no w. Just by noticing yo ur enjoyment, you have put yourself
into the eternal play of consciousness.YOUR EXPERIENCE:
 
 
 DAY 15
 
Upon close examination, no external world or physical
body can be found independent of our perceptions. We are so used  to living with  a divided self that it is a big step
to see beyond it. The divide d self tells you that you live in two
worlds, one “in here” and on e “out there.” But if reality is a single
thing, t his view is mistaken. Consciousness is the one thing. It
unfolds as one reality. Know ing this, you have firm gr ound to
stand o n—your own awareness. The conditioned mind corrupts
and dis torts awareness. It colors your perceptions, forcin g you to
accept t he division between the inner and outer worlds. Waking
up c larifies the truth. All wor lds are experienced in consciousness. There is no need to prove the existence of the physical world or
not to prove it. You are here now, and that is enough. For Today
It’s not difficult to merge the  inner and outer worlds into one. Find a photo of yourself; it can be your driver’s license or a
snapshot. Holding the photo  in your hand, look at yourself in the
mirror. Then look at yourself in the photo, and finally, see yourself
in y our mind’s eye. As you m oved from seeing your physical body
reflected in a m irror, capture d on film, and inside your mind, each
was an experience in conscio usness. On that basis, there w ere not
three different experiences. There was one experienc e being
modified in three ways. Everything in life stands on the same
ground, as experiences that are modified consciousness. YOUR EXPERIENCE: 
 
 DAY 16
 
Since there is no independent physical world, everyday
reality is a lucid dream taking place in the vivid now. Dreams aren’t  all cut from the same cloth. Some dream s are
vague, b arely more vivid than having a fleeting memory when you
are awake. At the opposite extreme are so-called lucid dreams. When you’re having a lucid dream, you have no clue tha t it is a
dream. You are fully immers ed in it and, when you wake up, it’s
hard to acknowledge that the dream wasn’t real. Likewise, virtual
reality is a fu ll-immersion experience. There are few clues to
suggest that you are not fully awake. For that reason, glimpses of  clarity, moments of joy, creative
insights, and the experience of meditation are precious. They
suggest that you are immersed in a vivid, lucid dream. Waking up
will come as a  surprise—for many people, it’s a shock to  realize
that they’ve been asleep all th eir lives. Every passing moment was
like experiencing the vivid now. Once awake, however, now
becomes a window into pure consciousness. It doesn’t matter what
fills the now. What matters is that you are fully awake to it. For Today
Moments when  you see through the spell/dream/illusion often
happen sponta neously—they come upon you by surprise. There’s
no set way to bring about such glimpses; the closest you can come
is throu gh meditation. Still, you can prepare the ground today for
the seed of metareality experience. At any time, take a look
around, smile to yourself, and say, “Imagine, this is all a dream,
and I am th e dreamer.” The smile is important. It’s likeanticipating Christmas as a child. You know something good is
coming and, by reminding yourself, you open the way. YOUR EXPERIENCE:
 
 
 
 DAY 17
 
Now isn’t a moment in time that can be grasped and held. Now is the rise and fall of awareness. If you want to  know who enforces the rules of virtual re ality,
the cloc k is a good place to st art. The tick-tock of clock tim e slices
life into segments of secon ds, minutes, and hours. Once you
identify with clock time, your life passes in seconds, minutes, and
hours. Such an existence is m echanical and routine. Breaking out
of virtual reality, now has to become a state of awareness, not a
slice of bread. When you wake up, now is a presence; it is the
unbroken experience of being here. Experiencing this presence, you witness how the stream of
consciousness delivers a se quence of fleeting sensations and
perceptions. Dividing this stream of activity into seconds, minutes,
and hou rs is a mental construct only. When you are awake, you
pay more attention to the presence of awareness than  to the
fleeting events taking place in the mind. For Today
Mental activity is very clingy. You have a stake in the thou ghts,
sensations, images, and feelings that pass through your mind. But
you do n’t have to have a stake in those thoughts, sensations,
images, and feelings. Imagin e that you are sitting on a co mmuter
train looking out the window . As the scenery rushes by, you don’t
see it by picking out each building, tree, car, or person. It’ s all just
the passing scenery. If you ha ppen to notice something that stands
out, it passes just as quickly as the things you don’t noti ce. Now
instead of windows, substitute your eyes. You are sitting behind
them watching the passing scenery. When you adopt this position,which i s known as “witnessing,” you approximate for a moment
what the permanent state of being awake is like. YOUR EXPERIENCE:
 
 
 
 DAY 18
 
Clock time slices up the timeless, giving it beginnings and
endings. As a result, there is birth, aging, and death. All of virtual reality, from the atom to the human body to the
universe, is a timeless process frozen in time. If you say, “I was
born in 1961” or “The meeting starts promptly at three” or “The
big bang occurred 13.8 billion years ago,” you are doing the same
thing—freezing a constant fluid process into a beginning, which
automatically b rings a middle and an end. Beginning, mid dle, and
end are  menta l constructs. What is the middle of blue? What was
the last  thing that happened before time began? When you wake
up, being here is continuous—actually, it has always been
continuous, until beginning, middle, and end were invented. It
will com e as a great relief to  ditch those concepts. Not o nly will
you find  that you are living in the now, but birth, aging, and death
will become irrelevant. For Today
To step out of clock time into the timeless, take a moment and
look at a color,  say the blue of the sky. Try to see beyond t he blue. Really try. You will notice th at it is futile to try to think your way
there. M ental activity is irrelevant. Nor does it matter if you
actually see beyond the blue. By stopping your mind from
interfering, you escaped clock time, so the only place you can be is
timeless. Similarly, try to imagine a time when you didn’t exist. This will also stop the think ing mind from interfering. You will
experience no time when you didn’t exist. Is there a better
definition of eternity?YOUR EXPERIENCE:
 
 
 
 DAY 19
 
Reality is the endless activity of awareness modifying
itself. If someone walked up to you  and said, “I want to be here  now. Where’s it happening?” you’d  be puzzled. “Now” isn’t a place on
the map. Brain connection s can be mapped in their precise
locations, but there is no top, bottom, back, or front to aw areness. The now is con tinuous because awareness is continuous. Only in
virtual reality are limitations  like beginnings and endings or birth
and death imposed. When experienced directly, reality flows like a
river. B ut you have to imagin e it as a river that flows in a circle,
without starting in the mountains and running to the sea. When you are awake, even to describe awareness as a flow is
too limiting. Awareness does n’t need to be active. As it h appens,
activity is everywhere. Out side of meditation or unexpected
moments of silence, the mind is constantly participating in the rise
and fall  of consciousness as i t modifies itself. Beyond the constant
buzz of activity, consciousness is silent, pure, unbounded, not
needing to do anything. Upo n waking up, you identify w ith pure
consciousness, enjoying the calmness and security it brings. For Today
Silent awarene ss is always with you, waiting to be notice d. Sit
in a  qui et place and say to yourself, “I am _______,” fillin g in the
blank w ith your full name. With a brief pause between them, say
the following things to yours elf: “I am [first name],” then  “I am,”
then “Am,” and finally no thought. Without labels to identify with,
the mind is quiet. As you experience this state, even for a moment,you hav e found your real ide ntity. The ego emerges from mental
activity; your true self emerges from silent awareness. YOUR EXPERIENCE:
 
 
 
 DAY 20
 
Time is only one kind of limitation. So are space, matter,
and energy. Awareness itself is without any limitation. Waking up is clearer today than in the past, when the process
was considered so mysterious that it seemed totally paradoxical. As o ne ancient metaphor put it, wanting to wake up is like  being a
thirsty f ish. Th e fish is thirsty  only because it doesn’t realiz e that it
is su rrounded by the ocean. L ikewise, a person seeking to wake up
doesn’t realize that all limitat ions of the mind are the result of not
knowing that the infinite ocean of consciousness is everywhere at
every moment. Limitation beg ins in the mind but is mirrored by time, space,
matter, and energy. This mir roring effect holds good whether you
are asle ep or awake. The difference is that when you wake up, the
physical universe is seen for what it really is, the play of
consciousness. Consciousnes s has no form or boundarie s. Being
beyond labels and thoughts, it is inconceivable. It is also w ho you
really are. For Today
Hold up your hand and start  moving it into various posit ions,
each sig nifying a meaningful gesture. Act out the part of a police
officer directing traffic, a teacher pointing to the blackboard, a
lover caressing  the beloved’s cheek, a chef whipping up an  omelet
—whatever str ikes your fancy. Reflect on how your hand carried
out wh atever your imagination wanted it to. Mind and matter
were di fferent appearances of the same consciousness. L ikewise,
your personal reality consist s of mind acting to coordinate time,space, matter, and energy. They express the same unlimited
possibilities as human imagination. YOUR EXPERIENCE:
 
 
 
 DAY 21
 
Virtual reality arose from the human need to live in
limitation. This need began the process that created the
conditioned mind. Limitation is part of virtual reality, and it seems t otally
convincing and necessary. Yo u cannot fly like a bird; you can’t be
rich by  wishing it were so; if you are hit by a car, you will be
seriously injur ed or killed. I’ve said that the conditioned mind
edits reality so that it serves  human needs. The infinite b ecomes
finite. W e are hemmed in b y harsh realities. There is actually
nothing wrong  with editing the infinite into the finite—a fter all,
you can’t think infinite thoug hts all at once, even though you have
the capacity to have infinite thoughts. The pro blem is that we’ve fo rgotten that this editing was done
by us. Virtual r eality isn’t a given; it was manufactured. The setup
is finite , and just as you can ’t think infinite thoughts all at once,
humans can’t physically do everything at once, say everything at
once, or desire everything at o nce. The setup of virtual reality suits
the self we think we have—and must have. When you wake up, the picture is reversed. You realize that
virtual reality is a construct. Only consciousness is a given. Only
consciousness cannot be crea ted. By waking up, you free yourself
from th e condi tioned mind, the limited self, and the mind -forged
limitations of virtual reality. In freedom you still cannot fly,
become rich by wishing it we re so, or avoid being injured if a car
hits you . On the other hand, it’s a bad bet to declare that a nything
is im possible. Waking up tak es you over a threshold. Wha t awaits
on the other side is a vast new territory of possibilities.For Today
Sit f or a mome nt and start to  think of things that you’d like to
do or be that are impossible. You might like to be fabulously
wealthy or incredibly attractive or young again—the sky’s the
limit. A s each thing comes to mind, pause and say to y ourself,
“Why not? Why is this impossible?” Wait for a reply and let it
unfold, telling you all the reasons you can’t have or be w hat you
want. Now ask yourself, “Who says I can’t?” There is no good answer
to this question. Things are i mpossible not because anybody says
so. The y are impossible because the whole setup of virtual reality
says so. All limitations are built into virtual reality. When anyone
says that something is impossible, she is only upholding virtual
reality. Who says you have  to follow suit? Nobody, in cluding
yourself. When this realization sinks in, you begin to glimpse how
free you really are. YOUR EXPERIENCE:
 
 
 
 DAY 22
 
When infinite awareness is edited, form and phenomena
appear (i.e., things we can see, hear, touch, taste, smell,
and think about). For the  purposes of everyday life, infinity needed to be edited. Everyone agre es about that, but we forget that there was no
rulebook or set of guidelines for editing reality. The only rules are
self-imposed. Pure consciousness unfolded into the physical
universe, imposing time, space, matter, and energy upon its
creation. But pure consciousn ess didn’t believe it had to do things
this way. Billions of other u niverses with different setups have
been proposed by modern physics. Knowing that rules are self-im posed was never in doubt a t the
level of  pure consciousness. We inherited this certainty. Art and
culture express  the certainty that the human mind can construct
any setu p while also accepting the setup of the physical universe. This makes it seem that life has two compartments—the  mental,
which is unlimited, and the p hysical, which is limited. But that’s a
mistake. A house isn’t separ ate from the desire to build a house
and the  knowledge of how it is done. Mental and physical are
aspects of one thing: creative intelligence at play. When you wake
up, you  will see how creative intelligence works, and with
fascinated curiosity you will become a co-creator of reality. For Today
To become aware of how creative intelligence unfolds, start
with a small object. Whether it is a nail, an earring, or the keys to
your car, these things are id eas that took physical shape. Now
consider some thing larger, like the Empire State Building or theGolden Gate Bridge. They too are ideas that took physical shape. Does it matter that an earring is tiny and the Golden Gate Bridge
immense? No. Creative intel ligence isn’t large or small. Nor is it
hard or soft, here but not there, visible or invisible. The ability to
create is entirely self-contained, respecting no limitations of forms
and shapes. Creativity ne eds only itself. Without creative
intelligence, forms, shapes, and events couldn’t arise. Now see yourself in the m irror and say to yourself, “I am
infinite creativity that has taken on a form.” Stop identifying with
the form and start identifying with the creativity. This is how you
wake up. YOUR EXPERIENCE:
 
 
 
 DAY 23
 
Every form and phenomenon is actually one thing: the
modification of the formless, the infinite reduced to the
finite, pure awareness given a beginning, a middle, and
an end. The world rewards big thinkers and gives them a place in
history. By comparison with an Albert Einstein or a Leonardo da
Vinci, everyone feels like a l ittle thinker. But a big thin ker isn’t
necessarily the biggest thinker. The biggest thinker sees that
reality is one thing, creation one process. That’s the whole picture
in one view, which becomes your reality when you wake up. The whole picture becomes clear when the mind stops
constantly blurring your view with interfering thoughts,
sensations, images, and feelings. They represent the ba ck-and-
forth be tween you and the ou tside world. When you wake up, the
interference patterns fall aw ay. You accept as a natural fact that
infinite, formle ss pure consciousness is the source of al l things. What makes this realization natural is that you see yourse lf as an
expression of one thing, not a jumble of mental and physical
activity. For Today
If you see an object in the outside world, you view it from  the
outside. Wholeness—the one thing—has no outside. It also  has no
inside. Therefore, you can’t view it. Because you are  it , you can’t
even relate to wholeness in  various ways, like accepting it or
rejecting it, participating on e day and taking time out the next. When y ou wake up, you know that you are the one thing. Yet even
now you can stop relating to it in false ways.Today, practice having no attitude toward your mind. Let
thoughts arise and fall, and when you are tempted to have an
attitude toward  what is going on, don’t. Don’t say that one thought
is good and a nother bad. Don’t assign labels like SMART, DUMB,
POSITIVE,  or NEGATIVE . T he mind is none of those things. It is the
flow of activity from the absolute. To label the mind is like saying
that wholeness  is bad, good, positive, negative, and so on. Clearly,
wholeness is beyond all lab els. So is your awareness. By not
judging your thoughts, you begin to adopt the open,
nonjudgmental state of being awake. YOUR EXPERIENCE:
 
 
 
 DAY 24
 
Only awareness is real. Even as it plays the role of
observer and observed, even as it creates worlds “out
there” and “in here,” its own nature is unchanging. Awareness exists. Everything else is a passing experi ence. These two sentences have be en said and resaid for centur ies. This
fact shows, at the very least, that human beings looked at reality
and found it mysterious. How did change emerge from
nonchange? How did One become Many? The mystery was
formulated in countless different ways. Asking “What came before
time began?,” as modern cos mology does, is merely a va riant on
the medieval question “What existed before God?”
The answer is contained in t he question. What came first has
been here forever. Change i s just a mask worn by nonchange. Once hu man beings saw the mystery, we saw our own nature. We
are creator and created, One and Many, changing experience and
unchanging awareness. None of this has to be proved o r tested. Whether you accept your true nature or not has no bearing on
your tru e natu re. It continues to be. On waking up, you see your
true nature clearly, and then a new life begins. For Today
Taking a moment or two, l et your mind roam across some
things you can recall from your past—memories of early
childhood, your parents, birthdays, school, your first kiss, some
things t hat are  sad, and so on. It doesn’t matter what you choose
to see. Now ref lect on the one thing they all have in comm on. You
were there. You are the nonchange in the midst of change. Now
you know your true nature. Everything else is window dressing.YOUR EXPERIENCE:
 
 
 
 DAY 25
 
Human suffering is built into virtual reality. It doesn’t
exist in awareness itself. When you suffer and feel unhappy, anxious, depressed, or
hopeless, your suffering feels totally real. You are experiencing
something that  is a given, feels like a given, rooted in phys ical pain
and mental anguish. But virtual reality, our collective
spell/dream/illusion, is a construct. Suffering is embedded in the
construct, which is why it fee ls inevitable. Beliefs about suffering,
whether they originate in the doctrine of sin or karma or modern
medical theories, reinforce virtual reality. Waking up doesn’t guarante e that there will never again be
physical pain or sad days. Th e conditioned mind is stubborn, and
our body has been bombar ded constantly by signals from the
conditioned m ind. Shadows of conditioning continue  to fall
(always remembering that t he shadows can be light as well as
heavy). On waking up, yo u abandon your allegiance  to the
conditioned mind, and, from that moment, it begins to fade and
lose its grip. Y ou see that freedom from suffering is possible and
natural. Suffering doesn’t ex ist in awareness itself, which is your
true nature. For Today
When people suffer—for example, when they feel depressed or
are diag nosed with a life-threatening illness—there’s a tem ptation
to b lame themselves. “Did I do this to myself?” is a questio n posed
out of guilt, and guilt is quick to blame. The best answe r is that
your suffering is part of virtual reality. You accepted virtual reality,
which makes your participation in pain and suffering inevitable.Not tha t you are doomed; some people escape serious s uffering. But you r partic ipation is a se aled deal, no matter who yo u are or
what happens to you, unless you make a change. To end suffering, break the deal. When you wake up, the w hole
contract is annulled. Today yo u can prepare the way by not buying
into pain and suffering as so mething fated and inevitable. Think
back on some experiences you consider as suffering—they’d
include instances of grief, loss, sickness, betrayal, failure,
humiliation, and so on. Now sit quietly, go inward, and be with
yourself this minute. You are the same awareness that went
through suffering but also not suffering, that experienced pain but
also pleasure, that lost but also gained. For every opposite, you
have experienced both poles. Therefore, you are not either one. You are the unchanging awareness that witnesses change, the
screen upon which every experience plays without being an
experience. This insight holds the entire secret of bringing
suffering to an end. YOUR EXPERIENCE:
 
 
 
 DAY 26
 
Suffering continues because we cling to memory and
grasp at experience. It is an illusion to believe that the
now can be grasped or that reality can be clung to. Truth feels cold when there’s nothing you can do about it. People feel the truth that l ife brings suffering, and they hate
feeling helples s in the face of this truth. The result is gre at inner
conflict. On the one hand, w e pretend to accept that lif e brings
suffering. On the other hand, we struggle to escape the feeling of
helplessness. Modern medicine ends part of the confusion and
struggle. As diseases are conquered, human beings feel more
powerful and suffering is pushed aside—for the moment. Suffering in the form of ment al anguish has not been allevi ated,
nor has the fe ar of disease and aging, or the dread o f death. Upgrading virtual reality is the story of modern technological
civilization. (Just as the discovery of new means of mechanized
death is  a downgrade of virt ual reality.) Suffering retains its grip
because we want to cling to g ood experiences and the memory of
better days. As long as youth, health, and happiness are rooted in
time, with good times being preferable to bad times, the re is no
escape from suffering. Clinging to virtual reality means that
suffering is part of the construct. When y ou wak e up, you don ’t try to cling or grasp. You don’t
store up good memories and push down bad ones. There  is only
being here now. In the now there is nothing to hold and grasp,
nothing to cling to. By no lo nger clinging, you have cut off your
connection to virtual reality. Then suffering no longer clings to
you.For Today
When s omebody tells you to let go and stop holding on, does
that advice really help? The most stubborn resentments, affronts,
hurts, and anger are holding on to you, not the other way around. No one wakes up after a bitter divorce, losing a job, or being
betrayed by a friend, thinking, “Now I’ve got something I really
want to  hold on to.” Instead, the anger and resentment come back
of th eir own accord, and they  last as long as they decide to last, not
as long you want them to last. What y ou are actually clingin g to isn’t bad memories, neg ative
emotions, old grudges, and hurt feelings. You are holding on to
virtual reality. By waking up, you let go of your allegiance to it, and
then the bad stuff stops clinging to you. Think about something
that ma kes you really angry or resentful. When you have it in
mind, let go. You won’t be able to, not when it is still clinging to
you. In reality,  you are where you are. This place is filled with bad
things that once happened, hurts and resentments that are in
various stages: clinging tight ly, starting to let go, or almost faded
to noth ing. Virtual reality is set up so that, wherever you are,
experience clings like barnac les to a ship’s hull. Seeing this gives
you a sense of detachment, which is a sign that you are waking up. YOUR EXPERIENCE:
 
 
 
 DAY 27
 
Suffering comes to an end when we no longer fear
impermanence. As long as we have a stake in the illusion,
we will suffer. Children are eager to explore the world, and they love how
everything is changing. But at the same time a child wants the
security and safety of hom e. This balance becomes harder to
maintain as an adult. Change becomes threatening when there’s
no one at home to promise s afety and security. One way to hold
anxiety at bay is to pretend t hat “I,” the ego-personality, is stable
and reliable. “I” has a stake i n the world, something to maintain. The ego  builds itself up by every kind of clinging—to pleasure,
fantasy, wishful thinking, outworn conditioning, old memories,
and false beliefs. All t hose things are imperma nent, so it doesn’t work to build a
self wit h them as a foundation. Fear of change departs only when
you base your life on the true  self. As you wake up, the transition
from ego to true self happens naturally. For Today
The bes t way to feel safe is when you take safety for gra nted
without worryi ng about it. Consider the commercials you see on
television for life insurance, pharmaceuticals, retirement homes,
and burglar alarms. They offe r reassurance by first bringing up the
fear tha t you are not secure a nd safe. The tactic works bec ause we
don’t really take our personal security for granted—we push
anxiety out of sight instead. To feel how real, unshakable security feels, stop reading for a
second. Then start reading again, and stop again. In the pausebetween readin g these words, you took for granted that yo u know
how to read. T here’s no underlying anxiety about this—yo u know
it for certain—and the same is true for dozens of things you know
how to do. Thi s is how it feels when you are truly secure  without
hiding f rom underlying anxie ty. When you wake up, you will take
for gran ted tha t you have alw ays existed and always will. On that
basis, you are a gain like a child, free to explore the world and safe
from fear because you are at home always, inside yourself. YOUR EXPERIENCE:
 
 
 
 DAY 28
 
Freedom is the natural state of existence, knowing that we
are aware here and now. Virtual reality isn’t reliable when it comes to lasting happi ness,
security, fulfillment, love, and other things we cherish. Some
people enjoy very few of those things, and even when we get more
than our fair sh are, we fear p ossible loss. It is a bad deal to rely on
what is unreliable. You would n’t take a job from an employer who
says that he w ill toss a coin every day to determine if you  stay or
get fired. But we cling to vir tual reality with no guarantees that
things w ill work out. This is a form of bondage—the wor st form,
since the widely held belief is that there’s no alternative. Real freedom isn’t something  you struggle to achieve, hope for,
and fee l unlike ly to win. Free dom is our natural state if we don’t
imprison ourselves. On waking up, you no longer feel bound to
virtual reality. Mental constructs lose their grip and eventually
fade away entirely. Being her e now is the same as total freedom,
because the now is gone before anything can lay claim to y ou. You
exist and you are aware—that’s enough to set you free. For Today
All of us have our own version of what it feels like to be fre e and
its opp osite, what it feels like to be trapped, hemmed in, and
suffocated. Yet  these concepts disguise the reality, which is that
our sense of freedom is al ways bound up with its o pposite. Retirement frees us from the demands of work; having the
children go off to college frees us from having them under our
roof. But our freedom is constrained by having a job and becoming
a parent in the first place.True fre edom isn’t bound up with its opposite. To prove this to
yourself, think  for a moment and describe what you were doing at
7:37 last Tuesday evening. What thoughts were in you r head? What words did you say? Even if something memorable sticks
with you from last Tuesday, it takes an effort to recall it. You are
free fr om 7:37 last Tuesday evening because there  is no
attachment to it. A moment of now has fled and gone. The
moment when you started to read this lesson has fled and gone. Your re lationship to the now is to experience it, extract what it has
to give, and move on. This is the state of nondoing and
nonclinging, which dawns as your natural state when you wake up. YOUR EXPERIENCE:
 
 
 
 DAY 29
 
Knowing ourselves as timeless beings, we can live
consciously. We can be what we really are—a species of
consciousness creating the human universe. “I,” the ego-personality, grapples with the stuff of creation
every day, turning new idea s into reality. We call this progress,
and it is—of a sort. The ideas we turn into reality have an agenda
and a past. The y crop up in a context that accepts or rejec ts them. The con ditioned mind has no choice but to respond to all kinds of
external limita tions. Once a wish, hope, or dream manages to turn
into rea lity, we cling to wh at we have created. We ignore the
inevitable ruin  of all things—one day the things we’ve built will be
relics like the Parthenon or the Egyptian pyramids. Creation that is lasting must be built upon the timeless. That’s
not possible with physical things, and since physical objects
represent ideas, even ideas cannot truly last in the face of the
ravages of time. In the timeless, what lasts isn’t an idea or a thing
but creativity itself. The “stuff” of creation is our own awareness
and its infinite  capacity to cre ate. By waking up, you creat e on the
basis of  being a creator, not o n the ideas and things that surround
you. Yo u are beyond things and ideas, a conscious being of
timeless dimension. For Today
Timeless  i s a concept that feels very fa r removed from daily life,
but it comes c loser when you realize what time is. Time is the
process of creation and destruction. Therefore, if you don’t
identify with creation and de struction, you stand in the timeless. You have a cho ice to shift you r allegiance to the timeless w heneveryou wan t. Stop  for a moment  to look around the room. When you
return to reading this page, everything you looked at is in the
process of decaying, dissolving, and fading away. But did time take
away th e present moment? No—it only took away the things you
noticed in the present moment. The present moment constantly
renews itself. It stands for the timeless that persists in the activity
of time. When you are awake , the timeless takes precedence over
everything else . This shift allo ws you to celebrate creation without
feeling anxiety over things passing away. YOUR EXPERIENCE:
 
 
 
 DAY 30
 
Knowing that we are free, the future of humanity can go
beyond birth, death, and all the stories in between. If you could land anywhere in history, you could seek out
people who are awake. The y would always be a minor ity, and
perhaps a tiny sliver of a minority. But counting noses is n’t how
waking up works. If you want to know if human beings ca n swim,
you on ly need to find one example. Likewise, one aw akened
person tells you that waking  up is possible, and, even more, that
everyone is part of the process. Waking up isn’t learned; it is not
acquired behavior. It is a state that all of us already exist in. The
only thing that happens when you wake up is that you realize who
you rea lly are. Humanity is a lready free—we wouldn’t be here as
conscious bein gs if that weren’t true. Only the stories we tell
ourselves block our view of our true nature. This interference pattern, like a fuzzy television picture, doesn’t
affect re ality. The broadcaste r is still sending a clear picture, even
if our receiver  isn’t picking i t up. When you wake up, the signal
and the receiver are both c lear and in tune with each other. Thoughts and feelings come and go without creating interference. This is what it means to be in the world but not of it. For Today
You can  be in poverty for two reasons—either you are act ually
poor or  you are rich but don ’t know it. In relation to the infinite
potential that is our true nat ure, we feel limited in everyday life. So whic h is it? Are we actuall y limited, or do we not know that we
are unli mited? The answer isn’t given by looking at conditions on
the ground. The richest, smartest, most gifted, and happiestperson can wind up leading a very limited life. The answer is only
available in your own awareness. Sit for a moment and try to  think of a forbidden thoug ht. It
could be something you have  refused to consider for any  kind of
reason—it is too shameful, outrageous, antisocial, demeaning, or
anything else forbidden. The instant such a thought occur s to you,
it is no longer forbidden. In fact, no thought has ever be en truly
forbidden. You cannot limit thought, and since thoughts spring up
from silent awareness, you c annot limit the possibility that any
thought will be born. Because your entire life—and the life of
humanity—is based on consciousness, you too are unlimited. You
can sto p buying into all t he stories about birth, death, and
everything in between. Knowing that you are unlimited means
that no story can limit your possibilities. YOUR EXPERIENCE:
 
 
 
 DAY 31
 
You can enjoy the movie while knowing at the same time
that you created the movie. That is the awakened state. The everyday world operates  by opposites. There is a positive
and a negative  pole to every experience. To navigate thro ugh life,
people try to g rasp the positive pole, but this effort never frees
them fr om the  specter that th e negative will also have its day. The
ultimate polarity is attachme nt and detachment. Spiritual  seekers
learn that detachment is positive, because being attached (i.e.,
stuck, clinging, buying into the illusion) leads to pain and
suffering. In a land where it always rain s, it’s hard to stop using the word
wet . I n a world ruled by opposites, it’s hard to stop using a w ord
like detachment . But in the larger picture there is neither
attachment n or detachment. Each depends on the other;
therefore, each leads to the other. Bad breakups show how  hard it
is to detach from somethi ng (or someone) you were deeply
attached to. But we have to re late; that’s what the relative world is
all about. In the awakened state, thin gs change. You know that you
created the movie, so you can enjoy it without buying into it. This
doesn’t mean that you detach yourself. Directors love the movies
they make. But they also do n’t keep reminding themselves that
they created the movie as they watch it. They take for granted that
they are its creator. Likewise, when you are awake you know that
you created the movie you are living, but you don’t dwell on it. You
are too busy be ing immersed in the now. Being a creator sits at the
back of your awareness, and this behind-the-scenes knowledge is
enough.For Today
Right now there are things y ou’re attached to and things you
aren’t attached  to. If you are a parent with a young c hild, for
example, you allow your child a certain amount of freedom while
also stepping in when needed. This alternation between standing
back an d getting involved is the day-to-day business of being a
parent. Yet in the back of y our mind you know that you are a
parent; this is your status, a nd you don’t need to bring it to the
fore all the time. Now co nsider how you parent yourself. In the same fas hion,
you let yourself go some of th e time, while at other times you step
in to monitor your behavior. It is impossible to let yourself go all
the time and equally impossible to rein yourself in all the time. Yet
no m atter which mode you ar e in, in the back of your mind  is your
sense o f self. Sit quietly for a moment and experience your sense
of s elf. Hasn’t it always been  there, through thick and thin? Your
sense of self sit s at the back of your mind at all times, not needing
to be brought to the fore. When you wake up, the sense of self looms large at first. You
experience wit h astonishmen t that everything emerges from your
sense of self—all thoughts, words, actions, the outside and inside
world. Such a realization can’t dawn without bringing a sense of
wonder and awe. But in time the sense of self, having reali zed how
infinite it is, retreats once more to the back of your mind. Two
people can buy popcorn at the movies, with only one of them a
wealthy man. Both eat the same bag of popcorn and pay t he same
price for it. Bu t the one wh o knows he is wealthy stores a very
different set of possibilities in the back of his mind. This is what it
feels like to be  awake, knowing that every small action is backed
up by infinite possibilities. YOUR EXPERIENCE:
 
 
  FOR EVER Y DA Y
 
Waking up is always in the now. There is no time schedule
for realizing that you are the dreamer, not the dream. A month of aw akening has passed. You’ve taken the jou rney
that goes from here to here. B ecause there is no distance between
here an d here,  a month was enough to complete the jour ney. But
in a nother framework, no ti me is ever enough. Only w hen the
timeless is your playground does “from here to here” no longer
matter. The now swallows up all beginnings, middles, and
endings. Being here now was never a goal the way becoming a good
person or raising your childre n right or earning a million dollars is
a go al. You can not compare the now with anything, because every
other now is lost forever. What changes as you wake up is subtle
but all-i mportant. There is no longer a journey of any kind. Not an
outward journey or an inward one. No dream to be fulfilled, no
fear to escape f rom. The past is no longer filled with regre ts or the
future looming  with threats. The phantom side of life ha s faded
away, and those things were phantoms. For Every Day
At random moments, whenev er the fancy strikes you, stop and
look around. Say to yourself, “A lot is going on. A lot has always
been go ing on. I’m here, and that’s what matters.” As you wake up,
these w ords will mean something different to you. They will
expand to embrace more and more. By being here you are joining
the cosmic dance. Appreciate  the dance for what it is tod ay. The
cosmic part will knock on your door when you are ready.YOUR EXPERIENCE:
 
 
 
 DA  F I N A L  W O R D
espite our seven billion storie s, we are united in one life. The fate  of the planet depends on realizing this fact. Once we do,
the human race can evolve to metahuman. How close are we, right
at t his moment? The answer  isn’t clear. Life never settle s down
enough. If a da ily newspaper had been available in ancient Rome,
medieval Fran ce, or Shakespeare’s London, the same  drama
would be seen. The best asp ects of human nature always seem
precariously balanced against the worst. We are the only c reatures
capable of self-pity, and the only creatures who feel they deserve
it. Instead of focusing on how h umans behave or animals behave
or even  how quarks and b osons behave, we should ask how
consciousness behaves. Consciousness unites everything. All
objects, whethe r a brain cell, a limestone cliff, or a prehistoric flint
knife, represent mind in motion. The play of consciousness is
infinite, but there is unity holding the play together. If the dense and challengin g ideas in this book leave you
baffled, I sympathize. The las t thing I want to do—or could do—is
to force anyone to accept any thing I say. But it is critical to wake
up t o the one  life we share. If you consider yourself a modern
person, you live and behave the way the modern world does. As a
point o f pride, the modern world has been wildly successful at
amassing knowledge, one fact at a time. It hasn’t been two decades
since th e number of human genes was counted and the entire
human genome mapped. In the coming decade, the brain’strillions of connections will be mapped through a huge, concerted,
scientific effort. So it must be  shocking to hear me say in this book  that
anything you can count, measure, calculate, and reduce to data is
part of an all-encompassing illusion. Perhaps even more shocking
is my argument that whatever you can perceive, imagine, or think
about in words inhabits the same illusion. I am not an enemy of
the illusion. I believe that peo ple have a right to upgrade it all they
like, and I feel sorrow for people whose portion of the illusion is so
degraded that they suffer. But only waking up allows  for the unity of one life t o be
experienced di rectly. Otherwise, the world will always be a clash of
opposites, founded on the certainty that humans are capable of the
best and the w orst. What makes us capable of listening to our
demons one day and blessing the angels the next day isn’t really
human nature, though. It is the state of separation we keep
reinforcing, generation after generation. I don’t foresee Homo sapiens  taking a collective leap in its
evolution, but  I know it can. Our evolution shifted fr om the
physical to the mental domain tens of thousands of years ago,
even when early humans we re naked and vulnerable, leading an
existence as fraught with threats as any animal caught u p in the
contest of predator and prey. It’s a total mystery how we acquired
self-awareness. Once we did, or our hominid ancestors did, the
mind was poised to triumph in every aspect of life. But the active
mind i sn’t the same as consciousness. A thought, feeling, or
sensation is like a wave that  rises and falls; consciousness is the
ocean. This an alogy goes back thousands of years in India, and I can’t
remember as a child when I  first heard it. The words felt like a
cliché, however, the way that “Love thy neighbor” or “To be, or not
to be, / That is the question” feels like a cliché. Repetition leaches
meaning away, even from the most profound sayings. I po ndered this obstacle and decided that the direct path has to
bring a small awakening every day; waking up shouldn’t be held
out as the ultim ate reward at the end of the spiritual path . In my
own life I aim at three kinds of experiences. If one of themhappens today , I’ve achieved a small awakening. If two or all three
happen, the small awakening becomes magnified. Here are the
three experiences:
I see reality more clearly. I feel less entangled in habit, memory, outworn beliefs, and
old conditioning. I stop clinging to expectations and external rewards. How would these experiences apply in your life? YOU SEE REALITY MORE CLEARL Y
This is the expe rience of perceiving with fresh eyes. You give up
old ways of int erpreting the world around you and your o wn life. Interpretation is built into perception. It is unavoidable that you
give names to everything, have opinions, draw on past
experiences, an d render judgments about whatever is hap pening. The world has been interpret ed for you since you were an infant,
and yet you have control ove r this now that you are an adult. The
world doesn’t have to chan ge. If you perceive freshness and
renewal, if you wake up with a sense of optimism and feel open to
the unknown, then every day is a world. You don’t have to try to
live in the pr esent moment—you won’t be able to escape the
present mome nt. It will draw  you in without resistance, because
there is everything to gain and nothing to lose when a person lives
here an d now, rather than re peating the past and anticipating the
future. YOU FEEL LESS ENT ANGLED IN HABIT , MEMOR Y,
OUTWORN BELIEFS, AND OLD CONDITIONING
This is the feeling of getting unstuck. Virtual reality would be
perfectly accep table if people felt free to alter it according to their
own desires. But a great deal of life is beyond our control, whichleads to a feeling of being trapped, confined, limited, and even
suffocated. I lump these feel ings into the phrase “getting stuck.”
By getting unstuck you disentangle yourself from the complicated
web woven by the ego-personality. This web has become sticky
through the process of identification. Anytime you say “I am X,”
you are further away from being able to say “I am.” As we saw, X
can be anything: your name, job, marital status, race, religion,
nationality. Th ese and much more become your personal story. “I
am” is beyond all stories. YOU ST OP CLINGING T O EXPECT ATIONS AND
EXTERNAL REW ARDS
This is the ex perience of becoming your true self. The ego-
personality is constantly on the lookout for external rew ards to
validate its worth. If you ask people, “Which would you rather be—
happy simply to exist or rich ?” their answer is obvious. The need
for ext ernal rewards, not just money but status, the right
neighborhood, a new car, social approval, and more, fuels our
dependence on them. Over time the ego-personality has become a
dominant force, even when someone considers himself
unambitious or spiritual—the front pew in church feels better than
the last row. But the ego is a false guide, because t he total
fulfillment it promises is a lways over the horizon. Living on
expectation goes hand in hand with needing external rewards—
there is always a mythical jo lt of pleasure or triumph or wealth,
the big score th at will make life worthwhile once and for all. To cut
the strings, you need to feel that the absence of external rewards
isn’t painful, because it is off set by inner rewards. The gre atest of
these is the freedom to be yourself. As a result of t hese three experiences, waking up becomes  your
life, litt le by little, and then, almost without knowing it, you are
participating in the one life, which is real, radiant, and whole. Because everyo ne can have small awakenings, the future of our
species doesn’ t have to be a grand project marked by the great
upheavals of war and peace, revolution and backsliding, achieving
greatness and losing it again,  or playing the roles of oppressor andoppressed. On e person at a time can awaken to reality. It will be
enough. The mystery of being human has been hidden from each
of u s, w hich m ay be why it remains so tantalizing. We have never
stopped being a self-created species. If we can create a world of
glorious highs without being  fully awake, imagine what we could
do with our eyes wide open.A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S  
I fe el gratitude every time a new book is finished for the
generous and productive relationship I have with my publisher. Beginning with Gina Centrello, president and publisher of
Penguin Random House, who has shown unwavering loyalty to
me. Thank you.
Meta_Humans_-_Unleashing_Your_Infinite_Potential_by_Deepak_Chopra.txt
Summarize the following text section accurately and concisely. Maintain specific details and numerical information, and use anti-repetition mechanisms:

        Cup your hands over your ea rs and notice how muffled th e world
is. Put on sung lasses and notice how dim the world becomes. Turn
off the lights at night and cautiously, with small steps, try to
navigate a room in your hou se you are very familiar with. When
you take your hands away from your ears, remove your sunglasses,
and tur n on the lights, your awareness of everything aro und you
expands. Waking up expands reality even more. YOUR EXPERIENCE:
 
 
 
 DAY 3
 
All biological organisms have their own unique
bandwidth of sensory experience. Experience defines us all, and since we are tuned in to only one
bandwidth of reality—call it the Me Channel—our identit y is also
narrow. Other living things are tuned in to different bandwidths,
giving them an existence we can barely imagine. But humans can
change the channel at will. Reality is only as narrow as our
awareness. Wh en you wake up, you are tuned in to the entire
bandwidth. Then reality is unlimited. For Today
Take a mome nt to listen to  the birds singing. Each bird is
telling its story. Birdsong communicates information from parent
to c hick, announces the limit s of territory, attracts a mate, signals
danger, and identifies which  species the bird belongs to. Notice
that you do not understand a single thing on Bird Channel. If it is
winter o r you hear no birds, consider a dog sniffing the air. A dog’s
nose can tell i t who has wa lked by, what was on that person’s
shoes, and when the incident occurred. Notice that your nose
gathers none of the information that comes across Dog Channel. YOUR EXPERIENCE:
 
 
 
 DAY 4
 
Our physical body is also a perceptual experience. The Me  Chann el tells you th at you have a body. The body you
see and feel, th e sensations that come through the nervous system,
the locations of pleasure and pain—these signals are constantly
broadcast on the Me Chann el. The body is not a thing; it is a
confederation of perceptions. Your mind unites these frag mented
perceptions int o a coherent im age in time and space. If your mind
didn’t do that, the Me Channel would just be transmitting noise. For Today
Take a momen t to perceive y our body directly. Close your eyes
and sit  quietly. Let your attention roam from sensation to
sensation. Lift your arm and feel its weight. Rub your fingers
together and feel their softne ss and the texture of the skin. Hear
your breath and your heartbeat. It doesn’t matter how many
signals you pick up, or wheth er your body feels nice to you or not
nice. You have contacted the real body you have. The experience of
the body is  the body. Everything else is mental interference. When
you wak e up, you will accept and enjoy the experience of t he body
for itself, which is blissful. YOUR EXPERIENCE:
 
 
 
 DAY 5
 
By itself each perceptual experience is a unique,
evanescent, ungraspable, momentary sensation. Our
senses take snapshots of reality. Life gives us a constant flow of perceptions that we live by. The
five sen ses are the pipeline through which everything flows. But
it’s not like a continuous flow of water from a faucet. Sensations
are muc h more like rain, whi ch falls one drop at a time. W e make
sense of life using fleeting t houghts and sensations. We ignore
how ev anescent every perception really is—each sensation starts
to fa de as soon  as it is noticed. Every thought has already v anished
by the time it registers. By w aking up, we stop ignoring what is
actually happe ning all the time. The need to turn fleeting
sensations into a running movie or story fades away. For Today
Put a grain of s alt or sugar on  your tongue. Notice how the  taste
starts to diminish after the first strong taste sensation. Pay
attention to how your saliva ry glands quickly reacted and how
your throat wanted to swallow. This puts you in touch with how
brief and temporary experien ce is. But here’s the real point. Try to
taste what was on your tongue before  you  pla ced the  salt or sugar
on i t. You can’ t. That taste, which you probably didn’t ma ke note
of w hen it occu rred, has fled forever. Fleeting perceptions  are the
texture of life. YOUR EXPERIENCE:
  
 DAY 6
 
The only constant in every snapshot of perception is the
presence of being and awareness. Snapshots don’t take themselves—there has to be a
photographer behind the camera. No matter how many thousands
of photos a professional photographer takes, he is the constant
behind the lens. His job is to  look, arrange the setting, p lace the
lights, focus, and decide if the image satisfies him. You do the
same with reality. Your senses deliver snapshots of raw data,
which change in endless ways. The only constant is you, seeing,
arranging, turn ing random bursts of perception into so mething
you can relate to. Most of this happens automatically, but when
you wake up, you see what you’re doing. Then you hav e much
more freedom to create. For Today
Get bac k in touch with the b asic units of experience. Sit for a
moment and be with your simplest experience of light, warmth,
the sme lls wafting your way, the taste in your mouth. Relax into
the experience. Notice each sensation spontaneously, w herever
your att ention wanders. The more you are able to relax, the more
effortless wakin g up will be. Waking up in itself is a totally  relaxed,
spontaneous state, open to whatever happens here and now. YOUR EXPERIENCE:
 
  
 DAY 7
 
The stringing together of perceptual snapshots creates a
sense of continuity, the same way a movie is created from
the rapid sequence of still frames. When the invention of motion pictures revealed that our eyes
can be fooled b y stringing together a series of snapshots at  twenty-
four frames per second, a d eeper truth about reality was also
revealed. The human brain w orks by the firing of neuron s. Each
firing is  a burst of energy, followed by a pause, then the ne xt burst. The bursts slice reality into bits of information from the five
senses. When a train races past you, you are not seeing it in
motion. You are seeing bursts of information in your brain that
give the illusion of motion. Likewise, you don’t hear con tinuous
sounds. The con tinuity of your life is  a necessary illusion. We have to
see the world in motion so that we can live in motion, no t frozen
bits of sensation. Right now you are experiencing pictures and
stories created in your mind through the same piecing-together
process. When you wake up, these pictures and stories will  be seen
for wha t they are: artificial constructs of the mind. You will live
from th e “real” reality that is beyond pictures and s tories—
consciousness itself. For Today
Sit in front of a moving image on your TV or computer—this
can be anythin g, from people walking around to a news or sports
event. Focus on something m oving across the screen from left to
right. In reality there is no person moving across the screen; not a
single p hoton of light is movi ng across the screen. Instead, burstsof color are ha ppening, each one totally stationary. By s tringing
these bursts in a sequence, th e illusion of motion is creat ed. Now
notice how hard it is to see the actual process taking place before
your very eyes. Your mind m ust see motion because, since you
were bo rn, the world has been a series of pictures in moti on—this
is how conditioned you are to accept an illusion as reality. YOUR EXPERIENCE:
 
 
 
 DAY 8
 
The physical body and the appearance of the physical
world are created in the mind as constructs from
sensations that are intermittent and ephemeral. In daily life we do not investigate how the mind creates a three-
dimensional world out of random, meaningless bits of sensation. Starting with the simple world a baby experiences, everything gets
more an d more complicated. A newborn cannot focus on its hand,
which l ooks like a pink blob floating in the air. In time the blob
becomes a hand attached to the body; it acquires a name; it
develops many  skills. Medicine studies it down to every tis sue and
cell. This buildup of knowledge occurs in the mind and is created by
the min d. A naked hand has  no story to tell; it has no developed
skills. E verything a hand can become when it belongs to a skilled
painter, sculptor, circus performer, chef, or welder is mind-made. The same goes for the whol e body and the physical world. We
construct virtual reality so that we can have the pictures and
stories that are necessary for being human. For Today
Take a  sheet of ordinary 8 ½ × 11-inch paper and poke a
pinhole in the center. If you hold the paper close to your eye, you
can see the wh ole room through the pinhole—this is your mental
picture of the room. Now hold the paper one or two inch es from
your eye, until you see only p arts of familiar objects—just pieces of
lamps, chairs, windows, and so on. Try to walk around the room
seeing only these bits and pi eces. It is quite difficult. Deprived of
the picture your mind makes, the room is a disconnected  jumbleof fragmented images. Reflect on how you have used the mind to
construct the familiar three-dimensional world you accept at face
value. YOUR EXPERIENCE:
 
 
 
 DAY 9
 
The appearance of the body and the world are activities in
consciousness—verbs, not nouns—constantly and rapidly
changing. When you enter a room, go to work, or take a stroll outdoors,
the objects you see appear to be fixed and stable—but they aren’t. Your b rain is constantly firing to keep the illusion of stability
going. Your five senses cooperate by turning photons into pictures
and air  vibrati ons into recognizable sounds. In other words, you
are constantly  making the world. An ever-changing, endless
process is taking place in your awareness. Therefore, the outer
world is an ever-changing, endless process wearing the disguise of
fixed, stable objects. By waking up, you see past the mask of
matter, reconnecting with the creative process that makes the
world. For Today
Look at  a photo of a friend, family member, or celebrity. Now
turn it upside down. Notice  that you cannot recognize the face
anymore. A hitch has occurred in your brain, which is conditioned
to r ecognize faces only righ t side up. There was a process to
recognizing a face; the face itself is meaningless. Or imagine
placing a photo on a turntable and setting it spinning (you can try
this on a lazy Susan or a record player). Notice that you cannot
make sense of the photo wh ile it is revolving. The movin g world
has no reality until the min d constructs it into a human  world. Constant change acquires the illusion of stability and nonchange. YOUR EXPERIENCE:
 
 
 DAY 10
 
The mental construct of the body and the world is the
product of centuries of conditioning. In daily life we accept the world as a given. Trees, mountains,
clouds, and sky are simply th ere. But these are merely the scenery
of v irtual reality. Everything i n the world beyond raw sens ory data
is r ooted in mythology, history, religion, philosophy, culture,
economics, and language. Raw sensation is overlaid with this
complex conditioning. As a result, the body and the world we
perceive have been interpreted in advance. They exist as
extensions of the human drama. By waking up, you step out of the
drama to be who you really are. You see that virtual reality is a
kind of hand-me-down, which you no longer have to settle for. For Today
Here is a simple exercise in perception. Contemplate the letter
A. When you set eyes on it, you saw a simple sign made with three
short strokes of a pen. Bu t those strokes have no i nherent
meaning, as you can instantly determine by turning A  on its side
or u pside down. The meani ng of A  is emb edded in it. It is an
ancient meanin g, going back to the Phoenician alphabet. M ixed in
is the Hebrew letter aleph, which stands for the beginning,
creation, and God. A  is syno nymous with one, which connotes
individuality a nd the start of  arithmetic. A  is  a de sirable grade in
school, and if you earn enough A s, y ou are like ly to be well -
educated and end up prosperous. If a sing le lette r of the alphab et carries so much history a nd so
many implications, imagine how complex the fabric of the human
world i s. We inherit a weal th of meanings that hold the worldtogether but also become a burden. (Think of all the trouble
caused by another letter of the alphabet, I. ) YOUR EXPERIENCE:
 
 
 
 DAY 11
 
The mind itself is nothing other than conditioned
awareness. Each of us was born into an interpreted world. Pre vious
generations spent their lives giving everything a human
meaning. Every newbo rn grows up by learning the ropes, and
once you can navigate the world—walking, talking, making life
choices, forming relationships—you find your place in virtual
reality. At some point you w ould like to have your own unique
experiences. “I want to be me” is a powerful incentive. But the  only way to have an e xperience is to use the mind, and
everyone’s mind is totally conditioned. It had no choice. By
learning the ropes, each of u s sacrificed “I want to be me” in the
name o f “I want to fit in. ” Mo re than social pressure was at work. The rules of v irtual reality require us to accept a shared set of
pictures, stories, beliefs, and  habits. By waking up, you get to be
yourself beyond the rules. The “real” reality is always new and
original. For Today
Today the challenge is to ha ve a thought that is totally your
own. Su ch a thought cannot echo anything you’ve heard s omeone
else say  or anything you’ve re ad in a book. It can’t be couc hed in a
familiar phras e. It must not grow out of memory, becau se then
you would only be repeatin g the past. Faced with this  simple
challenge, you can see how ti ghtly the conditioned mind holds you
in its grip. The re are well-tried escape routes, like imagination and
fantasy, which get around the rules by not matching reality. Thereis anoth er escape route, waking up, which allows you to be here
now. In the eternal now the conditioned mind has no place. YOUR EXPERIENCE:
 
 
 
 DAY 12
 
Virtual reality is a web of relationships. The physical world is all abo ut relationships. Around them we
create stories. A Christmas tree tells a story; the tree the
ornaments are hung on is re lated to other evergreen trees, which
leads back to the plant kingdom and the origins of life. There is
nothing in the world that can be seen without being embedded in
relationships spreading out in all directions. This web of
relationships is the invisible net that holds everything together. Tangled inside the web, we create endless stories in an ongoing
movie. But how do you get out of th e web. Humans dream of a realm
like Heaven that allows the relative world to drop away forever. Heaven may be a dream, but a world beyond isn’t. By waking up,
you find yourself in that world, which is consciousness itself. Beyond all created things lies the womb of creation. For Today
Let your gaze roam the room and pick any object at ran dom. Now in rapid succession, think of as many words as you can in
thirty se conds that relate to t he object. Let’s say you chose  a table
lamp. Words related to a tab le lamp: light, lightning bug, torch,
Statue of Liberty, lamp beside the golden door, freedom,
immigrants, Germany, Nazism, Hitler, World War II, an d so  on. Notice t hat the flow of words  spreads out on its own, going in any
and every direction. By a sim ple exercise in word association, you
have woven one strand of the web that creates the known world. YOUR EXPERIENCE:
 
 
 DAY 13
 
The mind has entangled us in a virtual reality of our own
making. In creation myths around the world, God or gods stand apart,
looking down on the world th ey created. For humans, however, we
created virtual  reality and then stepped into it. The pu rpose of
virtual reality was to allow us  a double role, as both the authors of
our own stories and the actors who play them out. The two roles
are mind-created, and keeping them separate is confusing. When
trouble arises, people ask themselves, “Did I do this to myself. ”
without being able to answer. Entangled in virtual reality, w e find it easier to simply go along
and pretend we play only one  role, the actor. Yet the role of author
is fa r more im portant. Unfortunately, how to be an author has
been lar gely forgotten. Life is too confusing already. By waking up,
you clea rly see  your role in the creative process. You are no longer
helpless or a victim, any mor e than Romeo and Juliet are  victims
of Shak espeare. They came to life in their author’s awareness, as
you come to life every day in yours. For Today
Put yourself back at the creat ive center of things. The next  time
you order food or ask to s ee something in a store, fra me the
situation this way: I had the thought that put this situation in
motion. I put the thought into words. The words caused another
person to undertake a new action. That action prompts another
action by the cooks in the kitchen (or the manufacturer who
made the goods in a store), who are earning a living to create
their ow n stories, and the sum total of these stories is humanhistory. Therefore, at every  moment, my thoughts are at the
creative center of history. This is more th an a new way  to frame a commonplace act ivity. It is the truth. You are the creative center of things, ever and
always. YOUR EXPERIENCE:
 
 
 
 DAY 14
 
The body, mind, and world, when seen directly and
without interpretation, are actually one activity. Even though we busy oursel ves with a thousand things a  day,
seeing the world as one th ing comes naturally. To a devout
believer, the one thing is Go d’s creation. To most scientists, the
one thing is the physical u niverse. But these are conditioned
responses. Believers cannot consult God to confirm their belief,
and scientists cannot confirm where time, space, matter, and
energy come from. What if you look at the world directly, without
a co nditioned response. Yo u would see that the one thing is
awareness constantly modifying itself. Body, mind, and world are
experiences in consciousness. This alone can be verified. Experience is the touchstone of reality. When you wake up, it
becomes the only touchston e you need. You join the play of
consciousness and revel in it. For Today
The play of consciousness embraces all of creation. Today you
can join the game as an enjoyable experience. Take a moment to
do s omething that makes yo u happy—it could be lunch with a
friend, appreci ating the trees and sky, watching children on the
playground. If  your enjoyment comes from eating ice c ream at
midnight, that ’s perfectly fine. Whatever you are doing, re lax into
your en joyment and notice it. Enjoyment is the easiest w ay to be
here no w. Just by noticing yo ur enjoyment, you have put yourself
into the eternal play of consciousness. YOUR EXPERIENCE:
 
 
 DAY 15
 
Upon close examination, no external world or physical
body can be found independent of our perceptions. We are so used  to living with  a divided self that it is a big step
to see beyond it. The divide d self tells you that you live in two
worlds, one “in here” and on e “out there. ” But if reality is a single
thing, t his view is mistaken. Consciousness is the one thing. It
unfolds as one reality. Know ing this, you have firm gr ound to
stand o n—your own awareness. The conditioned mind corrupts
and dis torts awareness. It colors your perceptions, forcin g you to
accept t he division between the inner and outer worlds. Waking
up c larifies the truth. All wor lds are experienced in consciousness. There is no need to prove the existence of the physical world or
not to prove it. You are here now, and that is enough. For Today
It’s not difficult to merge the  inner and outer worlds into one. Find a photo of yourself; it can be your driver’s license or a
snapshot. Holding the photo  in your hand, look at yourself in the
mirror. Then look at yourself in the photo, and finally, see yourself
in y our mind’s eye. As you m oved from seeing your physical body
reflected in a m irror, capture d on film, and inside your mind, each
was an experience in conscio usness. On that basis, there w ere not
three different experiences. There was one experienc e being
modified in three ways. Everything in life stands on the same
ground, as experiences that are modified consciousness. YOUR EXPERIENCE: 
 
 DAY 16
 
Since there is no independent physical world, everyday
reality is a lucid dream taking place in the vivid now. Dreams aren’t  all cut from the same cloth. Some dream s are
vague, b arely more vivid than having a fleeting memory when you
are awake. At the opposite extreme are so-called lucid dreams. When you’re having a lucid dream, you have no clue tha t it is a
dream. You are fully immers ed in it and, when you wake up, it’s
hard to acknowledge that the dream wasn’t real. Likewise, virtual
reality is a fu ll-immersion experience. There are few clues to
suggest that you are not fully awake. For that reason, glimpses of  clarity, moments of joy, creative
insights, and the experience of meditation are precious. They
suggest that you are immersed in a vivid, lucid dream. Waking up
will come as a  surprise—for many people, it’s a shock to  realize
that they’ve been asleep all th eir lives. Every passing moment was
like experiencing the vivid now. Once awake, however, now
becomes a window into pure consciousness. It doesn’t matter what
fills the now. What matters is that you are fully awake to it. For Today
Moments when  you see through the spell/dream/illusion often
happen sponta neously—they come upon you by surprise. There’s
no set way to bring about such glimpses; the closest you can come
is throu gh meditation. Still, you can prepare the ground today for
the seed of metareality experience. At any time, take a look
around, smile to yourself, and say, “Imagine, this is all a dream,
and I am th e dreamer. ” The smile is important. It’s likeanticipating Christmas as a child. You know something good is
coming and, by reminding yourself, you open the way. YOUR EXPERIENCE:
 
 
 
 DAY 17
 
Now isn’t a moment in time that can be grasped and held. Now is the rise and fall of awareness. If you want to  know who enforces the rules of virtual re ality,
the cloc k is a good place to st art. The tick-tock of clock tim e slices
life into segments of secon ds, minutes, and hours. Once you
identify with clock time, your life passes in seconds, minutes, and
hours. Such an existence is m echanical and routine. Breaking out
of virtual reality, now has to become a state of awareness, not a
slice of bread. When you wake up, now is a presence; it is the
unbroken experience of being here. Experiencing this presence, you witness how the stream of
consciousness delivers a se quence of fleeting sensations and
perceptions. Dividing this stream of activity into seconds, minutes,
and hou rs is a mental construct only. When you are awake, you
pay more attention to the presence of awareness than  to the
fleeting events taking place in the mind. For Today
Mental activity is very clingy. You have a stake in the thou ghts,
sensations, images, and feelings that pass through your mind. But
you do n’t have to have a stake in those thoughts, sensations,
images, and feelings. Imagin e that you are sitting on a co mmuter
train looking out the window. As the scenery rushes by, you don’t
see it by picking out each building, tree, car, or person. It’ s all just
the passing scenery. If you ha ppen to notice something that stands
out, it passes just as quickly as the things you don’t noti ce. Now
instead of windows, substitute your eyes. You are sitting behind
them watching the passing scenery. When you adopt this position,which i s known as “witnessing,” you approximate for a moment
what the permanent state of being awake is like. YOUR EXPERIENCE:
 
 
 
 DAY 18
 
Clock time slices up the timeless, giving it beginnings and
endings. As a result, there is birth, aging, and death. All of virtual reality, from the atom to the human body to the
universe, is a timeless process frozen in time. If you say, “I was
born in 1961” or “The meeting starts promptly at three” or “The
big bang occurred 13. 8 billion years ago,” you are doing the same
thing—freezing a constant fluid process into a beginning, which
automatically b rings a middle and an end. Beginning, mid dle, and
end are  menta l constructs. What is the middle of blue. What was
the last  thing that happened before time began. When you wake
up, being here is continuous—actually, it has always been
continuous, until beginning, middle, and end were invented. It
will com e as a great relief to  ditch those concepts. Not o nly will
you find  that you are living in the now, but birth, aging, and death
will become irrelevant. For Today
To step out of clock time into the timeless, take a moment and
look at a color,  say the blue of the sky. Try to see beyond t he blue. Really try. You will notice th at it is futile to try to think your way
there. M ental activity is irrelevant. Nor does it matter if you
actually see beyond the blue. By stopping your mind from
interfering, you escaped clock time, so the only place you can be is
timeless. Similarly, try to imagine a time when you didn’t exist. This will also stop the think ing mind from interfering. You will
experience no time when you didn’t exist. Is there a better
definition of eternity. YOUR EXPERIENCE:
 
 
 
 DAY 19
 
Reality is the endless activity of awareness modifying
itself. If someone walked up to you  and said, “I want to be here  now. Where’s it happening. ” you’d  be puzzled. “Now” isn’t a place on
the map. Brain connection s can be mapped in their precise
locations, but there is no top, bottom, back, or front to aw areness. The now is con tinuous because awareness is continuous. Only in
virtual reality are limitations  like beginnings and endings or birth
and death imposed. When experienced directly, reality flows like a
river. B ut you have to imagin e it as a river that flows in a circle,
without starting in the mountains and running to the sea. When you are awake, even to describe awareness as a flow is
too limiting. Awareness does n’t need to be active. As it h appens,
activity is everywhere. Out side of meditation or unexpected
moments of silence, the mind is constantly participating in the rise
and fall  of consciousness as i t modifies itself. Beyond the constant
buzz of activity, consciousness is silent, pure, unbounded, not
needing to do anything. Upo n waking up, you identify w ith pure
consciousness, enjoying the calmness and security it brings. For Today
Silent awarene ss is always with you, waiting to be notice d. Sit
in a  qui et place and say to yourself, “I am _______,” fillin g in the
blank w ith your full name. With a brief pause between them, say
the following things to yours elf: “I am [first name],” then  “I am,”
then “Am,” and finally no thought. Without labels to identify with,
the mind is quiet. As you experience this state, even for a moment,you hav e found your real ide ntity. The ego emerges from mental
activity; your true self emerges from silent awareness. YOUR EXPERIENCE:
 
 
 
 DAY 20
 
Time is only one kind of limitation. So are space, matter,
and energy. Awareness itself is without any limitation. Waking up is clearer today than in the past, when the process
was considered so mysterious that it seemed totally paradoxical. As o ne ancient metaphor put it, wanting to wake up is like  being a
thirsty f ish. Th e fish is thirsty  only because it doesn’t realiz e that it
is su rrounded by the ocean. L ikewise, a person seeking to wake up
doesn’t realize that all limitat ions of the mind are the result of not
knowing that the infinite ocean of consciousness is everywhere at
every moment. Limitation beg ins in the mind but is mirrored by time, space,
matter, and energy. This mir roring effect holds good whether you
are asle ep or awake. The difference is that when you wake up, the
physical universe is seen for what it really is, the play of
consciousness. Consciousnes s has no form or boundarie s. Being
beyond labels and thoughts, it is inconceivable. It is also w ho you
really are. For Today
Hold up your hand and start  moving it into various posit ions,
each sig nifying a meaningful gesture. Act out the part of a police
officer directing traffic, a teacher pointing to the blackboard, a
lover caressing  the beloved’s cheek, a chef whipping up an  omelet
—whatever str ikes your fancy. Reflect on how your hand carried
out wh atever your imagination wanted it to. Mind and matter
were di fferent appearances of the same consciousness. L ikewise,
your personal reality consist s of mind acting to coordinate time,space, matter, and energy. They express the same unlimited
possibilities as human imagination. YOUR EXPERIENCE:
 
 
 
 DAY 21
 
Virtual reality arose from the human need to live in
limitation. This need began the process that created the
conditioned mind. Limitation is part of virtual reality, and it seems t otally
convincing and necessary. Yo u cannot fly like a bird; you can’t be
rich by  wishing it were so; if you are hit by a car, you will be
seriously injur ed or killed. I’ve said that the conditioned mind
edits reality so that it serves  human needs. The infinite b ecomes
finite. W e are hemmed in b y harsh realities. There is actually
nothing wrong  with editing the infinite into the finite—a fter all,
you can’t think infinite thoug hts all at once, even though you have
the capacity to have infinite thoughts. The pro blem is that we’ve fo rgotten that this editing was done
by us. Virtual r eality isn’t a given; it was manufactured. The setup
is finite, and just as you can ’t think infinite thoughts all at once,
humans can’t physically do everything at once, say everything at
once, or desire everything at o nce. The setup of virtual reality suits
the self we think we have—and must have. When you wake up, the picture is reversed. You realize that
virtual reality is a construct. Only consciousness is a given. Only
consciousness cannot be crea ted. By waking up, you free yourself
from th e condi tioned mind, the limited self, and the mind -forged
limitations of virtual reality. In freedom you still cannot fly,
become rich by wishing it we re so, or avoid being injured if a car
hits you. On the other hand, it’s a bad bet to declare that a nything
is im possible. Waking up tak es you over a threshold. Wha t awaits
on the other side is a vast new territory of possibilities. For Today
Sit f or a mome nt and start to  think of things that you’d like to
do or be that are impossible. You might like to be fabulously
wealthy or incredibly attractive or young again—the sky’s the
limit. A s each thing comes to mind, pause and say to y ourself,
“Why not. Why is this impossible. ” Wait for a reply and let it
unfold, telling you all the reasons you can’t have or be w hat you
want. Now ask yourself, “Who says I can’t. ” There is no good answer
to this question. Things are i mpossible not because anybody says
so. The y are impossible because the whole setup of virtual reality
says so. All limitations are built into virtual reality. When anyone
says that something is impossible, she is only upholding virtual
reality. Who says you have  to follow suit. Nobody, in cluding
yourself. When this realization sinks in, you begin to glimpse how
free you really are. YOUR EXPERIENCE:
 
 
 
 DAY 22
 
When infinite awareness is edited, form and phenomena
appear (i. e. , things we can see, hear, touch, taste, smell,
and think about). For the  purposes of everyday life, infinity needed to be edited. Everyone agre es about that, but we forget that there was no
rulebook or set of guidelines for editing reality. The only rules are
self-imposed. Pure consciousness unfolded into the physical
universe, imposing time, space, matter, and energy upon its
creation. But pure consciousn ess didn’t believe it had to do things
this way. Billions of other u niverses with different setups have
been proposed by modern physics. Knowing that rules are self-im posed was never in doubt a t the
level of  pure consciousness. We inherited this certainty. Art and
culture express  the certainty that the human mind can construct
any setu p while also accepting the setup of the physical universe. This makes it seem that life has two compartments—the  mental,
which is unlimited, and the p hysical, which is limited. But that’s a
mistake. A house isn’t separ ate from the desire to build a house
and the  knowledge of how it is done. Mental and physical are
aspects of one thing: creative intelligence at play. When you wake
up, you  will see how creative intelligence works, and with
fascinated curiosity you will become a co-creator of reality. For Today
To become aware of how creative intelligence unfolds, start
with a small object. Whether it is a nail, an earring, or the keys to
your car, these things are id eas that took physical shape. Now
consider some thing larger, like the Empire State Building or theGolden Gate Bridge. They too are ideas that took physical shape. Does it matter that an earring is tiny and the Golden Gate Bridge
immense. No. Creative intel ligence isn’t large or small. Nor is it
hard or soft, here but not there, visible or invisible. The ability to
create is entirely self-contained, respecting no limitations of forms
and shapes. Creativity ne eds only itself. Without creative
intelligence, forms, shapes, and events couldn’t arise. Now see yourself in the m irror and say to yourself, “I am
infinite creativity that has taken on a form. ” Stop identifying with
the form and start identifying with the creativity. This is how you
wake up. YOUR EXPERIENCE:
 
 
 
 DAY 23
 
Every form and phenomenon is actually one thing: the
modification of the formless, the infinite reduced to the
finite, pure awareness given a beginning, a middle, and
an end. The world rewards big thinkers and gives them a place in
history. By comparison with an Albert Einstein or a Leonardo da
Vinci, everyone feels like a l ittle thinker. But a big thin ker isn’t
necessarily the biggest thinker. The biggest thinker sees that
reality is one thing, creation one process. That’s the whole picture
in one view, which becomes your reality when you wake up. The whole picture becomes clear when the mind stops
constantly blurring your view with interfering thoughts,
sensations, images, and feelings. They represent the ba ck-and-
forth be tween you and the ou tside world. When you wake up, the
interference patterns fall aw ay. You accept as a natural fact that
infinite, formle ss pure consciousness is the source of al l things. What makes this realization natural is that you see yourse lf as an
expression of one thing, not a jumble of mental and physical
activity. For Today
If you see an object in the outside world, you view it from  the
outside. Wholeness—the one thing—has no outside. It also  has no
inside. Therefore, you can’t view it. Because you are  it, you can’t
even relate to wholeness in  various ways, like accepting it or
rejecting it, participating on e day and taking time out the next. When y ou wake up, you know that you are the one thing. Yet even
now you can stop relating to it in false ways. Today, practice having no attitude toward your mind. Let
thoughts arise and fall, and when you are tempted to have an
attitude toward  what is going on, don’t. Don’t say that one thought
is good and a nother bad. Don’t assign labels like SMART, DUMB,
POSITIVE,  or NEGATIVE. T he mind is none of those things. It is the
flow of activity from the absolute. To label the mind is like saying
that wholeness  is bad, good, positive, negative, and so on. Clearly,
wholeness is beyond all lab els. So is your awareness. By not
judging your thoughts, you begin to adopt the open,
nonjudgmental state of being awake. YOUR EXPERIENCE:
 
 
 
 DAY 24
 
Only awareness is real. Even as it plays the role of
observer and observed, even as it creates worlds “out
there” and “in here,” its own nature is unchanging. Awareness exists. Everything else is a passing experi ence. These two sentences have be en said and resaid for centur ies. This
fact shows, at the very least, that human beings looked at reality
and found it mysterious. How did change emerge from
nonchange. How did One become Many. The mystery was
formulated in countless different ways. Asking “What came before
time began. ,” as modern cos mology does, is merely a va riant on
the medieval question “What existed before God. ”
The answer is contained in t he question. What came first has
been here forever. Change i s just a mask worn by nonchange. Once hu man beings saw the mystery, we saw our own nature. We
are creator and created, One and Many, changing experience and
unchanging awareness. None of this has to be proved o r tested. Whether you accept your true nature or not has no bearing on
your tru e natu re. It continues to be. On waking up, you see your
true nature clearly, and then a new life begins. For Today
Taking a moment or two, l et your mind roam across some
things you can recall from your past—memories of early
childhood, your parents, birthdays, school, your first kiss, some
things t hat are  sad, and so on. It doesn’t matter what you choose
to see. Now ref lect on the one thing they all have in comm on. You
were there. You are the nonchange in the midst of change. Now
you know your true nature. Everything else is window dressing. YOUR EXPERIENCE:
 
 
 
 DAY 25
 
Human suffering is built into virtual reality. It doesn’t
exist in awareness itself. When you suffer and feel unhappy, anxious, depressed, or
hopeless, your suffering feels totally real. You are experiencing
something that  is a given, feels like a given, rooted in phys ical pain
and mental anguish. But virtual reality, our collective
spell/dream/illusion, is a construct. Suffering is embedded in the
construct, which is why it fee ls inevitable. Beliefs about suffering,
whether they originate in the doctrine of sin or karma or modern
medical theories, reinforce virtual reality. Waking up doesn’t guarante e that there will never again be
physical pain or sad days. Th e conditioned mind is stubborn, and
our body has been bombar ded constantly by signals from the
conditioned m ind. Shadows of conditioning continue  to fall
(always remembering that t he shadows can be light as well as
heavy). On waking up, yo u abandon your allegiance  to the
conditioned mind, and, from that moment, it begins to fade and
lose its grip. Y ou see that freedom from suffering is possible and
natural. Suffering doesn’t ex ist in awareness itself, which is your
true nature. For Today
When people suffer—for example, when they feel depressed or
are diag nosed with a life-threatening illness—there’s a tem ptation
to b lame themselves. “Did I do this to myself. ” is a questio n posed
out of guilt, and guilt is quick to blame. The best answe r is that
your suffering is part of virtual reality. You accepted virtual reality,
which makes your participation in pain and suffering inevitable. Not tha t you are doomed; some people escape serious s uffering. But you r partic ipation is a se aled deal, no matter who yo u are or
what happens to you, unless you make a change. To end suffering, break the deal. When you wake up, the w hole
contract is annulled. Today yo u can prepare the way by not buying
into pain and suffering as so mething fated and inevitable. Think
back on some experiences you consider as suffering—they’d
include instances of grief, loss, sickness, betrayal, failure,
humiliation, and so on. Now sit quietly, go inward, and be with
yourself this minute. You are the same awareness that went
through suffering but also not suffering, that experienced pain but
also pleasure, that lost but also gained. For every opposite, you
have experienced both poles. Therefore, you are not either one. You are the unchanging awareness that witnesses change, the
screen upon which every experience plays without being an
experience. This insight holds the entire secret of bringing
suffering to an end. YOUR EXPERIENCE:
 
 
 
 DAY 26
 
Suffering continues because we cling to memory and
grasp at experience. It is an illusion to believe that the
now can be grasped or that reality can be clung to. Truth feels cold when there’s nothing you can do about it. People feel the truth that l ife brings suffering, and they hate
feeling helples s in the face of this truth. The result is gre at inner
conflict. On the one hand, w e pretend to accept that lif e brings
suffering. On the other hand, we struggle to escape the feeling of
helplessness. Modern medicine ends part of the confusion and
struggle. As diseases are conquered, human beings feel more
powerful and suffering is pushed aside—for the moment. Suffering in the form of ment al anguish has not been allevi ated,
nor has the fe ar of disease and aging, or the dread o f death. Upgrading virtual reality is the story of modern technological
civilization. (Just as the discovery of new means of mechanized
death is  a downgrade of virt ual reality. ) Suffering retains its grip
because we want to cling to g ood experiences and the memory of
better days. As long as youth, health, and happiness are rooted in
time, with good times being preferable to bad times, the re is no
escape from suffering. Clinging to virtual reality means that
suffering is part of the construct. When y ou wak e up, you don ’t try to cling or grasp. You don’t
store up good memories and push down bad ones. There  is only
being here now. In the now there is nothing to hold and grasp,
nothing to cling to. By no lo nger clinging, you have cut off your
connection to virtual reality. Then suffering no longer clings to
you. For Today
When s omebody tells you to let go and stop holding on, does
that advice really help. The most stubborn resentments, affronts,
hurts, and anger are holding on to you, not the other way around. No one wakes up after a bitter divorce, losing a job, or being
betrayed by a friend, thinking, “Now I’ve got something I really
want to  hold on to. ” Instead, the anger and resentment come back
of th eir own accord, and they  last as long as they decide to last, not
as long you want them to last. What y ou are actually clingin g to isn’t bad memories, neg ative
emotions, old grudges, and hurt feelings. You are holding on to
virtual reality. By waking up, you let go of your allegiance to it, and
then the bad stuff stops clinging to you. Think about something
that ma kes you really angry or resentful. When you have it in
mind, let go. You won’t be able to, not when it is still clinging to
you. In reality,  you are where you are. This place is filled with bad
things that once happened, hurts and resentments that are in
various stages: clinging tight ly, starting to let go, or almost faded
to noth ing. Virtual reality is set up so that, wherever you are,
experience clings like barnac les to a ship’s hull. Seeing this gives
you a sense of detachment, which is a sign that you are waking up. YOUR EXPERIENCE:
 
 
 
 DAY 27
 
Suffering comes to an end when we no longer fear
impermanence. As long as we have a stake in the illusion,
we will suffer. Children are eager to explore the world, and they love how
everything is changing. But at the same time a child wants the
security and safety of hom e. This balance becomes harder to
maintain as an adult. Change becomes threatening when there’s
no one at home to promise s afety and security. One way to hold
anxiety at bay is to pretend t hat “I,” the ego-personality, is stable
and reliable. “I” has a stake i n the world, something to maintain. The ego  builds itself up by every kind of clinging—to pleasure,
fantasy, wishful thinking, outworn conditioning, old memories,
and false beliefs. All t hose things are imperma nent, so it doesn’t work to build a
self wit h them as a foundation. Fear of change departs only when
you base your life on the true  self. As you wake up, the transition
from ego to true self happens naturally. For Today
The bes t way to feel safe is when you take safety for gra nted
without worryi ng about it. Consider the commercials you see on
television for life insurance, pharmaceuticals, retirement homes,
and burglar alarms. They offe r reassurance by first bringing up the
fear tha t you are not secure a nd safe. The tactic works bec ause we
don’t really take our personal security for granted—we push
anxiety out of sight instead. To feel how real, unshakable security feels, stop reading for a
second. Then start reading again, and stop again. In the pausebetween readin g these words, you took for granted that yo u know
how to read. T here’s no underlying anxiety about this—yo u know
it for certain—and the same is true for dozens of things you know
how to do. Thi s is how it feels when you are truly secure  without
hiding f rom underlying anxie ty. When you wake up, you will take
for gran ted tha t you have alw ays existed and always will. On that
basis, you are a gain like a child, free to explore the world and safe
from fear because you are at home always, inside yourself. YOUR EXPERIENCE:
 
 
 
 DAY 28
 
Freedom is the natural state of existence, knowing that we
are aware here and now. Virtual reality isn’t reliable when it comes to lasting happi ness,
security, fulfillment, love, and other things we cherish. Some
people enjoy very few of those things, and even when we get more
than our fair sh are, we fear p ossible loss. It is a bad deal to rely on
what is unreliable. You would n’t take a job from an employer who
says that he w ill toss a coin every day to determine if you  stay or
get fired. But we cling to vir tual reality with no guarantees that
things w ill work out. This is a form of bondage—the wor st form,
since the widely held belief is that there’s no alternative. Real freedom isn’t something  you struggle to achieve, hope for,
and fee l unlike ly to win. Free dom is our natural state if we don’t
imprison ourselves. On waking up, you no longer feel bound to
virtual reality. Mental constructs lose their grip and eventually
fade away entirely. Being her e now is the same as total freedom,
because the now is gone before anything can lay claim to y ou. You
exist and you are aware—that’s enough to set you free. For Today
All of us have our own version of what it feels like to be fre e and
its opp osite, what it feels like to be trapped, hemmed in, and
suffocated. Yet  these concepts disguise the reality, which is that
our sense of freedom is al ways bound up with its o pposite. Retirement frees us from the demands of work; having the
children go off to college frees us from having them under our
roof. But our freedom is constrained by having a job and becoming
a parent in the first place. True fre edom isn’t bound up with its opposite. To prove this to
yourself, think  for a moment and describe what you were doing at
7:37 last Tuesday evening. What thoughts were in you r head. What words did you say. Even if something memorable sticks
with you from last Tuesday, it takes an effort to recall it. You are
free fr om 7:37 last Tuesday evening because there  is no
attachment to it. A moment of now has fled and gone. The
moment when you started to read this lesson has fled and gone. Your re lationship to the now is to experience it, extract what it has
to give, and move on. This is the state of nondoing and
nonclinging, which dawns as your natural state when you wake up. YOUR EXPERIENCE:
 
 
 
 DAY 29
 
Knowing ourselves as timeless beings, we can live
consciously. We can be what we really are—a species of
consciousness creating the human universe. “I,” the ego-personality, grapples with the stuff of creation
every day, turning new idea s into reality. We call this progress,
and it is—of a sort. The ideas we turn into reality have an agenda
and a past. The y crop up in a context that accepts or rejec ts them. The con ditioned mind has no choice but to respond to all kinds of
external limita tions. Once a wish, hope, or dream manages to turn
into rea lity, we cling to wh at we have created. We ignore the
inevitable ruin  of all things—one day the things we’ve built will be
relics like the Parthenon or the Egyptian pyramids. Creation that is lasting must be built upon the timeless. That’s
not possible with physical things, and since physical objects
represent ideas, even ideas cannot truly last in the face of the
ravages of time. In the timeless, what lasts isn’t an idea or a thing
but creativity itself. The “stuff” of creation is our own awareness
and its infinite  capacity to cre ate. By waking up, you creat e on the
basis of  being a creator, not o n the ideas and things that surround
you. Yo u are beyond things and ideas, a conscious being of
timeless dimension. For Today
Timeless  i s a concept that feels very fa r removed from daily life,
but it comes c loser when you realize what time is. Time is the
process of creation and destruction. Therefore, if you don’t
identify with creation and de struction, you stand in the timeless. You have a cho ice to shift you r allegiance to the timeless w heneveryou wan t. Stop  for a moment  to look around the room. When you
return to reading this page, everything you looked at is in the
process of decaying, dissolving, and fading away. But did time take
away th e present moment. No—it only took away the things you
noticed in the present moment. The present moment constantly
renews itself. It stands for the timeless that persists in the activity
of time. When you are awake, the timeless takes precedence over
everything else. This shift allo ws you to celebrate creation without
feeling anxiety over things passing away. YOUR EXPERIENCE:
 
 
 
 DAY 30
 
Knowing that we are free, the future of humanity can go
beyond birth, death, and all the stories in between. If you could land anywhere in history, you could seek out
people who are awake. The y would always be a minor ity, and
perhaps a tiny sliver of a minority. But counting noses is n’t how
waking up works. If you want to know if human beings ca n swim,
you on ly need to find one example. Likewise, one aw akened
person tells you that waking  up is possible, and, even more, that
everyone is part of the process. Waking up isn’t learned; it is not
acquired behavior. It is a state that all of us already exist in. The
only thing that happens when you wake up is that you realize who
you rea lly are. Humanity is a lready free—we wouldn’t be here as
conscious bein gs if that weren’t true. Only the stories we tell
ourselves block our view of our true nature. This interference pattern, like a fuzzy television picture, doesn’t
affect re ality. The broadcaste r is still sending a clear picture, even
if our receiver  isn’t picking i t up. When you wake up, the signal
and the receiver are both c lear and in tune with each other. Thoughts and feelings come and go without creating interference. This is what it means to be in the world but not of it. For Today
You can  be in poverty for two reasons—either you are act ually
poor or  you are rich but don ’t know it. In relation to the infinite
potential that is our true nat ure, we feel limited in everyday life. So whic h is it. Are we actuall y limited, or do we not know that we
are unli mited. The answer isn’t given by looking at conditions on
the ground. The richest, smartest, most gifted, and happiestperson can wind up leading a very limited life. The answer is only
available in your own awareness. Sit for a moment and try to  think of a forbidden thoug ht. It
could be something you have  refused to consider for any  kind of
reason—it is too shameful, outrageous, antisocial, demeaning, or
anything else forbidden. The instant such a thought occur s to you,
it is no longer forbidden. In fact, no thought has ever be en truly
forbidden. You cannot limit thought, and since thoughts spring up
from silent awareness, you c annot limit the possibility that any
thought will be born. Because your entire life—and the life of
humanity—is based on consciousness, you too are unlimited. You
can sto p buying into all t he stories about birth, death, and
everything in between. Knowing that you are unlimited means
that no story can limit your possibilities. YOUR EXPERIENCE:
 
 
 
 DAY 31
 
You can enjoy the movie while knowing at the same time
that you created the movie. That is the awakened state. The everyday world operates  by opposites. There is a positive
and a negative  pole to every experience. To navigate thro ugh life,
people try to g rasp the positive pole, but this effort never frees
them fr om the  specter that th e negative will also have its day. The
ultimate polarity is attachme nt and detachment. Spiritual  seekers
learn that detachment is positive, because being attached (i.
The presence of being and awareness.
According to the text, what is the only constant in every snapshot of reality?
To show that the reader can wake up and experience the world in a new way, free from the conditioning of the mind.
What is the main point of the text?
The author believes that time is an illusion created by the mind to make sense of the world, and that true freedom is not bound by time.
What is the author's view on the concept of time?
The author believes that suffering is an illusion created by the mind, and that it is possible to transcend it by waking up and recognizing the true nature of reality.
What is the author's opinion on the concept of suffering?
The ultimate goal is to wake up and experience the world in a new way, free from the conditioning of the mind, and to recognize the true nature of reality.
What is the ultimate goal of the text?