Anyway, it occurred to me, I was playing around with this, and I really believe that things like movies and books and games that get a lot of purchase in the culture are tapping into some very deep storylines that are possibly written in our very genes. It could be just in our souls, these intuitive paths of knowing—the hero saga, the classic romance. These are deep, the sort of Star Wars adventure thing. So it’s interesting to me to see what is capturing the attention of so many people as a game like Minecraft.

And the thing that thrills me about it is watching Lila switch through three different modes. So the three modes you go into—one is survival, one is creative, and then one is adventure. And I think that these three modes are bouncing off of modes we can live in our actual three-dimensional lives. You’ve probably heard me several times compare this world to a video game, that when you sit in meditation long enough, or when you do psychedelics and have the right shaman or whatever it is, there can be a moment where you suddenly realize—near-death experience is the same thing—you suddenly realize that what you thought was the ultimate reality, the physical world, is in fact very fleeting and ephemeral and transitory and in fact is projected by consciousness onto this screen called “now” in every tiny fraction of a second. Now, now, now, now. Consciousness is projecting this drama.

As Shakespeare put it in The Tempest, Prospero, the hero, is a magician, and he puts on a whole play with just spirits, and he waves his wand and they all disappear. And that’s where we get the phrase “into thin air.” It’s the first time it was written down. He says, “These actors, as I foretold you, are all spirits and have vanished into air, into thin air.” And then he goes on talking about how everything in the physical world will vanish into thin air and that we are something beyond that.

So this is deep. This is in the Asian models of enlightenment. It’s in Dante, it’s in Shakespeare, it’s in all these things, all these deep profound works of imagination, literature, fantasy that we still carry in our culture. And once you’ve seen that, the real world where we are right now, it starts to appear very much like a video game. When you sit down and play the video game, you have a character that is you. When Lila has her character and I have to follow that character around, but if I get too close, that character kills me. And I’m quite offended, like, “You killed me just for coming too close to your weird little pixel dog?” “Yes, you can’t do that. Don’t worry, I’ll resurrect you.”

So we can identify with the avatars, but then as soon as you stop playing the game, you know what you really are. So it’s like when you’re playing one of these video games, it’s an iteration further of what I think is going on in what we call “real life.” So you’re in an avatar watching this wherever you are, I’m in an avatar here. There is something more real than that that is all of us. And it is so much more powerful and relaxing and real than this is.

So I was very curious to know what the differences were and what the purposes were behind these three modes. And it occurred to me: You can play in these three modes in what we call real life. So I Googled, “Why would you do these three different strategies?”

So the first one is survival mode. And it’s so interesting. It says, “This is the default way, this is the most common way, and it offers a challenge by”—and I’m quoting from the internet so you know it’s true—”by forcing you to gather resources, craft tools, manage your health and hunger, and fight enemies. This is the default mode.” So when I coach people, they’re always really miserable because they can’t gather enough resources. Well, they’re not always, but they often feel this way. They can’t gather enough resources, they can’t craft what they need. They can’t manage their health, they can’t fight their enemies, and they want a life where none of that is a problem. But then we go away and people spend millions, billions of dollars playing a game that gives them those very same conditions: scarcity, enemies, need for creative solutions.

We play that game as the default because it’s fun—as long as we know it’s a video game. So when you start to have the perspective that all of this is a video game, you start to have a lot more fun. Now, there are times when that just doesn’t work very well for you. When the survival mode gets really, really dire and because we’re identified with it and really, really experience it as the truth, it can get desperately upsetting.

So then, in Minecraft, you just switch to creative mode. And this is best, it says online, for building large-scale projects without worrying about resource gathering, combat, or hunger. And it gives you an unlimited access to all items, the ability to fly, and the immunity to damage from mobs.

Okay, think about this. I am obsessed with trying to save the world—not me, myself, all of us. And there will be many aspects to that. But the part of it that I feel capable of accessing has to do with changing minds, changing ideas, going into a mode that is different from most people’s survival mode. The whole world, a lot of the darkness in the world comes from the human obsession with lack and attack, right? Getting resources, keeping up your health, and fighting your enemies.

People go nuts because of lack and attack fears—ironically enough, the very things they play Minecraft to experience again. But if that gets too harsh, you can go into a place where you’re building, you’re making large-scale projects. So my whole thing of saving the world by assisting in the transformation of consciousness is I don’t want to worry about resource gathering, combat, or hunger. I don’t want to worry about the lack and attack. I want the ability to be anywhere, everywhere. I want the ability to fly. I want immunity from mobs.

So how do you switch? I believe you can switch. How do you switch from survival mode to creative mode in this supposed reality? The way you do that is through insight and a progressive awakening that only comes from focusing on the center of the self as the access for truth rather than something out there in the world. You have to turn inward to yourself until you realize, as Nisargadatta Maharaj says, “When I look inside me and see that I’m nothing, that is wisdom. When I look around me and see that I’m everything that is love. Between these two, my life turns.” When you get there, when you realize that there’s really nobody here, there’s just, the body is as ephemeral as everything else, and there’s a consciousness, but it’s no thing.

And then you look around at the incredible pageant of this apparent reality of this game and you say, “Oh, I am all of this because I am consciousness. I’m continuous with consciousness, and this is all the creation of consciousness or the projection of consciousness. I am all of this. I am the sunset. I am the fire. I am everyone walking around me.”

Then you feel separate from Survival mode, not separate in the way of being cut off from—there is no separation, but there’s no sense of danger. There’s no fear that you will cease to exist. There’s the awareness that because you are part of this consciousness that is projecting the game, you can project what you want. You can project all the items. You can—we call it manifestation—you can project the means to live well. You can project the loved ones you want, and you will not have to be worried in this state of mind about lack and attack. You’ll be focused on this other self.

But that’s not the default way. The default way is to go to Survival mode. So when Lila, my daughter, when she’s playing, she goes into creative mode to resurrect me after she’s killed me, and then she goes right back into Survival mode. Why? It’s more fun, it’s more interesting. And then if you really want to put the afterburners on, you can go into something called Adventure mode. And this is “designed for playing on custom-made adventure maps where the creator wants to limit or guide the player’s interaction with the world.” So this one, there’s still lack and attack, but there is a creator—and you are the creator of the game if you’re going to do this in Minecraft or if you’re going to do it in what we call real life—and it limits but also guides your interaction with the world.

So I lived in survival mode for about 50 years. I was hoping for more. I believed that there could be more, but I was basically playing the default setting for 50 years. Then I spent a lot of time meditating and stumbled over creative mode and had all kinds of very magical experiences, but then was directed, if I can say it, by my own higher self, by my intuition, back to the world. But not in survival mode, in adventure mode.

I can still go into survival mode sometimes. I gave a speech a few weeks ago, and I just bombed. I’ve never bombed this badly. And afterwards I was like, “How am I going to support my family?” So I was in survival mode for like half an hour. But mostly when I feel that way, I access guidance.

And I think I told you all, I just last month went on a walk through part of Spain, along the Camino de Santiago with 43 therapists, coaches, very academic people who are really, really skilled and knowledgeable and intelligent and certified. And all but one of us admitted at one point that we had the experience of being guided by some kind of a being that does not seem to be completely just ourselves, that we have guides.

So what I want you to challenge us all to do today is if you are in survival mode, and it’s hard for you, know that there are two other modes, that they’re more fun if you’re scared to death of survival mode. But if you’re not scared to death, you can have a lot of fun in survival mode. It’s the default mode. If you decide to go to creative mode, you have to be highly motivated because you have to be able to look within you until the nature of reality shifts and you see something realer than you ever knew was present, but you will be able to access all kinds of magic in there.

And then there’s adventure mode, and this is the one I think I choose to live in most of the time. There’s still lack and attack, but there’s also guidance and there’s also a creator—in my way of thinking, the creator is consciousness itself, and it’s not separate from the guidance or the guided. But there’s that sense of playing in this body, which is getting predictably older and breaking down and having incidents here and there. But it’s an adventure. It’s not just survival, and that’s a choice.

I think the people who come and watch this mostly want to live in adventure mode or creator mode. But remember that even if you slip down to survival mode, that’s the game we came to play. That’s the fun stuff, most days. And when it gets to the point where it isn’t fun, switch. Go into the mode that sees more, that sees from outside the game, that can create the game even while you’re playing it.

Stay in there as creator. You’ll be a little lofty and separate, drifting around the edges of society, or jump back in as an adventure, but know that you are not tied to anything frightening or miserable or hopeless that you always have these other two modes to go to, and that ultimately, we put the game away and we go back to real life.

As Byron Katie says, “We put these bodies on the ground when they stop talking, and we walk away.” And then we’re, who knows? Maybe we’ll go play another game.

Anyway, I wish you all great adventures, and I wish you all great creations, and I thought it would be fun now to do our usual bizarre meditation. For those of you who’ve never been here before, it’s triggered by a word that was vetted at the Princeton Research Institute, showing that it puts the brain into something called synchronous alpha. So we’re going to do that and then I will answer some questions.

Okay, here we go. Get relaxed, breathe in deeply, then out all the way, shake the tension out of your body and then look at the computer or the phone or whatever’s in front of you and focus on the target of what you’re looking at. And then let yourself look at the distance in between your eyes and the target, whatever you’re looking at. And then ask this question, not because you need an answer, but because asking the question tricks the mind, tricks the brain into opening facets that we don’t usually open.

And the phrase is: Can I imagine the distance between my eyes? You don’t have to answer this. The question is the point. Is it possible for me to imagine the distance between my eyes? Can I imagine the distance between the center of my forehead and the back of my skull? Can I imagine the distance from my forehead to my skull? Can I imagine the distance from the crown of my head to the base of my spine? And can I imagine the space inside the atoms of my spine?

Remembering that all matter is overwhelmingly made up of empty space. Can I imagine the space in the atoms that make up my torso? Can I imagine the space inside the atoms of my heart? Can I imagine that space continuous with all space? Can I feel, can I imagine the connection between the space inside my heart and the space inside the hearts of all others, both those who are listening with us and everyone else and all beings?

Can I hear the silence that carries all sound? Can I listen to that silence? Can I feel the stillness in which all action occurs? Can I feel how the silence, the stillness, and the space will go on long after matter has disappeared? Can I imagine that the silence, the stillness, and the space are alive and that they are love?

Thank you. I always feel your energy so strongly and people might think I’m making that up. It is a tangible physical sensation. So let’s look at some questions.

Yes, first question: “Sometimes this supposed reality is bound to systemic forms of oppression. How do you support those whose basic needs aren’t met, and there’s racism and other forms of oppression at play?”

I think this is one of the major objectives of the game right now for those of us who are trying to change things for the better. You don’t go into the game and just wander around letting mobs kill innocent people—not in Minecraft, and certainly not in the world we experience as real. There’s absolutely no doubt that in our experience, racism and oppression are real and that they are evil and that people are being harmed by them. And the game is to try to change that. That is the game. It’s the, what it says, “It offers you a challenge by having to gather resources, fight enemies, fight hunger.”

That’s not just for your body, that’s for the bodies of all the people who are hungry in the world. So you have to feel where you’re called to affect the greatest improvement you can. That’s the game. That’s, weirdly enough, that’s where the fun is. I mean, that’s why I say switch to creative mode if you can’t get your head around “This is fun” because it’s not fun to be starved, discriminated against, and oppressed. It is not fun. So you can switch to creator mode.

And actually a lot of people who have been in oppressed circumstances made that switch. I’m obsessed with Sojourner Truth, who lived in these parts. She made that switch under hideous oppression, and she changed the game. So yes, let’s all of us seek to eliminate oppression and discrimination and injustice. That’s the game right now. That is a big, big part of the game. And yeah, it’s not fun exactly, but if we can win, it will be grand.

So next question: “What does it mean to be in adventure mode? Is it best to be in creative mode?”

Well, creative mode is interesting because you can fly, you have access to everything. What my five-year-old says is she doesn’t play that way because it’s too easy. And I said something about we all, I feel like I have guides. They talk about this being the very hardest game there is—not the very hardest, but one of the hardest games there is—to be human on this planet is one of the hardest games a soul can play. So it’s really difficult, but if we can master things in this difficult place, then we have this massive takeaway of strength and power and joy and courage, and that’s why we’re playing, I guess.

But if you need to switch into creator mode, I can’t tell you how many people I have interviewed and coached and loved who have been at moments where it was absolutely dark and something switched and they were suddenly in the light. I mentioned Byron Katie, one of my favorite role models. She was in a horribly dark life until the age of 43, depressed, raging, anxious, terrified, agoraphobic addicted. And then she just woke up one day. She was so miserable, something just snapped. And she woke up, and she woke up in creative mode and she says, “Wow, look at you. I’m projecting you. You’re my sweet dream. And you even have hair.” She sees from the creator’s mode. She lives from the creator’s mode, and I’ve spent a lot of time around her. Now it is not a put-on, she really lives that way.

But I kind of like not knowing that yet. I kind of like slipping in and out of that, knowing it’s there but going back into, “I don’t have all the items, I have to somehow figure out how to get them. I don’t have all the solutions. I have to figure them out.” And then adventure mode is where you both create the game and play within it, but the player is guided. To me, that’s like—so somebody creates the game for you. You go in and the creator of the game guides you. So to me, that was my big takeaway from this. My big aha! is that survival often isn’t fun for me because I do see oppression and horror and brutality, and that’s not fun. It isn’t for me. Creative mode would be too easy. It would be too easy to, I mean, my guides are like, “Wow, you are really having adventures down there. It would be too easy for us, but for you, it’s so hard that you’re building enormous strength and we’re here to guide you.”

So that’s the adventure mode. You’re playing the game, but you know there’s someone to help. I would encourage you, without any religious clap track at all, to just ask for help the next time you feel stuck and try not believing that it can’t come. It’s a double negative. I’m not asking you to believe that it can come. I’m asking you to temporarily suspend your disbelief in it and see what happens. It can get very, very interesting. It can get to the point where it’s almost like you’re in the creative mode and you have access to all items and you can fly.

Okay, another question: “What are your tips for organizing my personal space? I feel like my inner and outer is connected. Is there an exercise or tips for this?”

I’ve noticed because we just moved and I have this sort of separate space of my own, and I could not get it organized after we moved. I traveled and traveled and traveled. So everybody else is moving in, and my space just looked like a bomb had hit it. And I realized that I was in an internal chaos because I was living in an external chaos. They do tend to mirror each other. It’s something I talk about a lot in coaching.

Write up a description of your home and you will have written, unconsciously but metaphorically a description of your inner life. So one day I just moped on over to the other place and I found Ro and said to her, “I need help.” And she came over and said, “Oh my God.” And helped just organize stuff in a way and get rid of a lot of stuff and organize stuff.

I was really good at that for other people’s stuff, but I was overwhelmed by my own. So I would really say, organize what you can. Now I’m in a place where it’s organized, but I’m still working on it. So I try to tidy things every time I go past them. Just little by little by little. That’s one way of organizing your outer space. And you will find that it reflects, it is mirrored in your inner mental state. But if you really can’t do that, be guided. Go into adventure mode. Go find a friend and companion. Ask them to help you. It is often the best way forward.

All right, just a few more questions: “How do you celebrate the holiday season in a way that feels authentic to yourself?”

Oh, my. Once we had a person who came to babysit my kids when they were little, my older kids, who was a member of a church that does not believe in the holidays and—because they think holidays are pagan and therefore evil.

So one day that person was there and my kids were there and they said, “People who are Jewish celebrate Hanukkah. Some African-Americans celebrate Kwanza. Christians celebrate Christmas. What are we?” And I said, “Well, your ancestors were all Nordic. And so yeah, we are basically pagans.” And the person who didn’t believe in holidays was all excited because I said pagan. And I said, s”So what we’re going to do is we’re going to have pagan holidays.” And the person quit. But I looked up the old traditions, so for years we would paint our faces blue—like the picts of Scotland were my ancestors. And I would hide a white deer like a little toy deer because you’re supposed to hunt the white stag on the solstice. And then we would eat steak because that was better than venison, easier for me to access.

In other words, you’re in creative mode. Make it up. You’re in adventure mode. Make it up and be guided. It’s great fun, and it’s, I hope, fun for your kids and will make some people just leave.

Okay, somebody says, “What if survival mode gets stuck?”

What a good question. Survival mode is stuck for almost everybody who lives in a purely materialist mind frame, which is what our culture feeds us. And you get really, really stuck. Just notice. It is miserable. It is painful. It leads you to feel hurt and to feel hurtful to others. It is not a great mode to live in without the awareness that this is a game and that creative mode and adventure mode are available to us.

So if you get stuck, what will happen is you will suffer. That’s a gift. That’s giving you the maximum motivation to find another way of looking at what’s happening to you. And maybe you’ll just switch in the creative mode or into adventure mode.

I’m just going to do the last question: “How do you stick to authenticity in normal chaotic life?”

I think every day I’ve started doing something I call my “morning tuneup.” And every day I get up and I find whatever it takes to put me back in creative mode. Sometimes I read from books that are either inspiring or sacred or channeled or whatever. I read a lot of ancient wisdom texts and a lot of modern masters as well. I meditate. I spend a lot of time talking to whatever guides there may be. And then I listen for their response, which is getting stronger and stronger as I age— and maybe getting more and more crazy or maybe getting more and more tuned in. Who knows? I just suspend my disbelief. So I think that’s a very, very pivotal thing that what we call “normal” is a chaotic version of the survival game, and it’s not fun.

So taking time to orient ourselves every day. I do it several times a day. We have rituals in our family because we have a five-year-old and a 30-something with Down syndrome who really likes routine. We have several sort of, we call them communions, sort of ritualized gatherings during the day where we just get together to share and be in the same space briefly. And those always reorient me to creative mode, to adventure mode.

So return to love, return to inspiration, tune yourself to the creative and adventure modes of the game and realize that even when you fall into survival mode, you came into the game to play it for the fun of it. And that’s the default mode. Go figure.

I hope you have a wonderful, wonderful time being creative, being adventurous, flying around, and having access to all the items whenever you need them, and being comforted when you get stuck in survival mode, but able to get out really quickly. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I see you another time on The Gathering Room. Bye for now.