Highways, and specifically, the road trips taken on them, have always been considered a metaphor for change or freedom, but are they? The highway–with its wide open space all around, a painted ceiling of infinite sky, an endless carpet of empty fields, miles of mirage-distorted asphalt disappearing behind you and stretching out in front of you–is actually more like another plane of existence. It is so unbelievably big, that you can’t help becoming mesmerized by it and drifting off into some narcotic-soaked dreamland. The hours slip by while you float in your semi-conscious state, lulled by the white noise of the cars and trucks, motorcycles and RVs that hum by.

There is no escape, not even at the random rest stops, unreal park-like worlds filled with a bizarre mix of strangers moving about. Stopping and getting out of your vehicle, your body feels heavy and disoriented. Everyone around you looks groggy and zombie-like, as if abruptly awakened from a nap.

Then there are the actual exits, a repeating montage of sameness, with each designed to look familiar, so as not to remind people they’re actually somewhere they’ve never been. The reassurance comes from the chain restaurants and gas stations and motels that are carefully arranged to invite people into the dream of being in a place that looks like home. You can continue your drowsy mood here, because there is nothing jarring or foreign enough to shake you out of it. Relax, you haven’t left your comfort zone even though in reality you’re 1784 miles away from home. All the same stuff is here. You are fine. You are safe. So relax, fill up your tank, eat some food, and pay an outrageous amount of money to sleep in a bed for the night.

But, by all means, don’t think too much. Don’t look too hard through the veneer of the illusion because what you see may frighten you out of your wits, and by god then what would you do? Who would you call? Who would help you? And how would you explain that you’re afraid to be in someplace new surrounded by hundreds of strangers and too much open space? That those huge farms with the houses spread out on all that acreage makes your chest hurt just imagining living with that much isolation. You are in your own country but feel as though you’ve been dropped out of the sky into a foreign land.

No don’t think. Just drive and dream and let the hallucination work its magic on your mind. The highway is really a sedative designed to keep you believing in the predictability of life. Only on those rare occasions when something happens to break up the routine, such as engine trouble, do you get to peek inside the life going on behind the blandness of highway rest stops and exits. Even if you decide to stay for several days in one place, you will still see it through a tourist’s trance, not the reality of the people whose day to day lives are going on there. That would be more than you’d want to know because you’re on vacation and the last thing you need is to be reminded of all that drudgery and pain and human drama.

Behind all those billboards beckoning you to take a look at all the wonderful things they’re offering, are the people creating that illusion for you. Who sleep in beds and shower and watch tv in between the times they’re staging their show. Not to worry, they don’t want you to be bothered by all that. They want you to relax enough to spend your money freely, take pictures, and tell your friends they ought to stop there sometime.

Yes, highways are a metaphor, but rarely do they represent the catalyst for change or promise of freedom they once did, instead they’ve become one more monotonous monument to banality and maintaining the status quo. Road trips are great, and most of us fantasize about the mind-altering escape they offer from our daily lives. However, unless you get off the highway and drive on back roads, you will see what others want you to see, no more, no less. It is a sanitized, homogenized, view of life, refurbished to cater to the least common denominator: the masses.

A lost highway indeed.

photo by Liz Labunski

I’ve been watching the first season of House on DVD. It is very well written. The dialogue is witty, philosophical and even spiritual at times. One of my favorite lines is when Dr. House says, “Everyone lies.” Again and again, through the various medical dramas that unfold, he’s proven right.

I asked myself why this resonated so strongly. I realized that it was because it’s the truth. We all lie. We’re all equal in this. There are no exceptions. None of us is exempt.

Think about it. Do the people around you really know what you think or feel all the time? Do they really know you? What motivates or drives you? What you obsess about? What you fantasize about?

Of course not. We all carefully manage how much we let people into our inner thought processes.

This is a form of self-preservation. Lying serves us because it allows us to conform to what is socially acceptable behavior. So we lie to fit in, to be accepted, to feel part of things.

But what about the lies we tell ourselves? These are more subtle and more difficult to detect. Over time, we believe them so intensely that we convince ourselves they’re the truth.

What I’m referring to are our illusions, our projections, assumptions, ideals, expectations, etc. Our illusions are so seductive. The world is much easier to tolerate when the void of existence is painted with the colored palette of our daydreams. We invest our experiences and our sight with meaning. We imagine we know best, and that if only things matched our vision, we’d be happy.

This is not living, but rather a simulation of living, a step removed from actual participation. Life becomes a spectator sport and we are watching it from the sidelines. Life is happening somewhere out there, but you’re so caught up in watching the movie screen of your own interpretation, that you completely miss it. It just passes you by.

Looking at the underbelly of our illusions and pulling them out by the roots is a radical step that yields a new vision of the world around us. Seeing how we manipulate our experiences to fit our expectations is the best way to get honest with ourselves and break free of the mind games that hostage our authenticity.

Disillusionment is a good thing, because we put the illusion there in the first place. Having it removed frees us. I didn’t say it doesn’t break our hearts or make us uncomfortable. But it does set you free.

The trick is in determining how much Truth we can handle and which illusions we can let go of, without becoming overwhelmed. Questioning our illusions can make us feel disloyal, as if we are going against the status quo

In a sense we are. We are pruning away the dead branches and the excess fat that hides the light of our true selves. We are removing the ancestral, genetic and societal beliefs that have made up the shell of identity we’ve wrapped around us. We are excavating the priceless treasures of our soul amidst the landscape of our personal history.

Dropping our illusions is a spring cleaning of our interior dwelling, airing it out, making room, and putting it in order. What do we want to keep and what do we want to toss? What resonates and what doesn’t?

Think about it….

How often have the deepest longings of your soul been met with a dozen arguments to stop you from expressing them?

How often have you had an intuition to do something spontaneous or out of the ordinary only to have it shot down by all of your considerations to the contrary?

How often have you wanted to express yourself freely, but censored yourself because you were afraid of being rejected or seen as crazy?

This is not freedom! It is a soul in bondage and the only way out is to get onto yourself about it. It’ll make you uncomfortable; it’ll make you squirm; it’ll turn your life upside down. But once you let go of some of your soul-killing ideas about what you can and can’t do, you’ll start to feel life flowing in your veins again. And as the shackles start to come off, the energy and excitement and passion that have been dormant for so long will begin to surface. You’ll be able to breathe freely again.

Don’t take my word for it. Try it out for yourself. Start with the simple awareness that everyone lies and see where it takes you. Then go a step further and examine what untruths about yourself and others you’re holding onto. Finally, once you identify the untruths, see if you’re ready to let any of them go.

Do this even once, and you’ll never see yourself or anyone else in the same way again.

So yes, Dr. House, everyone lies. But in our mad rush to judge ourselves and others too harshly let’s remember too that everyone also wants to be loved.

Our Creator gave ALL OF ITS creations free will to create. In that place of free choice, dimensions were manifested that projected the illusion of limitation and duality, creating a dense matrix of shadows, tricks and lies that veil the Truth about who we are and where we came from.

This veil is the cloud of amnesia and forgetting and suspension of disbelief about our divine origin, causing us to be at affect of a duality that isn’t real and to believe we are limited and powerless and victims of lack, illness and conflict.

This amnesia keeps us in bondage and makes us slaves to the unreal. We unknowingly accept our fate and falsely believe this is all there is and that the three-dimensional world is a solid, immovable and chaotic realm that we were born into. Like prisoners, we adapt to the rules of this realm, believing we have no choice and no power to escape or change it. We believe we must obey the rules of this realm and stay in the box of our beliefs about it or risk pain or certain death. Fear is our warden. Uncertainty and doubt keep us in line. We resign ourselves to finding whatever pleasure we can within it, looking outside of ourselves for the next thing to relieve our feelings of limitation, even though these pleasures are never long-lasting and are threatened by constant change and suffering.

Within each of us is a feeling that something’s not right, a feeling that there is something inherently wrong with the world we’re living in, that it doesn’t make sense and that the rules go against something deep inside of us. Some memory exists there and it makes us agitated and confused and afraid. Some of us feel this at greater levels than others and begin to question everything. We seek out answers in books, workshops, meditation, techniques, gurus, but nothing works. All external answers throw us off track and leave us empty-handed. Our minds spin in the confusion. Some of us give up hope of ever finding an answer. Some of us seek out escape through death. Others escape with drugs and oblivion. Still others shut down and hide out in relationships or churches or work.

But then there are a few of us who are determined to find out the Truth. Some powerful longing leads us to seek the answers within, and there we discover the key to unlock the prison door that had been there all along. Finally…finally, we connect with something greater than ourselves and begin the journey of remembering who we really are.

The 3-D is a shadow world, an illusion, a holographic matrix, a massive projection created by an immense agreed-upon belief system about the world we live in. In this shadow world many different beings interact, some seen and many unseen — all part of the duality of dark and light. This matrix isn’t real or solid, but the appearance of it is convincing.

We are at a time in history where the density of the 3-D duality has reached a critical point. We can no longer afford the amnesia about our true origin or we risk losing everything. This cycle has been repeated over and over. There have been cataclysmic fires, floods, ice ages, polar shifts and entire civilizations that evolved to a certain point and then self-destructed.

Our free will gives us all the option to evolve or destroy ourselves.

This is what we’re up against right now. And the only thing that will save us is to free ourselves from the hold of the amnesia that is keeping us imprisoned.

The question is: how to do this?

Awaken and remember who you are.

1. Human beings are asleep and unconscious and suffer from mass amnesia. We are born into the world open, receptive, conscious and close to Source. As we mature, we soak up the genetic, ancestral beliefs of our ancestors and the agreed-upon beliefs of the society we live in…friends, neighbors, school, the media, etc. This process happens over time, and it is so subtle, we are unaware of how the collective consciousness affects all of our thoughts, emotions, actions and reactions. We are trained to focus on the past and the future, never on the present, reinforcing our unconsciousness. We spend most of our time in a chaotic state, reacting to the constant input from the world around us, never realizing that most of our reactions are to thoughts and feelings that aren’t ours but those that we adopted, borrowed and absorbed over time. We have taken such ownership of this state of being that we consider it our normal state of being, not realizing there is a whole other way of being possible.
2. As human beings, we believe we are weak, powerless, limited, and destined to live a life of suffering and quiet desperation. We see ourselves as victims of our lives and the world we live in. Things happen to us and all we can do is react and respond the best way we know how. This is reinforced by the belief system of the world we live in. We think it is normal to experience physical illness and emotional pain and problems in our relationships, our finances, our work, our communities, and our environment. We think this is the way it is and that we have to accept it or at least find ways to cope with it or escape from it. We don’t know that by continuing to adhere to the agreed-upon beliefs and not questioning them, we are perpetuating the very suffering that we’re trying to deal with.
3. We are imprisoned by our unconsciousness and our belief that we are powerless and limited. We are imprisoned by our perception of ourselves as victims. We are imprisoned by the view that suffering is normal.
4. We believe the answer to our suffering lies outside of ourselves. We seek answers in all the wrong places. We can find temporary relief, but nothing that will last, nothing that will empower us, nothing that lifts us out of the unconsciousness, nothing that will set us free and remind us who we are and what we’re capable of.
5. We don’t know that we create our own experience. Every thought, belief, emotion, idea, assumption, expectation, desire, everything we put out from our mind “EVERYTHING” is input into the collective and directly manifests as our perception and experience without fail. Most of what we put out, we put out unconsciously, without monitoring it or observing it, because most of the time we’re on automatic pilot or cruise controlling our way through life and then wondering why things are turning out the way they are. This is a life lived asleep and without accountability or responsibility. This is an imprisoned life with no options; the life of a perpetual victim where life “appears” to be happening to you so all you can do is react.
6. The only way to stop this vicious cycle is to wake up and become conscious of everything that’s coming in and everything that’s going out. Like a firewall you have to stop what you don’t want before it gets into your system and becomes part of you; at the same time, you have to monitor what you’re putting out. This is so that you can take responsibility for creating your experience. To do that, you have to begin to observe what’s going on, both inside and outside of you. To observe, you have to slow down enough to watch and listen. Watch your mind; listen to your body and intuition.
7. Human beings are extraordinary beings capable of extraordinary things, miraculous things. Human beings are strong, powerful and limitless. Human beings are completely free. Human beings can create anything we want to create and do anything we want to do. We can perform the most impossible of miracles, the most mind-blowing feats. We can transcend space and time, experience multi-dimensions, access any information that exists anywhere in the universe, heal any illness, and speak to those who aren’t in the physical and on and on. But in the fog of the mass amnesia, we have convinced ourselves that this isn’t true. We have bought into the collective lie about this and forgotten who we really are. Most of us have had glimpses of the extraordinary, but when it’s over we file it away because we don’t know how to access it at will; so we wait, hopeful that it will happen again or we associate it with a person, place or thing and try to repeat it. We don’t really believe this is something we have any say or control over. We claim that miracles are from God. That they happen to us from somewhere outside of us. This, too, is reinforced by the world we live in. We all agree on it so it must be true? Right? Wrong.
8. The Truth is that what we call paranormal or peak experiences are actually our normal state and can be accessed at will. This is the nature of who we are, and accessing this is as natural as breathing. The problem is that we’ve forgotten how. Or if you want to put it another way, we were born with an incredible instrument called a human form capable of amazing things, but we don’t know how to play it. Our parents didn’t know how to play it, so they couldn’t show us. Our teachers didn’t know how to play it, so they couldn’t show us. Neither could our friends, loved ones, neighbors, co-workers, government officials, religious leaders, etc. Why? Because the instructions cannot be found in the world around us or outside of us. We’ve always had them and had access to them but didn’t know where to look. These instructions are the very thing that will free us from the amnesia and open up the infinite capabilities we all have.
9. There is only one place to find them and that is within. The Truth about who we are and what we’re capable of is within. To access this, you have to shut the world out and listen to the voice that comes from inside of you.
10. The Truth within can only be known by direct experience, not with the intellect or mind, books, techniques, a teacher or guru or words. Only with the visceral (bodily sensations) and the intuitive (information that comes in through by-passing the mind). With a commitment to take the time and space to learn how to do this, the reward is that you will not only be able to consciously create your own extraordinary experiences at will, over time, those experiences will become your normal.
11. The world would be different if each of us discovered that we were only using 10% of our capabilities as humans! And that if we had access to and used the other 90%, we could open our experience up to infinite possibilities. It would be exciting and exhilarating and wonderful! And for most of us, quite frightening. Why? Because it is unknown. We are used to the way things are, even if they are limited and cause us to suffer. But there’s an even greater problem. This freedom and discovery of our divine capabilities within our human instrument is also threatening to those who are attached to and benefiting from things remaining just as they are. This discovery is very threatening (if you don’t believe me think of what happened to Christ), not only to the apparent stability and security of the world we live in, but also to the part of us, the ego, that is used to using only a small part of the instrument of being human and is very attached to the old, and especially the agreed-upon way of doing things. It will become very afraid if you stir things up and try to change it. The world is just a group of egos that feel the same way and want things to remain the way they are because the unknown is frightening, change is scary, and we believe that we may not survive if we can discover how to play our instrument. This discovery would change everything. People would end up making different choices, doing things differently, because they would be freed up, and what would happen to those in positions of power and wealth? And when people feel threatened they will go to any length to stop something from happening.
12. People need to be hooked up by direct experience to the Source within, never linking it to any one person, or technique or environment, so that they can take responsibility for the discovery, and honor it fully as theirs and theirs alone, and something that is accessible no matter what.