I’ve Always Known This Isn’t Real

I’ve always known this isn’t real. This experience I’m having is made up. Maybe I got this idea from movies like the Tron VHS tape I almost wore out as a kid. Maybe my non-denominational Christian religious upbringing created some irreversible mental pathways with verses like 2 Corinthians 4:18:

"So we do not focus on what is seen, but on what is unseen; for what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal."

My passion has always been to look behind the veil, to know and see the truth. To wake up and wake others up as well. In high school, I didn’t really go along with what everyone else thought was important. It really came together in college with the release of the Matrix movie which I saw in a dirty, dingy Philly theater near campus. I still interpreted “the truth” from a Christian lens and even started a Bible study my senior year called “Unplugged” with the theme of unplugging people from the illusion, Maya, the Matrix, the false sense of reality that permeates our experience.

My favorite movies are always the ones which cause people to question time and space such as Inception, 13 floor, Dark City, Truman Show, Total Recall, Source Code, Existenz, Arrival, etc. My favorite class in college was the Philosophy of Space and Time which explored every major philosopher’s view throughout history on what time and space actually is, starting with Ptolemy who thought the world rested on the back of a turtle. His famous reply of “its turtles all the way down” when asked what the turtle rests on still rings through my mind to this day.

Coming up on nearly a decade ago, I began to severely question my religious beliefs. As I studied the workings of the mind (Thinking Fast and Slow, Predictably Irrational, etc) and memorized logical fallacies to more readily recognize my own biases, I turned with my business partner at the time to hard materialistic determinism. What if there was no god and no Creator being who designed and possibly still manages this simulation we call life? I essentially abandoned my quest to see beyond physical matter reality by accepting a premise that truth could only be found within the deterministic machinery of physicality. Within a handful of years as my inescapable nature drove me to continue seeking truth, I adopted a framework which let go of the many varied definitions of truth to instead embrace the process of being less wrong about my true nature and the nature of reality. With this in mind, any path that was less incorrect, however strange it may seem to others, was the path for me. I began to explore inward as consciousness became the only thing that truly is, when all else falls away. I explored some psychedelics a handful of times and spent a year or so doing consistent daily meditation, for a while it was an hour a day. I read and loved Thomas Campbell’s My Big Toe along with authors like Jed McKenna and Donald Hoffman watching many interviews with thinkers like Bernardo Kastrup. Could physical matter reality be an emergent property of consciousness? Could consciousness be fundamental?

The theme of my life so far seems to be the journey to understand and unveil the simulation, the fractal holographic projection, the absolute unbounded oneness learning about itself through individuated units of itself, dissociated and pretending to forget their true nature and be separate. That theme follows me everywhere… while also being here and now, enjoying the human experience. I enjoy my wife, my kids, myself m, and my community. I’ve been richly rewarded by this system, and I’m grateful for it. Escaping it may not be possible. Knowing what’s really going on may not be possible either.

And I’m learning to be okay with that.

While also continuing my journey of wonder...

What is this illusory experience all about? How can we have even more fun with it?

Maybe every fraction of a second we all spin off into different realities with each possible outcome that can unfold. Maybe the version of me in your world follows your timeline. Maybe the version of you in mine follows my story.

Maybe it’s stories all the way down.

I hope you’re enjoining your story.