This is a challenging article to write. How does one provide a clear and cogent account of what our reality actually is, when that reality is so contrary to most people’s understanding and experience, and when that reality is so much more complex than most people are willing to attempt to understand? Below is my best attempt at an explanation of the reality in which we live, as I understand it. I pose a series of questions about our reality, and then I answer them as best as my current understanding permits. As with all things, take what resonates, and set aside the rest.

What is the role of consciousness in our reality?

For many people, when they think of the universe, they often think of an arbitrary mechanistic reality, with arbitrary laws, that happens to have the right conditions to give rise to life and ultimately humanity.  That reality is a cold and hard place, where survival of the fittest is the fundamental rule of all creation. Consciousness, if it is considered at all, is thought of either as something that arises emergently from the rules of our universe, or as a sort of overlay on reality – maybe spiritual in origin, maybe not – that is ultimately not tied directly to our reality but sits apart from it.  

From my perspective, the arbitrary mechanistic view of the universe has it all backwards.  In actuality, consciousness is the foundation of everything.  Everything is a single consciousness, and nothing actually exists beyond that single infinite consciousness.  That consciousness could be referred to by many names: God, Allah, Source, Brahman, the universe, the Creator.  In my opinion, none of them are complete in their concepts and connotations, as none of them fully encompass both the being and the non-being, the formed and the formless. For that reason, I prefer to use the term All That Is.

In order to better know itself, that single consciousness refracted itself into countless parts, each a fractal hologram of the whole, so that through the exercise of free will, it can fully explore the infinity of its being.  Every one of those parts, no matter how small or large, is a conscious being, experiencing a unique reality, and thereby having a unique experience which adds to All That Is.

What do you mean by fractal hologram? I’ve heard those words before, but I don’t understand what they mean here.

A fractal is a geometric figure in which every part of the fractal, regardless of how zoomed in or zoomed out, is similar to the entire figure. It is the same at all levels. A hologram, as regularly understood, is a three dimensional image created from a two dimensional substrate. What is unique about a hologram is that each part of it includes information about the whole and can ultimately be used to reconstruct the whole.

When I say that we are each a fractal hologram of the whole, I mean that we are each All That Is, at all levels, and we are each creating all of reality through our own unique perspective.

If everything is conscious and unique and having a unique experience, then how can we all be the same consciousness?

One way to think about this is to imagine yourself standing in an amusement park hall of mirrors.  You look around and see countless distorted reflections of yourself. In an important way, you know who you are because your senses are telling you that you are not those reflections. Yet how those reflections move and change as you do tells you important information about yourself. That is what your reality actually is: a reflection of your consciousness. Your reality always reflects your internal psyche. 

Are you saying that everyone around me is only a reflection of me? Does that mean that I am the only thing that actually exists?

Everyone around you is a reflection of you in your reality. Every other person’s reality is a reflection of that person. Everyone exists, and everyone is experiencing their own reality that is a reflection of their own internal psyche. Everyone is literally existing in their mind. There are no realities that are truly shared; merely overlapping. We are each, quite literally, our own universe. 

Every interaction we have with anything, be it an object or a person, is not had directly with that object or person; it is had with the version of that person we perceive.  The only things that we ever interact with directly are the creations of our own consciousness.  If A talks to B, A is speaking to the version of B in A’s mind, and B is hearing the version of A in B’s mind.  A is producing the content that in its distorted fashion B is hearing, and yet at no point does A speak directly to B.  

Similarly, assume A and B are sitting in a room together having a conversation.  They share the same environment: hearing the same sounds, experiencing the same air temperature, seeing the same room.  Yet A and B are having entirely different experiences.  B’s experience of the room is going to be fundamentally different from A’s.  The objects that B or A focuses on in the room, the sensations each notices in his or her body, the reactions each has to the conversation, and countless other variables, will all differ between A and B.   And even if A and B focus on the same object, or experience the same sensations, that event would likely nevertheless trigger an entirely different relational chain within each of their psyches.  Each experiences reality through a completely unique symbology.  Each of A and B exist in their own personal reality.

Saying that because each of us only experiences the reality of our own consciousness, we therefore exist in an entirely personal reality feels like a logical leap. Isn’t there still an objective reality that we are all simply perceiving in our own unique way?

There is no objective reality. Each of us truly lives in a reality formed by our beliefs. This is true at the level of interpretation, and also at the level of creation. This concept can be challenging to grasp, especially when considering the physical world we navigate daily. We're taught to believe in an objective reality governed by fixed laws of physics, where events occur outside of our personal influence — a world that happens to us. However, this perspective is a gross distortion of a much more intricate and complicated tapestry of existence.

The physical universe, as we perceive it, is a manifestation of our collective consciousness. While it seems solid and consistent, it's more akin to a shared dream or a co-created illusion. Our beliefs, emotions, and intentions shape the fabric of this dream, weaving together the individual experiences into a tapestry that appears as a unified reality. The universe is a dynamic, ever-evolving construct, reflecting the consciousness that observes and interacts with it, and it is not nearly as unified or stable as it appears.

Let’s return to the metaphor of the hall of mirrors, where you are looking out at countless distorted reflections of yourself. In actuality, you are the source of all of those reflections and you are also a reflection yourself. Like you, every one of those reflections is also looking out, and is also the source of all of the reflections, and is coming to know itself better by its interactions with the other reflections. Everyone is truly the same thing and the source of everything, moving together in a perfectly coordinated whole.

How can everything move in a perfectly coordinated whole? How can we all be creating a reality based on our beliefs, yet all of those realities somehow work together to create the illusion of a shared reality? How can that be possible?

When we think of intelligence, we think in human scales. Try to mentally step out into a larger frame and contemplate what a consciousness containing infinite intelligence would actually imply. Such an intelligence is spacious enough that everyone could move with complete free will and nevertheless act in all moments in absolutely perfect coordination with all other beings. That is the reality in which we exist. Everything is connected to everything else. Every movement we make at some level impacts the movement of every other being. We each live lives that for many feel separate and independent. Yet we each create a personal reality that is formed in part from our shared consensus reality; and at the same time, our unique personal reality helps to fuel and shape consensus reality. It is all a beautiful interconnected dance.

As with many things that you will uncover as you continue your journey of spiritual growth, this perfect coordination between beings is always happening, even if it is not apparent and you are largely unconscious to it. By coming into conscious recognition of its occurrence, that perfect coordination becomes more perfect. Your awareness expands, and you become able to actively experience that perfection, noticing the synchronicities that arise in your life, and seeing how each experience and interaction creates the seeds for continued growth.

How does perfect coordination actually happen?

When All That Is refracted itself into countless parts, that created countless beings, and not just the people and animals to whom we usually ascribe consciousness.  We are surrounded by beings.  Everything, no matter how minute, is conscious.  Many of those beings are particles and simple life, beings whose souls have not yet evolved to have self-referential consciousness like we do. They are conscious, but not aware of their own consciousness.  However, there are also many beings who have evolved far beyond us, and rarely if ever take physical form in our experience.  These entities focus their efforts primarily on helping physical beings (and particularly humanity and other self-referential consciousnesses on Earth) to coordinate our shared consensus reality, helping each of us to manifest the reality that reflects our internal beliefs. 

In many ways, our reality is constructed by these higher-density beings.  Every god that humanity has ever connected with is actually a higher-density being that has, in one way or another, involved itself directly in human affairs.  Most of these beings do the active work of coordinating our reality, a process that is largely unconscious for most of us.

Each of us in every moment is telepathically expressing an energetic frequency that is the sum total of our conscious and unconscious beliefs. Higher-density beings take that information and structure reality to be a reflection of those beliefs, coordinating each of our movements together with the movements of all of the other beings, and giving each of us the reality we believe we can have.

The way you describe coordination, it sounds like we are being moved around like puppets. If each of us has free will, how is it all coming together perfectly, and yet also respecting our free will?

From a dualistic framework, it is possible to see our movements as puppeted by higher-density beings. Set aside the duality, and you begin to understand that we are being puppeted by ourselves. We are the puppet and the puppeteer, and also the theater and the audience. We are All That Is. Higher-density beings work with our telepathically-expressed beliefs in order to structure our reality in alignment with those beliefs. Thoughts arise in our minds, and meaning-gravity is manipulated so that our attention is drawn to specific aspects of our environment, in order that we move in specific ways that reflect our internal psyche and are perfectly coordinated with the larger whole. We have free will, in that we make the choice about how to act. If in any moment we choose away from a particular path, reality re-coordinates to accommodate that choice.

One way to better understand this is to step outside of time. Time is an illusion. All that has existed, all that ever will exist, exists in the now. The past is a memory trace that exists in the now. The future hasn’t happened yet; and when it does, it will be the now. Most of us are ruled by our mind, spending our time regretting or pining for the past, fearing or seeking our salvation in the future. This is the ultimate source of suffering: clinging, craving and aversion only exist when one is focused away from the now.

When we aren’t focused in the present moment, we are moving largely unconsciously, reacting to the thoughts generated in our mind without being aware of those reactions. It is through these unconscious movements that we are “puppeted”. As we grow spiritually, our psychological focus increasingly remains in the now, and we thereby become increasingly conscious. We take on a larger role in actively coordinating our own reality, and are therefore puppeted less through our unconscious movements. Even though we are conscious and no longer being puppeted, we still move in perfect coordination with all beings; we simply do so with more skill and wholesomeness. When we move consciously in the now, we move without fear and separation, reflecting only joy and unity. We naturally move with the 5 Virtues. Since harmonious movement with the 5 Virtues is the movement of all truly conscious beings, conscious movement is inherently movement in perfect coordination with All That Is.

How can I take what I have learned about reality to improve my experience?

Coming into conscious awareness of aspects of reality that were previously unconscious will, by its nature, improve your experience. Conscious awareness of an aspect of reality causes that aspect to work more effectively in your experience. Becoming conscious of the higher-density beings that coordinate our reality helps them to better understand you and meet your conscious desires. You can improve that experience by actively cultivating a sovereign relationship with deity as one of wholesome peership and not with an orientation towards them as a supplicant before the master.

Understanding that reality is only ever a reflection of your internal psyche will help you learn the lessons that reality is offering to you in every moment. Whenever anything is not going the way you wish, you can ask yourself the question: “What inside of me is causing this to happen?” Learning to see yourself as All That Is gives you the internal spaciousness to effectuate change. And learning to see others as an extension of yourself engenders compassion and understanding, rather than anger and frustration. When you learn to perceive reality in all its majesty and splendor, reality perceives you in the same way.