Living As Soul: Understanding the True Nature of Reality and Creating

2. The Grand Game

Channeled by John McCurdy on February 20, 2022

This transcript has been edited from the original recording to ensure that the intended meaning is conveyed as clearly as possible.

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I am that I am.

I am a sovereign being!

And I dare you, dear friend, to claim that for yourself also: I am a sovereign being.

Hmm…

I am Master John.

What does that mean? That’s actually John’s question, trying to figure all these things out in his mind, like how to identify me in these messages? For you see, I am John. Oh, but I am so much more than the human that you know as John. This little human—and indeed, well, for a human he is somewhat average to large—is such a small part of who I am.

I am John’s soul, John’s divinity.

I am that I am!

Hmm…

John’s brain still gets a little confused over that term, I am that I am.

The mind stops and says, “That doesn’t quite make sense. Do you mean, ‘I am all that I am’?”

Well, no, not exactly. You see, when you put in that ‘all’ it actually brings in a limitation.

I am that I am. It includes all, and it includes nothing. It just IS.

Hmm…

So, Master John.

Oh, I am not a master over anyone. I am not John’s master, whom he serves. Not at all!

I am a master, as in master creator.

John is a master carpenter. He is a master troubleshooter. He is a master at so many things in life, and he is—I am—a master creator.

Hmm…

Yes, the word ‘master’ has its limitations. But every word has its limitations, and there is no word that you can use to quantify who you are that doesn’t somehow convey a limitation. So, we pick the one that serves us best in this moment. And in other moments we will choose other words.

You could also say that I am Merlin John. Or you could simply say that I am The Merlin. Or you could call me John’s soul.

Oh, there are so many human names that I have gone by!

No, let’s say that different: Oh, there are so many human names that I am currently going by, across your timescape. You think of them as past lives, but they are not ‘past’ at all, except in your Illusion of time. They are all happening right now, from my perspective, for time does not exist for me. It is a human illusion.

Oh, it is a beautiful illusion that allows you—that allows me—to have all of these different experiences, all separated a little bit in time and/or in space, so that each one can be unique.

But past and future are total illusions, dynamics created to facilitate this human experience, which is itself a total illusion. Oh, the experience is real, but this world that you think is so real is an absolute illusion.

Hmm…

You stand on the ground, and you think it is holding you up. It is not. That is an illusion.

In fact, you could say that you are actually holding the ground up, because you are the center. You are the center of all things, and so indeed, you are in fact holding the ground up against your feet!

Ah, let that soak in a little bit.

It is an illusion. A beautiful, amazing illusion. But an illusion, nonetheless.

Oh, you walk into a theater and you watch a movie. It’s a beautiful experience of an imaginary world, sometimes based on somebody’s memory of something ‘real’ that happened, or sometimes simply on things that somebody imagined. Oh, but it gets so real! You get into the movie like you are there within it, and yet it is entirely made up. It is entirely an illusion.

You start to relate with those actors, with the characters in the movie, and for a short time you forget that those are actually people acting, people who have nothing to do with that character in the movie, except that they are acting it out.

Well, that is how life is.

It won’t be very long, and this technology you call ‘virtual reality’ will be very widespread. They are already working on suits you can put on that simulate physical experience, and you will be able to go into these imaginary realities and experience them as though they were real. You will be able to visit with a friend on the other side of the world and have the experience of touching them.

Hmm…

Oh, and that is just the beginning. We’ll see if the virtual reality suit technology even comes into being, because what is coming close on its heels, and might even beat it to market, is an implant in your body that connects to your brain and that can directly simulate whatever experience you want to simulate. Two people on opposite sides of the world will be able to connect to each other across your internet through these implants, and literally touch each other and have it feel just as real as if you were standing in the same room. You can touch each other, you can see each other, you can hear each other, and yet you are on opposite sides of the world!

This technology is already in the works, dear friend. It’s coming. It is almost here. Parts of it are already here.

Oh yes, it goes way beyond any physical suit that you could possibly put on, for with this technology there is no limitation. You can touch, you can experience, you can make love, and have it feel just as real as if you were in the same physical room.

Hmm…

Well, whether you choose to use that technology once it comes to market, or not, is up to you. But, it is a brilliant metaphor for what you are doing right now!

You think that you are here, walking around on this little planet. You think that the whole wide universe with all its billions and billions of galaxies, many of them far larger than the milky way, are all outside of you. You think you are just this little insignificant being on this little planet in a faraway corner of the universe.

But the truth is, dear friend, you are the center.

You are the absolute center of your universe. The absolute center!

For you see, it is all—ah, how to say it—it is all inside of you. And even that is a limited way of saying it.

It is all a projection of you, from you, and it is all your imagination.

Hmm…

Even the word ‘projection’—oh, it kind of works. The entire universe is projected on the screen of your own imagination. It is not out there. It is in here.

This earth that you are standing on feels so solid, so real, so outside of you. And if you look again, you see that it is actually just stuck to your feet!

You are here. You are the center, and this whole planet called Earth is literally stuck to your feet. Because that is how you imagined it. You are not stuck to it.

You think of gravity. But gravity does not hold you to the earth. Gravity holds the earth to you!

Hmm… Let that in.

Oh, in order to make it a viable illusion, I believable illusion, you created all these other stars and planets and galaxies so you would have something to look at ‘out there,’ to give this illusion depth and space. But it is all an illusion. It is all your imagination.

And we mean it, dear friend, when we say, it is YOUR imagination. It is not my imagination, for I have my own.

You say, “Well, but we see the same things. We see similar things. How can that be?”

Well, let’s go back to that implant that is coming soon to a brain near you. Using these implants you can connect to another person on the other side of the world through your internet. This other person has no power over you through that connection, as it is simply a communication, and yet you can perceive them.

Oh, the technology will come where you can perceive them, and you can also perceive what they perceive. Oh, that will be interesting! And with the help of your computer systems and their artificial intelligence, and this connection and these implants, oh, you will be able to have some incredible experiences!

But the real beauty of what is coming in your technology, is that it is such a brilliant metaphor for what you are actually doing right now!

It is a limited metaphor, because it requires physical reality and physical contraptions, and who you are is so far beyond that, but the principle is similar. You look at all those other people ‘out there,’ and what you are actually seeing is the illusion within you of that person.

You already have games that you play with other people on your computer, across the internet. These games are basically a template for an experience, in the form of a software program that runs inside of your computer. Or your game console, or whatever. It’s a computer.

It connects to the internet, and through the internet it connects to the same template, the same game, being played on computers all over the world. And you connect with other players, and they all come into this shared experience. And it is all happening within your own computer.

That other person creates an avatar, and the computers talk to each other over the internet. “Oh, this person created an avatar that looks like this,” they say, and they send the information to your computer, and your computer creates an avatar within your game that looks like that, and that does what they do. The same thing happens in reverse as their computer creates an avatar that looks like yours and does what yours does.

It’s just a communication. A communication that enables a shared experience.

Well, this is how what you call ‘life’ works. Within your consciousness, within your energy field—it’s all yours, it doesn’t belong to anybody else, and it is not shared with anybody else except as you communicate to them, so you have no power over them and they have no power over you. But you have an agreement to have this shared experience.

So, you communicate, and you have this template that got created along the way. It wasn’t programmed in one moment, and it did not stay the same ever since. It just began, and it has expanded and evolved over the eons of what you call time. Even that is an illusion, though.

This template has expanded and evolved through your experience, and through the experiences of all these others. It is like a software program that shows life to you in particular and very limited ways, but who you are is not limited at all!

In your terms it was a long, long time ago, long before Earth was created or even thought of, that you began this game, within this computer system that you call a mind.

Yes indeed, the mind existed long before the human existed, and it has been evolving and being refined ever since. And that mind is the computer within which the software runs that creates and projects the game onto the screen of your imagination.

Oh, it is a little different than your computer games, because you can interact directly with it. You can be inside of it, or at least a part of you can. You create an avatar in this game and a part of you goes into that avatar. You are not just watching it on a screen, like in your computer game. You actually go into it. You live that avatar. You feel what it feels. You see what it sees, even though it’s all a projection of your mind.

And then there’s this communication. It’s a little bit like your internet, only far, far more efficient. You wanted to share this experience, so you connected with others and you said, “Hey, take a look at this!”

Well, they did, and they said, “Oh, that’s cool!” And they pulled that template into their game, and they created an avatar in their game that matches yours, and now you have a truly shared experience. It is no more real than the avatar in your computer game, but it feels so much more real than your modern technology will ever achieve!

So much more real, and yet it is still an illusion. It is no more real than the avatar in a computer game, and yet, oh, the sensual experience that you can have within this game cannot be had anywhere else in all of existence! Not yet, at least.

Hm, John stopped us, because there is that word again: ‘not yet.’ It implies time, and there is no time. But there is a progression, a building, you could say, of experience. There is a way in which it is all happening at once, because time is an illusion, and there is another way in which you have come so far and this game has evolved so far!

Ahh…

Let’s not try to figure out this thing about time, for it is not figureoutable.

The mind, you see, created time in order to create this experience, and this entire experience has been created around this illusion of time-space, so it is very difficult for the human mind to comprehend an existence without time and space. There are no words that can convey that, because words come from the brain and are based upon time and space.

And yet, time and space are the structure, the underlying core and structure, of this template that you call reality. And that is all it is. It is a template. It is a projection. It is entirely imaginary.

And, it has a communication link far grander and far more efficient than your Internet, that allows a shared experience with other beings. Because each one, every single person on this planet, every single being in creation, has their own game. They are the center of their own universe and of their own reality. They have simply created it according to this template that you all agreed upon, to some extent or another, and that is why each of you see the same things when you look out.

Well, similar things, at least. Nobody sees it exactly the same, but it is close enough that you can relate to each other’s experiences. You can actually share those experiences.

Hmm…

It makes the brain a little crazy, but it is coming to understand, slowly. But more than that, you are coming back to your knowing.

You see, this creation of yours, this ‘reality’ that you created, turned into such an amazing creation that you just had to go into it. And it became overwhelming, almost. So grand! So amazing! So sensual!

To be able to make love with another being. What an incredible experience!

To be able to hurt another being, or to be hurt by another being. In the true reality of who you are that is not possible. It is absolutely not possible! And yet, here in this game, in this illusion, you can hurt each other! And you can love each other!

You can touch. You can snuggle. You can rage. You can rip each other apart. What an incredible experience!

And when it’s over, you simply turn off the game and you are back to who you are. None of it ever happened, but the experience is real. And the wisdom from that experience is incredible.

Oh, you get so concerned about all the “bad” things happening in the world. You look around and you ask, “When are we ever going to learn to live in peace? When are we ever going to stop hurting each other?”

Well, dear friend, the time has come to realize that it is not going to happen! Because that sensuality, that ability to hurt each other, is such an incredible gift.

Now don’t panic here. Hear us out.

It is sensuality.

This whole game began when you asked yourself the question, “Who am I?” And your imagination came to life and said, let’s find out!

And so it became such a sensual experience. You have been exploring who you are in every possible way, and all of those others have been exploring who they are in every possible way.

Some of you have come to this point where you have reached the top level of the game, where there is nowhere further to go in the game except to bring your consciousness fully into it.

Oh, even that metaphor doesn’t really work.

You have come to the end of the game. You have come to the highest level, and it has been such an incredible and sensual experience that some of you have chosen to remain in the game a little bit longer, with full awareness that you are the player as well as the avatar. With the full awareness of the player.

Hm. It’s not so easy, as you are finding out. But it is incredible. It is beautiful.

And, as that awareness comes in, you start to see how valuable this experience has been. You start to have more compassion for the others who haven’t quite come to the end of their game yet. They will get there, but they still need to play out all of that sensuality.

And by sensuality, we mean the experience of sensing. Whether it hurts or whether it feels good, it is still sensuality. And it is the most amazing and most sought-after experience in all of existence!

Let that in, dear friend.

This is why we have said, so many times, you are not here to change the world. You are not here to fix the world. And you are definitely not here to fix yourself!

Oooh, that’s the big one, for you keep trying to fix yourself.

The more aware you have become and the closer you have come to the end of this game, the more you see all of what you think are your faults and failures.

Hmm…

In so many of your other lifetimes you simply did not have that awareness. Oh, you look back at them—we will allow the metaphor of time here—you look back at them and you see what happened, and you feel all this pain inside of you and you see how you were hurt back then. But it is an illusion, dear friend!

You did not have the awareness to be able to hurt like that, back then. It simply wasn’t possible, for you have to be conscious in order to hurt.

You see, hurt, or pain, is simply an interpretation of your mind. It does not really exist.

The pain in your body does not exist. Period. It does not exist!

Oh, your mind will argue vehemently! John’s mind goes, “But my feet hurt! My legs hurt! Other parts of me hurt!”

No, they don’t. Because pain does not exist. It is an interpretation of your mind.

There is a warning system within your body, a sensing system of nerves. So if somebody pokes you or hits you, the nerves in that part of your flesh feel something happening and send a signal to your brain. And that is all it is: a little electro-chemical signal. It is not pain, and there is nothing of pain in it!

Your brain senses that signal and says, “Oh my god, somebody is hurting me!” And it turns on the pain. Or rather, it turns on the experience of pain. That is all.

Now, a time is coming—for many of you it’s not far away—when your brain is finally going to see through that illusion. Your awareness is already seeing through it. And then you will find yourself beyond pain and beyond hurt of any kind.

Emotional pain is no different. If somebody is mean to you, or says mean things to you, your mind interprets them as meaning something about you. They don’t!

Whatever anybody says to you, it does not mean anything about you. They are only telling you about themselves. But your brain decides that it means something about you, and so once again, it turns on the hurt. And that is all it is. It is an interpretation.

If somebody leaves you, or dies, or goes away, it’s the same thing. Your brain says, “Oh my god I’m going to miss them, so I need to hurt!” And it literally floods your body with chemicals that create a sensation of hurt. It’s not really pain, it’s not really hurt. It is a sensation. It is a drug, created within your own brain.

So, let that in.

Hmm…

Your brain is trying to figure it out, and we would ask the brain to be still. You can’t figure it out. But you will know. You already do know.

Slowly, your mind is coming to understand, and the illusion is breaking down. The illusion is coming to an end.

Oh, but you have chosen to keep the best parts of the illusion within you. You can come back into it, you can re-project it—no, you can’t come back into it, because it is inside you. But you can re-project it anytime you want to. You can—we are looking for words that work. We were going to say that you can step out of it anytime you want to, but once again, it is inside of you.

You can simply turn your attention somewhere else. Perhaps you will find yourself in the other dimensions. Ha! And then you are going to discover that they too are projections of your mind. They too are illusions!

When it comes right down to it, who you are—the closest words we have to describe who you are, are consciousness. Awareness. Simple awareness.

That is what consciousness is: simple awareness.

The brain goes, “Oh, who is it that is aware?” because the brain cannot conceive of awareness not having a ‘thing’ to be aware. But you see, awareness is unto itself. It does not need a ‘thing’ to be aware. It simply is.

Awareness is unto itself. And that, dear friend, is who you are.

You are not your mind, although everything you see and perceive is a projection of your mind. That’s all it is!

You stand on the ground, you look around and it seems so solid. It seems like gravity is holding you to it. We said that gravity is actually holding it to you, but even that is part of the illusion. Because really, you are just a movie projector. In a sense, it is like your eyes are a movie projector.

Once again, the metaphor is limited. But your eyes project that Earth stuck to your feet, or you stuck to it. It is not real. It is a projection coming out of your eyes and projecting itself into the void. Or into what you perceive as the void, which once again, is inside of you.

Inside, outside. Even that is an illusion!

You are simply aware of it, because that is who you are. You are awareness.

Oh, the mind thinks that there has to be something ‘out there’ for you to be aware of.

No, there doesn’t. You can be aware of anything you want to be aware of. Anything! And by the simple act of being aware, it manifests in your awareness. And that is how creation works.

You can be aware, you can become aware, of absolutely anything. And, if you choose to be aware of it within your “physical reality,” then it will be there. It’s that simple! And that is creation.

But you don’t believe it, and so it doesn’t work for you. At least not consciously.

You can’t think, “I want that new house or that new car in my reality,” and have it be there. Oh, there are games you can play, or you could in the past. There are games that other people play, that can focus their mind so intensely that they can actually project something into their reality using their thoughts. But it always backfires, in some way, for anything you push in your reality always pushes back. It is never permanent, because you cannot possibly maintain that level of focus in the human mind. Or, should we say, in the human part of the mind.

So, you think and think and think, “I want that new house!” or, “I want that new car!”

Oh, John has watched so many people go to some inspiring gathering where somebody teaches them how to focus their thoughts, how do these affirmations to visualize a new car. And the next day they happen to walk past a car dealership, and they remember all the passion they felt. So they walk into that car dealership, and an hour later they walk out with the keys to a new car. And with a big loan, with payments they don’t know how to pay. And next thing they know the car is repossessed and their life is a mess, because that’s what happens when you try to push things around from the perspective of the mind.

But nevertheless, the fact remains that when you, as awareness, the core of who you are, as I am that I am, when you project something into your human reality, it is there. It has to be.

Hmm…

John has learned—it has taken a long time in human terms, but he has learned—more of how that works. He has learned that what comes into his life does not have anything to do with what he wants, or even what he thinks about focusing on or tries to focus his thoughts on. It doesn’t have anything to do with that.

What comes into his life has to do with what he expects to come into his life, at a deep, core level. He wanted to say at an unconscious level, but that is not true. At a deep core level he has an expectation, now, that whatever he needs will be there when he needs it, and so it always is. Money is there. Food is there. Home is there. Car is there. Whatever he needs is always there, because that is his deep, core expectation at this point. It’s his assumption of life.

There was a time where his assumption was that he could never get ahead, and if he ever tried to save money, something came up and it got spent. Well, part of that was actually by design, because he knew—I knew—at a deep level that this lifetime is not about getting rich or about building up wealth. Rather, it is about living the wealth, the richness, of now.

It is not about working hard to make sure there’s enough money in the bank to take care of the future. It is about living the experience of now, and about nurturing himself in the Now moment.

You see, most humans spend all their time and all their consciousness in regretting the past and trying to protect themselves from the future. They are not here. They are not in the Now. They are not having the experience of life. And dear human, that is your job!

You were never sent here to take care of the future, to accomplish things, or to get anywhere. Oh, those were interesting games and they created some amazing sensual experiences, but that was never your purpose. Your purpose was simply to have those experiences.

You see, your soul can’t have those experiences. Your awareness cannot have those experiences. It’s too aware! And so it created a little part of itself to go into the sensuality of its own imagination and have those experiences, every kind of experience imaginable. And that is your job: to simply have the experience.

Well, here you are. You’ve had so many experiences, and now we come to the end of the game. To the highest level of the game.

Hmm…

We don’t have words for what comes next, but you know what we mean. In the past, a being would come to this point—it has only ever happened to beings who have come through the human experience on Earth—they would come to this place where there simply is no further to go within this game, and they would step out. Oh, some of them just went off to whatever is next for them, and others would keep on watching, watching you as you come up through your levels of the game.

You call these beings Ascended Masters, and some of you, who have become more sensitive, have been able to communicate with them and they have shared some of their experiences with you.

So here you are. Some of you have now gone beyond these Ascended Masters, and you have created a new level to this game. It has never been done before, but you are in the act, right now, of creating it! You could call it a ‘fully immersive level,’ but those words don’t really work. We don’t have words to describe it, so let’s just say that you are taking this game beyond where it has ever been.

And it is still a game, and you are still the player, and the game is still within you.

Mmm…

We will continue with this topic in some more sessions like this. For now, John needs a break, and you need to take some time to integrate this. To let it in.

The mind might be freaking out a little bit right now, because it is being called on its illusions and it knows this is true. And yet, its job has been to argue with everything and to keep you distracted from the truth. It was a beautiful setup, to keep you distracted from who you are so you could have these experiences.

Well, this next level of the game is about still being in the game, but being here as the player. It is about being here with the full consciousness of the player and knowing exactly what the true reality is, and still being able to be in the sensuality.

The human brain, though, has a really hard time comprehending this. And that is okay. It is time for the brain to take a rest. It is time for you to simply feel, to simply BE your awareness.

Oh, the words. The words we have to work with!

You are simply awareness.

That is who you are, and everything else is your imagination. And, it is a very real experience.

So, come back to that awareness. It has no words, it has no concepts, it has no ‘thing’ in it or behind it or anywhere else. It is simply aware.

You can call it a feeling, though even that—well, just allow yourself to feel your simple awareness.

Take a little time, and then we will continue.

And so it is.

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