Do you ever think about reality? What it is or how it works? I sure do!
Not that I’m some kind of philosopher. I have more pragmatic interests, like how do we actually create the reality we want?
Many people believe that we’re living on a ball of rock, hurtling through the vast emptiness of space, having evolved somehow from pond scum. Our lives are random, infinitesimal blips devoid of meaning. Our self-awareness merely an accident of nature. Even if there is a God, humans are of no special significance. Some ‘extinctionists’ even claim that humanity is a blight, and the world would be better off without us!
On the other hand, some maintain we’re living in a kind of simulation, something like a cosmic computer game, and the programmer may or may not be God. This worldview suggests that our lives do indeed have meaning, that we may be on some sort of quest or grand adventure. Perhaps there were different types of lifetimes on offer and we chose the one we’re in now. And no doubt there were many options to choose from to customize the experience, before entering as a player.
Of course there are many other worldviews on offer, but if I had to choose between just these two, I’d much prefer the simulation model of reality. Wouldn’t you?
I'm a big fan of meaning and purpose, and definitely like the idea being able to ‘win’ the game, so to speak. I’m not exactly sure what winning might be, honestly, but for now I’ve settled on the notion of authenticity.
Another reason I’d go with the game scenario are all the strange and memorable experiences that left me questioning the reality of random chance. Here’s a rather happy one that I’d love to share.
It was the summer I turned 22, between college and graduate school. I was traveling and happened to meet a lovely young woman on the train down from Seattle. Bonnie was 25 and also traveling, but soon to fly home to upstate New York for a new job. Our three-week love affair had an actual expiration date, which made it intense and wonderful.
One day we were hiking through a massive redwood forest along the northern coast of California. We hadn't seen another living soul all that long day and our sense of being in the middle of nowhere was very strong. Then, just as we were heading out of the woods, with dusk coming on, away in the distance, coming up the trail we saw a backpacker, his big red pack shining in the gloaming.
Did I mention we were in the middle of freaking nowhere? And that this was the first person we’ve seen all day? So why wouldn’t he be an old friend of Bonnie she'd known in college back in Oneonta, NY? This was 1981, so there were only about 230 million people in the US. Perhaps four and a half billion in the whole world. So pretty good odds an old friend would just happen to show up, right?
Just an odd coincidence.
The great psychologist Jung actually coined the term Synchronicity to describe the ‘acausal connecting principle’ underlying these strange sorts of meaningful coincidences. In fact, in 1952 he wrote a whole book about it that I'd go on to read in grad school. This leads me to believe these experiences must be somewhat common. I've probably had more than my share, how about you?
For me, stories of synchronicity register as cool, trippy, mysterious, fun and fascinating. They suggest that there’s something going on beneath the surface of life, behind the scenes, so to speak. That life is less random than we’ve been led to believe and perhaps purpose and meaning might underly many (or most) of our experiences.
I realize that some folks are rather uncomfortable with this sort of take on reality. If you’ve read this far though, I’m guessing you’re of a more adventurous, open minded sort and I salute you.
So let’s get back to the idea of winning the reality game. Perhaps life isn’t just randomly happening to us, but rather responding to us? If so, it's probably responding to our thoughts, feelings and beliefs. And theoretically at least, these are things we can control.
Many of us have dabbled with affirmations and positive thinking with little to no results to show. That’s because our subconscious is where the action is, right? It's running at least 95% of our life for us, or so we're told, and mainly through our beliefs. Our beliefs are like lines of code in our operating system, and most of our limiting beliefs were formed at a very young age. They’re running at a deep deep level and more or less immune to our conscious attempts to replace them.
Adding to the challenge of creating a better life, most of us have a collection of old, stuck emotions. Feelings of unworthiness, anxiety, guilt, sadness, shame or rage can really gum up the works. In fact, I believe they act as a kind of powerful magnetic charge, keeping us stuck to the circumstances, people and experience of life we’d most like to leave behind.
So how do we win? My favorite approach these days is based on the idea of alternate realities or timelines. If these exist, could it be that we're shifting between similar versions of reality on a regular basis, maybe on a daily or even hourly basis, without even realizing it? I love the idea that the life you're wishing for is already underway. That there’s an alternative version of you actually living that life right now!
Instead of ‘manifesting’ the change you want, it’s all about raising your ‘vibration’ to match that better reality that’s already underway. Seems like a lot less work! And I think we’re already doing this. We’re just doing it unintentionally as we react emotionally to the ups and downs of life. This means we're just as likely to drift into a more negative reality that we hate than the positive one we wish for.
Can we take this whole alternate reality thing off autopilot and deliberately shift into better timelines? Yes, absolutely. The tool for this I've found is EFT tapping. I’ve actually seen it happen without even trying, simply by tapping away negative emotions and replacing negative limiting beliefs. It’s happened in my own life and for hundreds of clients.
To be clear, I’m not just talking about having a better attitude toward the life you already have. I mean, that’s a nice achievement in and of itself. But no, I mean that actual circumstances change. Suddenly there’s an extra $4000 in your checking account. Your chronic health problem is just gone and it’s almost hard to remember how bad it was. The person who was just bugging the hell out of you has somehow changed in such a wonderful way it's hard to believe.
The EFT tapping part of all this is fairly straightforward. Just tap down the intensity of your feelings about whatever you don’t like. Tap away the validity of your negative limiting beliefs. That's entry level reality hacking. Lately I've been exploring how our interwoven, overlapping relationships might influence our ability to ‘win’ by shifting timelines.
For example, we may ‘create our own reality’ but we’re also immersed in various degrees of social reality. There’s a level of reality co-creation influenced by our immediate family, our community, and the culture and society we belong to. Can we become immune to the turbulence or stagnation in the energy of those around us? Or perhaps change at such a powerful level that our family, friends and even society ripple into much better patterns all together?
There’s also the “reality” presented to us through the illuminated screens in our hands or on our walls. Are we not programmed by the programs we choose to watch, and influenced by the influencers presented to us by increasingly sophisticated algorithms? What do you think? Aside from going cold turkey and giving up our screens is there an elegant way to neutralize any negative effects so we can navigate our way into the alternate reality we’d most love?
This is the kind of stuff I’ve been working on. Definitely a work in progress. If you’d like to join me in this exploration, specifically around creating a better financial reality, I have a class coming up on Friday, October 24th, 2025 called Money Magic with EFT. If you can't make it live, or you're reading this down the road, the class will be recorded for streaming.
I think I’ve got some really good stuff to share. A game plan for upleveling your money reality.
Here’s a link if you’d like to check out it out.
Copyright 2025 Rob Nelson
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