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[Music] you this episode is going to be a little different than most I don't want to fill your head here with too much theory rather I want to take you through an imagination exercise just purely a simple imagination exercise to help you to connect with the magnitude of this thing that we are inside of called reality people really take reality for granted people fail to appreciate the magnitude and awesomeness of what reality is even scientifically minded people who supposedly study this stuff and should know better still underestimate what reality really is and the reason that happens to almost all of us is because through the everyday grind of daily life we become numb to this extraordinary miracle of reality we're so focused on just living our lives and accomplishing practical goals to advance our own agendas in life to survive and to reproduce that we lose touch with the most important thing which is reality itself so imagine along with me let's do this visualization exercise you can close your eyes if you want to or not just watch and listen so imagine if you will that you go for a nice nature hike in the forest in the mountains and there you are it's a beautiful pine forest and you're walking through it then you walk up on top of a small hill and now you're on top of this hill and you're looking around you and you see all these giant pine trees and they are stretching out into the distance as far as your eyes can see all the way to the horizon you can see 50 miles all around you in a circle now 50 miles is equivalent to 80 thousand square miles and so what you do is you just pick up one little pine needle off the ground and you look at it real closely as you hold it in your hand and you wonder this pine needle is still green it's still fresh it just fell off the tree next to you and you look up at this tree to you and you wonder how many these pine needles must there be on this tree maybe a hundred thousand as a rough estimate that's pretty amazing in and of itself a hundred thousand these living pine needles these pine needles they're filled with chlorophyll and they're filled with complicated cells and DNA and bacteria and little molecules and mitochondria and all this source of stuff exists in there not to mention all the little atoms that make up each one of these organelles and cells and and all of that and it's amazing and then you look out far to the horizon 50 miles all around you and you wonder how many of these pine trees must there be five billion pine trees roughly fit into an area of eight thousand square miles which is what you see all around you and each one of them has a hundred thousand tiny needles let's say that's five thousand billion needles that you're looking at and then you look back down at your hand and you look at the pine needle in your hand a little bit closer and you see little ant crawling over it hitching a ride on the pine needle and then you wonder how many these ants must there be on the entire planet ten thousand trillion ants is one estimate and then you look a little closer at the pine needle you see little grains of sand stuck to the pine needle and you wonder how many of these grains of sand must there be on the entire planet seven million trillion grains of sand on earth and then you wonder well what about all the atoms that make up this one little grain of sand that I'm holding in my hand 50 million trillion atoms in one grain of sand multiplied by seven million trillion grains of sand on the entire earth and then you notice the sunlight shining down upon you from the Sun and you wonder well what about this sunlight what is the sunlight it's photons how many of those must there be shining down upon me right now one thousand trillion photons per second per square centimeter and this 8,000 square miles around you that's 80 million square centimeters that you're looking at of sunshine multiplied by 1,000 trillion photons per second per square centimeter and then you wonder about the cosmos and you wonder about other planets besides Earth in our solar system you wonder about Jupiter 1300 Earth's fit into Jupiter and you wonder about the Sun itself 1,300,000 Earth's fit into the Sun and that's just our solar system then you wonder how many these solar systems are there out there how many stars 100,000 million stars within the Milky Way galaxy and that's one galaxy and how many galaxies are there 100 billion galaxies comprise our universe and of course because you know Newtonian mechanics just very basic physics not going into some sort of fancy voodoo quantum mechanical stuff but just basic Newtonian mechanics you know that every single atom and every single particle in the entire universe is pulling on every single other one that's basic gravitation nothing fancy basic gravitation tells you that they're all infinitely interacting with each other every single pine-needle that you see on every single tree is gravitating and pulling on every other single pine needle determining the entire outcome of what the forest looks like right now among everything else every single star in the entire universe all the hundreds of billions of them are all right now exerting gravity upon that one little grain of sand that you have in your hand determining its precise position and behavior and then of course you realize well this is just our universe why would there only be one universe why wouldn't there be more than one how many could there be well why would there be a limit why couldn't there be infinite universes like ours or similar to ours or vastly different from ours and then you notice that all of this has just been five minutes of you standing here looking out on these trees and thinking about all this contemplating reality and that's just been five minutes out of a time span of four billion years just for our universe and all of this this this marvelous organic machine which is reality runs perfectly without a single glitch without a single frame drop without a single moment of lag without any errors your computer craps out and glitches out if it just stands idle running idly for what a couple of weeks for a month it's gonna crap out it's gonna crash this thing has been running for 14 billion years without a glitch and so you look back down at your hand looking at this pine needle and you realize something even deeper beyond the sheer numbers of what we're talking about here you actually realize that reality itself has infinite resolution this pine needle goes infinitely deep it has no end you can keep zooming into this pine needle forever forever and ever and ever it has no end and in fact what you're holding in your hand right now this pine needle is larger than the entire universe it's infinite it contains infinite universes within it it doesn't stop and then the strange loop hits you because you realize that this boundary between subject and object you observing the pine-needle that there is no such boundary and that actually what you're observing is what your being and that this pine-needle literally is you but of course not just the pine-needle all of it everything you see and everything you contemplate and the entire known universe and anything beyond it all of it is infinite infinite in infinite degrees and it's alive the entire universe is alive and self-aware of just as you are because aliveness and self-awareness is not a property of human beings or yourself it's a property of everything because there's no boundary between you in the universe and anything else and so there you stand smack-dab in the middle of infinity infinity goes on infinitely far in every direction it has no edge therefore you are always no matter where you find yourself smack dab in the middle of infinity why in the middle because no matter where you are the edge is infinitely far away from you in every direction in every dimension so by definition you are always at the center in the very middle because infinity goes on forever in every possible way in every possible direction and as you realize all this you say to yourself my god my god what am i involved with here something much larger than myself is at work here this is no ordinary clockwork universe this is no ordinary machine as maybe science has led me to believe this is no ordinary computer crunching numbers this is something way way way beyond all that this is not something that's simply big simply gargantuan simply mind-blowing this is something that is on a on just on a different dimension or a different scale its scale goes beyond quantity beyond number beyond even an infinity of linear numbers this is an infinity of infinity of infinity of infinity of infinity every pine-needle is its own little infinity every pine-trees its own bigger infinity every planet every star every universe and now it all finally starts to make sense it starts to make sense why science will never grasp this it starts to make sense why symbols will never work here it starts to make sense why Zen masters speak in riddles and wink at you rather than giving you answers it makes sense why there's so much confusion amongst religions and so much debate between religion and science and it makes sense why no one will ever believe you if you tell them this this is a private insight that only you can have only you can contemplate and fully grasp the significance of what reality is because it's you because it's not something you can read in a book it's something you have to fathom for yourself and of course the odd paradox or irony is is that while all of that is you and all of that is true you return back to your boring little mundane everyday life doing whatever you usually do waking up and brushing your teeth and going to work and taking care of the kids and worrying about some problem chasing whatever you're chasing after some practical material thing you know shopping for some new shoes that you think are cool or new car whatever whatever is important to you and that's your boring little life and it seems like your boring little life has nothing to do with this grand vision of what reality is how do you connect the two that's the key question because in this moment when you're fathoming the full scope and divinity of reality it strikes you that this is the most important thing to ground yourself with because this is what reality is this is the truest thing that there is this is the thing that you want to be aligned with rather than the thing that you've always been aligned with which is you're a mundane petty little existence of course you're petty little existence is boring which is why you go you look for four movies and if video games and you're looking for sex and relationships and and money and cars and clothes and all this sort of course of course because deep down you know that what's really possible for you is to be connected to everything what's really possible for you is to be connected to the divinity of all of reality but what you struggle with is making that connection and before you can even begin to make that connection you first have to realize what the goal is of life cuz most people don't even get this far this is alright you're already beyond the point that 99% of human beings get to is they never even get to this point where they fathom that oh yeah the point of my life is to is to connect myself to this to this larger hole that I'm a part of and then you can go about doing that then you can kind of create a vision around that and it's challenging because what'll happen is that everybody around you and the way that society is structured all around used it's structured in such a manner that it's gonna pull you back in to your little boring ordinary mundane life because you're gonna have problems at school you got to have homework assignments or do you got to go to go to a job gonna make a paycheck got to pay the mortgage gotta take care of the kids got to do this got to do that got to make your girlfriend happy or boyfriend happy make your family happy fix all these problems and by the time you're done for you're done fixing all these problems you're dead your life is over you've lived 80 years and the time is just flown by like that and what have you got to show for it all you were is you were just a doing robot you were just like a little factory worker you were born into this miraculous thing called reality but you spent your whole life with the blinders on just being practical being pragmatic because that's what you really cared about you cared about being efficient and so that's what she became you became very efficient at earning money you became a very efficient at getting sex you became very efficient at dealing with your kids such that you could talk to them without even looking at them you became efficient at dealing with your husband or wife such that you don't even need to speak to them to even know what they're thinking anymore so everything has become about efficiency and in your business and even in the way that you play video games or watch a movie it's all hyper efficient so you are chasing efficiency without realizing that really what you want is you want a connection to as much as possible and what more is there possible than reality itself in infinity which you're really looking for is you're looking for a connection a deep profound connection to infinity that is what the quality of your life depends upon not any of the practical stuff that you're chasing you can chase all that practical stuff all you want but deep down you will always feel unsatisfied because subconsciously your mind knows it's not stupid subconsciously and knows that what's possible for it is infinity a connection to infinity but you forget ah this is the leo this is just a visualization exercise this isn't really real this isn't real it's just an idea it's just a fun little exercise I'm gonna turn off this video I'm gonna go back and I'm gonna keep watching other videos and just doing my stuff and clicking on the computer and posting a little stupid comments and then going back to work that's the really important stuff that's life and then you wonder why you're not satisfied why everything that you acquire never really scratches that itch whether it's knowledge that you're acquiring or wealth or success or fame or women or cars or houses or anything else see you're never going to become infinite through this finite process that you're using this materialistic process it's never going to work to become infinite you need to realize that you already are infinite that's something within you that you have to turn inside and realize and that's where practices like meditation come into play self inquiry psychedelics yoga some Zen practice you know whatever there's a lot of different practices that you can use to develop this connection but that's what it's about but most people are so busy that they will say Ollie I don't have time to meditate I'm too busy to meditate too busy doing what the only thing you should really be concerned about is building your connection to infinity that's what really matters and you're not doing that by building your career for example or by getting into a relationship or buying the latest greatest video game so you're sacrificing infinity for little finite pieces of it you're chasing little crumbs when you could have the whole but in order to do that you really need to to become conscious to connect with the significance of what's going on here that connection then grounds you and sets the tone for the rest of your life and what you're doing from that one highest strategic objective is the pursuit of this connection that will inform everything else you should be doing in your life on a regular basis and if you set your life up that way then you'll set yourself up for the ultimate success and if you don't then what you could have you're just gonna have little practical stuff without the deep connection and what you really want is you want the deep connection it doesn't matter how much you have or or what kind of situation put yourself in life what matters to you is how you feel it's an emotional thing it's how deeply connected are you to reality so take this you're sort of guiding principle and see what your life will look like if you start to design your life around this guiding principle start to align yourself with it in little and sometimes big ways as much as you can both in micro ways and in macro ways in your life and then see how you feel and then see maybe whether self-help will start to work for you in ways that it never could before alright that's it short and sweet come check out actualized already I got some resources for you right there my blog the forum life purpose course which will help you with some of this stuff the book list where you can read more about this stuff and convince yourself even more to pursue this path and how to go about I'm actually kind of filling in the details how to pursue this objective in a practical way and stick around for more content because what actualize org ultimately is about it's about how to develop this connection and how to align yourself more and more in your life with the amazing profundity that's there how to live a really deep life not just self-help to help you with some practical little problem because that's not really gonna help you see people start doing self-help like that but then they never really get satisfied on the inside no matter how many self-help problems they fix using traditional self-help techniques that's because they're not going to the root of the issue and it's hard to get people to go to the root of the issue because the root of the issue is buried really deep underneath a lot of stuff so we have to uncover layers of it and it takes time it's it's profound precisely because it's profound your journey has to be profound but then people they don't want to go on a profound journey what they want is they just want a quick answer a quick five 10 minute video here and they're explaining something solving some little problem for them but that's not what you really want from life you want to profile life so if you want to profound life then you better expect that the teachings that you're listening to also must be profound and therefore you must be willing to put in the time and effort to go on this profound journey you don't want a quick shout a little journey you want a really profound a deep one one that connects you with the entire cosmos with all of reality and this is where self-help intersects with religion but not really religion spirituality non-duality because we don't want to we don't want to subscribe to all the dogmas and problems that come with religion but there is something at the core of religion which most self-help doesn't properly convey to people and which most scientific and rationally minded and materialistically minded people just don't get they're completely missing out on that facet of reality well when you miss out on that facet of reality that's the most important facet of reality it doesn't matter what else you do or what else you have or however much you understand scientifically or or otherwise if you don't have that connection what do you got you don't really have a profound life so what actualize that organ is trying to do and why some of my videos can be so long and some of these topics that I talk about can sometimes seem kind of woolly or lofty or metaphysical yeah because you you need your life to become metaphysical more the problem is that you lack you lack that and that a physical component in your life because it's that metaphysical component which connects you with the the the source and and being of all the cosmos right that's the kind of teaching that you should be looking for that's in fact how you evaluate the quality of the teachings at this point I can pick up a book any book off off of a bookshelf in a bookstore and just by skimming over and I can immediately see the depth of the teaching that's there it's really clear because if the teachings don't have a metaphysical component to them or an epistemological component to them then they're gonna be weak weaksauce teachings they're not gonna get you very far they're just gonna be little little tricks to to just change rearrange the you know the furniture on the Titanic that's what most self-help boils down to so stick around for more of the deep stuff you