Outside the looking-box

When I was a kid, we used to make these shoebox worlds at home or at school. You’d cut a hole in the side, fill the inside with little paper figures, maybe some clouds or trees, and then peek through the hole to see your own tiny universe come alive.

I remember staring through that hole for what felt like hours, completely lost in that little world. But one day it hit me: What if this life we’re living is just another looking-box? What if we’re the ones peering in, thinking it’s all so real, forgetting that we’re actually outside of it, watching?

That image never left me. For years I felt like I was standing just outside the box, looking into the world. Watching things unfold, learning to see them as they truly are. Not from inside the noise, the drama and all these emotions. But from that quiet, still place behind it all.

The video I recently recorded is about that moment of realization, that shift in seeing. About remembering who we are when we step outside the looking box.

Below is the full transcript of the video,
or if you rather watch than read: CLICK HERE

Outside the looking-box. Bits and pieces of my spiritual journey

So, I recently restarted this channel. I started it years ago when I was in the Bentinho Massaro Club. Back in 2017 I attended a retreat in the Netherlands led by this spiritual teacher (he doesn't really call himself a teacher anymore). Back then he did seem like a good guy, young but wise beyond his years. And not wise in the sense that he is very knowledgeable. It's not about knowing-it-all. I mean I know a lot too, but that doesn't mean anything, if you don't actually live it.

Back then, I really started living this and firsthand experiencing. Under his guidance, and not just his. I mean before I even learned about him, I was already listening to Eckhart Tolle, Adyashanti (one of my favorites) and they all point out the same thing. Eckhart is saying, "Yeah, listen, you live now. There's no past, no future. It doesn't really matter. You've never been to the future or you cannot go back to the past," which clearly shows that both past and future are not that relevant. Only 'right now' is relevant.

And with Adyashanti, I love when he said 'nothing really ever happens'. I mean, if you zoom out from the person, if you zoom out from what I call the soul (the blueprint, and the experience of many lifetimes here on earth). If you zoom out from all of that, then you meet the I AM. What they call the 'I am this' is the person or 'I am that' is the soul. But you're none of that actually. You are the one being aware of that all. So you are the I AM.

And then at the retreat Bentinho said, you're not even the I AM. You're the 'I' of the 'am'. The 'I' who is amming. It's difficult to explain, English not being my first language. So he calls this the I-I, like the 'I' who is also aware. Very helpful pointers to me. They call this the inquiry method where you ask yourself a question without the need to answer it or to find an answer. It's just a question of "okay so there's a lot of thinking going on but apparently I'm not the one thinking, I'm the one being aware of the thinking. Like there's a lot of physical stuff going on but I'm not the physical body. I am the one aware of the physical body."

And immediately when I did this, I tapped into this awareness that could clearly see myself as being the third person. I don't know if you're a gamer, but if you're not a gamer, then your first person view is when you actually are in your head watching through your eyes. And then you have the third person view where you actually stand behind your character in the game and you see your character walking around. And I clearly saw this happen by asking the question: "So who is the one aware of the thoughts? Who is the one aware of the character?"

That's when something shifted, and I've always known, but could not pinpoint it so clearly as I did with this practice. And I mean, I was in Baarlo (a small town in the Netherlands) in this huge retreat place. It could easily hold up to a thousand people. And we were there with like 500 filling half of the room. And it felt like coming home to me, like surrounded by other aliens because I have always felt a bit of an alien in this life, like the odd one out.

So I went into this mode that I know from meditation and working with trance. I did a lot of shamanistic work, drumming circles and even hypnosis is a way to alter your state of being. And years later, I did Ayahuasca. But it all were just stepping stones, until at some point I just lost complete grasp of life, of reality. It was what they call the ego death. It's not like the ego is going to go anywhere. It's not going to disappear or vanish into thin air. No, it's still there because it's very sticky. And we need it. I mean, it kept us alive for so long. So no, it's more about embracing the ego, embracing what some call the lower self as being part of this journey.

Our body is like an instrument. Our mind is a very powerful instrument. Then peeling back all those layers, there was this nothingness at some point and even nothingness is still something. So when I imagined myself standing at the edge of nothingness and behind me there's a curtain. I could fall through the curtain of the nothingness into... that which is impossible to express. They call it the absolute or Para Brahman. It's just words, just pointers.

I went into a state of being where there was no time. There was no sense of self, and then I popped out on the other side of the wormhole, like I went through all the veils of what we call reality. All the veils, all the curtains disappeared. And from then on out, I could see things or notice things or sense things that are there way beyond our natural, our normal perceptions.

Beyond the sense perceptions as Eckhart calls them. Like seeing with your physical eyes, smelling with your physical nose, hearing with your physical ears. And I just started remembering: this is what I used to do as a kid. I used to believe that was like a fantasy world or something my mind created and then I realized: no, this is not something the mind created. It is perhaps maybe what the mind tries to understand as being a fantasy world, but it's actually... well you can call it a hidden realm.

And looking from there... One example, a metaphor is like peering into the looking-box. I don't know if you ever done this, but as a kid we used to take a shoe box, cut out the top part so you can look into the box, and then in the front-side of the box you can make a little hole where you can look through and then inside the box you place these paper cut figures. And when you look into the box, you see the world.

And this is how I felt for a long time, like I was outside of the shoe box, looking into the world, looking from the outside in. Things started to make sense to me because things started to show themselves as they truly are. And when you're in it, if you're triggered and you're fully into your emotions and thoughts, it's hard to get this neutral or clear view of things. But zooming out of it all and watching it happen from there, even while it was happening, that became normal to me and still is.

Then I started realizing: "ah wait so this is what they call multi-dimensional perception." And it's not about timelines, and it's not about you have to move from 3D to 5D. No, the third dimension is here always. This is where the ego lives. This is where things are very black and white because you can only come from this polarity place. You can only see it like it's either this OR that. It's right OR wrong.

And as soon as you move into the fourth dimension (which is not like a place, it's more like a state of being) where you can see everything from this neutral point of view, I started seeing: it's not this OR that, it's this AND that. It's all true, it's all tied into it, it's all just a reflection of a mirror. And a mirror in a mirror, and a mirror. They call it the hall of mirrors, and sometimes when you're in the hall of mirrors, you see all these selves of you, all these separate versions of you. It's almost schizophrenic. But then again, if you zoom out of that and you just see that this is just the game we're playing as humans.

So zoom out again of the fourth dimension and step into the fifth dimensional realm or way of seeing things, vibrational level. Then you get to have this oversight. It's a very calm and quiet place. Things started to make sense there for me. And it helped me deal with so many human things, or cultural, or the way we were raised. I mean in my upbringing I was told many, many times: "You're not realistic. You live in a fantasy world." Well actually, you are living in a fantasy world and you believe it's real. It's so real for you that you cannot see it any other way.

It relieved me of all the drama. And of course, I still experience drama as well, but I experience it at the same time as like the 5D-view... calmness, quiet, just nothing really ever happens. It's just happening over there. I'm not attached to it. I don't need anything from it. I'm okay. I'm always okay.

Yeah. So, little bit of history, and story about me, how I experience life right now. Thanks for being you because the only one who can be you is you. There's no other you.

Cheers.

The looking-box