Picture an elderly man, a king of ancient times, sitting in a giant stadium in the best seats of the house, overlooking a competition between two sets of young men. On one side are his sons, and on the other side are his nephews, whom he raised as sons after his dear brother departed the world prematurely. This competition is important because it symbolizes the future path for the kingdom.

The king is blind. He can’t see any of the skills being exhibited as the young men display their martial prowess. All he can do is hear. His wise advisor narrates to him what is happening.

His nephews are putting his own sons to shame. The king wants to be neutral. He’s expected to be neutral. He is, after all, the king of the land. Justice lies in his hands. It would be petty to choose favorites, period, what to speak of with such pure, innocent young men who know him as their very father.

This has been a formative year for all of us occupying the planet together. The trials and tribulations have never been more formidable on a global scale. Suddenly, no one can escape completely. The global village has led to global catastrophe. It’s never been more obvious how much we need help to raise humanity above its present condition of misfortune. We face a health crisis, climate crisis, racial crisis, political crisis, socio-economic crisis, species extinction crisis, and crisis upon crisis, as serious as they get, ad infinitum. But all are inextricably connected by one thing – a consciousness of selfishness. That is all.

I wrote about the health crisis in The Spiritual Dilemma Within a Pandemic, Vipin wrote about the racial crisis in We Are Not Our Bodies, I wrote about the climate and species extinction crisis in The Consequence of Not Caring About Consequence, and I spoke to the political crisis in Our Nationwide Wakeup Call. There’s always much more to address, but for now, and as always, I’d like to focus on what’s behind it all, which is also our only way out – consciousness.

What if we all live in a massive video game? What if there’s no reality to our world as we know it beyond someone else’s concoction where we play temporary roles with wins and losses? 5000 years ago, the oldest surviving texts we have today portray such a shocking picture of reality.

I lived as a monk for five years rigorously studying and teaching Indian Vedic texts as my primary focus. I continue to study and teach them to this day, and what I’ve gleaned is that our reality is very much akin to the movie The Matrix, which we screen and use as a teaching tool in our course The Call to Awaken.

The Vedic literatures of ancient India are an immense body of work numbering many hundreds of books and amounting to millions of poetic, philosophical verses that are all inconceivably united in describing the one complex reality of Maya, or illusion. Through the fascinatingly sophisticated lens of the Vedas, we peer into a Matrix-esque world where humans act out different roles, disconnected from who they really are in a construct where they ignorantly and blissfully live out their non-lives. It’s a prison with golden bars. This is the illusory world of Maya – literally, “that which is not.” And a prison is most sinister when its inmates have no idea they’re locked up…

The ego is made up of designations. There’s a Sanskrit word upadi which means – designations. Identities within the overarching identity. In our search for self-worth, we attach ourselves to all these upadis or designations. We have innumerable mini-identities.

I’m a good father, a great athlete, I’m someone who keeps in shape, I’m a calm person, a reliable friend, I’m handsome, I’m sexy, I’m sharp as a knife, I’m a team player, I’m this, I’m that. We grasp after whatever we can to stay afloat, so we have something to hold onto, something that makes us feel like we’re somebody.

The problem is we are not our upadis. We never are. Just as we’re not our egos, we can never be the role we play or the specific projection of who we think we should be.

I told myself, I don’t want to write another contribution to the cacophony of coronavirus consciousness. We’ve got 7.8 billion perspectives out there, as virtually every single human being is suddenly faced with the same situation. There are plenty of thoughts recorded at this stage, and there are going to be more and more and more, even after the crisis subsides. It’s an overwhelming inundation. Why add to it?

But it’s a bit awkward to speak of anything unrelated to Covid-19 at this bizarre moment in history. Frankly, it’s as much on my mind as anyone else’s. There’s so much that requires processing. My aspiration here is to change our orientation from one steeped in the clear and present danger outside to one that helps us transcend the fear, not only with Covid-19, but the fear that is always near, buried within us. Therefore I sincerely pray that what I say here is somehow most constructive and genuinely addresses our needs at this time, and far beyond.

My dear Upbuild community,

I wrote to you last year of the blur that is this life and the inability to manage through all the madness of it, save for a solitary aspiration urged on by my guru – to create space between myself and my experience of life. As yet another year comes to a close and a new one makes its hurried way, I find unsurprisingly that the very same problem persists! In my defense, I had shared that it’s a life-long project to make progress at separating myself from my experiences!

The years keep getting faster. At Upbuild, we’ve gotten to know so many wonderful souls who we become very attached to. In our workshops, the way people open up and show themselves is so precious, it’s very difficult for us to just go back to our lives and not keep the company of such exceptional persons. We live to see this work continue and we love to witness the ongoing strides of those we become invested in. And as the year comes to a close, I find myself reflecting and missing everyone we’ve met, as is my custom throughout the year, but especially in retrospect.