The movie What the Bleep Do We Know!? challenges us with the question: “How far down the rabbit hole would you like to go?” In the safety of a movie theater seat, it’s tempting to confuse the invitation to experience a glimpse of another dimension with a ticket to a virtual A-ride at Disneyland. Rabbit holes seem such benign things — artifacts of Alice’s grand adventure in Wonderland where one might satisfy one’s curiosity by following a tardy furry little animal. What a delightful way to spend a rainy Saturday afternoon!
It would be wise not to confuse the storybook version with the slippery kaleidoscopic vignettes one encounters in the quirky world of quantum metaphysics. It’s one thing to read about doorways into other dimensions or see them depicted on a movie screen, and quite another to actually risk entering their depths.
I don’t mean to sound foreboding — quite the opposite. Nor do I wish to make the process of descent appear overly difficult — it isn’t. All that’s required to dive into the rabbit hole is the release of all personal identity and the belief systems that hold it in place. That’s like saying the path through the illusion is simple — provided one has no preferences.
Unfortunately, there are many hucksters — including your own inner voices — who tout all manner of shortcuts into the rabbit hole. Laced sugar cubes, magic ‘shrooms, sacred plant concoctions, and a host of other mind-altering substances are generally available to those not ready to do the serious work. In the age of instant gratification, these seem such simple ways to separate from the portion of oneself that still believes it is living within the illusion.
The question, then, is: Why would you want to go anywhere near a rabbit hole? Before you answer, consider this: Who is the you that would make the journey, and who is the you making the decision? What do you really know about yourself that doesn’t come from your lifetime resume? You can make a list a mile long describing every aspect of your life, your physical attributes, your likes and dislikes, your thoughts, your beliefs, and you wouldn’t begin to depict who you really are. Each item on your list is little more than the way you choose to project yourself into the illusion. None of these can make the journey.
Surprisingly, religious beliefs are the largest single obstacle to ascension (the lightness of being required to explore the deeper regions of rabbit holes) — not because people have them but because they cling to them as truth. Yet most people have not chosen their religions. Rather, the religion they claim as their own chose them, usually through circumstances of birth or enculturation. Feeling lost and abandoned at the edge of a vast galaxy in an incomprehensibly large universe, we understandably cry out for a mommy or daddy to comfort us. Religions give us community, and they give answers that, for many, make the challenges of their lives more bearable.
People are more readily attracted to a religious concept if it is presented as the word of a deity. Imagine the priesthood saying that what they teach might be an interesting theory for the congregation to explore for a while. Any good marketer knows it’s easier to fill the seats if what they offer is advertised as the only true path to God’s heavenly mansion, and that whoever doesn’t follow it is doomed to an eternity of unspeakable damnation. Fear, it turns out, is an excellent motivator.
But fear will not allow you into the rabbit hole. Nor will a tenacious hold on a belief system. Rabbit holes are only for the passionately curious, for those who are not so overburdened with someone else’s answer that they long ago forgot the question. Arguably, the greatest damage wrought by a belief system is the blunting of the desire to seek beyond the boundaries of dogma. The essential nature of a rabbit hole is to unravel. What you experience upon entering one will not only blow your mind, it will strip you of all sense of personal identity.
Rabbit holes are definitely not for the faint of heart. Don’t let the cleverness of the question fool you into thinking you can stick your toe into the hole to get a preview. What black hole ever asked “How far into me would you like to go?”
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