Staying in the Question

A truly open mind ... what does that even mean? And where can it take us?

This is a multi-layered, multi-player story. So please bear with me in the longish telling.

Back in the 1990s, I was a mainstream newspaper journalist and a spiritual person. I dreamed of the time when I would marry my two passions and bend my writing skills towards getting esoteric information out into the public eye.

Years passed with this as my unfulfilled focus. And then one day a friend called and casually mentioned that the local film crew making the documentary What the Bleep Do We Know!? was looking for a short-term, part-time office manager.

The moment I heard the words I knew the job was mine. It was the full-on cold-chills-from-head-to-toe experience. I hung up and called the guy I knew who was heading up the film's marketing team. (The whole Bleep crew was from my home town of Yelm, Washington and part of the spiritual organization I belonged to—Ramtha's School of Enlightenment.)

Pavel was nonplussed at my request to interview for the job. "But Catia. You're not a secretary. You're a writer!"

True, I'd never filed anything in my life. All my important papers were wadded into a box and stuck on a closet shelf somewhere. But how hard could it be? I mean, it's not like I didn’t know the English alphabet.

It took some convincing, but he finally agreed to set up an interview with one of the directors, a woman by the name of Betsy Chasse.

In the door

Betsy interviewed me at a local coffee shop, chewing gum and twirling her hair as she read my resumé. Finally, she said, "You're way overqualified. This is a minimum wage job. We'll use all your writing skills and you won't get paid for them." She paused, then added with her usual blunt candor. "But if you don't mind us abusing the hell out of you and you want it that bad, the job's yours."

This was January 2005. A month or so later I was moved onto the film's marketing team full time and paid accordingly. A month after that I was handed the job of creating and running the movie's newsletter, which effectively gave me the editorial credentials to approach all the world's great spiritual minds, as well as all the scientists with metaphysical leanings and write about what they knew.

I was finally doing what I'd dreamed of doing for so long.

"Coincidentally," this experience was also perfectly aligned with the film's message and raison d-être: Informing the world of the power of the mind and the conscious creation of personal reality.

How the film got its name

What the Bleep had three directors, Will Arntz, the guy who thought up and financed the whole production, Mark Vicente, a cinematographer from LA, and Betsy, a line producer from LA. Will and Mark were both in the Ramtha school and wanted to scientifically prove the validity of the esoteric science of consciousness Ramtha—a channeled spirit—taught. Hence all the interviews with quantum physicists like Amit Goswami Ph.D. and John Hagelin Ph.D., neuro-chemists like Candace Pert Ph.D., and the other doctors and researchers in the film.

A major reason the science ended up being so accessible to the world's audiences was because Betsy was a complete spiritual ignoramus when she was brought on board. And she made zero attempt to hide the fact. Will and Mark would sit down with the scientists and mystics and ask all these highbrow questions. Then Betsy would come on as the perfect layperson and ask all the "dumb" questions that actually resulted in getting relatable answers.

She constantly walked around the sets and studio muttering "What the fuck do we know anyway? What the fuck do we know?" Which is why, when it came time to release the film, they called it What the Bleep Do We Know!?

Keeping an open mind

I relate this tale because it highlights the wisdom of coming at life with more question marks than answers. Although I confess, back in my Bleep days if you'd asked me about life, God, consciousness, the universe, angels, spirit guides, aliens, life after death, reincarnation et al, I would have confidently trotted out info gleaned from the many books I’d read over the years as if it were my own.

I knew it all and had answers for everything.

Now? Not so much.

In the last three years, almost everything I've believed in has been turned on its head and proven false—like the goodness of government, the helpfulness of the medical/pharmaceutical industry, the incorruptibility and impartiality of the press, the righteousness of capitalism, the reliability of history, the purity of religious and spiritual teachings, the goodness and infallibility of priests.

Letting go thinking I know how things really are has been an unsettling process—but it’s also been refreshing. Like opening the windows in a stuffy airless room that hasn't seen sunshine in decades.

Flat earth? Once I would have laughed in somebody's face if they'd proposed it. Now? I don't know. I've done some research and there are many credible points to it. And the world is a very mysterious place.

Did we go to the moon? I don't know. I wasn’t there. But watching a NASA engineer at JPL say we haven't sent a manned mission back to the moon since 1972 because "We lost the technology" is hardly reassuring.

Did we stop because of aliens? I don't know. Have we reverse engineered alien technologies? I don't know. Are there alternative Earth realities? I don't know. Did my government or somebody use laser weapons to destroy Lahaina Town here on Maui?

I don't know.

Distraction

We've been deluded for so long into thinking if we have the right answers—enough facts—that somehow everything will be okay. That the world will finally compose itself into some sort of reasonable place we can rely on and feel safe in.

And we've been deluded into thinking the mind is our safe place.

But the mind is an insatiable rabbit hole—a torture chamber that inevitably argues with itself, restlessly seeking more and ever more data to consume in the insane illusion that there can ever be an end to the torment of its own uncertainty.

We waste so much time and energy on ideas—ideas that, in the scheme of things, don't even matter. 

So, what does matter? I think I'm pretty close to the thoughts of the average Joe and Jane when I say life matters. Quality of life.

Freedom of thought and speech. Liberty and the ability to pursue individual interests. Freedom to travel unrestricted. Freedom to live life unburdened by expectations and restrictions.

Healthy water to drink, healthy food to eat and clean air to breathe. A planet where all life is honored—including the life of the planet itself. A world where the spirit nature of humanity and all beings is recognized. A global society that supports and encourages individual autonomy, exploration and expression. A world where I don't have to worry about a bunch of elite sociopaths plotting my enslavement.

A world of heart. Not a world of hurt.

That's what matters to me ... at least nowadays.

On the wrong track

Looking back to when What the Bleep was all the rage, it seems what mattered to me most back then was making sure everybody on the planet knew what I knew and believed it.

The small fact that most of what I knew was second-hand information gathered from outside sources rather than anything even closely resembling inner heart-based knowing never even occurred to me. I was part of a global spiritual and commercial phenomenon, ridin' the wave.

And then came the movie The Secret.

It was a one-two, paradigm-busting, punch. Overnight people went crazy. WOW! We had the power to manifest whatever we wanted in life through our thoughts alone! If we could just learn how to rewire our brains, we could have it all!

Gold, jewels, wealth, knowledge, houses in the Caribbean, fancy cars, lovers, a better job, a better insurance policy ... all the things necessary to feel at least marginally safe in an unsafe world were suddenly ours to command—if we had the mental focus and sufficient force of personal will to make it happen.

And thus, The Secret—and a dangerously deceptive spiritual teaching—was unleashed upon an unwitting population.

The mind problem

The inspiration behind What the Bleep was the channeled message: "Consciousness and energy create the nature of reality." And that statement is a great truth.

All you have to do to prove its validity is look around at our reality today and it's clear to see what kind of consciousness lies behind its creation: A consciousness utterly ignorant of our spirit nature, enchanted by, dependent upon, and obsessed with the mind—a consciousness of separation, force, arrogance, power, hierarchy, control, and competition—all of this driving fear and the desperate desire/need/hunger for material security at all costs.

Introducing the thought that the mind is the major player creating reality into the minds of people whose consciousness is already enchanted by, dependent upon, and obsessed with the mind was the equivalent of throwing gasoline on an already raging fire.

Within a year, the power to manifest became the predominant New Age obsession.

And thus, spiritual materialism was born. And successful material manifestation became the talisman proving an individual's spiritual worth.

Just like in the regular world.

Insidious

Why is this problematic? Let me tell you another story.

A couple years after What the Bleep peaked in the spiritual marketplace, probably because my association with the film still gave me some PR value, I was invited as a special guest to participate for free in a well-known spiritual teacher's "Quantum Manifestation Techniques" seminar. (Or some such typical title.)

After the seminar finished, the teacher invited me to join her and her staff for dinner at a fancy Seattle restaurant to celebrate.

I was broke at the time, driving a beater truck I barely had the money to put gas into to get to the event. I remember sitting at the elegant table with this teacher and her entourage, ordering an herbal tea, lying about being "on a cleanse," listening to her talk about her workshops in London and Paris, the new pied-à-terre on the famous Boulevard de la Croisette in Cannes that she'd just manifested, her latest book coming out.

Over expensive wine and entrées, her well-coiffed staff eagerly chimed in with their latest manifestation stories—the new Mercedes convertible, the fabulous new lover, the free trip to Istanbul. And I sat there the whole time feeling like the worst loser in the world. What's wrong with me? I wondered, stomach growling emptily. Why can't I manifest like these women? I'm such a failure.

It was a gutting moment of such shame and self-judgment, I wouldn't have wished it on my worst enemy.

Sitting in that restaurant, I was about as far away from quality of life as it was possible to get. Far away from love, kindness, and heart and anything genuinely valuable—like the smell of a new baby's breath, feeling the kiss of a kitten's whiskers on my cheek, holding a friend's hand in a moment of trouble, or sitting, dreaming, beside a river, toes dabbling in the cold waters ...

Staying in the question … or not

I didn't see it. Nobody I knew saw it. I'm actually only really seeing the horror of it writing these words. Millions of "spiritual people" trapped thinking they're spiritual people instead of knowing they're pure spirit, unconsciously looking for a way out of the matrix of the mind, seduced even deeper into its clutches, hypnotized by their minds’ need for the ANSWER, believing the answer is the MIND and using it to get more STUFF (including more information) in order to feel good about themselves.

Yikes! And more yikes!

Can you say, “Down the wrong rabbit hole?”

I talk to so many spiritual people, young and old, and it seems humanity’s intoxication with ideas—concepts about reality, stories about aliens, myths and fabulous tales about our origins, speculations about the future etc. etc. etc.—is more powerful and compelling than ever.

And yet all the ideas, concepts, stories, tales, myths, speculations, and questions are just that: ideas, concepts, stories, tales, myths, speculations, and questions.

The mind is an imaginary reality ... an artificial construct configuring itself into endless fractal loops and spins, spitting out questions and endlessly conflicting stories that can never satisfactorily answer the questions and imaginary realities it produces.

The mind can never know anything for certain.

Because knowing is a matter of pure being.

So, how do we get to the place of pure being?

What a good question ... and I think maybe (HA HA! Think/maybe ... get it?), the most on-target answer is: By not asking the question in the first place.

Much love and aloha ~

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Check out the book:

Cracking the Matrix: 14 Keys to Individual & Global Freedom

For thousands of years, every culture on Earth has described a hostile, invisible Intelligence bedeviling humanity, dragging us down. The Archons, AshShaytān, wetiko, windingo, e'epa, antimimos, Satan ... the names are legion.

Cracking the Matrix explores the astounding history and nature of what humanity has erroneously labeled "evil" on this planet, helping people finally see the very real, negative, interdimensional influence that exists behind historic and current global events and our social decline.

The book outlines how to break free of this Force's ancient controlling agenda and how people can stand up in the power of their true spiritual nature, ready to create the New Heaven and the New Earth that have so long been prophesied.

About Cate Montana

A professional journalist specializing in alternative medicine and health, Cate is the author of several other books, including Unearthing Venus: My Search for the Woman Within [Watkins 2013], and The E Word, Ego Enlightenment & Other Essentials [Atria 2017], and a spiritual novel titled Apollo & Me. She has a master’s degree in psychology, and is a highly informative and compelling speaker and guest on radio and TV shows and podcasts. She is very grateful to be able to say she lives in Hawaii.

For more information www.catemontana.com