71/ taking the headset off

waking up from the illusion that is life

Vincent Daranyi
5 min readFeb 22, 2024
Image from the movie Ready Player One

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Imagine putting on an Apple VisionPro headset and entering a virtual world. Now imagine never taking this headset off and believing that the virtual reality you are experiencing is Reality.

This is what life is. We put on the “headset” of being a person at birth and we take it off again at death. Yet we believe that we are the headset, our body and mind, when they are merely our interface to experience life.

What we really are is the awareness behind this headset. The awareness that is experiencing life through the mind-body headset.

This awareness is ever present and eternal and doesn’t know birth nor death. Birth is simply the moment we put on the headset for the human journey.

What’s the purpose?

You chose to put on the headset to evolve. The purpose is specific to you. It’s your tailor-made experience.

And there’s a higher purpose: To understand who you truly are.

We are awareness = consciousness = love = source = God = creator = everything = oneness.

(Pick whichever label you resonate with. They all mean the same. God has nothing to do with religion. It’s simply the spiritual word for consciousness.)

But how can I understand what I am if I am everything?

Rich is meaningless without poor. So is beauty without ugliness or light without darkness and love without fear. We need polarity to understand.

Therefore, to understand who I am I have to experience what I am not.

This is what the earthly experience is about: I experience myself as a separate self so that I can experience what I am not and therefore understand what I am (which in it’s ultimate step means everything / awareness / …).

How does it work?

Once I understand what I am not (separate, ego, personality, self), I can take the headset off and experience what I truly am. This is called “waking up”.

The ultimate purpose of life is to wake up from the illusion we have created. This is the purpose of this illusion: To wake up from it.

The practical consequence of this is that once I wake up (not to be confused with “being woke”) embracing the much larger reality I am, I start using my life for a higher purpose, in service to others, rather than what my security and pleasure-seeking ego self wants or craves.

Why? Because realising that I am not an individual self I start treating everyone “else” as if it was me. Now imagine if we were all to do that what a beautiful world we’d live in. This is the promise of waking up. It is the ultimate utopia. And it’s a real thing.

It’s a head twister and might sound crazy but who said life is straight forward.

Why should you care?

If I don’t realise who/what I truly am then it’s impossible to make the most of this life experience.

While that’s per se not a problem, why would I want to choose a less joyful experience and missing out on its purpose? That’s like buying a movie ticket and then covering my eyes and ears. It’s self defeating.

The consensus belief that our life is the ultimate reality is the single source of all the suffering and dissatisfaction we are trying to escape from throughout our entire lives. It keeps us trapped in the perception that we are separate from everything else.

And it keeps us grasping for more. Ironically, our very seeking of pleasure and trying to avoid pain is the very thing that keeps us locked-up in the prison of never finding the satisfaction we are yearning for.

The never-ending rat race for a better tomorrow that we can’t win — and then we die.

How do I wake up?

First, I need to fully grasp that I am (in) an illusion.

There are various ways to experience your true (soul) self: Death, a near-death experience, certain psychedelics and deep extended meditation or self inquiry, to name a few. It’s not a quick process. It’s developmental just as growing up is.

Second, I need to live it.

Understanding the illusion not just intellectually/by knowing but reflecting it in my way of being. I need to step out of the illusion and act accordingly. I need to follow my intuition, an inner calling rather than following my survival and ego-driven mind. This is much harder than the first step (which is already difficult).

Third, I need to remember why I came here.

To experience life was a conscious choice. We play in this game of identity, time and space with the purpose to evolve. I might have come here to learn forgiveness and hence keep experiencing seemingly unforgivable experiences. Whatever resistance I seem to be up against, that’s where my purpose lies and where transformation takes place.

Those three are not necessarily sequential steps. Waking up is more like an iterative, spiralling up process.

Waking up is hard

As I am writing these lines, I’m reflecting on my own process of waking up from the illusion. I have gained certainty through experiencing it that life and the person Vincent is is an illusion: It is a temporary construct through which I am experiencing myself (step 1).

However, embodying this in my every day life has been rather challenging. As Einstein said:

“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”

This is why I have been working on it for now a decade. My goal is to fully and permanently wake up and navigate life from that place of full surrender. It’s not an easy feast nor a fast one but I know it can be done and I am convinced I can do it (and everyone of us can). We are much more powerful beings than we think we are.

Humanity as a whole is going the opposite direction. We are getting trapped ever more deeply in the material illusion and our pain is increasing in the process. It’s not a coincidence that mental health is getting ever more worse — a reflection of our level of unconsciousness.

Let’s make it easier

neoslife is the vehicle I am building to make it easier for us to wake up and live thriving lives. No one can do it for you just like no one can go to the gym for you but it definitely helps to have great coaches, environment and community.

For this purpose we are acquiring a beautiful piece of land to create a home and village for a new way of being. I just came back from my sixth visit shooting the below video. It’s an unedited/unfinished version but why not share it.

In April, we are holding a world-first transformation experience for up to eight potential investors. During this life-changing weekend you will not only experience neoslife and the estate but understand for yourself what all the fuss of waking up is about and why it will change the world. If that could be you, hit reply.

With love
Vincent

NB. Yes, the ostriches, cows and sheep are all part of it. Because of previous heavy rains the water is brown rather than blue.

You can watch the video here.

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