Think You Can Handle the Truth?

When I was in second year university, Larry joined my circle of friends as part of an engineering study group. He smiled easily, struggled with differential equations, and wore a lot of striped shirts. But what you remembered about Larry after any lengthy conversation with him was that he was an evangelical Christian. "God will provide," and "The Lord leads the way," would drop into otherwise divinity-free dialog.

"Larry," I asked after a few weeks of this, "You know all this God stuff just bounces off of us right? Why do you keep talking about it?"

I still remember his answer, four decades later.

"Sanjay, it's like I was at the Student Union building up the hill and there's this guy handing out $100 bills to anyone he sees. You're my friends, and I want you to get your $100 bill, so I keep telling you about it, even though you don't believe me."

I don't remember what I said in response, but I do remember going to the Student Union building later that day and there was no guy handing out $100 bills.

Fast forward to 2025 and the Student Union building has become the Hotel X in downtown Toronto, where I just spent five days with Robert Scheinfeld, author of Busting Loose from the Money Game, at something called the Ultimate Freedom Experience.

It was five days of epiphanies, five days of disbelief, five days of people alternately crying, laughing, cursing, and realizing that everything they'd been taught about reality might be fake news.

By the end, forty people had survived the experience. Reactions ranged from "Nope, fuck that," to "This changes everything."

The curriculum is simple enough to scribble on a cocktail napkin:

Free will does not exist.

The world is a holographic illusion.

Every thought, sensation, and action is already scripted by an unseen power.

The purpose of life is experience, with emotions as the centrepiece.

Suffering arises only when the mind insists on giving the story meaning.

Seeing this clearly reveals a lighter, easier way to live.

Easy to say, hard to swallow. At least one participant told me afterwards that he was giddy with excitement, but that a small part of him wondered if he'd actually gone insane.

Scheinfeld's genius is not in the telling but in the showing. He doesn't argue. He walks you through experiences until your brain does a sort of philosophical pratfall, and you realize you've tripped over your own assumptions.

One participant, eyes shining, whispered, "This has been the best five days of my life." Others told me that it was intense but they were sorry it was over. At least one person slipped out the door without saying goodbye, happy to escape the madness.

I didn't emerge from the experience with the ability to conjure wealth or wield a lightsaber. What I did emerge with was a sense of lightness and anticipation, as though the universe and I were finally on speaking terms.

I'd already devoured Scheinfeld's material online, but seeing him deliver it live was like watching a magician in person after years of YouTube clips. The tricks don't change, but the disbelief hits harder.

Life, Re-scripted

Since the event, I've stopped dividing life into "things I like" and "things I dread." It's all just… things. My son forgot his backpack again as I dropped him off at school. My wife would combust at this, but I found myself saying cheerfully, "No problem, buddy," and enjoying the 40-minute round trip to get him his backpack from home while making some calls to reschedule my morning.

Negativity falls away as you appreciate the beauty of everything exactly as it is, and not as how you'd like it to be.

Emotions that used to arrive under the grim banners of sorrow or anxiety now show up as appreciation and gratefulness. I burst into tears of joy at songs, conversations, sometimes at nothing at all. It's inconvenient at dinner parties, but profoundly liberating.

And yet, one question kept nibbling at my brain during the final day:

If this is true, really true, then why isn't it everywhere? Why is the world still peddling workshops, twelve-step programs, and overpriced yoga mats instead of Truth? Why don't the major religions and minor cults reveal the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?

The answer? I asked chatGPT and got this.

"Truth doesn't require believers. Lies can't exist without them."

Buddha and Christ, I believe, taught the same thing as Scheinfeld directly: the Truth. No slides, no bullet points, no influencer partnerships. Just the raw material. Then somebody realized that 90% truth plus a subscription fee was far more scalable. Techniques sell. Truth does not. And so Truth was quietly shoved into the broom closet while partial truths and techniques strutted about with revenue models.

Scheinfeld dodges this by inventing new vocabulary. God is too loaded, so he says True Creative Essence (TCE) is the power behind everything. Awakening is too soggy, so he calls it Dancing in Ultimate Freedom. Delightful, but a mouthful.

I like a new word that's bubbling up for me: Enwakenment.

To be enwakened is to discover that life is a story you're watching from the inside, not writing from the outside. It's less about doing and more about noticing.

Of course, your brain doesn't accept this quietly. It fries. It sizzles. It invents new swear words. That's why I like a companion term: Revolation - the combination of revelation and revolution slamming together in your head like two galaxies filled with chocolate and peanut butter. Tasty, illuminating, and impossible to clean up.

One of the core tenets of Enwakenment is that the unseen power has a script for each of us, and our own attempts at planning are as effective as ants organizing traffic on the autobahn.

So I've stopped trying to plan much at all.

Could I spread this message at scale? Could I compete with the people selling techniques? Probably not. Truth is still terrible at marketing, and I'm not at all sure this is a message the world wants to hear.

But life isn't about plans, it's about playing and exploring. It's about living the story that's written for us with as much presence and attention as we can muster.

But would I enjoy living the story of spreading the word? Of telling my friends where they can get their $100 bills?

Yes, I think I would like that very much.

Let's see what happens.