Beyond Reality – A Journey Through Consciousness.

Gypsy had been stopped dead in his tracks. Staring down the barrel of the gun — a Colt, a handgun, a semi-automatic. A quiet calmness overcame him as he thought, “I’m 19 years old, this will be my last breath. This is how it ends.”

The ink emblazoned on the wrist of the gunman marked him as a member of Cabramatta’s notorious 5T gang. “You took it, I fuckin’ kill you,” he yelled into Gypsy’s face, his own face distorted, twisted, hateful and seething for revenge. For Gypsy, this was a moment of truth.

What is a moment of truth? What does that even mean?

In that moment, standing in the hallway of his home, thoughts raced to find a solution to the obvious problem confronting him. His front door just a few metres behind the stranger holding the gun to his head. There was no escape, no retreat — no obvious solution.

It may have only been two seconds, but it felt like a lifetime as he waited for that final moment of life to come and go.

A moment where he watched all of his conditioning, education and experience pass through his mind — none of it, right now, of the slightest bit of use.

Unlocking his eyes from the barrel of the gun and looking directly into the gunman’s fiery eyes, Gypsy uttered, “What can I say?” the truth quietly emerging from his mouth, head shaking from side to side. “I didn’t take your stereo.”

Perhaps this is what they mean by moment of truth — as the truth inherent within Gypsy’s words pierced the gunman’s twisted exterior deeper than any bullet could have.

His fiery eyes shifted from contortion to confusion. Lowering the gun, his head ticked sideways, just slightly. The gunman had seen it, he could feel it, and couldn’t deny it.

“Then frien took it, you frien took.” Now shouting again and waving his gun around in the air, his own moment of truth unfolding. “You ge it back, I wan it back”… and then, that was it. The gunman was gone.

A most unfortunate start to the morning.

Shocked and silent, Gypsy stood in a state of momentary stillness, his thoughts drifting but not completely forming.

Though, what he couldn’t perceive in that moment — as he moved slowly toward his bedroom and leaned against the doorframe, meeting the wide-open eyes of his girlfriend — was that this particular experience was not to be so unfortunate. It would become a catalyst toward understanding.

An understanding of self. An understanding that would change everything.

But more on that later.

For now, Aileen sat up against the bedhead, knees drawn to her chest, the covers pulled up to her mouth. Her eyes, wide and unblinking, posed a silent question — what the fuck just happened?

“He had a…” Gypsy began answering her unspoken words, momentarily pausing, watching a girl gripping the blanket as if it might shield her from the world. “…he had a gun.”

Nine months — The time it takes for a child to form in the womb.

It had been nine months since that most unfortunate morning, and although Gypsy did not know it then, the event that shattered him would turn out to be a catalyst.

A lot had fallen away in those months — attachments, illusions, even the relationship with Aileen.

Piece by piece, the world Gypsy once clung to had dissolved.

But something deeper — the rigid framework of thoughts and ideas through which he had once viewed the world — inherited, conditioned, shaped across a lifetime of experience — had been cracked open in that moment faced with the gun, when thoughts and ideas held no value, allowing truth to speak.

And that crack, that fracture, was the catalyst that would see it all collapse, leaving him lighter, rawer, and strangely, freer than he had ever been.

By winter of 1997, he had drifted far from the suburb of Fairfield and found himself in Newtown — a world apart, a world alive, where broken pieces didn’t need fixing to belong.

Newtown was a vibrant, bohemian suburb tucked into Sydney’s inner west, home to an eclectic parade of punks, yuppies, metalheads, hippies, students, dreamers and tradesmen — all colliding and coexisting in a way that only chaos could make beautiful.

It was the kind of place that opened its arms to those who had nowhere else to fit — and Gypsy, for once, fitted right in.

Peering up from the book he was reading, Gypsy scanned the walls he’d decorated with artwork, torn-out pictures, strips of Indian fabric, his own paintings — wild swirls of colour on paper, and god knows what else. He had created a warm cocoon within his shoebox-sized bedroom, which did not hold much more than a single bed, a dresser, and a large comfy green leather single chair — arms padded, the type of chair one could just sink into.

‘I’ll read one more paragraph,’ a thought dictated by his tired eyes recursed inside his mind, his eyes dropping again into the book, picking up where he left off.

“We must assume every event has significance and contains a message that pertains to our questions… this especially applies to what we used to call bad things… the challenge is to find the silver lining in every event, no matter how negative.”

Some books will be found, and some books will find you at just the right moment in your life.

Placing The Celestine Prophecy upon the dresser, Gypsy slid from the padded chair into his bed and pulled the covers up to his shoulders.

“I think I’ll meditate,” he softly spoke aloud into the room before closing his eyes.

Breathing in — Breathing out. Gypsy focused on his breath.

Breathing in — Breathing out.

Rhythmic cycles began to spiral within his awareness, observing thoughts come and go.

‘Everything that has happened, all the pain and suffering, has led me here, to this peace that…’ one thought drifted off.

‘I’m no longer attached to anything, even my own life is insignif…’ another thought began but was not held — Breathing in — Breathing out, softer now.

One final thought passed by him: “I accept…”

But before it fell away, Gypsy’s focus turned inward further, feeling the very essence of his being.

It is one thing to be found by a book — but it is a whole other story when one finds the centre of their own awareness.

Gypsy’s awareness now floated — free from rigid mental frameworks, free from fears created by parents and peers, free from worry — no past, no future — just now, floating.

Floating carries a sense of weightlessness — something no longer secured, no longer bound.

Transcendence is something more — the lifting away from all material constraints, all anchors to the physical world.

It’s no surprise, then, that one would lead to the other.

Spiralling through an endless open space, Gypsy found himself no longer bound by physical constraints. His consciousness became his form — but he was not alone.

Around him, countless others flowed in every direction.

‘They look like tadpoles made of starlight,’ he thought, weaving through this field beyond reality.

A feeling of unbounded exhalation filled Gypsy as he dashed back and forth and all around. He didn’t know where he was — but neither did he think too much about it. The experience itself was far too immersive to leave room for much curiosity.

His attention, however, was still drawn by the way the other entities wove and spiralled around him.

He watched them with growing wonder until, suddenly, he came into contact with one of them — but more than just contact.

Consciousness merged — not touching, but fully melding — and in that moment, Gypsy felt a love far beyond anything he could remember from his life on Earth.

For those on Earth, love is considered a feeling.

But here, where Gypsy now found himself, love was something else entirely: not a feeling, but the sensation that occurs when one’s own conscious being is expanded by connection with another.

As their beings entwined, something else — something unexpected — unfolded.

Their shared consciousness manifested a reality, just as vibrant and alive as the reality that Gypsy had lived his whole human life through on Earth.

Gypsy found himself embodied in a creature — an animal of sorts — and the world around him was not abstract; it was flourishing with trees, fields, colours, horizons and light.

The being Gypsy found himself embodied in was unlike anything on Earth — and yet, not so different in function or form. He had four legs to race around with, eyes to see, ears to hear, and all the senses one might expect to feel the world fully.

If one had to describe it in relation to an earthly animal, it might resemble a strange type of llama.

His newfound friend was there too, incarnated in similar form.

The two of them raced and tumbled across the vibrant landscape, weaving, chasing and playing — their joy so pure it needed no words. They spoke to each other through their consciousness, effortless and alive.

The experience — fluid, unbounded — was pure fun.

Eventually, the excitement softened.

Without sadness or force, Gypsy and his friend consciously separated — and the reality they had formed together, dissolved.

What had felt like many moments stretched across time was, in truth, just a relative instant. Once again, Gypsy found himself as a state of conscious energy, moving freely within what could only be described as a living, open space.

The feeling of intense love that had flooded Gypsy during his connection — instantly gone.

A sense of loss moved through him, as if something essential had slipped away.

‘I’ll never feel that again,’ he thought, his being momentarily shadowed by the lament that he could not hold onto the experience.

But his concern was unfounded.

Soon, he connected with another conscious soul — and then another, and another — each connection expanding his being, each surge of expansion carrying with it the manifestation of a reality within their conscious union.

It was then that Gypsy truly understood.

Love was not the connection itself.

Love was the sensation of expansion — the feeling that arose when one’s being opened to the conscious energy of another and grew beyond its prior bounds.

When two or more conscious energies meld, they do not merely meet — they expand into one, if even for a moment.

Another revelation struck him as deeply as this revelation of love —

‘Intentions become reality,’ Gypsy thought as he flew between connections, understanding now — or perhaps just remembering — that realities are born from intention, shaped within the imagination of consciousness.

‘Realities aren’t fixed,’ he marvelled. ‘These are creations — formed and reformed by the breath of conscious imagination.’

Another curious thought surfaced: ‘Earth itself is one of these imaginations.’

And with that, Gypsy had a final revelation:

‘We trap ourselves inside our own creations by giving them weight that was never truly there. Focus folds inward, we forget we were the ones who shaped it. This is what’s happened in the reality holding Earth.’

Melding into yet another connection with a being of light, Gypsy suddenly felt something — sharp, piercing, far away — his human leg was stinging.

Immediately, his focus began to tunnel back toward his body — but something strange was occurring…

Now he was watching the journey unfold — through multiple levels of his awareness — each level translating his experience for the next. First, beyond words or even thoughts, experience forming into information. And then again — from information into symbol, and symbol into image. Image into dreams — strange, abstract dreams… none of which would have made the slightest bit of sense — except for the fact that he now saw exactly how they formed… what experiences they represented.

Eyes opening, Gypsy’s hand immediately shot down to his leg, but the stinging was already beginning to subside. The silence of the dark room was broken by the sound of air rushing into his lungs as his mind turned to the experience he just had.

It did not dissolve… or begin to fade — the sensation of melding, creating realities — the feeling of his self, expanding with the energies of others — love.

It was all there, even the memory of his journey back to his bedroom, back into his body.

But something, or someone, had also returned with him — but that, as they say, is another story.

Moments of truth come and go. They take many forms. Seeing reality form, one could say, is a moment of truth in itself. For those who cling to illusion, such moments arrive to shock them clean out of it. But for those aligned with truth, these moments reveal the very secrets of existence — or at least, show that there were no secrets to begin with.

And the truth is this:

When the layers fall away—identity, certainty, relationships, roles—
what’s left is not nothing.

What’s left… is you.

Not the you they shaped.
Not the you you performed.
But the still presence that knew how to breathe without being told.