What if you woke up in a different body? What if you became someone else tomorrow? And what if you weren't who you think you were yesterday? I've had this experience before, and I want to share it with you here, because right now you're probably really sure that yesterday you were in this body, and the day before that too, and tomorrow you're going to be in this body as well. But here's the thing. All you really have is right now. You're in the middle of eternity, and all you have at this moment are memories of yesterday. If you woke up in another body, that body would have memories of yesterday as well, and you would be just as sure that you were in that one the day before, even if you were in this one today.
Why this matters: knowing who you really are
You might think, well, why does this matter? First, it matters because it helps you get to know who you really are. As long as you identify with the thought, "I'm a body, that's who I am, I'm Jerry Banfield, I'm the followers I have, I'm the subscribers, I'm what I think of myself, I'm healthy, I'm happy, I'm married, I have a wife, I'm a YouTuber, a musician" — as long as you think that's all you are, then you can't be any more than that, and you can feel trapped and stuck and imprisoned.
What I believe is that once you awaken to the eternity of who you are, that God, the creator, the source, is who you are, and you realize this body is just kind of an avatar, a game you're playing right now, an experience you're choosing to create right now, then life becomes magical. You see that you can have, and be, and do anything you want to. All you need is patience and an open mind.
The night I woke up in another body
Let me give you an example from my own experience. I went to sleep, and I woke up in another body, in a completely different place. It felt kind of like Brazil, but it was some far distant planet or galaxy. I was a boy, maybe eight or ten years old, and it was nighttime — maybe early in the night, not the middle of the night. We were riding our bikes around, me and my little brother, and he was a couple of years younger than me.
All of a sudden these sirens started going off, and there were these parachutes with boxes on them falling down to the surface. I yelled at my brother in some other language — it wasn't English, it was one I don't know right now — but I yelled at him that we needed to get home, get home as fast as possible. I remember the fear, the fear surging up, pedaling my little butt off to ride this bike home with my brother while the parachutes and the sirens and the bombs were falling down onto the ground.
Then something hit me. You would describe it today as kind of like a reptilian alien. It was like a big reptile, human-sized, like a raptor or something. I didn't see it, I felt it. It jumped out of the bush and killed me instantaneously, and it didn't hurt. I remember feeling the sensation that you'd describe as just getting slapped hard and penetrated with something, and then I was dead. Instantaneously. I was riding my bike, riding my bike, and then I felt this thing — I didn't really see it because it was pretty dark, but you can feel the energy of some big thing jumping at you and hitting you. Right before it killed me, I had the thought, oh — because I hadn't known why those sirens were going off or what was falling from the sky, but right as it was hitting me, it made sense. Those bombs floating down were probably trying to hit this thing that just killed me.
So then right after that I was dead, and it was like I was alive, riding, riding, and then dead. I didn't have a body anymore, and I was in what you'd think of as the gray void, the shimmering light, and I was just there. I remember thinking, well, I'm dead now. It was very matter of fact. I didn't speak it, it was just this awareness: I'm here again, I'm dead, and here we are. And it was very relaxing. It wasn't scary at all. It was like, okay, well, nothing can hurt me now. I let go of that previous life — that life is gone. I remember just being in this gray void, a kind of shimmering light, not really dark but not really light either, kind of grayish, just being there as empty consciousness, empty awareness.
"Nice, this one again"
Then I woke up. I got back in this body, and my first thought was, "Nice, this one again." It was such a startling thought to have as I first became aware of being in this body again — the thought that I was happy to be back in this one. I could have gone anywhere, to anyone, and I was relieved. Ah, it's this one again, good. I really like this one. It's a nice, relaxing story, and I was really happy to be back here.
Sometimes when I go to sleep, I'm like, where the heck am I going to go, and when will I be back here? Some nights it appears like I just go to sleep and wake straight back up in this body — I didn't go off and live another lifetime. Other nights I have dreams where I'm off doing stuff, but that's more like a dream than a completely new reality. This particular evening was different. I know some of you will say, well, that was just a dream you had, you just fell asleep. But it didn't feel like that. It felt like I went out and was in this other lifetime, I died, and then I chose to come back to this one and keep going with this story.
It felt like switching video games
It was the same as if you were playing your Xbox or PlayStation, working on a single-player game. You used to put the disc in, but you all don't put discs in these days — you load the game up and pick up your campaign where you left off. Then your mom hollers at you that it's time to go to school, or maybe you're grown up now like me and it's time to pick your kids up from school. You turn the game off and go do something else. Maybe later you play a different game, but whenever you jump back into the game you were playing before, you pick up right where you left off.
If you purely identified with the point of view of "I am this character in this video game," then from your point of view it would just seem like you went to sleep. You'd be unaware of all the other things you're able to do. Choosing to come back was really the last thing that you, as the player of the game, did between exiting out of the game and coming back into it.
The observer and the observed
This is one of the best things you can understand if you feel really limited and trapped in this body and this lifetime. There's what's called the observer-and-the-observed effect: you can't separate the observer from that which is observed. So in my experience it is possible — if you really had enough of this life, you could just go to bed and wake up in another life and never come back, only observing the one you're in now. It would be like playing a video game that you just never finished. I've played so many games like that. I started a campaign in Horizon Forbidden West and I didn't finish it. I could go back and finish it, but I might have lost my save game.
So sometimes I do get concerned. When I go to sleep, I think, I hope I find this life again if I go do something else. But generally, before I go to sleep, I'm very committed to waking up in this body again the next day. I'm thinking about how much I really want to be here in this body again tomorrow. This comes from the point of view that I am God, I'm the creator, and I'm having this experience because I choose to — that everything in my life is a function of choice, that I have a choice as to which body I wake up in.
Remembering that you've died before
This also gives me patience, because I realize I have all of eternity. I remember dying, so dying is not even something you have to dread. You could just die, and you're like, oh my God, I'm dying, I'm dying — and then you literally fall asleep and wake up in a different body, having completely forgotten about this whole reality. If you're thinking, well, that's not possible, here's the evidence: do you remember all the other bodies and all the other realities you've been in? You don't recall them right now.
Sometimes I get kind of sad that one day I will very much be alive, but I will have completely forgotten about this particular life and this particular story — just like right at this moment I can't recall all the single-player campaign stories I've played through. I know I played through a lot of different games. I could try to do the work to remember them, but right now I'm not aware of them because I'm paying attention to this. Other times I think, well, I'm here now, I'm experiencing this now, so I know there are all these other lifetimes out there that I have experienced or will experience, and they're just as nice as this one. I have all of eternity, and love, and creativity, to do whatever I want.
The way I experience it, everything in this life has been created by me as God, as the father, the mother, however you want to think of it, and the son — this body and all the other creations I observe. The father and the son are the same thing. Who I really am is infinite consciousness creating my own reality in real time. And sometimes I get completely lost in my creations. It seems that there is some faraway God that's not me, and that I'm just in the middle of a creation, alone, and that this is all there is. This is the kind of thing I love to keep exploring out loud, and I dig into it with the people in the Jerry Banfield Family when we get on calls together.
The good news: you'll always remember
If you feel like that — lost, alone, like this is all there is — the good news is that you'll always remember. You'll always remember someday. It can be now, or it can be another now. You always end up remembering, like at the point of death in a previous life. I can't help but remember, oh, here we are, I wrapped up that existence. And now what existence am I going to go into next? I can hop into anything, anywhere, anytime.
This leaves me, ironically, really appreciating this life, this sacred experience, which there may never be one just like again. At the same time, just like with video games, there are so many I could play, and whichever one I choose today is a sacred experience. Let's really enjoy this today. And I know I have infinite time to do everything. So I hope sharing this has helped shake your conviction that you were in this body yesterday and that you'll be in it tomorrow. Because maybe you were — probably you were — but there's a chance you weren't. I've written before about how I chose to incarnate again one evening, and about remembering choosing to incarnate here, and this thought experiment is the same idea from another angle.
I could wake up as anyone
Sometimes I think, well, I'd like to have all these different experiences in my life. For example, I think it might be cool to be a professional basketball player. A lot of you would think, well, that's not possible, Jerry, you can't be a professional basketball player. And it's like — wrong. I could wake up in LeBron James's body. I don't know if he's still playing basketball, but I could wake up in Michael Jordan's body on the Chicago Bulls in the nineties. I'd have no idea I was in this body yesterday. I'd have no idea I was anybody besides Michael Jordan. I could have a day or two in that reality, fall asleep, and wake back up in this one.
That leaves me feeling really powerful. I can go anywhere. I can do anything. And there's almost no wait time. Ironically, it also makes me really appreciate this one. I want to see this experience through, because I'm really happy with it. If you enjoy sitting with thoughts like these, you can watch more of them in my Life playlist, where I share where my mind goes every day.
The awakening that all is one
To some degree, for what I'm creating here, I think that if I'm in your body, I might not realize that at one point I was in this body and made this for myself. From your point of view, you're listening to this thinking that I made it and you're listening to it. But really, from my point of view, I made this and I'm listening to it. And that is the spiritual awakening: that all is one. If sitting with that feels good to you, come join the Family and keep the conversation going with me.