Busting Loose From the Money Game: Mind-Blowing Strategies for Changing the Rules of a Game You Can't Win Hardcover – Illustrated, August 21, 2006

The first time I read this book was back in 2006 when it was first released in hardcover. At the time I had been reading self-help books for about 10 years. I had read all of the top selling authors but my life didn't seem to change all that much. I had a very substantial library but the results I was producing didn't seem to mirror all of the information I was consuming. I first found out about Robert Scheinfeld through his 11th Element course that is still being sold on Nightingale.com (these are Phase 1 teachings).His teachings were different but I didn't really understand a lot of what I was listening to but I never forgot about Robert. Then when Busting Loose From the Money came out I bought the book and read it cover to cover. Notice, that I said I read it cover to cover but I didn't do the work. I mainly didn't do it because I was afraid of reclaiming my power from the eggs. The eggs as Robert explains are those things that enable us to buy into the illusion that we are in fact limited beings with limited powers. I was unwilling to run towards something that could potentially be very painful when I didn't have to. Keep in mind calling something painful is a Phase I term that is not actually the Truth that you will ultimately find out once you begin doing Phase 2 work.Phase I - Is doing and living in a way to convince ourselves how helpless and limited we are. We will do anything to keep this illusion alive so that the ultimate game of life works.Phase II - Is telling ourselves the Truth about who we really are so that we can begin to reclaim the power that we've given away so that we can live in a state of continuous Joy regardless of what is going on outside of us. (which in Truth is nothing at all)So I read the book and I ran. Again, I never forgot about the book because it was so different from anything that I had ever read before. Fast forward to 2011 and that's when I could no longer ignore the fact that I was not entering Phase II work. There were a series of events that happened in my life that were so painful that I went looking for answers. I first was led to A Course In Miracles (ACIM) which really blew my mind about what was True and what wasn't. I read alot of the course and I still to this day embrace the teachings in the Course. ACIM says that you either accept The Course in its entirety or not at all. It also clearly states that many of the things you read in the book will be startling, that you may not agree with them but it is the doing/practicing/putting into action those things that will allow you to know that they are True.This is the same thing that drives Busting Loose. I've read tons of reviews where people have not done the work suggested in the book, yet they try to process the information through intellectual reasoning which cannot be done. Everybody wants the orgasm without doing any foreplay. This is simply not how it happens with Phase II work. The majority of the nectar and joy is in the foreplay not when you reach the orgasm which only lasts for a short while but still there are many who wish to jump straight to this point.So this year I bought the Ebook again because things continued to spiral down for me including having a business checking account and savings account being overdrawn by 832,000 in both accounts because of a law suit. This is only the mild portion of what I have been personally able to create in my Hologram. I have some really huge eggs with some tremendous power being stored in them. At the time of this writing I am still afraid but I have no choice now but to use the processes Robert talks about in the book and Bust Loose once and for all.Don't be deceived by the title because this book is about much more than money. In fact, I'd say the title is sexy only because it will intrigue you because once you start this process it affects every aspect of your life. I love simplicity and Robert's book is so simple in that it gives you a framework to work within. No planning, no goals, no attachments, and no expectations. Wake up each morning, see what is causing discomfort for you and apply the tools that he outlines in the book. Now it's simple but it ain't easy and anyone who says that it is may not be telling you the whole Truth.A few more important factors that I'd like to bring out about the book are:1. Learning to trust my Expanded Self totally is a big key to moving through this process.2. My Expanded Self will never put more on my plate than I'm capable of handling.3. There is no such thing as improving the Illusion. How you improve on something that is not true?4. My Expanded Self will always lead me to the Eggs that have the most power to be reclaimed and I don't have to go looking for it?5. Infinite is Infinite and it can't be measured.6. Everybody that I encounter are only characters in my play and can do no more or less than they've been instructed to do.Robert's book has done volumes for me so far and I'm so delighted with myself that I created him to come into my life at this time. This book is not for everyone but if it is for you I promise that you will know it.

I bought and read this book on the recommendation of a well-respected friend who loved it so much that he read and re-read it several times. Quick background on myself--very open-minded both spiritually and financially, and like to read "self help" books such as this one which expand my thinking. So this definitely is my genre of book.I will make several bullet-point comments about the book, but first a quick summarizing review. I like the author's personality and the way he presents his ideas. It's clear that he has read from a similar "stock" of books that I've read from over the past 15 years. As a matter of fact, Scheinfeld's entire premise of the world being an illusion was already proposed and covered extensively in "A Course In Miracles" over 30 years ago. This is not a new theory.With all of this as a backdrop, I found the book to be quite light in actual content. There just isn't much to it...he explains the "world is an illusion" premise for several chapters, "backs it up" with "physics", and then tells you what his process is for busting loose. Then he goes on to tell some stories and give some specific examples about people who have been applying the work. But the meat of it, the process, is explained in a handful of pages. I guess all the lead-up had me waiting for something really interesting and novel, but the process itself was sort of something you might learn in a Psych class as a way to deal with repressed anger, frustration, etc. Nothing revolutionary, though could certainly be helpful for someone who had not been exposed to the idea before.Here are some brief bullet-point "issues" I had with the book, or where it just didn't grab me the way it seems to have grabbed several others on here (and my friend who recommended it to me):* His entire process is really just one of releasing resistance, which is a core tenet of many spiritual/psychology teachings...anyone who releases resistance, especially where it's most heavy (money, relationships), will be better off and have things flow more smoothly in their lives. This is pretty old stuff spiritually speaking, and has been a pretty consistent theme in self-help literature for decades. Not that his process is bad or that it wouldn't help people, but just that if you've studied other teachings and books in this area, you would've already run across several similar processes to release resistance.* If the bank account isn't real and doesn't matter, and if he is truly in level 2 and we are all just at level 1, then why is he even charging for the book? He claims he lives level 2 now, which he describes as infinite manifestation, etc. He also says that he used to believe that his businesses were the source of his abundance/income, but now he knows they're not. OK, then why doesn't he give away or sell his businesses? Or just let them go? Give them to charity? Wouldn't that get him even more out of phase 1 thinking and the money game? He can supposedly instantly manifest money in his "bank account" (because it's not really there anyway) at will, yet how much money is he charging everyone who goes to his seminars? Why doesn't he just make the bank account number change and skip the "work" involved? Well, of course, because we all know he really can't instantly manifest...if he could, then he wouldn't bother charging people on how to do same.* His "backing" of his "world as an illusion" theory with quantum physics should've just been avoided altogether. If one is going to even attempt to bring science into a self-help spirituality book, then let's introduce things like the scientific method, publish the Busting Loose process in scientific journals for peer review, etc. But of course the author's work couldn't stand that type of scrutiny because it's very subjective and theory-based. I'm merely pointing out that he attempts to use vague concepts from quantum physics to bring credibility to his story, while he surely knows darn well that his book would be torn to shreds (figuratively and perhaps literally) at a quantum physics convention of PhD scientists.* So the author makes it very clear early on that he had made many, many, many (did I say many?) millions of dollars in the "Phase 1" game. Furthermore, his grandfather started a Fortune 500 company, from which I'm guessing the author had a dollar or two make its way down to him. Yet he repeats endlessly how nobody can win the Phase 1 game, nobody can win the money game, etc. He and I may have different definitions of "winning the money game", but when you get to the point where you could pay cash for a multi-million dollar house, drive several fancy cars, own several of your own businesses (be your own boss), have kids in private schools, etc., well if he hadn't figured out how to live a content life under those circumstances, he's not going to enlist the sympathy of most of his readers.* If everything is fake and nothing real, then why would anyone care if their checking account has $100 or $100,000 in it? He continually makes the point that if you have nothing in your bank account that this is not a bad thing, then it must also be true that having $100,000 in it is not a good thing. So why does anyone care which their balance is? Well, of course the answer is because in this "illusory" world, more money is preferred over less money. That is a judgment according to the author, but according to my way of thinking it's just "life" (or math). Put differently, whether this world is an illusion or not, we are still living 24 hours a day immersed in the illusion...so does it really help to consider it an illusion as strongly as the author does? I'm not so sure.* The book will definitely serve best those who have major money issues and mental hangups about money such as feelings of inadequacy, lack of abundance mentality, negative attitude, etc. I would at least lightly recommend the book to those people. I would not recommend the book to people who are doing well for themselves already and have a healthy attitude towards money and life...I just don't feel it will hit home with that group.* It seems to me that the author and his students are still fully in the money game...they just have a better, more relaxed attitude about their jobs, businesses, bills, etc., but they still have all of those things that comprise what I would call "the money game" (aka business). So nobody's really busting out of the "money game"...they're simply dealing with it differently. Which is all fine and well, but the title misleads here in my opinion.* There's a whole chapter detailing weird things happening to him, his family, and students of his, and he attributes the weirdness to working his process, but the majority of the things he's mentioned are things that have either happened to me, or to a friend, etc. There are no doubt coincidences in life and at least a few times a year, the freakiest of coincidences happen to me. They're really fun and cool, just like the ones he mentions. But he attempts to directly conclude from those weird things that the world is not solid and that working his process is what causes those coincidences to manifest...and there I disagree. Anyone who releases resistance and "goes with the flow" of life, which is all his process is having them do, will see more of these interesting coincidences and happenings in their life. At least that's been my experience.* I felt like there was a persistent contradiction/confusion between everything being a hologram and things actually mattering...in one breath he would have a student who was all excited about new money making it into a bank account, and in the next breath, when someone else's bank account was empty, then life wasn't real and the bank account not only didn't matter, but didn't exist. So if it doesn't exist and doesn't matter, and if judgments (negative or positive) keep you stuck in phase 1, then positive judgments such as getting excited about new bank account money should be avoided, right? It's like when things are bad they are fake and illusory but when they're good, that's good phase 2 evidence. You can't have your cake and eat it too is a good saying for this approach.All in all, it's a relatively entertaining book and certainly could help the right audience. But again, there is no real new material hashed out here...if you've read books by Esther Hicks, Byron Katie, Wayne Dyer, Deepak Chopra, et al., this book will likely offer you nothing new.

This book is definitely not what I expected!!!!I expected saving and investing advice, how to plan for retirement.. just the usual financial advice.However! As a big fan of all metaphysical and philosophical things, I was super pleasantly surprised!!!Not even one thing in there advised anything on traditional financing, but rather, a way on how to literally bust loose from the rat wheel all together!!!Once I got 3/4 of the way through, I realised the phase 2 living, the way it is once you bust loose, is actually sort of how my life has been for the last 7 years…. But this book helped me finally realise what was happening to me, and why I live the way I do!!!!!! Money always comes to me at the right time for anything I need, without worry.Anyways, this book, I would not recommend to most people as it’s veryyyyy out there, however, when this book finds the right person, at the right time!!!!!! It will make you level up!I have just ordered all Roberts other books, absolutely excited!

When I read this book, I had a semi-open mind, I chose which concepts that resonated with me and I didn't discard the rest - well, I just...wasn't ready to accept those ideas at the time, truth be told, I thought it was a tad odd. However further into the book, my attitude relaxed a bit and I approached the process with wonder (like a a child discovering something new), that means I had no expectations attached to seeing results and I swear things got weirder as it went along. I still going through the book and I suspect it will need another read through at a future date.

This book came along just at the right time and delivered just what I needed to hear. Although, everything he's saying in it is stuff I've been noticing and wondering about for years. Ir runs very deep. I feel this kind of book will only be for those who have perhaps tried everything from meditation to law of attraction and found those approaches somewhat limiting, since we use those approaches to make ourselves and our lices "better" .... thereby implying unconsciously that we and our lives are never good enough and we end up in a state of resistance to life as it unfolds (this resistance being the real problem).This guy shows an easier way to meet each experience or feeling and to dive into it without wishing to change or run away from it ... thereby reclaiming our power and no longer giving it away.

This book is full of amazing insights, stories from real life, guidelines organized in a structured form. Besides its content, what I liked about the book is the language: simple and no-nonsense writing style. The author gives more than just intructions and calls-to-action. It's a cosmic perspective that is being revealed throughout the reading process. Quite hard to explain it in a review format this is something that can only be experienced personally.

Very enlightening. Gave me a whole new perspective on life and how to live it because at the end of the day this book is not just about money or financial abundance. It cascades to every area of life.