Second of a seven-part series
As installment two in this seven-part article series, I will address the pervasive spiritual hunger in our world by making a case for the necessity of unveiling fundamental truths about the design and framework of our current Earth existence. Before embarking on that quest, I want to acknowledge that I have received a plethora of requests to offer my interpretive insights and impressions about theories, prophecies and predictions associated with Dec. 21, 2012. As promised in part one, future installments of this seven-part series will address that date, as well as earth changes and the birth of the Aquarian Age. However, I cannot ethically address any theories, prophecies or predictions surrounding the date Dec. 21, 2012 without doing my best to speak to the larger context – the veiled truths about the design and framework from within which all Earth documented theories, prophecies and predictions emerge.
To uncover the veiled truths and obtain answers to questions – such as, “Is there something wrong with the way in which current Earth existence is designed?” – I will reference the film, The Matrix, written and directed by Larry and Andy Wachowski, and work with it as a modern myth.
Myths as revelation
We have many misconceptions about myths, mostly because they have been demeaned and labeled as fables or fairy tales, when in actuality myths are the product of revelation. We tend to regard revelation as something achieved from arduous study. However, it is most often the fruit of an open-hearted, contemplative desire to uncover truth. Furthermore, myths work with information that is encoded. The codes come in the form of symbols (objects, images or written words that represent something by association, resemblance or convention), metaphors (comparisons used to suggest a resemblance between two things that are not alike in most ways but are similar in a particular way), and allegories (a symbolic narrative with an abstract or spiritual meaning; a figurative treatment of one subject under the guise of another). In many ways, an allegory is an extended metaphor in which objects, persons and actions in the narrative are equated with underlying moral, social, religious or political significance and characters are often personifications of abstract ideas, like charity, greed or envy.
Myths are parables, and parables are stories containing profound teachings with two meanings, a literal meaning and a symbolic meaning. Myths, therefore, deliver implicit messages. Because it is our right and responsibility to decipher encoded messages, the study of myths is a search for information. I believe that The Matrix is an encoded myth or parable, the product of revelation describing indispensable, rudimentary truths about the design and framework of our Earth existence. For me, the word “matrix” is synonymous with a surrounding substance or prevailing conditions of a milieu.
A virtual reality
The basic premise of The Matrix is that the world is not objectively real, but rather a computer simulation or virtual reality (the Matrix), a complex virtual reality wired into human minds by a species of artificial intelligence (machines). The species, who emerged victorious over humans after fighting a war for generations that virtually destroyed the world, have taken over and done two things: they have used human’s technological expertise to create a computer simulation, and they have bred humans for use as fuel. Millions of humans sleep within pods attached to vast, complex structures while their bio-energy is drained to fuel the machine world. While humans are asleep, the virtual reality (the Matrix) is inputted into their minds to keep them occupied. Morpheus (whose name means “the God of Dreams”) describes what took place: “They built a prison out of our past, wired it to our brains and turned us into slaves.”
Morpheus is a member of a small colony of humans who have managed to survive and remain independent from the machines in a location below Earth’s surface, called Zion. Their prophecy includes a messiah (“the One”) who will aid in their triumph over the matrix, restoring human dominion to the world. A woman named Trinity leads the foretold messiah, an extremely talented computer hacker named Neo (an anagram for “the One”), to Morpheus who is convinced that Neo is “the One.”
Two options
As part of an invitation to extract Neo from his enslaved existence, Morpheus offers Neo two options: the red pill or the blue pill. The choice of pills illustrates our right to choose between truth and illusion or ignorance.
The red pill will answer the question, “What is the matrix?” – a question that can be answered only by removing Neo from it. On the contrary, the blue pill will ensure that his life, or illusion of life, will go on as before.
As Neo reaches for the red pill, Morpheus warns him: “Remember, all I’m offering is the truth. Nothing more.”
Once extracted, Neo awakens to the real world, a ravaged wasteland where most of humanity is held captive by the machines that live off their bio-energy and imprison their minds.
“The Matrix is everywhere,” Morpheus informs Neo. “It’s all around us, even here in this room. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.”
The species or machines have the capacity to shape shift, inhabiting physical form as sinister agents. As a rebel against the machines, Neo must return to the Matrix and confront the agents who are devoted to obliterating the entire human rebellion. Neo’s training for his return to the Matrix is a technical/digital meditation. Just as meditative practices are intended to transform one’s perception and experience of reality, the software utilized in Neo’s training produces a transformation of his mind. However, Morpheus and his team can only give Neo tools to embrace his identity and fulfill his destiny. He must complete his own rite of passage for himself.
One of the rebel group members eventually betrays Morpheus and Neo to the machine agents, resulting in Morpheus’ capture. Neo rescues Morpheus, battles the virtual agents, is killed and resurrected and is finally able to conquer the Matrix. His final words – “I know you’re real proud of this world you’ve built, the way it works, all the nice little rules and such, but I’ve got some bad news…I’ve decided to make a few changes” – are a warning to the entity controlling the Matrix.
Is truth worth pursuing?
The choice between the red and blue pill entreats us to grapple with the question: Is truth worth pursuing?
Taking the red pill represents the risk and discomfort that comes with freedom. Why should we choose to pursue truth, particularly if we either believe we already know the truth or we are doing well under the current system? Besides, by accepting what we are told, our experience of life can seem easier. In addition, there is a social pressure in nearly all cultures on Earth to fit in, and for many, questioning the status quo bears the danger of ostracism and persecution.
Furthermore, how do we know that the status quo is not the truth? Within the system of the Matrix, one has a path to follow, and this removes much of the risk and discomfort experienced by a trailblazer. Why go anywhere else when the Matrix will provide us with everything? Why risk our current beliefs for the promise of truth, even if it brings freedom?
The red pill is an unknown quantity, and although we are told that it can help us uncover the truth, by taking it we risk trading our reality for something we’ve never experienced. In the film, Morpheus says to Neo, “You have to understand that many people are not ready to be unplugged, and many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it.”
If the arguments for the blue pill are so numerous and compelling, why take the red pill? First of all, because not risking the freedom that truth brings is tantamount to mere existence, and mere existence reduces humans to the level of useful objects divorced from their true purpose. Secondly, questioning ourselves and our experiences is fundamental to the human condition. Children ask a seemingly never-ending stream of questions from early age, and it is only with education and socialization that many stop asking questions.
A conspiratorial mystery
I believe that in the undercurrent – beneath the short-lived, fleeting changes and temporary gratification garnered from the voluminous quantities of information this spiritual renaissance constantly delivers, beneath the excitement and hope accompanying the history of sixty years of paranormal experiences, under the waves of repeated opportunities for rapid spiritual awakening that we ride in expectant seeking – our hunger for a clear, resounding experience of truth, for unadorned and unambiguous seeds of unequivocal new beginnings drives us to courageously uncover and face whatever has been shrouded in a conspiratorial mystery so that, at last, we might be released, liberated and infused with glory.
I believe that we, the ordinary people, are ready to take extraordinary steps in the direction of re-examining the condition of our current Earth reality.
I believe we are ready to accept that we are living in a Matrix, and most of us, like nearly all the humans in the film, don’t know it. We are the unwittingly compliant servants of forces we want to pretend do not exist. Although our world is not in literal danger of being taken over by sentient machines, this myth beseechingly challenges us to ask:
- How are we programmed?
- What aspects of our reality are artificially constructed?
- In what ways are we enslaved within a conceptual prison?
- Aren’t we raised/programmed to like certain things and dislike others?
- Aren’t we prodded and manipulated, from early childhood, not only to define ourselves according to our material wealth, the products we own, the sports we watch, the things we’ve accomplished, the “influential” circles within which we travel, but also to become addicted to these forms of materialistic capitalism?
Belong to something
Multi-national corporate and political structures rule our lives by assuring us that they have it under control and that as long as we follow the right path (their path), think the right thoughts and buy the right products, we’ll be rewarded. These powers turn our innate desire to belong to something into a twisted campaign to propagandize and promote products that enslave us.
This is evident in the popular phrase used by businesses: “Think outside the box.” Here again, the powers pose a deceptively encouraging offer to escape the control of the Matrix. However, those in control are clever. By offering us the illusion of freedom, they use our desire to break out as a way to actually keep us inside.
The Matrix is apparent also in the illusion that we have a choice in who is governing us. The Democratic and Republican parties are so similar that choosing between them amounts to no real choice at all, exemplifying an essential element of the Matrix metaphor: “Give people the illusion of self-determination and they will remain under control.”
For many of us, it might feel relatively easy to accept that the Matrix governs the design and framework of Earth’s political and social systems, economic constructs and most religious doctrines. For some of us, it might feel relatively easy to accept that the Matrix also exists in our New Age spiritual systems.
But what if the Matrix governs the larger context? What if the Matrix exists in all dimensions emanating from the Earth? What if the Source, the creative wellspring at the center of all that is, needs us not only to re-examine the condition of our current Earth reality and accept that we are living in a Matrix, but also to consider that there are multi-dimensional beings who designed and maintain a larger Matrix, whose intent is to keep us ignorant, distracted and divided as a way of hindering both our individual and collective spiritual evolution?
What if?
Take the red pill
I am neither suggesting that we toss out all the tenets of our current spiritual systems nor that we completely abandon our current spiritual practices. I am, however, challenging us to take the red pill so that we might uncover more and more threads in the tapestry of truth. Considering unveiled truths doesn’t invalidate our previous quests, diminish our discoveries or reduce to folly the time we’ve invested in them. Every step we’ve taken and every truth we’ve uncovered until now has carved pathways to greater receptivity and more profound revelation.
Throughout human existence, most of those who have questioned and inquired have been ordinary people who have been motivated to open their consciousness, because they genuinely yearned to explore uncommon knowledge about their origins and to re-examine reality as they knew it. It is not true that only a select few with exceptional, advanced perception have the ability to decipher and interpret spiritual complexities. From long before the dawn of recorded history, our yearning for answers to such questions as who are we, how and by whom were we created, why are we here, what lies beyond the material world, why is there so much suffering and what occurs when we die, has prevailed.
Now, more than at any other time, we are being summoned to take the red pill so that we might be released from any and all conspiratorial shrouds to sow the seeds of unequivocal new beginnings.
I leave all of us with words of Frances Moore Lappé from Time for Progressives to Grow Up: “We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy – from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses – that only recently have we awakened to see not only that ‘regular’ citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.”
