Unplugging from the Matrix

The Matrix is one of my all time favorite movies. What it symbolizes is a message that is desperately needed by our species at this point in our evolution and its communicated with a masterful use of symbolism. That message is quite simply: What we normally take to be reality is nothing more than a dreamworld created by our minds.

The body and personality we walk through this world with are not who and what we really are. The act of believing that is all we are is something we have been conditioned into and it’s also the source of our limitation and suffering.

I don’t mean to demonize this way of existing — exploring limitation is a natural part of evolution in my view — but there comes a point where expansion must take place or limitation becomes destructive. We have reached that point, exceeded it in fact.

In the movie, the main character, Neo, lives a life of dissatisfaction. He knows that something is not right with the world but he cannot figure out what it is. At one point in the movie he is contacted by people who are already free of the Matrix (the dreamworld) and invited to see the truth or reality for what it really is.

This symbolizes what many people right now are going through. Those that continue to live mainstream lives are feeling more and more like something is very wrong with the world and their usual activities are less and less satisfying. That wrongness with the world has gotten much more intense these last few years and decades and that wrongness is the structure of lack and limitation beginning to collapse in on itself.

When Neo is contacted by the character Morpheus he is given a choice to take a blue pill and remain in the dreamworld or take a red pill and wake up to true reality. In the individual’s journey there comes a point where higher self or spirit makes an appearance in the dream to initiate the awakening process. Morpheus is the greek god of dreams who could take human form when needed and this character appears in the dream as a figure to initiate a transformation for the main character.

Once the red pill is taken or the awakening process begins, there is no turning back, it cannot be undone. When we reach the point where higher self comes to tap us on the shoulder we must respond. If we resist this wake up call we will suffer more and more intensely until we get the message and make the turn inward.

In the movie, Neo chooses the red pill and is unplugged, so to speak, from the Matrix. The is an incredibly painful and disorienting process as he realizes that everything he took to be reality is not in fact real but just a projection of his mind and part of a simulated dream world within which he had been imprisoned.

Neo means ‘new’ or ‘one,’ and in the movie Neo is often referred to as ‘the One’. This is a nice piece of symbolism given that, when we wake up to reality as it truly is, there is a realization that what we really are is part of One singular reality which can be called Spirit, Life, God or whatever label you prefer.

The process of beginning to unplug from the Matrix is very painful for most of us because essentially everything, every aspect of our lives begins to change and transform in profound and initially uncomfortable ways. We no longer get much comfort and pleasure from the things we used to and as we begin to see through the illusion we’re confronted with the vastness and limitlessness of the unknown which is terrifying to us because we’re used to living in a comfortably limited world.

Perhaps the most difficult part of this process is when we have become aware of the dream but are not yet fully free from its grasp. This is very much like having a foot in two worlds. We can’t live the old way and are not yet free enough to live the new, more expanded way. The necessity then becomes taking the final step into the new life of limitless potential which requires a gigantic leap of faith and enormous trust in something which we don’t yet have a clear experience of.

It’s a bit like jumping off a cliff and trusting you will be caught by something and not be smashed to bits, quite a tall order! Nevertheless this is what is often required, and once that step is taken a quickening begins where we then have the ability to reclaim all the power we have invested in limited beliefs, physical forms and emotional patterns.

As we reclaim that power and remind ourselves of our true nature as limitless beings, over and over again our holographic dreamworld dissolves and we finally see reality for what it truly is, vast and limitless and completely interconnected.

More and more of us are being invited by spirit to take the leap off the cliff and wake up from the dream. When we do so, we become vehicles for divine expression and are free to fully live our potential with the full power of the universe behind everything we do.

“Of myself I can do nothing,” goes the quote from the bible. Who we really are is the power and presence of the divine acting through the mask of personality. We are infinite power, infinite abundance, infinite joy … infinite being.

So let’s wake up and BE what we truly ARE and CREATE the dream of LIFE without limitations!