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Location: Boston, MA
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After concluding the movies, beginning the book "The Matrix Philosophies", and reading much into spirituality, Daoism, and like concepts...it has occurred to me yet another similiarity, and 'Matrix' exist that most people pay no heed.
The 'plugged in' feeling we have is the of the Ego. The little voice inside our heads, programmed through our 5 senses by experience, authorities, images, sound, touch, site, and so on. It's the part of each one of us that says...
"I must have a college degree to by successful."
"I must marry by..."
"I cannot do..."
"Life is hard..."
These statements in and of themselves are constructs of a reality we did not decide upon, but were given against our will. A parallel exists as Neo learns to shed his own limiting beliefs once he re-enters the Matrix and learns to dominate it like never before. Once he realizes he is more spirit, more etheral, and not a body inside the matrix, he is content to free his mind like never before. And just as you can live freely in the matrix, so, too, can you die, at least in body and mind, but not spirit. [As witnessed when Neo gives himself up to Smith in the end.]
The same exist in our own world. The Ego is a piece of our mental construct that has needs and desires, which are often endless. Once one is finished, another crops up. Once you have the Audi A6, you get the BMW, or the JAG. Once you've met the girl you've long desired, the expectation fizzles and you need a second conquest. Simplicity is not a virtue of the Ego world. It is the Matrix created living "in this world," of the body and mind, but not of the spirit.
I can reference many works outside of the Bible broadening one's perspective on the spirituality of life, in addition to the Ego. Just a search on google or Amazon will provide the resources you need to awaken from your Matrix, which each one of us have covering our visions this own moment. I can see them veiled over friends' eyes, or families eye's. Programs, running, preordaining action with no ability to choose.
Until Neo left the Matrix, he was never able to truely choose his destiny. Once he did, he had the decision of true life or death, not just body death or mind death, but spiritual sacrifice.
I am posting this here, because the parallels to the Real World are so near perfect, it should be inspiring to see it and leave it.
When a person is locked into the Matrix, they cannot choose their destiny, a program has done so for them. They live life in their mind, feeling as if they were cursed by some 'higher being' for the lot they lead. But then one day, you're offered the choice of a red pill or a blue pill, and awakening to reality can be just as maddening as dying a mental death, which so many ascribed to by not living as they truly desire.
Each one of us will find a parallel explanation and analogies to help motivate, inspire, and educate. I use the Matrix in this way to teach how the brain truly is used in such a way, how so many people live 'in their brain,' and not in the world we truly have.
Remember when you were a child, and everday was an experience to be had? I recall visiting cousins in middle parts of Maine, just south of Bangor. For a kid in his early teens, it would seem a barren place. However, for the 4 of us ( 2 cousins and a brother) no statement is farther from the truth. With boating, snowmobiling, endless woods with rope and nails and hammers, we created any world we desired, and there existed no authority to correct us. We'd stay up late, and tasteful foods, and enjoyed whatever weather came to us and adapt. Happiness was the theme, and what life was was determined by us, not the external environment. No trip was alike, and all trips were miraculous. Yet as we grow...
We label life.
"Chair."
"Woods."
"Weather."
And stave off the imagination that was so integral in creating a vivid life. And from that world, so many great thinga have been created. I dare say that Disney, the Wachowski brothers, or the creators of Halo and Halo2 have enabled them to lose this grip on imagination. And people wonder why it seems success and true happiness are so hard to find, and why it's often replaced by booze, sex, material things, addictions and the like. True life is found within, not without.
"Anything that can be acquired, can be taken away."
The World of the Ego, or in this case "the Social Matrix" exists in any possibility where you negate or curtail the possibility of growth life. Where you cut back potential, or opportunity. Its the world where a ceiling exists, just as in the Matrix, "people jacked in with inadequate programming could not jump like Neo or Trinity or Morpheus, but once installed with proper programming, any body could pull off such moves." Hence you could learn the programming to ride a bike, to fight, to fly, but you could NOT learn the vision and possess the mind of awareness without accepting the fact that beliefs limit one's potential. Until Neo threw such things away, he was not able to succeed as he planned, and in almost any instance Morpheus made it known that his 'thinking' was preventing his growth.
Once Neo gave way to his 'feelings' he was more powerful than ever. He 'sensed' the machines, he killed Sentinels, he fought brigades of 'smiths', and yet, nothing was a match for him. Much of life is faced forcing things, when all along it was right there, and much more effortless when u jump in the flow of it.
In each of our own worlds we must aspire to be our own "Neo", to escape the Matrix we've too long into, and I'm not referring to just job, that's minor compared to the bigger picture. No. There are people with great jobs who are unhappy. There are wealthy who seek death. There are happy, who seek money, as if it would complete themselves. There are those who seek love, yet possess none for their own life. There are those with much love, yet give none.
When the mention agents, there's always going to be agents seeking to turn "us to their side" or "to police the heretics." It does not behoove society as a whole to have so much personal freedom, then we might enable personal responsibility  and we might actually have a more logical, methodical society on our hands. In the case of women, it does not behoove them to enable men to enage their sexual power either. Men, being the life long 'choosers' of mates, despise the unbalanced ability of men to have 'options' (hence equality and feminism). Hence why males undergo much more of an onslaught of derision from females just by our basic nature.
Picking on a girl is considered 'male and chauvinistic'.
Picking on a guy is considered normal behavior, and expected.
Which is all perfectly fine. We assume certain responsibilities in our various 'purposes', but the bottom line remains, a matrix exists. Each person is born into one, and to the degree of its individual success, the programmed experiences success or failure in the eyes of society.
The mind, or the EGO, likes orderly pieces that enable definition so we understand how to operate. Terms like...
Thug
Player
Job
Nice
...mean nothing, but what they mean to each individual person and their frame of reference to each.
I could go on all day about what the matrix means, but on a grander scale, it combined much of Philosophy that people had never been exposed to. In addition, movies are rarely made for 1 mode of interpretation, but many, through the eyes of the viewer, just like life.
Most of you are dead on about what 'they' leave out. Having reviewed the Revolutions, it was a quite a big WHOOPS when 'Merv' asks for the Oracles eyes (a huge request on anyone's part) and they merely counter-offer by fighting, and then offering their lives? No movie, particularly with such a cult-like following as the Matrix, should make such a faux pas.
In reality, it should been 4 movies or more, spaced out, and written properly. I review 'Riddick' the other day, and by virtue of the Director's Cut, the whole movie made sense, all through the addition of 15-20 minutes of technical details previously left out. I was in shock when I realized that major points were left out (such as how Riddick is a furian, the glowing hand on his chest, his past life, who Riddick and the Necromanger came to know each other in childhood, and so on).
In summation, a Matrix does exist. Not in a social, pyramidal structure, such as corporations, or a feudal system, but in the sense of a programmed brain seeing only certain visions. And to test this...consider the point when you buy or see something you deem unique. At some point, you make mention of this to a friend, or family member. Over a short period of time, they, and you, notice it increasingly more. It was always there, you just never focused on it. You were mind was not "programmed" to see it, so you bypassed over it like much else in life.
Titanium Fire
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