Category: Picturezz

Let me tell you why you’re here. You’re here because you know something. What you know you can’t explain, but you feel it. You’ve felt it your entire life, that there’s something wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is, but it’s there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad.

– Morpheus, The Matrix

I’m a thinker, it’s just my nature.

Call it intensity, call it passion – but as enriching as the experience of deep introspection can be, it’s often the burden of many an artist’s soul.

But it must be faced, for to attempt to escape from that splinter in your mind is a dangerous pursuit that will often manifest itself in some of the most unhealthy and destructive forms of prolonged self-abuse.

If you’re thinking, if your gears are going, it’s because your brain is trying to resolve something – and you can’t ignore it.

In my journey through the world, I am always looking for signs and I’m willing to blindly venture down the rabbit hole in order to find them.

This willingness, combined with my unbridled ADHD, makes for a life that’s full of signs.

Tonight I was listening to Phil Collins and one of the youtube commenters said something to the effect of ‘GARBAGE , PETER GABRIEL KICKS PHILS ASS, SCREW THIS POP SHIT.’

So, I decided to listen to some Peter Gabriel, and what a beautiful thing that I did.

I have an egocentric tendency to relate things to my personal life or current situation. This is probably a result of my desire to discover the signs and messages in life, but it provides me with a great power, which is the ability to use everyday things (like a Peter Gabriel song) as lenses through which I can view the world from a perspective other than my own.

That allows me to better understand myself, and life as a whole.

What struck me about this song was it’s message of transcending pain through awakening.

Love I get so lost, sometimes
Days pass and this emptiness fills my heart
When I want to run away
I drive off in my car
But whichever way I go
I come back to the place you are

All my instincts, they return
And the grand facade, so soon will burn
Without a noise, without my pride I reach out from the inside

In your eyes
The light the heat
In your eyes
I am complete
In your eyes
I see the doorway to a thousand churches
In your eyes
The resolution of all the fruitless searches
In your eyes
I see the light and the heat
In your eyes Oh,
I want to be that complete
I want to touch the light
The heat I see in your eyes

Love, I don’t like to see so much pain
So much wasted and this moment keeps slipping away
I get so tired of working so hard for our survival
I look to the time with you to keep me awake and alive

And all my instincts, they return
And the grand facade, so soon will burn
Without a noise, without my pride
I reach out from the inside

The lyrics perfectly mirrored the song in my heart and it spoke for me, which is what I think good music should accomplish.

The reason it spoke for me is because right now I am floating in a place where I am not living from my gut, from my instincts – and that’s a painful place to be.

This is a song about instincts returning and the grand facade burning.

It’s about reaching out from the inside and establishing a new and loving relationship with yourself, where you are complete and you’ve found the resolution of all the fruitless searches.

To me, it’s about awakening to the experience of being reconnected to your authentic-self.

Your authentic-self is the true you. The person connected to your passions, your purpose, your beliefs and your identity.

This is difficult, because the authentic-self is not the same you that has been so deeply conditioned and programmed.

Societal pressures that we’ve come to call ‘life’ trap us, and force us to compromise our heart and ignore our intuition. And once you awaken to that you will question everything you beleive in.

The questions I’ve started asking myself are:

What makes me tick? What are the driving forces in my life?

Why do I do what I do, and make the choices that I make?

What beliefs are dictating my being? and are they empowering or disempowering beliefs?

Those are questions that won’t leave me, it’s as if I have to live with them now.

I’ve started to try and answer them, and I’m beginning to discover so much more about my nature. But most importantly I’m realizing how conflicted it is with my reality.

I’m not trying to get too existential here, but when you realize that you’ve been making the wrong commitments and your priorities are completely paradoxical to your true-nature and your life is suffering as a result of your beliefs – then I think it’s a wise time to question what you believe in.

During his commencement speech at Stanford in 2005, Steve Jobs gave this sage anecdote:

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Unfortunately that answer has been no for me for far too long. Probably as is the case for many of us who aren’t living our truth.

Instead of living our truth, we are caught in the trap of trying to please everybody.

Why? We’ve been programmed to. Just like our parents were programed to try and please the gatekeepers. Employers, teachers, the opposite sex, the government – the entire system relies on us being compelled to try and appease it.

And that’s just one example of thinking that has been so deeply ingrained into us that we don’t even realize it.

From birth, we are plugged into a world that programs our thinking and our beliefs.

Welcome to the matrix.

But if we had the courage to deprogram our thinking, and truly examine our beliefs then we would have the power to define our world, rather than be defined by it.

That, my friend, is called unplugging from the matrix.

Here’s a great explanation of ‘unplugging from the matrix’ from Awake in The Now.

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…

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.

The higher-self has definitely tapped me on the shoulder. I’ve takien the red pill and I’m starting to experience the discomfort of seeing through the illusion of my beliefs and the choices they are producing.

There is no turning back from this awakening.

Now I really have to answer those same questions of:

What makes me tick? What are the driving forces in my life?

Why do I do what I do, and make the choices that I make?

What beliefs are dictating my being? and are they empowering or disempowering beliefs?

and just as important,

What are the beliefs that are holding me back from doing what I’d truly like to be doing and what I’m truly capable of doing?

and what beliefs are limiting my concept of what I’m capable of and what my limits are?

Clearly, for most all of us, fear is a central theme in the answers.

Many of us have likely heard of the concept of people being driven by fear.

We’re scared of letting people down, we are scared of being uncomfortable, we are scared of taking that most painful first step.

Whatever we are afraid of, we need to uncover our fears and face them as what they are: beliefs. And as I asserted, we need to ask if they are empowering or disempowering fears.

In my previous post, I embedded a youtube video where Will Smith can be seen explaining to PBS’ Charlie Rose that he is driven by fear:

‘I’m motivated by fear. Fear of fear! I hate being scared to do something, and I think what developed in my early days was the habit of attacking things that I was scared of.’

– Will Smith

What’s really interesting about what Will Smith said, is that although he admits to being motivated by fear, in his case, his fear is fear; being scared to do something.

So, in the case of Will Smith, his fear is an empowering belief, because it causes him to attack things to avoid being scared of them.

“So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”

– Franklin D. Roosevelt, Inaugural Address, March 4th 1933

That’s probably the only fear that’s going to empower us. The fear of being afraid to do anything.

If we are afraid of fear then we are afraid to be paralyzed by the ‘needed efforts to convert retreat into advance’.

And once we realize that’s the only fear worth fearing, then we stop being driven by limiting fears that are disempowering because they cause us to be afraid of taking action. Action shouldn’t be feared. Not taking action because we are afraid should be feared.

If we can re-frame our fears in this light, we will see that they are not protecting us, or keeping us safe. They are keeping us plugged into the matrix. And when we examine the root of the fears that have been guiding and defining us for so long, we will come to see that they are based in societal notions that have been imparted to us without any real critical thought.

We just accept that being successful is hard, and we are safer at a job, and all of the other ‘unjustified terrors’ that are keeping us in the uncomfortable place of having taken the red pill, but not walking through the door and becoming truly unplugged.

To truly unplug from the matrix, you need to establish a belief system that is completely rooted in the inner-voice of your heart, and the quiet yet unwavering intuition of your gut.

This sounds complex, to make the jump from the beliefs of the matrix to our own, but there’s actually a secret to it.

From the same video, in my previous post.

“Greatness is not this wonderful, esoteric, elusive, god-like feature that only the special among us will ever taste – you know it’s something that truly exists in all of us. It’s very simple: this is what I believe and I’m willing to die for it. Period. It’s that simple. I know who I am and I know what I believe, and that’s all I need to know, so from there you do what you need to do. I think what happens is we make this situation more complex – the normal among us, than it has to be (because we’re looking for complexity).”

If we want to find out what are beliefs are, we need only ask if we would be willing to die for them – and not necessarily in a literal sense, but absolutely in a figurative sense. Our true beliefs that are rooted in our authentic-self outside of the matrix have to be essential for our existence.

You either believe it or you don’t.

In this video, Will Smith talks about a lesson learned from Muhammad Ali on the critical nature of innate confidence as a belief that’s required for success.

If you don’t believe it – no one else will.

So if you can frame your beliefs on the idea that they will make or break you, then you can begin to establish beliefs that will unplug you from the matrix and connect you to the limitless nature of your true being.

You can unplug from the maxtrix wherever you are trapped by it.

You can go as deep as you want down the rabbit hole. It’s all dependent upon how much you wish to awaken to the programmed beliefs that keep us trapped in the matrix.

Maybe the matrix is your career, maybe it’s your dreams that lay stagnant because of your fear. Maybe it’s an entire life path, as defined by society. The matrix is nothing more than the software that our mind is running. Our physical being is the technology, and we don’t have to run the same software that everyone else is running. We can program our own beliefs to mirror those of the most self-actualized and successful members of our society. Those that are free from the rat-race, and are living a life that’s tailor made for them. Design your life and program yourself as required.

Start deprogramming yourself today. Find out exactly what your guiding systems are.

Your only fear should be fear of letting fear continue controlling you. Reach out from the inside and let your instincts return and the grand facade of the matrix will burn. Now that you are awakening to the matrix, it’s time to unplug. It’s your choice: you take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.

I’m trying to free your mind, but I can only show you the door. You’re the one that has to walk through it.

“There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance. We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create. Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life.” – John Lennon