11. The Matrix
In the movie, “The Matrix”, evil machines take over the planet. In order to provide energy to keep themselves going, they grow human beings in pods to be used as batteries. The machines feed off the energy the human bodies produce. The humans were kept unaware of their encased, imprisoned state by feeding a computer simulated world into their minds. They didn’t realize they were in a pod, a prison, but thought that they “existed” in the computer simulated world which was referred to as the matrix.
The story is reflective of what we are experiencing. Our pod, our prison, is the separated mind. In our pod, our prison, we would experience fear, unfathomable terror, extreme guilt and murderous rage just as the human batteries would if they realized they were in a pod. It would be literally unbearable. The cause of all this dis-ease is that we believe we have attacked God and that in retaliation He will terminate us at any second. So in order to deal with this intolerable situation, we make up a simulated computer world where we seem to exist and where we can pretend we are not in prison and can hide from God. This world becomes our drug, our alcohol, our coping mechanism to deal with the anxiety, in our one mind, that is threatening to drive us insane.
In the movie the characters, tired of existing in the fake placid world of the matrix, wanting truth and the real world no matter how ugly, find a way to escape from the pod to “reality”. There is a difference between the movie’s “liberation” solution and the real way to get back to our true Selves in God. Real freedom is not attained by escaping from our pods, our separated mind, but by learning that just as our computer generated world is not real nor is the pod, our separated mind, where we think we are experiencing terror and guilt. We never separated from the Mind of God. Our mind separating never happened. We are not in prison. God is not angry with us. We didn’t attack Him. He is not about to annihilate us. We never did anything but fall asleep and dream a foolish dream which we can awaken from at any time.
In our awakening process let us remember that the illusion is our drug. We made it to alleviate our anxiety. Detoxing off of it is challenging. We will be tempted to make it real at every turn. But detoxing off the illusion is an essential step to “getting” that the separated mind is not real and releasing our unconscious guilt. We can and will do this by supporting each other and being guided by the Holy Spirit. It is God’s Will and ours.