The Matrix & The Way
By Simon Dawe, published on April 1, 2015
Last week I had the most extraordinary experience of the Matrix. Years ago I experienced it as a fun idea for a film, later I saw more parallels to life and grew in understanding. Last week I got an experience of it; it was an awareness, a ‘being with’. I was aware I was in it and managed to surpass it somehow… moving through it, jumping into ‘Mr Jones’. That might sound odd. The following is an attempt to flesh that out. What happened was that my usual reactive ‘No!’, the reaction of a child’s ego, became a ‘Yes’ to what is within me, my inner power, my I AM. The experience was of timelessness and of being very powerful.
It came from putting on the clothes of humility (not something I am prone to do). It came because I gave up my resistance to what I saw around me and simply stood or sat or bathed in love, a love that came up from within. Standing in that place, from that perspective, there was nothing to fear, nothing to react to. Not in a passive way. I was (as a result) fully present.
I’ve been struggling with seeing the One People fall into Some People in the past few months, over events in Morocco. It’s played out the same way over thousands of years. We get ‘right’ about something and offended, we put aside humility and love, we separate from ourselves and from one another. We all deal with ‘not enough’ (or not) as we hold up a mirror. We often don’t like what we see. What we cannot stand in another, we cannot stand in our selves. When we judge, we bring judgement. Love is who we are. If we don’t keep coming back to that, through forgiveness (of ourselves and others) we are lost. No longer awake.
Listening to George K this week, I couldn’t help but hear parallels to the life of Jesus the Nazarene. Both spoke of the need to step out of opposition, reaction and stepping into knowing who we are. There is a curious point of discord, if you the read the gospels of Jesus – he speaks of not reacting and yet takes a whip to thieving stall holders in the Temple, throwing them out. His life was not a passive one. Was that a contradiction? The question for me has long been, how do I live in love and not turn a blind eye to the evil in this world. We become what we focus on the most and yet evil thrives when good men do nothing. Part of the programming is being passive. Another part of the program is being reactive. There is power in the way between, like the invisible platform in Harry Potter. 😀 Jesus called it a narrow gate, a reference to the eye of the needle, a gate in Jerusalem so narrow that to escape the approach of an enemy, one had to strip the camel of everything it was carrying to pass through. One might call those things baggage. 😀
There’s a wonderful moment in the Matrix films, where Neo comes into his power, holding out a hand to still bullets in mid air and seeing them drop to the floor. It is the turning point in the film of his experience; from running and fighting (fight or flight) to standing in his strength and seeing his enemy (Mr Jones) flee before him.
We are creator beings, something the rulers of this world are not. Our doing comes out of our being and our being is I AM; the name of the one without name YHWH; I am that I am.
That last phrase is an interesting one. It implies that if we do not practice being, we are not being our selves. Being is expressed in doing. Lately a Zen proverb has come to mind and hung around – “To know and not to do, is not to know at all.” We cannot be love, without doing love. It’s a work I experience in my walk along ‘the way’, stepping from one side to the other. I do nothing, I react; I come back to my centre, strip off my baggage through forgiveness, enter through the narrow gate again and again.
It’s worth pointing out that ‘Mr Jones’ is a program, morphing out of everyday sleeping people and that it is just as much a threat to the machinery or ‘the system’ or ‘the world’ as to awakened, living human beings. If only I could remember half the thoughts that come to mind; that flee at the thought of consequence (another part of our programming). It happened just now. I thought, it fled. A moment of something profound to share and it’s gone as an obedient mind shuts it down, well trained in the art of subjugation. It will come back to me and I’ll share it with you then.
Sending out much love to you on your walk in life!
Thank you Simon for your words. It reminds me to just say No! No, I will not allow that which does not serve me. Please do not share email address.