On A Personal Note

I started writing this “Leaving The Matrix” series about two and a half months ago. Initially I was excited at the prospect of arranging the ideas I’ve been encountering, contemplating and testing over the last four or five years into a coherent whole. By the time I was finished with part 2 though, I found myself in a bit of a quandary. It had been coming on for quite a while, but about a month or so ago I hit a wall. I reached a point where I felt I actually had to stop writing about this sort of stuff, specifically metaphysics, for a time. To put it in a nutshell, it became clear to me that to continue writing this series with any sort of authenticity I had to sit with some things, I had to be with some unpleasantness for a while.

Born Into This
Unless you’re a particularly unusual person (or an alien from another galaxy) you were born into a set of screwed up circumstances. Maybe you’re thinking now that you had nice parents and you were raised in a nice town and you had an idyllic childhood. It was only later, when you got into your teens and twenties and thirties etc., that things became messier, you may be thinking. To this I could reply, “Think again.” That would not be the right response though. A better response would be, “Feel again.”

“born into this

into hospitals which are so expensive that it’s cheaper to die

into lawyers who charge so much it’s cheaper to plead guilty

into a country where the jails are full and the madhouses closed

into a place where the masses elevate fools into rich heroes” (1)

Spiritual Experiences

Spiritual and/or transcendental experiences can be very valuable. Seeing that our “normal”, everyday interpretation of reality is just one of many ways of seeing can be extremely useful. Encountering these new ways of seeing provides a window into a range of possibilities that have the potential to liberate us from beliefs that have tripped us up for decades. However, in my humble opinion, there is no set of ideas, no one spiritual experience, no one “seeing”, no matter how profound, that is a get out of emotional jail free card.

No Exceptions
It’s said that there have been people who are exceptions to this rule, people who have broken through all of their conditioning in one miraculous moment of inspiration. Personally, I am skeptical of all of these claims. History has shown us that transformations and “conversions” do occur, extremely rarely, in a form that appears to be instantaneous, in a sort of “all in one go” moment.(2) What is often not taken into account when these cases are spoken of though, is the very likely possibility that subcognitive transformative activity was going on “co-presently” in the minds of these people over quite a long period of time.(3)

As Long As One Is In Human Form
As long as one is in human form one is subject to the effects of one’s environment. If you were born into a culture then you were and will continue to be influenced and shaped, at least to some degree, by that culture. You will NEVER be above it all. You will NEVER transcend it all. Your teacher/guru didn’t transcend it all either. If he or she says that he or she did then, well, talk is as cheap as the cost of a best-seller. Buyer beware.

This is not to say that we can’t change our relationship to our formative landscape. Of course we can. Seeing through culturally dictated misconceptions about ourselves and about reality in general is what the lion’s share of the spiritual journey is all about. It’s a never ending process though. There is always more to learn … and more to unlearn.

“There ain’t no guru who can see through your eyes

I found out, I found out”

          • John Lennon, from the song ”I Found Out”

Nothing Can Harm You, Feel Your Own Pain

So what’s my point here? What am I getting at with all this apparent Debbie Downering of the Divine?! “Nothing can harm you, feel your own pain” is a line from a John Lennon song called “I Found Out” which has always resonated with me. The song is about letting go of illusions, which is easier said and/or sung about than done. If you’ve gotten this far reading this article you’re probably someone who has worked, at least to some degree, to get rid of your own illusions as well.

I’m not gonna go into a big technical spiel here about how to get rid of fear-based illusions because frankly, at least in my case, just about all of the major illusions I’ve let go of have been shed against my will and despite my best unrecognized efforts to hold onto them. Dare I say, I suspect that this is the case for most people. It seems to me we’re on a planet full of Prodigal Sons and Daughters, all pretty much hell bent on kicking and screaming and projecting and blaming our way into that good night and/or day when we finally realize that what we fear more than anything is being with our own pain.

Sympathy For The Devils

Now in my fifty-third year, what I am beginning to (really) understand is that my deepest fears and confusions are rooted in the early childhood feelings that I have not yet been able to fully revisit and process from the perspective of adulthood. It has been these long rejected feelings (from ages 0 through 6, give or take a year) that have, without my fully realizing it, tinted my views about myself and reality as a whole.

I could have told you all of this five years ago. I think I wrote an essay about it five years ago, in fact. But as was mentioned earlier, talk is talk, text is text, yada yada, etc., etc.

I am not being self-effacing. Seeing, and more importantly feeling all this has been no small feat. And the more I feel into and integrate these feelings the less fear and confusion I feel in general. Doing this is also no big deal. I mean, there’s nothing “special” about it. All that’s required is a showdown and reconciliation with shame. Where there’s shame there’s fear. And where there’s shame related fear you can bet there are long bypassed, obfuscated emotions.

Another song line that comes to mind here is PJ Harvey’s, “Shame is the shadow of love”. Interestingly, she and John Lennon share a birthday. So there you go!

“If you’re frightened of dying and you’re holding on, you’ll see devils tearing your life away.

But if you’ve made your peace, then the devils are really angels freeing you from the earth.”

– Louis from the movie “Jacob’s Ladder” paraphrasing Meister Eckhart

The Heart-Shaped Doorway

In the course of writing this article I happened to come across the essay I mentioned that I wrote five years ago. I’m gonna wrap up with a quote from it here:

“What if I told you that your capacity to be of real-time assistance to others and your ability to make others feel safe in your presence will increase tenfold when you begin to truly acknowledge and adore every aspect of yourself and treat yourself with the kindness you have always deserved?

What if I told you that the realms of the transcendental and the miraculous are reached not through struggle and exhaustion but through means that are so glaringly simple and heart-centered that they have been delayed for eons due to their being constantly overlooked?”

Coda: The Whole Of The Sum Of The Parts

I realize that this third and final part of the “Leaving The Matrix” series is somewhat of a departure from the metaphysics-based themes in parts 1 and 2. I made a late game course adjustment, what can I say? My hope is that the three parts of this series will end up working in concert with each other and that, hopefully, you’ve found them to be enjoyable and/or useful in some way. If not, as my friend Danny Zuckerbrot says, “No doubt one person’s lame is another person’s brilliant.”

Leaving The Matrix Part 1 (Dualism Is Dead) – https://www.pressenza.com/2021/06/leaving-the-matrix-part-1-dualism-is-dead/

Leaving The Matrix Part 2 (The Double Meaning Of The Meaning Of Life) – https://www.pressenza.com/2021/06/leaving-the-matrix-part-2-the-double-meaning-of-the-meaning-of-life/

Bibliography:

  1. Bukowski, Charles, “Born Into This”, Harper-Collins, 1994
  2. James, William, “The Varieties of Religious Experience”, Random House, 1982
  3. Silo, “Collected Works”, Lattitude Press, 2010