Is the Matrix Real?

If anyone alive today hasn’t seen the 1999 movie “The Matrix” prepare for a spoiler alert. The basic premise of the film (like a number of films before it ) is that humans create machines that become self aware. The machines then declare global war on all humans, seeing them as greedy, self absorbed, destructive, cruel, wasteful animals. Actually, similar concepts have been played out before. The Terminator movie (1984) is based on a series of events that occurred after humans built a machine that became self aware and waged war on humans. Wargames (1983) depicts a high school student who hacks into the war simulation computer who plays out its strategies with real world consequences. More recently, the movie G-Force (2009) depicts guinea pigs fighting a electronics manufacturer whose machines are programmed to come to life to fight the human race.

The crux of the Matrix plot is that the machines create a huge field where humans are made, not born. The humans are grown in pods that feed them nutrients to keep them alive for one solitary purpose – to use humans as batteries. Humans are an energy field. This energy field can be used to power more machines. To keep the humans alive and functioning, they are plugged into a system, a world, a matrix that simulates lives they lead day after day. They live artificial lives fed to them by the Matrix, while in reality; they are trapped in pods which continually drain their energetic life force. The movie focuses around a group of humans that find a way to unplug from the Matrix and wage a guerilla war against the machines.

Once unplugged from the Matrix, the lead character finds himself in the “real” world. The Earth has become a post war wasteland. He finds that when he is temporarily plugged back into the Matrix for certain missions, his new paradigm allows him to bend certain rules we normally understand as unbreakable. He can alter time, defy gravity, and perform physical feats normally not allowed were he to follow the rules that govern the Matrix. He can do these things because he knows he is not of the Matrix. He knows he is plugged into this framework from the comfort of a chair OUTSIDE this place. His understanding of how this artificial place works allows him to do things that other people living within its confines cannot because they are still plugged into this Matrix from the confines of their pods in the “human fields.” Two different paradigms, two different behaviors. One paradigm originates from the idea that we are not of this temporary, false world. The other is predicated by the notion that this world is all there is and there is nothing more.

The Matrix poses an interesting theory, one born thousands of years ago and revived today in New Age thought.

Is this world real?

This singular question raises a host of other posers. “Is this all there is?” “What am I doing here?” “What is the meaning of life?”  “Why does this world involve so much suffering?”

A predominant thought in New Age is that we have been here before. We have multiple lives. We live, we learn, we die, we come back to learn some more. In classes I teach, I refer to this world as a classroom. It is predicated on the idea that we are NOT human beings searching a spiritual life. We are spiritual beings living a human life.

Remember your Seventh Grade Science class? The book showed a diagram of an atom. It had a nucleus and some electrons orbiting around. It looked similar to the solar system. To scale, the nucleus would be the size of a grain of sand. Fourteen blocks away, the first electrons in the first orbit would the size of a grain of salt. The space in between is …. nothing, only space and energy. This same energy holds atoms and galaxies together. This is because galaxies and atoms share the same construction, shape, make up, even the names of some of their parts is the same. When one discusses quantum physics, atoms and galaxies are on equal terms.

 Now let’s go deeper down the rabbit hole. Every cell in your body, every one of the near 50 billion, that’s a B, billion, cells is made up of millions of atoms. Each cell is made up like a small city. There are factories, sanitation and sewage areas, gates and toll booths that allow certain items to come in and go out, central government and control centers that regulate everything. And just like a small city, each cell requires and produces energy. And each vibrating atom in each one of those cells holds energy. We truly are energetic beings. We are literally made of the same material as stars and galaxies and nebulae and planets.

But we are so much more than that. We are spiritual in nature. We are spirit.

We come to this classroom as spirit inhabiting a body. We drive these physical vehicles around as our lives. When the body grows old and gets sick, it stops working. But the spirit part of us moves on. We go back to source. There, we review what we learned and what we have yet to learn. We then choose the moment of our next incarnation. We select the perfect time, period in history, geographic location, parents, name, skills, talents, etc. that will best allow us to learn our lessons. When these conditions are perfectly met, we are born. Unfortunately, we immediately forget why came here and what we are destined to do with our lives. We can only hope to discover our purpose and live it. Because we often forget why we are here, we have to keep coming back again. We do this so we can learn to let go of attachments. Attachments are things like money, sex, power, greed, love, grief, etc. When we finally learn that there is so much more to this world than going to work for some company to pay for insurance and get a 401K and raise some kids and buy a house or a car or deal with crappy parents or a jerk boss or criminal kids or losing our parents; we can learn to appreciate our lives and our spirituality.

So what if it is real, the Matrix? What if we really ARE star stuff, spirit incarnate into a physical frame? What if we really are spiritual beings simply operating these meat suits? What if this place, this world we live in, is filled with so much suffering because we made it that way? Even in the Matrix movie, a character representing the machines declared that the machines once created a perfect world for us. This world was idyllic in every way. No pain or suffering, no difficulties of any kind. But our human minds rejected the concept and it crumbled. So the machines created this, our current world. A beautiful place filled suffering and despair. We readily accepted it. We CHOSE this for ourselves.

So again, what if it were real? What if this world, like A Course in Miracles says, doesn’t really exist? What if we created this place so we could come here to learn how to be ourselves, but better? To learn to lose the ego?

I don’t pretend to know the answer. I don’t have the corner on the Truth market. I simply know what my experience tells me. I truly believe we are made of cosmic stuff. I truly believe we are spiritual beings living human lives. I believe that after this life, I will come back later and live another one, and then another one. I truly believe this world is a classroom. I believe that our thoughts become things. Our thoughts, emotions and beliefs affect our physical bodies and this world.

I believe these things because of what I have seen in this world. I grew up in a haunted house, I have seen a UFO. As a psychic healer, I see spirit, I see other people’s energy patterns, I pick up on other people’s emotions and pain, and I have seen some of my own past lives and those of others. These are my experiences.

So, how would you live if you knew for certain this world is temporary, but you are eternal? Not just knew it, but truly believed it deep down in your bones. Would you be nicer to others or more concerned with your own needs and wants?  I haven’t even gotten into the discussion of karma yet. I will save that for another day. But think about this for a moment. Give this some thought. What if it were true? How would you behave? How would you treat yourself and others? Would you be nicer or tougher?

Our experiences, our troubles, or failures, our pain and our suffering are meant to teach us something. Does it hurt when someone close to us dies? Yes! Does it hurt when we are sexually abused as children or raped as adults? YES! Does it hurt when we are raised by abusive parents? YES! Does it make life difficult when we are born with a physical or mental impairment? YES! Is it unfair when we are fired from our job and the slacker in the next cubicle gets promoted? YES! Does it hurt when we lose someone we love? YES! But do we let these events define who we are and cripple us emotionally each and every day? You decide.

 I believe each one of us is born into multiple lifetimes where we experience these challenges and more. Each one of has overcome several lifetimes of challenges, difficulties and issues. And we can do it again this time, as well as the next time.

I have given you plenty of questions and have intentionally not given you any direct answers. It is because I don’t have any. I know what I believe. I reserve the right to believe it. As I extend to you the right to believe as you do. We each travel our own individual paths, live our own different lives and develop our own various beliefs as a result of our particular difficulties. I wouldn’t dare tell you yours are wrong; and I hope you won’t tell me mine are wrong. I only hope I can give you a nudge to search for what you honestly believe about yourself and the world around you.

Live as if all you leave behind is how you are remembered.

Namaste

Weeg