Mind Over Matrix

by: Bastiaan Berende
The Matrix Trilogy offer me in an allegorical and virtual visual way a vision of my own awakening. In my increasing dedication to teach A Course In Miracles I am very thrilled about the closing episode of the Matrix trilogy The Matrix Revolutions. I thought the first Matrix was great and that there would be no possibility that part two or three would add anything essential to the first one. I still think the first episode is whole in itself but in this capacity lends itself to be developed in three parts. Within the first episode as well as within the entire sequence of the three episodes I recognized a strong parallel to the stages of my own personal awakening.
A Dream of Separation
The first part of my own awakening process were moments, visions and communications that I received all through my early life here on earth. I had glimpses of reality that showed me the dreamlike nature of this world. Sometimes not more than a feeling, now and then I could clearly envision it and at other times it became totally reasonable to me that I wasn't from here. The real reason I was here couldn't be dictated to me by this world.
Morpheus in their first conversation says to Neo:
I can see it in your eyes. You have the look of a man who accepts what he sees, because he is expecting to wake up. (Matrix 1)
The Course tells me:
You are like one still hallucinating but lacking the belief in what you see.
I became increasingly aware that I found myself in A Dream of Separation. Everything in my world was inherently conflictual; dualistic, distant and divided. Nowhere within this conflicted framework was I able to find a resolution. I was a slave to the institutions at work in the world, its laws and principles, its rules and behavioral codes. My relationships were a constant source of chaos and a consistent provision of guilt and self-pity, anger and frustration. The fundamental emptiness in my life brought me time and time again to the realization that there had to be a fullness of life accessible to me in some way.
This Alternative had to be constructed on an entirely different main frame. Since I had already come to recognize that my world was fear based, another world would have to be one that was sustained and entirely governed by love. I was through with this one, I did see it all, remembered the result of all my previous attempts at wholeness in this place of impossibility. The old world verified nothing but a lack of faith in me as a whole identity. My whole world including me was preprogrammed with impulses and mechanisms developed to ensure its own continuance in the loop of its own limited inescapable non-being. In other words everything was pretty much dead, had no real purpose and was trapped in its fixed position in time and space. The experience of myself was one of being totally dependent on an outside world and its people to give me everything I needed. I was in total demand and was selfishly projecting all my misgivings on others. Nothing in my world was able to meet my demands or lead me to the experience that I was seeking.
Something just had to be there because it was simply impossible for me to continue the personal crisis condition that I was in. It simply had to confirm itself to be unreal. My helplessness, my despair, my frustration and the darkness and isolation in my "life" had simply reached its limit.
"An imprisoned will engenders a situation which, in the extreme, becomes altogether intolerable. Tolerance for pain may be high, but it is not without limit. Eventually everyone begins to recognize, however dimly, that there must be a better way. As this recognition becomes more firmly established, it becomes a turning-point." (ACIM, Ch. 2 III)
The New Beginning
I asked for help and something I knew that was outside of the matrix came to my rescue. It was Jesus simply shining his light directly in my mind. He reassured me with a super gentle gesture that where I had held myself, up until that moment, was indeed a dream and that I was now able to wake from it.
With a whole new sense of faith, certainty and direction I started to play and experiment with the world around me. All my relationships were changing and all of a sudden I was attracting a lot of positive activity around me, I began to live as if it was for the very first time. I started learning the power of suggestion and the power of decision. I was becoming more honest and direct with everyone and I had a lot to offer. I started to feel that everything was possible in the universe. I was no longer an object in a deterministic world of outside forces and factors, but became the active determiner of my fate. I started walking up straight again and felt a pride and certainty like I never felt before. I was Mind connected to Spirit, which was the true reason of my freedom and strength. I started actively changing my mind about myself and everything in my world, and thus the world redeemed itself. This whole turn around happened after I had started working with a hypno/ chak ra therapist who right after my devastation was the only 'human' I took in full trust. We miraculously met one night and I knew I had to talk to her; I had the feeling that she could help me. I knew I had requested the universe for help and saw in her the answer to my prayer. After about 5 or 6 sessions with her I felt so open and completely free as I no longer experienced any obstacles to the energy flowing through my body. I came home completely at peace and laid down on my bed. Because I had began to learn that I receive exactly what I ask for and given the fact that I felt bold enough to experiment, I asked a daring question:
So my body is healed and now what?
This question led me directly to a Universal, Quantum experience where I felt a power surge flush through my whole body and I totally lost awareness and control over it. That moment I was totally unplugged from the matrix and plugged into a Power Source far greater than the tiny battery capacity that I in my familiarity with my body-shell was able to hold.
I heard the call and answered it instantaneously. My signal was now about to be traced. I was singled out by a scout vessel and transported to the Mother ship.
A friend told me the next day about his brother's wife who was totally won over by a group or movement called A Course In Miracles and I just knew I had to go there. The next day I was picked up and we drove out to Amsterdam where I heard a guy read 'For They Have Come' from the text of A Course In Miracles (Ch. 26 IX)
I was expecting some alien visitors from the outer realms to come into the room and pay us a visit. What I didn't fully realize as yet was that I was the One who had come. I was the one who started to make his first declarations as a Savior. I declared that I had heard the call and I had answered, that I was here to get the message straight and to enlighten the force that drives me. To express honesty in the words I speak and to express truth in the music I make. I was in for a wild ride and began my awaking to the real.
The acceptance of the Atonement by everyone is only a matter of time. This may appear to contradict free will because of the inevitability of the final decision, but this is not so. You can temporize and you are capable of enormous procrastination, but you cannot depart entirely from your Creator, Who set the limits on your ability to miscreate.
After this Universal experience and after this miraculous session, I kept slipping back to my illusions. I wasn't quite willing to give it all up. But somewhere I knew I was only procrastinating the inevitable. A few years later after occasionally reconnecting with the light and the Course in Miracles teachers I used it all up. It became too painful and I wanted out. Now I knew I had to really do the work. I had to commit and fully step in, no more wavering. I did step back and let Him lead the way. I ended up in Switzerland and was totally uprooted by the light. I experienced my body dying and I couldn't take hold of anything that used to provide me with 'safety'. I was completely turned inside out. That moment was the definite end of my life in the flesh, in the world, in the unreal.
I can now 'look back' and see that this new beginning was really the end and this end was a new beginning. Neo, after he woke up from the matrix (1) and saw the falsity of its construct revealed to him in source code, made his first declaration of Saviorship:
Neo: I know you're out there. I can feel you now. I know that you're afraid. You're afraid of us. You're afraid of change. I don't know the future. I didn't come here to tell you how this is going to end. I came here to tell you how it's going to begin.
Jesus at the very last page in the last segment of ACIM the clarification of terms says:
"Forget not once this journey is begun the end is certain. Doubt along the way will come and go and go to come again. Yet is the ending sure. No one can fail to do what God appointed him to do."
Now I was really faced with my mind, my condition as a human being and my earlier state as an addict to agony, alcohol and narcotics. "Straight the gate and narrow the way." I was accustomed to loosing myself to self-pity, doubt and depression that to attain the goal of peace, happiness and the freedom of my mind I had to undergo a mind-training. I had to be disciplined with the truth about myself persistently so that I could come to suspend my limited beliefs and false ideas about everything. I had a serious authority problem and I always wanted things differently. Trying to obtain special favor from others or God I found myself in constant competition with everyone and everything. To undo all these getting mechanism's as Jesus calls them in the Course I needed to reverse all of my thinking because I had it all entirely upside down.
I needed the strongest possible statements about Reality to confront my deepest emotions of unworthiness and the fear of love and the fear to love.
The second and most important part in my apparent awakening process was learning new ideas about myself and my Reality. Thus I was enabled to achieve a constant state of Peace. It helped dissolve my self-doubt and my fear of being judged by others or rejected by God. The Mind-Training of A Course In Miracles provided me with the ultimate means to free my mind. And to read his word and teach it I know that my Master is alive and kicking.
Mind over Matrix
Neo undergoes a similar process where he is encouraged to suspend the rigid beliefs of his physicality and the laws in which the matrix operates.
Some rules can be bent; others can be broken.
In order to be brought up to speed in his new chosen purpose he was running all these virtual training programs. These were the means provided him to increase the power and responsibility of his mind. In order to fulfill the function he was ordained to perform as the One he had to achieve a certain degree of readiness. He reentered the matrix to find out more about his artificial past life, was confronted with his lack of certainty and his loss of memory of being the One. Everything until then was a procrastination of accepting his new and inevitable function. He still thought there was a choice to be the One or not to be the One.
The mind training to which he submitted himself when he took the red pill, and all his subsequent experiences, led him to a new certainty of purpose and revealed to him the true nature of his Identity. This period of preparation, trial and error I would like to call Mind over Matter or Mind over the Matrix of my own making.
The Course expresses that this requires the shift from being the Dreamer of the Dream to becoming the Mindful and Responsible Hero and Savior of the dream. To become the superman in your own production.
My Function as Savior
The third part of my awakening I would therefore call my function as Savior. To come to the realization that the whole universe and everyone and everything in it depends on me fulfilling my part. According to Jesus I am here as an active member of his party:
To close all things of time; to end the sight of all things visible; and to undo all things that change. (ACIM MFT 29 p.8)
"To fuse the warring parts within the totality of my responsibility to make the leap from a world made up from zero's and one's via singular vision to the light of reality. From blonds and redheads via a committed relationship with one brunette to my only real relationship with God. From my sinful mistakes and its sad consequences via a forgiven world to where the world will cease to seem to be and I usher in the world's happy ending."
My function as the light of the world is to forgive all those I had split off from myself. To include again all those I rejected from my love and send out to fulfill certain special functions and thus confirm me in my separate identity. To literally release all the definitions I imposed on life and which kept me in an encapsulated confinement, a plugged-in pod prisoner, "safe" and shallow in a shell, weary and wired to a womb.
To forgive, correct and confront myself with the world that I pulled over my eyes to blind me from the truth. To forgive the world I had invented to make myself author of the dream. And to forgive myself for not being successful at governing this chaotic thought system that turned out to become impossible to control.
Neo also becomes increasingly aware that everything in his dream is somehow dependent on him playing his vital part as the One. Nothing or no one within the Matrix, Zion or the Machine world was able to recognize of its true purpose until he fulfilled his. Being manifestations of Neo's Mind in Separation they needed to be shown by Neo what their flaw was so that a correction would be able to occur.
The purpose that these creations share with the One would have be revealed to them in truth's reflection. He couldn't escape the result of his mind that had attempted to make a split between himself and his Source.
He had attempted to build a perfect substitute world for himself. But how could such a world remain perfect when the Source of its Perfection was fundamentally denied. A substitute world that is built using the light that was intended to sustain the Source's own Real Single Creation would thus unavoidably turn into a world of suffering. Because the effects of his mistake did not leave him, Neo was assigned to heal the split that seemed to occur by forgetting who he really was.
Jesus in A Course In Miracles offers me the resolution to my dream of conflict.
Forgiveness ends the dream of conflict here.
Conflict must be resolved. It cannot be evaded, set aside, denied, disguised, seen somewhere else, called by another name, or hidden by deceit of any kind, if it would be escaped. It must be seen exactly as it is where it is thought to be, in the reality which has been given it, and with the purpose that the mind accorded it. For only then are its defenses lifted, and the truth can shine upon it as it disappears.
Neo knew there was no conventional way to reach the goal of peace that he had set out to attain. The conventional ways didn't work.
Neo found out he couldn't escape his conflict or his responsibility by being shot. He also slowly but surely discovers that fighting and destroying the things that were apparently causing him conflict didn't get him out of it. He learned in the room of the architect that he couldn't escape the causal loop through his insistence to make the 'right' choice. This only brought him back to the same room and the same TV-screens multiple times. He furthermore realized he wasn't able to evade his enemy by escaping from the matrix to the real world. His enemy (Smith) just as inescapably made his simultaneous transition to this new domain of duality (the Real World) in the form of Baine. His conflict with himself became excruciating and it had to be resolved. After the battle with Neo, Baine brings an end to Neo's double vision by burning out his eyes. These eyes were indispensable as long as he was still attaching his faith and meaning to the illusion of the matrix. Baine who just like Neo wanted to get out gives Neo the gift of singular vision. Herewith Baine fulfills his function and thus leads Neo into a higher Realm where he stops perceiving the conflict. He stops judging and starts seeing the real substance of the world.
Neo: It's unbelievable, Trin. Lights everywhere. Like the whole thing was built with light. I wish you could see what I see.
Spiritual vision literally cannot see error, and merely looks for Atonement. All solutions the physical eye seeks dissolve. Spiritual vision looks within and recognizes immediately that the altar has been defiled and needs to be repaired and protected. Perfectly aware of the right defense it passes over all others, looking past error to truth. Because of the strength of its vision, it brings the mind into its service. This re-establishes the power of the mind and makes it increasingly unable to tolerate delay, realizing that it only adds unnecessary pain. As a result, the mind becomes increasingly sensitive to what it would once have regarded as very minor intrusions of discomfort.
Trinity, the one thing that was the most precious to Neo had just surrendered her 'life' to acquiesce to the higher purpose that her 'beloved' had set out to accomplish. Now all his ships are burnt and he enters into the full alertness of his Singular purpose. The unlimited power of his Mind makes him entirely ready for the last step(s).
Your footprints lighten up the world, for where you walk forgiveness gladly goes with you. (ACIM Ch. 26 IX 6.2)
Neo leaves golden footprints on the path towards the Deus Maximus, the Machine God.
For perfect effectiveness the Atonement belongs at the center of the inner altar, where it undoes the separation and restores the wholeness of the mind. Before the separation the mind was invulnerable to fear, because fear did not exist. Both the separation and the fear are miscreations that must be undone for the restoration of the temple, and for the opening of the altar to receive the Atonement. This heals the separation by placing within you the one effective defense against all separation thoughts and making you perfectly invulnerable.
Neo stands fearless in the face of the totality of his enemy in the Real World; the Machine God.
In total defenselessness he stands face to face with what we could call the outside manifestation of his fear. In this moment Neo in his augmented 'know thyself'- ness realizes he can't solve the problem in this outside world. He recognizes that his outside enmity is a mere effect of his inward condition. To reach peace for Neo's uttermost external creation's he has to settle his affairs with the evil within. He reenters the matrix and comes face to face with his rejected and resisted self-image represented here by Agent Smith. Smith in his purposeless existence ever since he is no longer instrumental in the matrix and at the same time is still resisted by his Savior Neo, didn't know any better than to duplicate himself and increase his numbers in order to provide himself with a false sense of existence. Being a part of Neo's mind his true desire was equal to Neo's, namely to be reunited with his opposite self and to become whole again.
About The Author
Bastiaan Berende is 33 years old, his country of origin is the Netherlands. He is a trained teacher of A Course In Miracles by a Master Teacher and also a certified Minister. He is an inspired song writer and composer and performs in a number of musical groups. The Miracle Times: http://www.themiracletimes.com.