Take the Red Pill3 min read

2021-05-17
Robert Middleton

This past week I discovered that I was living inside the Matrix.

Well, not the computer-generated Matrix from the famous movie, but inside a particular Mind-Made-Matrix (MMM) that was shaping my perceptions, feelings, and actions.

Living inside this MMM dragged me down, made me feel tired and uninspired, so much so that I couldn’t manage to write this newsletter last week (a real rarity for me).

The reality projected by this MMM was… “Wondering if I’m relevant anymore, worrying about the future, catastrophizing about possible illnesses, and procrastinating about every small project.”

Feeling not like my usual, upbeat, creative self, I stopped to ask myself what was going on.

I asked, “What am I currently believing that is making me feel this way? What MMM Program have I bought into?”

And I soon caught a clear glimpse of this Mind-Made-Matrix that was projecting a distorted, but compelling version of reality.

There it was, with the label on the packaging: “I’m getting old – and I shouldn’t be!”

And this one is a real doozy, a ride into an imagined future that is anything but bright.

It’s a real downer. Not happy or alive. Sad, worried, hopeless.

I felt old and cranky. I had lost my Mojo.

It’s almost as if the MMM was laughing at my previous newsletter where I talked about the idea of AWARE. HERE. NOW. ALIVE.

MMM: “AWARE? HERE? NOW? ALIVE? Hah! You, you’re just an over-the-hill coot. What value do you have to offer? Nobody cares about you! You’re old. And you shouldn’t be old!”

My Response to that: “Oh, shit, it’s true!” I’m believing it. I’m caught in it, identified in it.

But when I looked closely, I saw that MMM for what it actually was: a projection, an illusion, a story, a virtual reality. A lie.

When I saw that I was only running an old program generated by the MMM, I popped right back into present time:

AWARE. HERE. NOW. ALIVE.

Later that day, I had three wonderful coaching sessions with clients, no longer under the sway of that MMM.

I didn’t feel old anymore. And, just as important, I didn’t believe that I should feel young.

And with that, I started to chip away at my long list of avoided to-do items with zero resistance or procrastination.

Remember that pivotal moment in the Matrix movie?

Morpheus gives Neo the choice of two pills: The blue pill or the red pill?

Take the blue bill and you stay connected to the Matrix.

Take the red pill and you disconnect from the Matrix.

It really doesn’t take that much.