The Sorcerer's World

Sometimes I find myself simply observing people - warriors, ordinary men and women, sages, teachers, enlightened gurus, and the like. And in the big picture, there isn't much difference between any of them. The warrior may be a businessman in his ordinary life, and the ordinary man may be a weekend warrior or an armchair philosopher; while the sage may be nothing more than someone who has learned from his life experience, and the enlightened guru still gets up every morning with the awareness that s/he is a being who is going to die.

In these ways, we are all the same.

And yet...

Perhaps the difference lies in how we treat one another and, moreso, in how we choose to *see* one another at a core level. Just some observations from my journey through life.

Just this week as I was having breakfast with an "old friend", she was telling me about her housekeeper. (Housekeeper? Who can afford a housekeeper?) But no matter. The woman is elderly, with a bad back, essentially crippled. She called my friend that morning and said she could not keep her 10 a.m. appointment due to the effects of her arthritis, and could the hour be rescheduled to 2 pm? My friend agreed, though she said she was terse and, "I let her know I wasn't happy." When I asked why it was a problem, she said, in essence, "It's not that it's a problem - I was going to be home all day anyway. It's a matter of her not keeping her appointment."

As the story continued to unfold, my friend revealed that the old woman was not able to show up at 2 either, because, in her own words, "I cannot straighten up sufficiently to hold my own weight." I felt an instant compassion and sorrow for the old woman as this was revealed, because it brought home to me our human frailty - regardless of our intent and will, despite all our best efforts, and with no respect for the fact that we may need to work in order to keep food on the table, our bodies become decrepit and if we are not extremely fortunate, we may one day find ourselves in a similar position: old, crippled, and attempting to work at a time in our lives when we should reasonably be retired and sitting on a beach somewhere in the Caribbean.

But no matter. My friend then surprised me when she said, "So I told her if she can't show up, she should at least fucking call me!" This was said with a fine aire of superiority and disdain - with a sense of entitlement often witnessed in the very rich or the very spoiled. It sickened me. Particularly when she added, "Mary was pleading with me not to fire her, but I told her if it happens again, I will have to find someone else. I wanted her to know who's in control."

At this point, I could only stare at my "old friend," wondering what had happened to her along the way, wondering what had hurt her so much that she would find it necessary to pass that hurt along to someone else. Suddenly, I didn't even know her anymore. And I didn't want to know her. So I casually said to her, "I feel sorry for Mary. She has nothing to fall back on and I know she needs the job." I didn't add that it was as if my friend were having some grand dinner party and needed the house spic and span. No dinner parties. No guests. Just herself and, frankly, her indulgences that have resulted in a slow but inevitable parting of the ways between us over the past few years.

At any rate, what this incident caused was sort of an instant recapitulation, resulting in a few observations which I've decided to toss out there. Not required that anyone agree or disagree. But it comes to mind...

If you see someone else struggling and you throw a rock in their path, what does that say about you?

If you know somone is hurting, where does your own responsibility lie? A serious question for warriors, since many hold the opinion that if someone is in dire straits, it is a result of their own doing. Perhaps not untrue. But have you never been in dire straits? And when/if you ARE in dire straits, have there not been times when some fellow human being has offered a hand to somehow alleviate YOUR suffering?

I'm not saying we're here to save the world. Not possible. Can't save anyone but ourselves. But that is a dangerous statement if it is not tempered with the rare commodity of common sense and reason. The beggar we feed today may be the man who saves your life tomorrow. Fail to offer him a loaf of bread today because "his situation is his own doing", and he may be too weak to push you out of the path of that oncoming bus tomorrow.

If you know someone is grieving over something - whether the loss of a loved one, or a pet, or simply the loss of their own identity - why taunt them with accusations of emotional indulgence or self-importance, or any of the other buzz words warriors throw at one another from time to time?

The art of empathy is not the same as an act of sympathy. Not necessary that you feel sorry for someone in order to realize that old cliche: "There but for the grace of god/goddess/luck (fill in the blank) go I." Put another way: it could happen to you, and just as easily as it happened to the other guy. You are not protected from on high. You've just been lucky so far, and I'm sure your impeccability has played into that equation, but the universe is a strange and dangerous bedfellow where, quite literally, "Shit happens." Eventually, shit will happen to YOU. To think otherwise is nothing more than a heavy dose of your own self-importance.

If you know your kid hates peas, why force him to eat them? In warrior terms, if you know someone has an aversion to the color red, why wave it in their face? What does that say about YOU? Do you think you are somehow teaching them something? And, if so, has that person asked you to be their teacher, or acknowledged you as their mentor? If not, you're just being a deliberate annoyance, and you need to ask yourself why that might be.

If you realize someone is having difficulties in their personal life, it really isn't up to you to tell them what they're doing wrong anymore than it's up to you to try to "teach" them how to get their act together, get with the program, get back in line. Instead, you need to be practicing that thing called the art of empathy. Shit happens. Shit could happen to me. Shit WILL happen to me. Empathy is a far more healing energy than even the most well-intended 'tough love'. No need to overdo it. Just remembering that it can and will happen to you at some point is usually sufficient to shift the assemblage point away from SI and into a natural resonance that will enable you to do far more 'good' than all of that crap you think you learned in some new age self-help book.

Finally, if you can *see* well enough to realize that so-and-so is never going to agree with you about something, leave them be. Your world is your world and their world is their world, and whether you are right or wrong is altogether irrelevant. You can't hammer someone into believing what you believe - the Crusaders tried that, the Catholics are still at it, and basically it's a no-win scenario. If you are a firm believer in flowers and fuzzy woodland critters as the meaning of life, more power to you! But keep in mind that so-and-so standing over there may have an entirely different opinion, and may believe that the way to enlightenment lies in meditation or self-flaggelation or reciting the entire script of the third Harry Potter movie at least twice daily. Whatever his beliefs may be, you will not change them by hammering him, and in fact you will only cause a further distance which will ensure that no future communication is possible. What others believe is none of your concern. What others think of you is ALSO none of your concern.

Bottom line... as warriors or ordinary men or sages or gurus, we need to examine our hearts and pause to look in those ugly mirrors from time to time. What do our actions say about us? What do our feelings toward others reveal to us about our feelings toward ourselves?

Just some observations after breakfast with an old friend, whom I thank for the insights.

December 6, 2008

Since Gonz keeps hammering about what life outside the cave is like, I'm going to indulge him briefly and give what amounts to a comparison of life inside the cave (or matrix) and life outside the cave/matrix.

First, it's pretty simple, so if this all sounds rather like a kindergarten primer, my apologies. My guess is that 99.9% of folks on this forum are well aware of "the matrix" (I'm going to stick with that analogy for now), since it is all around us, and it is why most of us went on this quest of awakening in the first place. Like Neo in his apartment at the beginning of the first movie, we felt there was something "wrong". We sensed the matrix, but couldn't actually *see* it because it was all around us. Can't see the forest for the trees. And so it goes.

Now, skip forward several years, and in some way, each of us has either met our personal Morpheus, or become Morpheus and/or Neo all by ourselves. We have exited the matrix/cave, and now our level of perception is such that we wonder how we didn't *see* it from the start. Maybe we even try to convince ourselves that the matrix was a con job, that it didn't/doesn't really exist. Maybe that's how we try to forgive ourselves or excuse ourselves for NOT noticing it sooner, but in my estimation, that's rather like crying over spilled milk and several other cliches. That was then, this is now. Move on. Instead of debating whether the MATRIX exists, rejoice in being in "the real world" - where our will is our own and we are the masters of our own creation.

The thing about the matrix, and the argument some have used, is that it CAN be pleasant, and we are seemingly free to move about inside of it. The mud, the blood and the beer is a common phrase... yet from the perspective of one outside the matrix, NONE of those things are real. They are the food of the illusion - drugged with lethe to keep the prisoners inside the matrix comfortable and happy - even if some may find their comfort zones in being miserable and unhappy. Negative pleasantries, as Orlando calls them. I know more than a few people who thrive on them, but that's neither here nor there. Just pointing out that even the "suffering" encountered in the matrix is part of the game plan - for as the architect pointed out in one of the subsequent movies, the first matrix was idyllic, and therefore was a total failure. Humans thrive on drama, often to the point that it blinds them to any potentially "larger" reality outside the matrix.

So, what IS life outside the matrix? It is a complete movement of the assemblage point - a total alteration of perception. It takes prisoners and turns them into free men, and the predictable result is that those newly freed may not even be able to see their own freedom at first, even though it, like the matrix, has been staring them in the face all along. But no matter. These are just words. If you want my direct personal experience, I'll try to put a small amount of it down on cyberpaper, though know in advance that it is entirely personal. You can discredit it if you want. You can dismantle it if that will protect your comfort zones. You can even say it is a con job if that will make you sleep better. But nonetheless, you may be caused to wonder, to ask yourself why so many people DO escape the matrix, and are then able to talk about what lies beyond it.

Maybe it's important to state at the outset that I was born outside the matrix. Maybe lots of folks are. I only know my own story, so that's where it begins. As a child, I didn't have a lot of adult supervision, and so I essentially slipped through a lot of the programming cracks that most children are swept up into at an early age. At a time when other little girls were wearing frilly pink dresses on their grandmother's lap in Sunday School, I was running wild-haired and half naked through the Florida swamps, cavorting with spirits and vagabonds. So point being, maybe I had some advantage from the outset, but I don't really think so. And even if I did, I don't think it matters much, since I did get yanked into the matrix right around the time I entered first grade. I remember the excruciating headache I had that day, and how the teacher was concerned for my health. More likely, I now realize in hindsight, that headache was the direct result of a massive shift of the assemblage point which I did not really want to allow, but which seemed to be inevitable.

Result: I spent the next several years inside the matrix. Good grades in school. Good job when I got out of school. The world was my oyster in so many ways. Got any job I ever applied for. Slept with any man (or woman) I ever desired. Bought the right house. Had the right friends. I was on top of the world.

Yet something was missing. Even after I left Miami and moved to California, something was missing. Even after I met Wendy and we began the love affair that has lasted 30 years, something was missing. My life was perfect in virtually every way. Yet something was missing.

Skip forward several years. Aftert my involvement with Orlando began and we Wendy and I eventually moved to the desert, we began the process of awakening as a direct result of a "blow" to the assemblage point. At the time I was 38, I began to *see* the matrix clearly - the prison which consists not of bars or cages or caves, but of belief systems, humanform rules, and the folly of phantoms. God was a lie (though I'd always known that). The government was NOT there to help us (though I had never believed that). Family was not operating in my best interest (and never had been). The flag was just a rag. The wine was just fermented grapes. The sun and the moon were not my mother or my grandmother, just orbs hanging in the sky on the set of the human drama. Family was, at best, familiar strangers; or, at worse, control mechanisms of the program. No matter what car I might drive, it would always and only travel inside the matrix, because it did not have the power to take me outside of it. No matter what house I lived in, it woud always be a prison, because in the years between 7 and 38, I had become "complacent". I had accepted the illusion and began to function inside of it AS IF it were real... knowing all the while it never had been.

At that point, as a result of *seeing* the matrix (which came as a result of my involvement with Orlando - whom I might equate to Morpheus in the analogy), I was able to slip between the bars of the prison and get outside of The Program once and for all. Gonz likes to argue that we are ALL still in humanform, and perhaps that is true to some minor extent, but not to the extent he thinks. Some of us project into the matrix, KNOWING we are projections, coming and going freely for whatever reasons. But it must be noted that the PERCEPTION of someone who is outside the matrix is, simply, OUTSIDE the matrix. Those inside the cave still perceive only the cave. They do not and cannot imagine that there is any other existence. Those outside the cave may peer in from time to time, to look up old friends or shoot the breeze with the architect, the keymaker or the oracle... but those outside the matrix are no longer prisoners of its programs.

Okay, when you lose the analogy and get down to "real life" - the difference is pretty straightforward. If my mother-in-law insults me, I know it's part of her programming to do so, and so I don't waste one iota of energy fretting over it. I *see* the energy of that engagement DIRECTLY, and so no further action is required. The matrix has lost its control over me in that regard. Mama-in-law can no longer cause me to waste energy, because she is seen for the model prisoner she is. I am free to refrain from voting, because it is seen that any vote cast inside the matrix is purely a hypothetical in a meaningless program. I am free to love whom I choose without any concern for political correctness. I do not lose sleep worrying about money or power or who loves me or hates me today, because none of it is real. Phantoms on the road to Ixtlan.

Now, that doesn't mean I am "better" than the phantoms. It just means I'm not one of them, and that is quite by my own choice. I could have gone back to the matrix several times, but now that is no longer an option, nor would I choose it even if it were. Sure, life outside the matrix can be lonely, but not nearly as lonely as life INSIDE the matrix. Reason? At least those you meet who are outside the matrix see the prison and the programs, too. Those inside may pretend to love you or hate you based entirely on some program du jour - anything from racial prejudice to gender prejudice to not liking the color of your hair or the car you drive. Programs.

So, life outside the matrix is largely about exploring freedom beyond the programs. Some would argue that some programs will always exist, and perhaps that is true. I'll work on that NEXT. But in order to see the programs, we have to first get beyond them, and the only way to do that is to take that first step that leads beyond the cave, outside the matrix. Trying to say the cave doesn't exist is like trying to deny the bus that just ran over you. Trying to say it's a "con job" is mainly trying to con YOURSELF - a last ditch effort to protect the comfort zones which form the bars of the prison itself.

Exploring life outside the matrix? There is no way to predict what form that is going to take, because every moment becomes real and one lives in a state of being fully awakened, as opposed to drifting in and out of some quasi-sleep state within the program. Exploring beyond the matrix is largely a matter of defining the reality we want to create, and then bringing it into manifestation. And make no mistake - the matrix may STILL try to reach out and grab us back in, just as the "Smiths" were constantly trying to kill Neo and anyone else outside the matrix. It's just their job. It's their programming. It's why Jesus made that great quip, "Forgive them, Dad, they ain't got a clue."

To be succinct, life outside the matrix is a shift of perception which allows one to see the prison - to no longer have the luxury of denying its existence or trying to pretend there's no elephant in the room. From there, our focus shifts from the prison, to the real world, and what might lie beyond even THAT.

It's an ongoing evolution, and it starts with getting outside the prison.