Are You Caught In The Matrix? Automatic Patterns Of Behavior?

I have added this section as I have a commitment to expanding consciousness on the planet, and in particular in the world around me.  Even though this is a Hollywood blog, mostly aimed at Actors and Screenwriters, this section is really for anyone who is committed to expanding consciousness.  I am not addressing a moral concern, but more of a spiritual matter.  What I mean by this is that I believe the reason “we” are here is to become more conscious of our true connection to the Universe while living in this human body — and, I might add — enjoying the pleasures of being in this human body.  The more we become conscious, the more we can actually enjoy what is otherwise a rather painful episode of life.

Given that, I will be writing of the patterns that run us.  Much like in The Matrix.  However, to be clear, this is not something I got the idea about from The Matrix.  This is a way of seeing things that I have developed over the last 20 years, and the last 12 years in particular.

As a matter of fact, it was in my first acting class that I suddenly had an experience of being outside of my patterns — or shall we say, an experience of consciousness.  I was doing a monologue, getting coaching from Sebastian Brook, and after a moment, I suddenly burst into tears and started sobbing.  (How embarrassing it was at first.)  But I had connected with emotion inside of myself that I had never felt before.  As it turns out, I was crying about some guy that I had been hurt about, but the important thing is that I connected with emotions inside myself that I had simply repressed.  That was a major opening into self-inquiry … and my own consciousness.

In that same class, there was this classy upscale broad by the name of Myers Bartlett.  She was an actress from Queens, New York, with lips that would challenge Angelina Jolie’s in a beauty contest. She had earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Theater from Boston University, which she told me was a very good school, and she was very charismatic.  Myers had already been a New-Age, consciousness-seeking person, shopping at Whole Foods and Trader Joes, for quite some time.  And even though we were the same age, she was way more advanced in the arena of consciousness.

After class with Sebastian that day, Myers came over to me and handed me a piece of paper with her phone number on it and said, “If you want to talk, call me.”  And she strolled away with her classy New York walk.  I just stared at her.  I had already admired her because she just seemed to know what she was doing in the world.  She seemed very sophisticated.  So when she gave me that note, I thought, “Yeah, I might just do that.”

A day or two later, I did, in fact, call her.  I discussed my whole situation and the guy problem I was having.  I had a broken heart at the time.  When we began to talk, she would tell me about her relationships and say phrases like, “… meant to be,” and, “we connected on a soul level,” and “soulmates,” and “He was a Leo and I was…”  I had never heard anyone talk like this (who actually believed it) — talking about this airy-fairy stuff like it was real.  She was completely different from anyone I had ever been around… and I liked this other language.

As I hung out with Myers over the next few years and also attended my classes with Sebastian Brook and did my homework, I got firmly set on a path of seeking awareness.  Both of them made a major difference in my life in setting me on this path.  Later, I became a Seminar Leader at Landmark Education, which profoundly altered my consciousness.  And I also earned my Ph.D. in Mythological Studies from Pacifica Graduate Institute.  Mythological Studies is a program that covers all of the humanities and how they express the human experience.  It also covers in depth the study of stories, aka myths — our own personal stories, as well as cultural stories.

To come back to The Matrix, the point is this.  We are all born caught in a web, a pattern of stories, a set of myths.  As we grow up, those patterns get carved more and more deeply into our belief system, and we don’t even realize that we are in it.  We just think that how we see things is how life is.  We react to the pull of the pattern and think we are in love, or we think we are in hate.  And all the while, we are simply playing out a pattern.

The gauntlet which has been thrown down for us as human beings is to notice that we are acting inside a pattern and then to stop that — and simply make a conscious choice of what to do in a given situation.  This does NOT mean do the opposite — which many people get confused about — it is to stop and choose one way or the other.  If you do the Opposite to get out of the Pattern, you are still IN the pattern and your actions are still being given by it.  Like someone who goes against authority on purpose thinking that they are being powerful or unique.  No, they are still acting in response to authority and trying to prove something, they are not acting freely.

So… this area of this blog will address the Matrix of patterns that we are born into.  I hope that you may find some inner peace and freedom from my posts.

Thank you for engaging.