by Oli Anderson, Transformational Coach for Realness
Escape the Matrix
One of the most important things that you can embrace about life if you value your freedom is the idea that:
“THE WORLD IS NOT REALITY” (quoting my own books, Personal Revolutions and Shadow Life).
If you don’t step back to acknowledge this then two things can happen, both of which hold you back and limit your capacity for FREEDOM and its expression:
- You start to limit yourself INTERNALLY because you take a sense of identity on board that is given to you as a conceptual set of ideas from ‘The World’ (which isn’t real).
- You start to limit yourself EXTERNALLY because you start to see external barriers to your own growth and progress towards your goals (that also aren’t real because they’re rooted in your perceptions of ‘The World’).
This isn’t to say that ‘The World’ isn’t a thing that doesn’t exist (in the sense of at least being ‘there’) but it’s something that only really exists as a consequence of human ideas about life and what it ‘should’ be.
It’s a kind of MATRIX that exists as the sum total of all our collective doubts and fears about life that we project over whatever is really ‘out there’ in reality.
Nothing ‘wrong’ with that and it’s just something that human beings do in order to ‘survive’ whatever they’ve already been through (just like we do at an individual level by creating an ego for ourselves in order to keep surviving life based on what we’ve already seen of it).
The problem, however, is that a lot of the IDEAS we come up with about life and what it is are actually limited and unreal because the thinking that caused them in the first place is actually DISTORTED and untrue because of the natural limitations of being a human being.
That might sound a bit much but all it means is that the DEFAULT way of thinking and being in the world for a human being is often more about SURVIVING LIFE rather than THRIVING in life (something that you’ve probably heard before).
This being the case, we create a collective MATRIX for ourselves to live in that allows us to go through the motions of living but never to actually live in the REALEST possible way.
Perhaps that’s fine because not everybody is ready to pay the cost of living a real life and many people are ‘happy’ to just go through the motions and to take things at face value.
If you’re one of the Real Ones that feels like there might be more to life than just ‘the Matrix’ of the World, then keep reading because this article is going to simplify your relationship to it and give you a few simple techniques and strategies to start breaking out and finding freedom again.
You only get one life so there’s no point holding yourself back and being INDIMIDATED by a world that doesn’t even exist and living a life that never truly makes you feel alive.
Here we go:
Human beings need to be WHOLE if they want to be real but – unfortunately – we’re ‘made’ of FRAGMENTS.
Before we get into this, you need to understand an important difference between WHOLENESS and FRAGMENTATION. If you’ve read some of my ‘stuff’ before then you’ll know what this means but if you haven’t here’s a super quick overview:
Essentially, human life becomes more ‘complicated’ than we often want it to be because we are torn (as a result of our bodies and our social programming) between two states of being.
The first state, is what I would call a REAL state which is a state where we’re constantly moving towards WHOLENESS in ourselves by connecting to our true values and intentions, uncovering and ACCEPTING hidden ‘parts’ of ourselves that may have been disowned in childhood (like certain emotions etc.), and generally putting ourselves on a path to be more authentic.
This real state will also see us moving towards more WHOLENESS in relation to the world around us: for example, by having less barriers erected between ourselves and others so we can have more authentic relationships, finding people that share our values, and understanding the similarities between ourselves and every other human being on the planet rather than just being obsessed with and motivated by the differences.
Finally, the real state will allow us to keep going into a deeper relationship with REALITY. All this really means in simple terms is that we embrace our inherent CONNECTION to life as a whole and to the systems within systems (ad infinitum) of the universe as a whole. This doesn’t necessarily need to mean anything ‘mystical’ – it just means that we all play a role in the universal unfolding of the universe as ONE relationship.
When we are able to live in this REAL STATE then we’re able to keep flowing and growing with life and to generally avoid a great deal of friction, frustration, and misery in our lives. This is because we’re not holding ourselves back with illusory mental blocks or ideas that cause us to act as something that we’re not.
This is where FRAGMENTATION comes in – fragmentation is just anything that causes us to think, feel, and act like we’re DISCONNECTED from ourselves, the world, and reality. This is almost always because we have PERCEIVED these things incorrectly and because we have INTERPRETED these perceptions incorrectly on top of that (this is the VEILED VEIL which we’ll discuss in more detail in a second).
If you tend to CHOOSE fragmentation over wholeness then you will end up removing yourself from reality (because reality is ultimately about working with what’s WHOLE) and you will end up causing yourself to live in a state of FRICTION that will eventually turn to frustration and misery.
The most common form of fragmentation that the majority of us have to contend with is our own SELF-IMAGE (aka ‘Ego’ in the language I use) and the way that we separate and DISCONNECT ourselves from the whole of ourselves, the world, and reality in order to protect it (because we think protecting it will help us – which it might in the short-term but only causes more problems in the long-term).
For example:
At the level of ourselves, being ATTACHED to a certain fragmented image of ourselves cause us to DISCONNECT from all of the emotional ‘stuff’, values, or intentions that are real about us but which go against that self-image (usually because we want to hide from those things for whatever reason – usually social conditioning and self-hypnosis).
At the level of the world, being attached to this fragmented self-image (that we’re separate and not the ‘same’ as others) causes us to create unreal NARRATIVES about our place in the world and to start playing ROLES that are disconnected from reality (usually either acting as ‘more than’ or ‘less than’ human and playing either a ‘hero’ or a ‘victim’, respectively).
At the level of reality, being attached to this image causes EGO RESISTANCE that causes us to resist things about reality that cause us to grow more WHOLE – for example, we may resist change, we may resist facing our weaknesses, we may resist the fact that time is precious because we’re going to be dead one day.
These are all examples but the basic principle we all need to follow is that – to be a ‘happy’ human being – then we need to consciously make a CHOICE to move towards wholeness and connection despite there being a natural drive towards FRAGMENTATION inside all of us.
When the will to fragmentation starts to win, we just end up being ENSLAVED to the Matrix of the world because we believe that the world is reality and the identity we’ve created to survive in it is the truth about us.
‘Escaping’ and living our REAL lives means that we understand the unreality of fragmentation and make a shift into a REAL STATE that allows the world to slip away from our experience of our fragmented ideas about ourselves so that we can move towards wholeness (without expecting to be fully whole, just embracing wholeness as a direction to keep MOVING in).
This means battling our own biological and cultural limitations and making sure we step into what’s whole rather than just acting according to the fragments of ourselves that we picked up from our fragmented perception and interpretation of ‘The World’.
The Veiled Veil: Limited Perception and Interpretation
This is where we come to an inescapable problem of FRAGMENTATION that every human being on the planet has to contend with: the VEILED VEIL.
The Veiled Veil is what emerges when you’re in a fragmented body on a fragmented planet and when you have a machine in your head that uses fragmented concepts to try and make sense of everything it perceives (that ‘machine’ is your brain, btw).
Even though the ‘truth’ about reality is that everything is WHOLE and just one system relating to itself in different ways, human beings have TWO different levels of fragmentation that can block them from experiencing this wholeness to the greatest extent possible.
- Limited perception.
- Limited interpretation.
When these two things come together you have what this article is referring to as the Veiled Veil.
It’s called a ‘veil’ because it places a layer of fragmentation between ourselves and our experience of life as a whole. It’s called a ‘veiled’ veil because it doesn’t just do this once but two times.
At the first level of PERCEPTION, we experience the wholeness of life as being divided and fragmented because of our BODIES.
The fact that we’re in bodies in the first place means that our perception is limited.
My body is positioned in a different place in time and space to yours and so will have a slightly different perception of the WHOLE to you. Furthermore, all bodies are incapable of perceiving everything around them – for example, unless you have eyes in the back of your head you can’t see what’s behind you as you read this.
Nothing wrong with that, of course, it’s just the way it is but what it means in terms of wholeness versus fragmentation is that the primary information you bring in through your senses is completely FRAGMENTED from the very outset. To think that you’re perceiving the truth is a mistake…you’re just perceiving (like the rest of us).
The second level of fragmentation of the Veiled Veil is our INTERPRETATIONS of what we perceive. Because what we perceive is already fragmented, we’re already disconnected from the reality of the whole – but we complicate and fragment things even more by also being BIASED (consciously and unconsciously) in the way that we interpret things we’ve perceived.
This usually comes back to our own relationship to ourselves and our own emotional ‘stuff’ – for example, if we had a ‘bad’ relationship with somebody in the past then we’ll be more likely to interpret what they’re doing in the present as being ‘bad’ too. Another example might be that we CHOOSE to believe something about somebody because it fits in with the way that we want to see ourselves (the ‘ego’ stuff mentioned above).
Either way, what this all boils down to is that the NATURE OF REALITY is wholeness but the way that we perceive and interpret life as a default – from behind the Veiled Veil – is FRAGMENTED.
‘The Matrix’ is just what happens when we choose to continue believing in fragments in our own lives and when we choose to believe that the collective fragmentation of ‘The World’ is real also.
To free yourself, you need to condition yourself to step back from the influence of the Veiled Veil as much as possible.
Survival Value and the MATRIX
Just to be clear, we need the Veiled Veil so that we can survive life on earth but it isn’t the TRUTH about life – it’s the MATRIX that keeps us plugged into an unreal world that holds us back from REAL LIFE.
If you want to start freeing yourself then you need to improve your relationship at the two levels that the Veiled Veil causes you to buy into unnecessary fragmentation: the level of perception and the level of interpretation.
What we can do: Limited Perception
You need to find the EDGE and taste WHOLENESS
It’s probably impossible for a human being to live in a complete state of wholeness for their whole lives – this is because we’re in fragmented bodies in a fragmented world and because we will always have emotional ‘stuff’ to work through that distorts our perceptions and interpretations from time-to-time.
Even so, it’s more than possible to have a TASTE of wholeness that will permeate into the rest of your life and give you a direction to move in and return to if the ‘matrix’ starts to suck you back into ‘the world’ (and the unreal version of yourself that ‘lives’ there to keep the illusion going).
This is something I’ve talked about a ton in my books and in the 7-Day Personality Transplant System Shock for Realness and Life Purpose but the short-version is that you need to put yourself in situations that get you out of your head and allow you to feel completely CONNECTED to your surroundings.
Some examples:
-Riding a motorbike fast.
-Making love to somebody.
-Climbing a mountain.
-Getting in a flow state with a creative project.
-Etc. (the list is endless).
In these kind of cases, you will experience being completely whole and as one with life itself. This means that you managed to find your EDGE and to get out of your ideas of yourself – in other words, there is no separation between you and life. It’s just life experiencing itself.
The more of these kind of experiences you have (Abraham Maslow called them Peak Experiences) the more you will understand your REAL IDENTITY beyond the Veiled Veil.
You need to think in terms of systems
Thinking in terms of systems can also help you to perceive things in a way that is more ‘reality-aligned’ and not limited quite as much by the Veiled Veil.
A ‘system’ in this context is just a series of interrelated parts sharing a connection.
Seeing things in this way, allows you to make a shift towards wholeness instead of just being caught up in the ‘default’ way of the body to limit everything to separate parts.
As a simple example – right now, as you’re reading this, we are not just too ‘separate’ entities but have created a new system that exists between writer and reader. That means that in this moment, we are ‘One’ and the exchange between us is a system. From that system, something ‘real’ might emerge.
That might sound simple but seeing things in this way – and making a conscious choice to remind ourselves to do so – allows us to see things in a way that’s more aligned with the natural WHOLENESS of reality.
Other examples:
-If you’re in a group of people, then you’re not just all separate individuals; you’re all ‘part’ of the ‘group’ system. Seeing it as ‘one’ thing allows things to flow better between the ‘parts’ (people involved) and to allow something bigger to emerge.
-If you’re walking through a forest (or whatever), then you’re part of that system whilst you’re in it (and even when you’re not, tbh). This helps you to see how connected you are to it – even if you’re only playing a small part, you’re still ONE with the system (and it’s only your perception that makes you disconnected if you get caught up in the default way of being).
-If you have a pet, then you and the pet form a new system and this connects you to each other on a deep REAL level. You might not see this if you’re in the ‘default’ way of perceiving but seeing it as a mutually beneficial system allows you to go deeper into it.
These are simple examples and it might seem almost trivial to make this shift but seeing things as systems allows you to step out of the fragmented view of life and to start moving more towards WHOLENESS (which is always more real and allows you to feel more ALIVE).
Train yourself to look for WHOLENESS instead of FRAGMENTATION and to act on what’s whole.
In short, you need to train yourself to overcome the limited perception of your body (which of course you can’t do completely because you’re in your body) and to start looking for the real connections between things.
How far you choose to take this is of course up to you but it might just be about asking yourself from time to time:
“Am I CHOOSING wholeness or fragmentation right now?”
You don’t have to be perfectionistic about it but it will usually be clear which direction you’re moving in.
Act in a way that moves you towards wholeness and your life will usually reflect what you want to a deeper degree.
Learn to BREATHE
Focusing on your breath from time-to-time is another great way to bring yourself back to wholeness.
Again, this doesn’t have to be anything complicated and you don’t need to meditate for hours at a time (unless you want to). Your breath is a great metaphor for some of the things we’re talking about here, though, because it’s connected to the WHOLE.
Your breath is connected to the whole of your body as it carries oxygen throughout the whole SYSTEM. More than that, the breath also connects the inner and outer world and so can show you that you’re not just an independent entity but interdependent with reality as a whole (the breath you breathe is shared with all the other living things around you, etc.).
There’s loads of good stuff out there about breathing but a simple technique is just to do 7-11 breathing when you want to remind yourself to get out of your head: you breathe in for 7 seconds and out for 11.
What we can do: Limited Interpretation
You need to stop treating opinions as facts.
At the Veiled Veil level of interpretations one of the easiest things you can do is to learn to tell the difference between opinions and facts.
A lot of the time, we interpret things as meaning whatever we want them to mean because a general rule of life is that MOST PEOPLE BELIEVE WHAT THEY WANT TO BELIEVE (see below).
This could be about anything but the short-version is that whatever is going on with their relationships with themselves and their emotional ‘stuff’ causes people to act irrationally and to believe whatever will support their egos, justify their fears, give them hope, etc. etc.
When people slip into this unreal way of being they come up with all kinds of skewed distortions about life in the form of narratives and conceptual ideas that they treat as FACTS.
This gives them short-term comfort but in the long-term it just causes them to become more FRAGMENTED and to live lives that they don’t really want to be living.
If you have the emotional resilience, then a way to get around this is to be HONEST with yourself about whether or not what you think is just an OPINION or if it’s an actual fact (true for all about REALITY).
If it’s just an opinion then all you have on your hands is an INTERPRETATION of reality. That’s fine just as long as you are open to changing this interpretation if need be as you keep moving forward and growing more REAL.
You need to realise that MOST PEOPLE BELIEVE WHAT THEY WANT TO BELIEVE (and try to kill this tendency in yourself).
Most people don’t believe in the TRUTH, they believe in what they want to believe in order to feel good about themselves and life. If you’re not careful then you might also fall into this trap (as the old saying goes “ignorance is bliss” but if you want to live a REAL life then you need to be truth-facing, not truth-avoiding).
People believe what they want to believe because it’s easier than facing difficult truths about life and the people that share it with us. It also gives us a kind of false ‘hope’ that we’ll get whatever it is that we want and need in the way that we want.
Here are some examples:
-Somebody might believe that they can grow their business by simply ‘manifesting’ clients or by finding a quick fix (like posting on social media once a week and watching the clients come crawling). Both of those go against reality but people WANT to believe it works like that because they WANT to believe they can do it without doing any WORK (people hate that).
-A guy might go to a coffee shop every day and he develops a crush on the girl that works there. He WANTS to believe that she feels the same way so he starts to tell himself a story in his head that she’s madly in love with him and he starts looking for evidence that this is the case (when really she’s just being nice because she wants the tips).
-Somebody wants to believe that she can lose weight fast in only 5 minutes a day by buying some MAGIC BULLET from the shopping channel on TV (do people still use those?). Of course, in reality there is no magic bullet but people WANT to believe in them because they don’t wanna do the WORK.
-Somebody is in a relationship with an irrational emotional retard but wants to believe “they’ll change” because they don’t want to do the difficult emotional work of breaking up, finding a new partner, accepting that the love wasn’t as deep as they thought, etc. etc.
-Etc.
These are just examples but the POINT is that people interpret life to fit into what they WANT from life. That’s fine if you wanna live in Cloud-cuckoo Land but if you wanna get actual RESULTS then you need to understand that this is just a case of you skewing things from behind the VEILED VEIL in order to justify your own BS.
You need to give up CONTROL FREAKERY
Another thing you can do to manage your life in a more real way at the level of interpretation is to stop trying to CONTROL everything.
If you lapse into CONTROL FREAKERY it’s always because you need life to be a certain way to justify your own interpretations of life. That would be fine if interpretations were the truth but because they’re not, it just causes all kinds of tension in your life, ruins your relationships, and stops you growing.
In the very best case, control freakery will just lead to you managing to create a bubble for yourself to live in but this bubble will always burst when reality creeps back in.
Instead of trying to control everything – which is always EGO – you need to switch to an approach where you can handle UNCERTAINTY and keep growing with it.
The TRUTH about life is that “the only certainty is uncertainty” but this means having to also face uncertainty in yourself (which control freaks hate which is why they’re control freaks in the first place).
When people have a lot of shame, guilt, or trauma that they don’t want to face, they create INTERPRETATIONS of life and try to hide from it behind a false certainty. If you’re a control freak, you need to accept that facing this stuff is just the way back to WHOLENESS and will give you the real experience of life you want.
You need to ensure you have an attitude that keeps you LEARNING
In short, your way out of the Matrix (which is really your relationship with yourself) is to stop acting like you know everything and to put yourself on a path of LEARNING.
Acting like you know everything is the same as acting like your perceptions and interpretations are completely true. Because reality constantly changes and evolves around us this is an UNREAL STATE to be in that just causes problems (including anxiety and depression in many cases).
The REAL approach is to accept and even VALUE uncertainty without letting it affect our own levels of self-acceptance so we can keep growing real and become more WHOLE.
Learning to learn means we can let go of our attachment to interpretations and:
-Not have to worry about being seen as ‘right’ all the time (a form of Control Freakery)
-Not needing to be perfect
-Not being afraid to change our minds
-Etc.
In other words, we won’t have to live our lives defending the fragmentation that makes us miserable in the first place!
You need to stop getting involved in unnecessary conflict.
Finally, developing a REAL relationship with your own interpretations of yourself, the world, and reality allows you to step back from engaging in unnecessary conflict (aka DRAMA & BS).
When you know that the TRUTH is whole and that people can only argue about their INTERPRETATIONS of it, then you don’t need to argue about your own opinions and you don’t need to be bothered about other people’s (whether they’re positive or negative).
Somebody calls you an asshole? Just their interpretation (which might be accurate).
Somebody doesn’t like your political opinions? Cool, they’re just your opinions and they’re entitled to theirs.
Somebody thinks their method of doing [whatever] is better even though it gets the same results? No problem, carry on.
All that really matters is what’s either gonna move you to more wholeness or bring more fragmentation into your life.
If somebody shares something – positive or negative –that helps you on that journey then take it on board. Otherwise, just smile, nod, and move on because the TRUTH can handle itself.
Bring it all together by growing real
The long and short of all this is that you can keep pushing through and EXPERIENCE life deeply by growing REAL:
Choose a purpose that keeps you moving towards wholeness and shattering your interpretations of yourself, the world, and reality (so you can remove layers of fragmentation and become more REAL) on the way there.
As you become more real, you become more whole, and the rest will fall into place. Get in touch if you need some help figuring out how to do it.
Conclusion
You can either live life in an unreal state and be miserable or you can get REAL by pushing through your limits and shattering the VEILED VEIL and leaving the Matrix.
Trust: A Manual for Becoming the Void, Building Flow, and Finding Peace is a book about learning to return to your realness by cultivating trust in yourself and trust in life.
It contains practical exercises and dedicated meditations (Transformational Bridges) to take you DEEP in knowing yourself and life.
This book will answer many of the questions you have growing REAL and flowing towards wholeness. It covers everything from shame to addiction to the unconscious mind and synchronicity (and way more).
Personal Revolutions: A Short Course in Realness is a book designed to help you look at your life from the inside-out so that you can stop holding yourself back and go get what you really want.
It contains 166 practical ‘Revolutions’ for awareness and over 8,000 Self-Guidance Questions for you to uncover new insight about yourself, the world, and reality that you can translate into action and start building your real life on the realest possible foundation.
Shadow Life is an exploration of the human shadow and the hidden side of our personalities. It looks at the masks we wear, where these masks come from, and how we can take them off.
The book explores how we can better manage our relationships with shame, guilt, and trauma in order to remove the Mask that the world has asked us to wear (and that we forgot we were wearing) so we can live an authentic life with less drama, chaos, or BS whilst we’re still around.
The Flow Builder Journal has everything you need to make the next 21-weeks of your life a turning point.
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If you want to get unstuck and grow REAL then check it out.
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