The Red Pill
This Is What Will Happen After You Take It
The Red Pill
"This is your last chance," rebel leader Morpheus tells Neo, holding a coloured pill in each hand.
“You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe.You take the red pill, you stay in
Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes."
This sequence from the iconic film "The Matrix" released in 1999 has, in recent times, been appropriated by right-wing extremists and other fringe groups. I completely disassociate myself from all that and return to the original interpretation:
Taking the red pill is a symbolic action and
a metaphor for an experience of some form of transcendent awakening.
This article describes my experience of what happens when you do.
My Story And What Led Me To The Red Pill
The dynamics of change and "how to do life"
In my business life I have been fascinated with the dynamics and mechanics of what makes organisations tick for as long as I can remember.
But I have also been equally fascinated with the dynamics of personal change and "how to do life".
In everyday life this involves learning how to think effectively, and how to not
think, and the practicalities of how to apply all this to the tough
times that now affect us all.
For many years I felt that the organisational and
personal dynamics of change were two quite separate fields and thus
different lines of enquiry. Eventually, I realised that they are not.
They are inter-connected. Everything is inter-connected. We are all
inter-connected.
I do not simply mean this as an idea or a concept but as a felt and experienced reality.
However, for most of us of us, for the majority of the time, we just can't experience this inter-connectedness because our minds get in the way.
Waking up
When I first saw "The Matrix" I immediately saw the film as a powerful visual analogy for what I was experiencing. The waking up from one reality into a vastly bigger one.
The movement from a thought based understanding about consciousness based on reason and logic and to an experience based understanding of consciousness using noetic understanding [from the Greek noēsis/ noētikos], meaning inner wisdom, direct knowing, intuition, or implicit understanding.
Put very simply, I describe this as a shift from head to heart.
About 10 years before seeing the film, I had set out on a personal journey of discovery into "the meaning of life, the universe and everything".
I was serious and sincere in my intentions to discover and master the underlying truth of it all, but I did not fully realise what I was getting into when I took the red pill...
What Does It Mean To Take The Red Pill?
The journey of personal development and spiritual growth starts by developing a good working relationship with your mind.
The
initial stages of this process focus on the conscious mind and working
on all the things you can do to develop a more resourceful mind.
As
you engage with this process you soon realise that your mind has many
unconscious aspects that you need to make conscious and work on.
Then, at some point, you become aware of your spiritual or higher self. The best way to think of this is as your personal portal to the universe and "everything out there".
Taking the red pill describes the point at which you start to seriously engage with consciousness via your higher self.
What Happened When I Took The The Red Pill
On my journey to this point I had immersed myself in the study of
psychology, self-help and personal development. I had practised positive
thinking, visualisation, affirmations; I had also embraced NLP and
other techniques of self-improvement. I worked my way through various
religious and spiritual practices. I had also done a lot of work on
myself to deal with the baggage of my past.
As a result of all
this I mastered certain skills in life and in business, and I became
fairly successful and what I used to describe as a fully functional
human being.
At that time I felt that with the mastering of these various skills I had at last got a working model of how to do life.
Curved Balls And Shattered Certainties
But,
having made the commitment to dive deeper into the inner spiritual
dimension, what I found was that every time I thought that I had
mastered it and got the hang of it all, life threw me a series of curved
balls that shattered my certainties and exposed them as delusions.
If You Take "Life" Seriously It Engages And Starts To Take You Seriously
Firstly, what I didn’t know at the beginning of all this is that when we start to take Life seriously - or The Energy Of Life as I refer to it - it takes us seriously, and that changes everything. This is an interactive process, and it is a personal process.
We live in an energetic world,
and how we feel inside most of the time - our dominant emotional/energetic state -
has a major bearing on our experience of life, especially over time. In
other words we live in a participatory universe.
The Rules Of The Game Change
In
simple terms, the effect of a personal engagement with consciousness - or the energy of life as I refer to it - quite literally reverses the rules of the game. All the
things that used to work no longer work. The old skills become
irrelevant. The model cracks and old certainties fail.
Secondly, I
discovered that once we start out on this journey there is no turning
back. This is a high wire walk and the only way is forward.
How Do You Get Started With The Red Pill
Firstly you have got to want to.
Through the heart not the head
The gateway to engaging with consciousness is not through the conscious mind, it does not involve your ego. It all starts with some form of inner prompting. This is felt in your heart not your head.
Personally I have found that the regular practice of meditation and a continual practice of mindfulness has created the space to allow this to happen.
For some people there is sudden and amazing flash of insight but for most of us this is a more gradual and developing awareness.
Relating to, and interacting with, consciousness
The
key thing I very rapidly experienced was that there was an interaction
taking place between my inner dialogue and accompanying energy states
and The Energy Of Life.
The interaction was a combination of
verbal initiation, questioning, reflection and intention on my side, and
an intuitive reception of response, supported by external changes of
circumstances, and my perception and attitude towards them.
This was rarely an immediate cause and effect but rather analogous to a dance, and often a very slow dance at that!
I
came to experience this dance as a relationship which developed and
deepened over time and which, as with all relationships, involved a
degree of trial and error, learning and development.
Finding the language to express this
One of the difficulties of sharing these experiences as accurately and honestly as possible is finding the right language, finding the most neutral and balanced way to express this without falling into the trap of using religious or faith based language on the one hand or being overly analytical on the other hand.
As noted in Lost For Words, words are limited and for whatever they include they leave out a greater amount. What I am looking for is the language of ineffability.
Of all the documented experiences of the red pill I have read that are expressed in neutral and what I would call balanced language, one of the best descriptions is shared by personal development blogger Steve Pavlina in a series of 3 videos to which I have created key point summary notes to accompany each video.
I commend this material to you.
Steve Pavlina's videos and my notes Further Resources on this site I have written an extended, indexed article on consciousness: The purpose of this article
is firstly to offer a personal, experience-based perspective on
consciousness and secondly, to offer some potential ways of exploring,
living with and developing your connection and relationship with
consciousness. The following links will take you to these specific areas:
The Red Pill Videos and Further Resources
Next Article: Transformational Life Hacks
Return from "The Red Pill" to: Walking The Talk
Or to: What Is Spirituality?
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