Tag: awareness

Spoiler Alert: If you have never seen the matrix, be warned the following piece describes pivotal scenes.

There is a moment towards the end of the Matrix that I find compelling to contemplate.

Inside the Matrix, Neo collapses after being showered in bullets. His body in the real world flatlines and it appears that he is dead. Trinity leans in close, her lips to his ear, she tells him to get the hell up. Well, first she tells him that he must be ‘The One’ because the Oracle told her that she would fall in love with ‘The One’ and since she had fallen in love with him then he must be ‘The One’, so he had better get the hell up! She kisses him in the real world and inside the matrix, his avatar (residual self-image) gets the hell up.

The first time I saw ‘The Matrix’ this part really annoyed me. It felt forced and cheesy. On subsequent viewings, I softened as a deeper meaning emerged. What follows when Neo gets up is another wave of bullets, only this time Neo believes he is ‘The One’. He’s taken Trinity’s belief in him, communicated either through her forcefully whispered words or her kiss, and he has converted that into belief in himself. As for the bullets, well they just keep coming. Now Neo[1], sees that he can’t stop the bullets from being fired but he can stop them from harming him. Remember this is a metaphor, real bullets actually kill, but metaphorical ones can drop to the ground. Bullets will keep coming but what Neo is doing is choosing how they affect him.

I entreat you to contemplate this moment by choosing your own metaphor. The bullets could be anxiety, financial stress, a problem relationship, frustrations or other complications in your life. The fact is once you learn to control your response to them that won’t actually stop them coming at you. But their impact on you can and will change.

Buddha described the same idea as arrows turning into flowers. Your mind chooses how you see things and how they will affect you. To me, the film-makers are telling us that we and only we are ‘The One’ in our own lives. It’s only ourselves that can determine how the bullets that life fires at us will impact. Will you be mortally wounded, or will you put up your hand and say ‘No’. There is always a choice to do things differently. We just have to find awareness of the moment and realise our own control of it.

I’m grateful to both the film-makers and my meditation practice for offering the opportunity to look from a different perspective.

Evan Shapiro
Author – Road to Nowhere

[1] Anagram of One

There are a ton of things going on in the world that bother me. They range from mildly inconvenient intrusions into my daily life to global demigods that threaten the end of our existence. The everyday intrusions I’m learning to deal with. What’s harder is the wave of moderate to high, national and global issues that inundate my mind at the speed of light. Literally, light carrying information from the multitude of screens I’ve allowed to infiltrate my existence directly into my thought stream. I’m angry with many things people do in my world. Rather than list them all, I can sum them up into two very simple actions. 1. People treating others without compassion. 2. People treating their world with contempt.

Within this constant download of outrage from social media and the 24/7 news cycle, there is one person in the world who is damaging us all by relentlessly surfing the waves of light we recklessly allow to flow into our view. I’m angry with the world for not only allowing it but for propagating it. I don’t even want to use his name because that’s what he wants. Instead, I’m going to refer to him as The Great Disruptor.

The Great Disruptor, via traditional and social media, is destroying our thought patterns. His every move, great or small, is reported in a way that no other world leader has been subject to and the constant appearance of stories related to him, the constant disruption is corrupting normal thought processes. It’s very important to respond appropriately to the outrageousness of his actions, but equally, it’s important to remove him from our stream of consciousness as a constant form of unpredictable energy. The Great Disruptor needs to be compartmentalised. His intrusion into our consciousness should not be at the expense of caring about other people or self-nurturing. The Great Disruptor aims to leverage our fear as he aims to validate his self-worth by the accumulation of wealth and power.

By disrupting our thoughts, by intruding into our conversations, by infiltrating our social media feeds as well as our mental processes he is taking our thoughts away from where they can do the most good. He is undermining our ability and our right to create a sense of self-security.

I like to think I have a strong will, but I’ll admit I’ve been mentally fractious since The Great Disruptor came to prominence. My peace of mind is slowly and surely being eroded. But now that I can see the negative influence of the constant news stream I can take steps to disrupt the Great Disruptor. For me, this is taking the form of reading less news and reconnecting with what’s happening in the immediate world around me. I’m turning off the internet and phone for a few hours every day and when they are back on engaging with them less.

We can and should have our moments of protest. They are vital. Our voices can and will change things. But along the way, it’s essential to also protect our thoughts. To allow ourselves the time and space to evaluate and to contemplate. We can grow meaning in our lives and hold true to what is of real value when we tune out the noise. And right now, The Great Disruptor is simply the noisiest child in the room. We can’t allow his cries for attention to be our undoing.

Evan Shapiro
Author – Road To Nowhere

It’s a thin line between calm and chaos. I want to take that line and make it thick. Really really think. I want to make it so thick that chaos is held clearly and firmly on its side of the line.

As I write this I’m aware that I’m talking about chaos. It’s not going to be contained by a line, real or imagined. By its nature chaos is going to do its best to destroy the very idea of a line. Even when we feel we may have created or discovered some degree of balance, chaos is lurking. It waits patiently for the façade of calm to crumble. Or is there a means to conquer it and remain calm in the face of inevitable chaos?

When I examine what I go through in my day I can see where the conflict between calm and chaos arises. On one side I have my plans, I have a clear idea of how I want to spend my time. There are deadlines to meet and goals to achieve. Chaos sits on the other side poised to thwart, metaphorical spanner in hand, ready to be thrown into my works. It’s so simple for chaos to hinder my plans and by so doing unravel my calm. My calm is almost entirely based on my desire to achieve what I have told myself I need to do. Chaos is no more than the frustration of my desires not being met. And there is the solution lying at the crux of the problem. I am giving chaos all the power. The true chaos is the idea I have created in my mind, that if I don’t tick off my list today then I have failed, that my idea of what needs to be achieved is somehow so vitally important that if frustrated it will lead to calamitous retribution. Aiding chaos is the idea that when anything new comes along I immediately think I have to deal with it and drop what I think is truly important.

The answer to what has seemed like an endless riddle to me might be to alter my perception of emerging priorities and rationally address them for what they are rather than seeing them as obstacles to my calm. Applying reason, I can either give immediate attention to the interruption or triage it. I also have to look closely at the things on my to do list. Who said I had to do all these things? Who said I had to make them all happen today? Who said I had to do them all at once? Turns out I did! Why exactly I don’t know, but it’s clear that the malicious force I personify as ‘Chaos’ is only a figment of my over active human mind, so too is my seemingly endless list of desires. Perhaps the best way to create calm is to remove the line between calm and chaos entirely, remove the very idea of an internal world of opposing forces. With that perhaps I can take away the power they hold in my mind and the affect they have upon my thoughts and actions.

Evan Shapiro
Author – Road To Nowhere
www.amazon.com/author/evanshapiro

‘Looking at the world through rose coloured glasses’ is an expression that has fascinated me since I was a child. I had a baby sitter who actually had rose coloured glasses and said she preferred to see the world through them than the harsh reality she saw without them. She let me try them on once and I found it amusing to flick them up and down, comparing my reality to her rose tinted version.

The phrase implies a world view that is ignorant to the truth, but could it be seen another way? There isn’t anything inherently wrong with wanting to see things better or perhaps just differently to the way you naturally perceive things. Putting a rose tint on everything isn’t any different from filtering all you perceive through your own mind and body. ‘You’ are what you have to perceive the world. Your mind and body are essentially your mechanisms for perception. Your world view and your self view completely influence how you see things. So, consciously adding a tint is quite possibly more aware than simply going through life taking in information and not recognising how you are altering information as it comes in.

In science this is called the ‘observer effect’, that by the act of observation, the observer actually changes what is being witnessed. If we have low self-esteem, poor self awareness then pretty much everything you think and do will be altered by that ‘reality’.

There have been times in my life where I have felt embarrassed to say what I think, too shy or concerned about what other people might think about my opinion. To people who know me now this must seem ridiculous. Yet I’m aware of how these patterns can corrupt my experience of the world. Over time, through self examination, I have learned to be accepting of myself and this has unlocked a degree of confidence. But I know people who are consumed by what they perceive as their failings. If perhaps they realised they could remove that filter and choose a different way to look at things who knows how their observations of life might change the world before them.

Evan Shapiro
www.amazon.com/author/evanshapiro

Spending a week away camping with my family recently was both deeply relaxing and at times extremely frustrating. As I experienced moments of frustration, though I couldn’t always stop them, I could however observe myself as the feelings took over.

Why was I getting frustrated in the first place? This was a family holiday, camping right on the beach with amazing wildlife all around and nothing to do but swim, nap and find a good spot to read and relax. I have one word that explains it. Family! I love them, but sometimes they trigger my frustration like no other human beings can. Our interchange with each other is based on years of behaviour. We all have our likes, dislikes and oddities. We can make each other laugh hysterically but we can also drive each other crazy.

I set my agenda early. Reading. I wanted to sit and read. And I told them, I told them all, don’t hassle me because I want to read this year. I’d seen others in the group do it, why couldn’t I?

As I sat in my camp chair in the shade of our makeshift living space determined to enact my chosen course of relaxation my loved ones around me had other ideas about what constituted relaxation. I love having a good chat, but can’t they see the book in my hand? Food preparation, an understandable distraction. Outings; can we go to another beach? Can we go for another swim, can you come out with us and catch waves? Yes of course, I love all those activities, and naturally it’s only fair I take my turn shared among the adults for beach safety. BUT I WANT TO READ!

Everyone had their time table and it seemed that their plans for one reason or another required action by me to enable their desired outcome. This is not a complaint, it’s just what I observed, more about myself than about them. I looked long and hard and wondered how I had contributed to being an enabler, a provider, a necessity to others, a conduit they had to pass through in order to obtain something. How did I come to hold that position? I wasn’t the only one of course. There were a few of us in the group that also filled a similar role for our respective dependents. Did we create this way of being because we want to be in control? Was it just a side effect of being a parent? Was it because I take my responsibilities seriously and I like to make sure those around me are looked after? If so why was I frustrated by it? I’m not one to shirk my responsibilities. On the contrary I would feel guilty when attempting to enact my own desires to relax to the point that, when the opportunities to relax arose, I found myself asking if anyone needed anything? I invited interruption. I maintained the structure of dependency equal to or perhaps even more than those I was ‘responsible’ for.

It wasn’t my wonderful crazy family after all, well not totally. It was me. I was responsible for how I interacted with them and it was up to me if it was going to be different.

Let’s see what happens next year when I sit in my camp chair, book in hand. I think I’ll make a few signs to hold up to help re-educate my loved ones and myself.

‘I’m not moving but I’m actually really busy right now’, ‘Before asking me, ask yourself’, perhaps just ‘Do Not Disturb, information download in progress’ or ‘I love you, but please go away.’

I guess I’ll see how it goes. Ultimately it’s my choice to go with the flow, swim against the tide or step out of the water.

There are two times of year traditionally set aside for clearing out the old to bring in the new. Springing cleaning, a human reflection of seasonal change, and the new year, also based on seasonal renewal but perhaps a more human defined concept of new beginnings.

I’m caught up in the latter. I have completely removed the contents of my wardrobe in the name of rationalisation. My floor is covered in items collected during the coarse of my life. They represent links to past moments, past careers, past relationships and past ideas. My bed is covered in clothes that need to be sorted; those to be kept, those to be discarded. I have to etch out a space in the mountain of material to sit for my daily meditation practice.

Being surrounded by this multitude of items that represent my life is probably not the best environment in which to meditate, however I have a commitment to a daily practice so I go ahead. What I find when I close my eyes is that all these objects are now floating around in my mind. But this is meditation. What I’m seeing is my minds projection. These mental objects and their connection to me can be easily altered. With each breath I can melt them away.

When I open my eyes I see all these things around me and the difference between the representations in my mind and the ‘real’ objects is suddenly negligible. While I can’t melt these ‘real’ ones away with my mind I can choose how they affect me. I can choose to keep or discard. They may have physical properties but it is still my mind, aided by my senses that is creating them for me to perceive, giving them permission to be good or bad distractions.

I sit a little longer amongst my possessions, both connected and disconnected from them. Suddenly this seems the perfect place to meditate because if I can’t work out how to see beyond all the distractions before me how will I see passed all the distractions that life throws at me every day.

I hear the sound of someone outside. A car starts, a train goes by, someone in the kitchen puts the kettle on, a work deadline appears, shopping lists and domestic demands rise as though tangible. I breath and take in these ‘distractions’ rather than fight against them. Just like all the objects surrounding me, these ‘distractions’ are only happening in my mind, aren’t they? It’s only me here, in my head. It’s only me deciding what to keep and what to clear away.

Evan Shapiro
www.amazon.com/author/evanshapiro