The 6 Grand Illusions That Keep Us Enslaved to the Matrix
“In prison, illusions can offer comfort.” – Nelson Mandela
For a magician to fool his audience his
deceit must go unseen, and to this end he crafts an illusion to
avert attention from reality. While the audience is entranced, the
deceptive act is committed, and for the fool, reality then becomes
inexplicably built upon on a lie. That is, until the fool wakes up and
recognizes the truth in the fact that he has been duped.
Maintaining the suspension of disbelief in
the illusion, however, is often more comforting than acknowledging the
magician’s secrets.
We live in a world of illusion. So many of
the concerns that occupy the mind and the tasks that fill the calendar
arise from planted impulses to become someone or something that we are not.
This is no accident. As we are indoctrinated into this
authoritarian-corporate-consumer culture that now dominates the human
race, we are trained that certain aspects of our society are untouchable
truths, and that particular ways of being and behaving are preferred.
Psychopaths disempower
people in this way. They blind us with never ceasing barrages of
suggestions and absolutes that are aimed at shattering self-confidence
and confidence in the future.
Bansky, the revered and elusive revolutionary street artist, once commented:
“People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small.They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate.They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you.” – BanksyAdvertisements
Advertising is just the tip of the iceberg.
When we look further we see that the overall organization of life is
centered around the pursuit of illusions and automatic obedience to
institutions and ideas which are not at all what they seem. We are in a
very real sense enslaved. Many call this somewhat intangible feeling of
oppression ‘the matrix,’ a system of total control that invades the
mind, programming individuals to pattern themselves in accordance with a
mainstream conformist version of reality, no matter how wicked it gets.
The grandest of the illusions which keep us
enslaved to the matrix, the ones that have so many of us still
entranced, are outlined below for your consideration.
1. The Illusion of Law, Order and Authority
For so many of us, following the law is
considered a moral obligation, and many of us gladly do so even though
corruption, scandal, and wickedness repeatedly demonstrate that the law
is plenty flexible for those who have the muscle to bend it. Police
brutality and police criminality is rampant in the US, the courts favor
the wealthy, and we can longer even lead our lives privately thanks to
the intrusion of state surveillance. And all the while the illegal and
immoral Orwellian permanent war rages on in the background of life,
murdering and destroying whole nations and cultures.
The social order is not what it seems, for it
is entirely predicated on conformity, obedience and acquiescence which
are enforced by fear of violence. History teaches us again and again
that the law is just as often as not used as an instrument of
oppression, social control and plunder, and any so-called authority in
this regard is false, hypocritical, and unjust.
When the law itself does not follow the law,
there is no law, there is no order, and there is no justice. The pomp
and trappings of authority are merely a concealment of the truth that
the current world order is predicated on control, not consent.
2. The Illusion of Prosperity and Happiness
Adorning oneself in expensive clothes and
trinkets, and amassing collections of material possessions that would be
the envy of any 19th century monarch has become a substitute for
genuine prosperity. Maintaining the illusion of prosperity, though, is
critical to our economy as it is, because its foundation is built on
consumption, fraud, credit and debt.
The banking system itself has been engineered from the top down to
create unlimited wealth for some while taxing the eternity out of the
rest of us.
True prosperity is a vibrant environment and
an abundance of health, happiness, love, and relationships. As more
people come to perceive material goods as the form of self-identification in this culture, we slip farther and farther away from the experience of true prosperity.
3. The Illusion of Choice and Freedom
Read between the lines and look at the fine
print, we are not free, not by any intelligent standard. Freedom is
about having choice, yet in today’s world, choice has come to
mean a selection between available options, always from within the
confines of a corrupt legal and taxation system and within the
boundaries of culturally accepted and enforced norms.
Just look no further than the phony
institution of modern democracy to find a shining example of false
choices appearing real. Two entrenched, corrupt, archaic political
parties are paraded as the pride and hope of the nation, yet third party
and independent voices are intentionally blocked, ridiculed and plowed
under.
The illusion of choice and freedom is a
powerful oppressor because it fools us into accepting chains and short
leashes as though they were the hallmarks of liberty.
Multiple choice is different than freedom, it is easy servitude.
4. The Illusion of Truth
Truth has become a touchy subject in our culture, and we’ve been programmed to believe that ‘the‘
truth comes from the demigods of media, celebrity, and government. If
the TV declares something to be true, then we are heretics to believe
otherwise.
In order to maintain order, the powers that
be depend our acquiescence to their version of the truth. While
independent thinkers and journalists continually blow holes in the
official versions of reality, the illusion of truth is so very
powerful that it takes a serious personal upheaval to shun the cognitive
dissonance needed to function in a society that openly chases false
realities.
5. The Illusion of Time
They say that time is money, but this is a
lie. Time is your life. Your life is an ever-evolving manifestation of
the now. Looking beyond the five sense world, where we have been trained
to move in accordance with the clock and the calendar, we find that the
spirit is eternal, and that the each individual soul is part of this
eternity.
The big deception here is the reinforcement
of the idea that the present moment is of little to no value, that the
past is something we cannot undo or ever forget, and that the future is
intrinsically more important than both the past and the present. This
carries our attention away from what it actually happening right now and
directs it toward the future. Once completely focused on what is to
come rather than what is, we are easy prey to advertisers and fear-pimps
who muddy our vision of the future with every possible worry and
concern imaginable.
We are happiest when life doesn’t box us in,
when spontaneity and randomness gives us the chance to find out more
about ourselves. Forfeiting the present moment in order to fantasize
about the future is a trap. The immense, timeless moments of spiritual
joy that are found in quiet meditation are proof that time is a
construct of the mind of humankind, and not necessarily mandatory for
the human experience.
If time is money, then life can be measured
in dollars. When dollars are worth less, so is life. This is
total deception, because life is, in truth, absolutely priceless.
6. The Illusion of Separateness
On a strategic level, the tactic of divide
and conquer is standard operating procedure for authoritarians and
invading armies, but the illusion of separateness runs even deeper than
this.
We are programmed to believe that as
individuals we are in competition with everyone and everything around
us, including our neighbors and even mother nature.
Us vs. them to the extreme. This flatly denies the truth that life on
this planet is infinitely inter-connected. Without clean air, clean
water, healthy soil, and a vibrant global sense of community we cannot
survive here.
While the illusion of separateness comforts
us by gratifying the ego and and offering a sense of control, in reality
it only serves to enslave and isolate us.
Conclusion
The grand illusions mentioned here have been
staged before us as a campaign to encourage blind acquiescence to the
machinations of the matrix. In an attempt to dis-empower us, they demand
our conformity and obedience, but we must not forget that all of this
is merely an elaborate sales pitch. They can’t sell what we don’t care
to buy.
About the Author
Sigmund Fraud is a survivor of modern psychiatry and a dedicated mental activist. He is a staff writer for WakingTimes.com where he indulges in the possibility of a massive shift towards a more psychologically aware future for mankind.
http://themindunleashed.org/2015/02/6-grand-illusions-keep-us-enslaved-matrix.html
