#3. You no longer take the bait of “money brings happiness.”
Long story short: My friend Adrian works in an art gallery in town. Today while I was buying bread, my friend kidnapped my mother and sat her in a chair at the gallery entrance to have her caricatured (apparently, there was a meeting of caricaturists).
When I went to get my mother back, he kidnapped me, too, and sat me on another chair next to my mother so that another artist could do the Caricature you see on the article’s cover.
Which gave me a chance to 1) pose as celebrities do 🙂 and 2) stare at a fixed point on the main street for 30 minutes, during which time if anyone said, “Why are you staring at me, you pervert?” I could claim I wasn’t looking at anything, just posing for my portrait like any self-respecting European Renaissance King.
The fact is that during those eternal 30 minutes, I have seen hundreds of people pass by on the street, and they all stopped to look at the caricaturists and the caricatures but then went on their way with identical walks.
There came the point when I realized that the vast majority of people live on autopilot: the people who passed by on the street were drinking coffee, shopping, etc., but they looked like pigeons to me.
Their actions were routine, mechanical, and focused on utility, not human life. And I found it very sad to see so many people turned into zombies while they were caricaturing me.
When the artist finished the Caricature, I asked her if she had a Twitter account to promote her work, and she said, “I don’t have social networks, just a professional Instagram; I have enough with my life.”
And she said it with a tone that wholly connected with me. She didn’t know I was an artist, but I felt that connection of perfectly understanding what a person was referring to.
I noticed how her phrase hid something deeper, something like that lately she didn’t understand life or people and that socializing on social networks only increased her confusion.
I have seen that what happens to her is typical to all of us when we escape from the Matrix. And I thought many people don’t know they escaped the Matrix and feel weird like the cartoonist.
That’s why I want to share three signs that you have escaped from the Matrix in case you feel identified with them so that you know nothing is wrong; you have just evolved spiritually.
And if you trust, everything will fall into place.
Let’s start
1. You have stopped liking things you used to love.
Escaping the Matrix is not about dressing up like Neo and calling everyone Agent Smith. That’s usually done by people who think they’ve escaped the Matrix but are still in it.
The first thing is to define what it is to escape the Matrix: for me, it is to get out of the social spell and to start being a free thinker who does not accept as his own the model of success promoted by the advertising of western culture.
From my definition of the Matrix, you can draw the subtle conclusion that advertising and mass media culture is ceasing to work on you; it is ceasing to entertain you, to anesthetize you, to keep you zombie-like on your sofa-eating Doritos.
So if you want to know if you’ve escaped the Matrix, ask yourself these questions: “Do I watch as many shows on Netflix as I used to?”, “Do I finish watching the movies or stop halfway through because I’m tired of watching the Rockie costumed hero trip or John Wick 1, 2, 3, 4, or 1000? Do I go out less than before? Do people’s conversations seem childish and shallow?
If, in answering, you realize that you no longer enjoy what you used to enjoy and that you now prefer other, more profound, or at least different things, what is happening to you likely is that you are escaping from the control of the Matrix. That’s why you feel strange, like you don’t fit where you used to.
Don’t worry; you will find your place.
2. You have started to look at people more on the inside than on the outside.
One of the tricks of the Matrix is to make us believe that we are so unique that we need to surround ourselves with winners or, instead, with what society labels winners.
And this is an evil thing because it made chubby boys like me in the 90s not want to date chubby girls. After all, fat guys were losers.
Crazy. But that’s how the Matrix works; it makes you exclude those like you and buy products or services that take you out of the social rejects.
When you discover the trick and start caring more about people’s inner appearance than their physique, it’s a clear sign that you’ve escaped the Matrix.
My mother, for example, typically walks with two crutches, and men look at her as if she were not a woman but a cripple. But today, the cartoonist who drew her saw in her a Super Woman 🙂
Here is the Caricature he drew of her,
The artist was clearly outside the Matrix, so he could see my mother with the eyes of the soul rather than the ego. The author used a crutch daily, and he knew firsthand how ordinary people look at people in my mother’s situation.
My mother, today, not only got a caricature, but a smile, thanks to an artist who looked at her as what she is, a strong and incredible woman.
So if you’ve started not judging people so much by their physique, my friend, it’s a clear sign that you’re out of the Matrix.
3. You no longer take the “money brings happiness” bait.
Antonio Gala, a famous Spanish writer, now almost a hundred years old, always says, “People believe that having everything they want, this or that, will give them happiness, but it’s a lie because if what everyone wants is to be happy, why instead of asking for so much stuff don’t they ask for happiness directly?”
The rat race only leads to dissatisfaction. But, according to the Matrix, life is to work and consume things, and we spend our lives on that hamster wheel.
We work — We earn money — We buy something that is supposed to make us happy — We get tired — We get bitter — We work harder to buy more expensive and spectacular things — We buy new, more costly, and astonishing things — We discover we are unhappy — We repeat the process.
A clear sign that you have escaped the Matrix is that you no longer take that bait, and you look for activities that may or may not cost money but make you happy now.
Because if you have left the Matrix, what happens is that you start to look for that life that gives you inner peace because peace does bring happiness, and money only helps.
A virtual hug
AG
Leave a Reply