Awakening to the Matrix of Social and Cultural Conditioning
What is the matrix of social and cultural conditioning?
The matrix of social and cultural conditioning is the most pervasive form of trauma on the planet.
It’s a system of mind control that manipulates us to think, feel, and behave in specific ways.
Without realizing what’s happening, we become drugged by a fabricated and conditioned reality. One that recklessly distorts our feelings of wholeness and creates a sense of painful separation and aloneness.
The matrix has attempted to turn the masses into puppets dangling on strings of I should. As a result, many of us have learned to repress our authentic needs and desires.
The matrix gets us to do the dirty work, by subliminally encouraging us to internalize voices of criticism and shame. To liberate ourselves we must first see how the voices of domestication are reinforced from the inside-out. If the matrix had a voice, it might say things like this:
“You’re broken and sinful. I know better than you — do as I say and you’ll be safe, protected, worthy of love, belonging and celebration. If you try to step out of line, you’ll be punished and humiliated.”
What is the result of the matrix?
The matrix turns us away from our instincts, wisdom, and wholeness and towards feelings of inadequacy, fear, and compulsively seeking externally for our value.
This pulses a persistent and irritating buzz of restlessness and anxiety coursing through us. For many, the anxiety may go unnoticed because we’ve learned to quickly block and manage it through addictive behaviors and habits. You know, those swift impulses to fix, numb, or strive towards something that will help you to assuage your discomfort in the moment?
As a result, we will plunge into anxiety-induced addictions such as consuming technology, food, people, sex, work, online shopping or consistently falling into worm holes of social media and online research. These activities temporarily alleviate our anxiety until the next craving takes over. Until we examine the root of our anxiety, it’s hard to shift addictive behaviors in a sustainable way.
Is the matrix behind a socially-normalized addiction to busyness? What happens if we slow down? When we get quiet enough, on a consistent basis, will we feel the power of our quiet presence and the capacity to know answers without conscious thought? Will we feel our hearts more? Instead of protecting and judging ourselves or others, will we lean into connection and compassion?
Exposing how the matrix influences our reality
The matrix acts as a virus swiftly disrupting our mental, emotional, physical health, and well-being. It’s an invisible and inherited poison — a slow drip faucet incrementally filling our mind and body with lies.
The matrix’s messages permeate our reality. As a result, we unknowingly become the gatekeeper of our own prisons. When this external oppressor becomes our very own inner critic — the internalized voice of “I should,” “I’m too much” or “I’m not enough— we’re under the spell of domestication.
This is how domestication becomes reinforced from the inside-out and why the tactics of the matrix are one of the most subtle and pervasive forms of disempowerment, manipulation, and misuse of power.
The matrix wants us to forget the radiant treasure of who we truly are.
Who is the wizard behind the curtain of the matrix?
Who or what is the original source responsible for the mind-controlling messages geared towards domesticating the masses?
Who is behind each initiative that intentionally manipulates the health of our natural resources by poisoning our air, soil, and waters?
Who is taking responsibility for how these choices are causing a detrimental impact on the well-being of countless species on the planet?
Is this a group of people? The government, a mysterious elite organization, certain religious institutions, or corporate monopolies? Or is it a field of consciousness? A source beyond the earth plane?
I don’t have the answers to these larger questions. While they do intrigue me, I feel it’s most important to focus on sharpening our inner game to help heal this personal and collective trauma of domestication and disembodiment.
Self-awareness and the courageous act of taking personal responsibility are two essential ingredients required to slip off the shackles of domestication from minds and hearts.
Tracking internalized voices — and conditioned behaviors — of the matrix
As we’ve explored, internalized voices of the matrix convince us that our worthiness comes from something outside of our essential nature.
Instead, we’re measured by how much we earn, our physical appearance, our social and economic status, our education, the number of followers we have on social media, and so on. When we fall short in any of these areas, it exclaims, “See, you are a failure!”
The voices of the matrix prey on our vulnerability. Left unchecked, the distorted messages will emphasize a painful perception of deficiency — which leads to conditioned ways of operating that trap us in states of fear, anxiety, striving and addictions.
Let’s look at a summary of these voices and conditioned behaviors.
INTERNALIZED VOICES OF THE MATRIX
Shame and self-doubt
Fear-based thinking — lack and scarcity
Comparison to assess value and worthiness
Hierarchical thinking based upon superiority and inferiority
Blaming others or judging ourselves to manage anxiety and fear
Self-imposed pressures to uphold idealized versions of ourselves, which often override authenticity and vulnerability
Conformity as an attempt to avoid rejection, humiliation or loss of status
CONDITIONED BEHAVIORS FUELED BY THE MATRIX
Grasping for happiness externally instead of internally
Consumerism and amassing material possessions
Abdicating our authority and authentic desires in order to belong or fit in
Striving to be a superhuman and check all the boxes of success which can lead to illness, burn-out and mid-life crisis
Anxiety-driven addictions and coping mechanisms that disconnect us from our vitality and well-being
Disembodying from our somatic intelligence and discarding its power with our logic and reason
The matrix focuses on seeding and reinforcing shame
One way the matrix does its dirty work is by manipulating us to internalize messages of shame. Shame is a universal experience that leads us to feel unworthy, broken and hopeless.
If you feel dissociated, collapsed, powerless, spacey or forgetful, there’s a good chance you’re at the effect of shame.
Another form shame takes is self-aggression. Shame is usually at the root of self-punishing, self-doubt, and self-hatred. It can also fuel an anxious obsession to fix or improve ourselves (learn more about this topic in my article, The Self-Improvement Campaign Trap).
Shame leads us to seek evidence for the conviction that we’re innately bad or wrong for who we are. Brené Brown — a renowned researcher and storyteller of shame — distinguishes between shame and guilt in this way:
Guilt = I’ve done something bad or wrong.
Shame = I am bad. I am wrong. I am broken.
The person with guilt will judge their behavior as bad, wrong, or out of integrity.
The person with shame will feel innately bad or wrong. They can’t separate their behaviors from their own sense of worthiness.
Shame leads us to feel things like:
I don’t deserve good things
I shouldn’t feel this way
My needs don’t matter
I’m too much
I’m not enough
My needs are a burden
My desires are irrelevant
The harmful effects of shame
Sometimes, we hurt ourselves because we feel powerless to change our internal state of shame.
One strategy to manage the intense feelings of shame is to inflict additional pain upon ourselves in an attempt to feel alive instead of numb. A dear friend retreats into his in-home gym when he feels shame. He lifts weights aggressively to the point of physical injury — the effects of which sometimes last for a week. Lady Gaga recently joined Oprah Winfrey live, in front of millions of viewers, and boldly shared how she used to cut herself to manage her unresolved trauma and shame.
Shame can also be paralyzing. It has the power to trap us in a state of “fight or flight” for hours or even days. When we’re in shame, we can’t feel safe or at home in our own skin.
I know the experience of shame all too well. Sometimes, I feel suffocated by the thought that something is irreversibly wrong with me. This thought makes me want to isolate myself and hide.
Even though I know I’m not my thoughts, during experiences of shame, my thoughts appear as a convincing and accurate account of who I am. When I notice that I’m caught in this swirl, I sit on my meditation cushion and observe the cascading thoughts. This is how I recalibrate my system and regain access to my higher self and inner witness.
If shame really gets a hold of me, I will also reach out to a trusted ally to share my vulnerability.
Brené Brown says that shame grows in silence. She explains that shame can be released and healed when we find a trusted ally who can witness us, and hold a space for us to let the shameful voices out.
I’ve found that to be true. The kind of love I receive when someone embraces me exactly where I am, without trying to fix me or critique me, shifts the grip of shame.
Self-inquiry:
Do you experience shame? If so, what are the triggers? What thoughts and body sensations arise?
When shame is present, how do you relate to it? What are your go-to behaviors, actions, and impulses to manage the shame?
Do you collapse and isolate yourself?
Do you have impulses to blame others rather than feel your own vulnerability and shame?
Three adaptive strategies occur in response to the matrix
Conditioned patterns are often blindspots, which we unknowingly reinforce even defend against seeing. Why? Because the acknowledgement of our strategies is a threat.
Obviously, this makes it more risky to challenge our conditioned assumptions — they’ve become the safe and invisible electric fences needed to keep it all together. Looking at them means we have to acknowledge they hold electrical shocks and the power to harm us and others.
Let’s look at three common defense strategies many of us employ as both a conditioned response of domestication, and as an unconscious means to cope with the matrix:
Helpless & collapsed
We collapse through shame and self-doubt. This often gives rise to a compulsion to fix our perceived brokenness, which breeds self-aggression, and ignites behaviors that keep us small, compliant, and powerless.
Protective & defended
We subconsciously construct self-images and personas with intelligent strategies of power, control, and charisma that portray a simulated version of who we want to be perceived as. We fabricate this persona to avoid any unwanted exposure and vulnerability.
Enforcing & controlling
We become an enforcer of the matrix through aggression turned outwards, resulting in forms of violence, greed, and power-over to maintain status and control. This kind of domestication is reinforced in relationship dynamics where one person holds the pole of being the powerless and collapsed person (filled with shame), while the enforcer reinforces the shame through punishment, criticism, or control, as if the other is a pet animal in a cage.
As we expose the various ways that we perpetuate unconscious protection strategies, we simultaneously empower ourselves with the self-awareness needed to dismantle domestication and disembodiment from the inside-out.
Breaking free: Transforming through the inner game
How do we pierce the veil of domestication?
It takes great courage to slow down and become mindful of how we’re reinforcing domestication every day, in our own minds, hearts, and bodies. We dismantle the enslavement of domestication each time we embark upon a journey of expanding our self-awareness and illuminating the conditioned patterns that we identify with.
It’s helpful to orient to both our outer and inner game.
THE OUTER GAME
The outer game is what we believe about who we should be — in other words, this is our conditioned self.
This is who we feel we need to become. Who we strive to uphold. Who we fear not being perceived as by others.
It’s typically riddled with patterns of shame, which caution us from moving outside of the lines of these idealizations, because who would we be if we’re not this person? Would everyone stop loving, respecting, honoring, and valuing us?
THE INNER GAME
The inner game is the path of power reclamation.
This is our journey of dusting off and recalling our most authentic self. We discover our inner world as we self-reflect, track, and map our patterns of reactivity, limiting beliefs, and habitual behaviors based upon fear and control.
This process is a treasure hunt to discover and embrace, with equanimity, our superpowers and our kryptonite. Many wild, courageous and disciplined heart-warriors are committed to a collective movement in which we’re more interested in remembering our true nature than upholding the idealizations of who we think we should be.
ENGAGING OUR DISCERNMENT
More people are questioning standards of ‘should,’ and instead courageously listening to the yearnings and longings of their hearts. Many subcultures are challenging cultural expectations and social norms — especially the proposed golden highways to happiness that result in exhaustion and burn-out.
Traditional models of success are shifting. They’re expanding beyond the measuring stick of a coveted status, income, physical fitness, attractiveness, financial success, recognition, social circles, and other lifestyle indicators. Higher education used to be a requirement after high school, and now the age of technology, innovation, and entrepreneurship are giving rise to new forms of self-expression and creativity. Another non-traditional shift is a growing movement away from adhering to monogamy as the only socially acceptable relationship model. We’re on in an innovative and evolutionary quickening.
What needs to die in order to give birth to the new?
How do we integrate the complex nature of navigating these two realities of the inner and the outer game? Especially when they clash?
How do we each discern between our authentic reality and our conditioned reality?
Collective liberation: Will the tipping point occur?
Humanity is at a pivotal threshold. A tipping point. A revolutionary potential for wildly unimaginable miracles.
Each time we shed the skins of domestication and disembodiment, we expand the substantial shift needed to topple us into a tipping point of higher consciousness and embodied love.
What’s a tipping point? The temperature of thirty-two degrees is the tipping point required to change the form of water into ice.
A tipping point is the magical moment when a critical mass movement, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold into a new perception and rendition of reality. This is when the gravity of change tips into a new paradigm and suddenly spreads like wildfire.
How many dedicated heart warriors and primal leaders will it take to shift the collective consciousness from self-preservation and fear, to an embodied recognition that we are many fractals from the same source of love and oneness?
Awakening to the matrix is the beginning of a mass exodus and unplugging
We can’t always change the systems outside of us, but we can transform how they live within us.
It’s unlikely that we’ll dismantle and destroy the matrix head on. The collapse of this system requires a stealthy, strategic approach. Remember the inner game I referred to earlier? This is our strategy. This is what we’ve been training for, and we can do this together.
Deconstructing the matrix is an inside job. That’s why we need to become meticulously present to our authentic desires and patterns of control, reactivity, and aggression towards ourselves and others.
To break the cycle of anything we must first become aware.
Self-awareness is the key to all change. Without it, we remain on autopilot, obliviously reinforcing fragmented ways of being. Without investigating what we believe, what we defend against, and how we operate, we remain a victim to our conditioned reality and consensus reality.
Join the revolution! The nexus of my life and work is devoted to human evolution, love, and embodied power. Those of us who have committed our lives to the embodiment of our whole-being and re-wilding, are healing the fractures in humanity, one-by-one.
We can do this! We can snip the puppet strings of domestication through our shared commitment to expand our self-awareness, and take personal responsibility for our conditioned behaviors and beliefs. This type of discipline and courage pave the way for a new world founded on systems and structures of power-with rather than power-over.
As we remember our wholeness and essential self, it becomes impossible to live boxed in by rules that were conceived to control and manipulate us.