Sky Mountain Way Sangha

Awakening Within the Matrix is designed to help us use the Matrix Saga as a tool for our conscious awakening. How so? The world of the Matrix is synchronized from a main Source and through technology that shared experience is being projected by the minds of the humans. Like those humans, we, too, are being fed a live feed from a central source. When we focus on the projection of that feed that we call it "life." But when we focus on the observation of the projection of that feed we may start to question the material world of solid matter that we have come to accept as "real." The Wachowski Brothers have done a great job of providing scene after scene chock filled with philosophical questions geared to have you question your own reality.

So what is one to do when they come across a treasure trove of questions such as this? Our existing conditioning is in place largely due to the fact that it reinforces the conditioning already in place. In other words, we are subject to our conditioning because the conditioning is self-perpetuating. Many will come across these questions and their conditioning will enable them to find ways to not address the questions, to avoid resolving them so that you are prevented from unplugging from its apparent control.

But there are others, those like you and me, who have finally crossed the threshold and are willing to truly ask themselves what is going on. Few who "have it made" seek to change, for why fix what doesn't seem to be broken? But many of us, especially in times like these, are facing intense experiences that we have traditionally called bad, negative, stressful, and painful. These experiences, especially the ones we intensely resist, are our greatest opportunities to wake up from our lifetime of conditioning. Getting laid off or being foreclosed upon or going through bankruptcy or a nasty divorce... any or all of these can be your Red Pill.

So what good is it to use the Matrix Saga to awaken to the realization that things aren't what your parents and your public education taught you? And we're not talking about political merit or nationalism or religion. We're talking about things MUCH bigger than any of those, than anything your human brain can imagine. We're talking about the fundamental structure underlying what you have thought to be the "real world" since you can remember.

Wouldn't it be nice to go somewhere to get all the answers? You might say yes, but then if that were the case, that would mean that you could possibly not have the answers that you need and that someone could then conceiveably give the answers to you... or not, as they would see fit. The good news is that there are no answers to be had, which means there is no one outside of yourself that can withold the answers from you (including any church, government, or other proclaimed authority). YOU HAVE ALL THE ANSWERS WITHIN YOU AND THEY HAVE BEEN THERE ALL ALONG. But what good is THAT, as you certainly don't seem to have been accessing them all along!

Awakening Within the Matrix is intended to be a tool for your initial awakening. The saga provides many opportunities to discuss some of the biggest philosophical concepts and you never know which one will be the key that will suddenly throw open the doors of your perception. But these discussions will not provide you with any satisfying answers, just more questions leading to bigger, more fundamental issues. At some point the discussion about a series of movies will seem trite as the real subjects come into focus. It is at this point in the journey that many start to seek a community of like-minded answer seekers.

For centuries a few have come to experience their true nature and have extolled it, many of their teachings having gone on to become our major world religions. But much like the game of telephone, where the message is nothing like what it was when the first person sent the message, mainstream (exoteric) religion and philosophy has gotten muddled and obscured from the original message of Buddha, Jesus, Sufi mystics, and other so-called Enlightened Beings. As the teaching became distant from the original source, the truth in it became diffused. It was the truth in the teaching that drew the seekers, but when the truth started to wane the schools found they needed to become more authoritiative if they were to survive, valuing survival over the truth itself. Generally speaking, a school of thought demands more authority the further away from the truth it is. The closer to the truth it is, there is less need for rules, belief, and faith.

Understand that an untruth (lie, misperception, deception, smoke screen, intention, manipulation) requires some kind of story for it to exist. Without a story to believe in, the untruth cannot be presented for consideration. Without a story to distract you from seeing WHAT IS, you are able to experience the truth for itself. More directly, the truth does not need a story to support it for it to exist, and therefore any explanation required is necessarily moving away from what IT IS. This is why genuine gurus will tell you that there is nothing that they can give you, that you must experience it for yourself. And to experience it you need to momentarily disengage from the story that you've been playing in your mind since you were about five.

There are a relatively small number of those that look for the esoteric (underlying) meaning amongst the world's major religions and philosophies. Rather than being bound by one philosophical or religious system, these individuals tend to develop highly personalized systems of understanding that can be quite different than the others that they frequently interact with. This is very different from the dogmatic approach that religions take in that there is absolutely nothing to believe. Over the years these groups of independent philosophical seekers have been called many things, one of them is the Buddhist and Jainist term called sangha (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sangha): a community or association with a common goal, vision, or purpose.

The Sky Mountain Way Sangha is a community of 120+ people who have to some extent or other awakened to something that is so big, we have trouble putting our finger on it. The group has been meeting weekly on Sundays since January, 2009 and has evolved into a very tight-knit collection of friends and fellow philosophers. Our meeting place is Bodhimandala (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodhimandala), and it is decorated by local sage Jim MacKenna. Jim is a prolific artist, poet, and the go-to guy when we think we have the answers. This journey paradoxically has no end in either time or space, and so it is with Jim and his answers. For the answers he gives are only eloquent segues to bigger, deeper questions and they, like your questions and the journey of your self, have no end.

The sangha meets every Sunday from 2pm until after 5pm, and we often have an even less formal discussion that carries on until around 10pm. The conversation has a lot to do with the nature of reality and about the conditioning that we seem to be subject to since we were children. It is very relevant to the Matrix crowd in that it addresses the practical side of waking up. Whereas the Matrix discussion groups are geared towards making you realize the incredible parallels between the movie saga and our actual human condition, the Sunday Sangha discussion is geared on how to wake up to a higher level of consciousness. But it's not enough to just want to exist in a "higher level of consciousness," it is most effective to engage in an exchange with several people who are presently communicating at that higher level. After functioning that way several times it becomes familiar and it is much easier to do so while going about your day. This is the process of initial awakening and it is readily accessible to anyone who desires to do so.

So while the Awakening Within the Matrix Meetup group gets going and attendance is building, we will be posting the Sky Mountain Way Sunday Sangha event on this group's Calendar so that you can come to those events and get to know some of the characters of this cast and crew. We look forward to seeing you there and are excited for the upcoming Matrix events.

Shoonya and Kali

For more information on the Sky Mountain Way Sangha, CLICK HERE (https://www.meetup.com/Sangha/).

For more information about the Awareness and Consciousness Group of Southern Nevada, a Meetup group of over 450 members of the local consciousness and spiritual community, CLICK HERE (https://www.meetup.com/AwarenessGroup/).