Why oh why didn’t I take the BLUE pill?
In the film, “The Matrix”, Neo is taken to a secret hideout where Morpheus offers him a red or blue pill, explaining the results of each. The red pill makes him aware of his true reality, while the blue pill keeps him in the illusory reality he has been living in. Deciding whether to choose the path of recovery—of taking responsibility for the suffering of our human condition and becoming a Loving Parent to our Inner Child—is rather similar to this. So often we live in the habits of our Wounded Self, using people and things outsides of ourselves to maintain the reality we have become accustomed to. Yet this reality, while familiar and perhaps comfortable, distances ourselves from our Inner Child and God.
The choices we make on a daily basis either aid our recovery or hinders it. Simply recognizing this is akin to taking the red pill. Now, the red pill doesn’t promise us some utopian existence; it rather shows us how we create our reality through the choices we make. When I became aware of the gravity of my choices, and how certain choices caused me to abandon my Inner Child, I began to see how much responsibility was required of me to become a Loving Parent. There were many times when the weight of such responsibility had me ask, “Why oh why didn’t I take the BLUE pill"?”, as Cypher does in conversation with Neo. But once we become aware of our true reality we cannot take back this awareness.We may believe that living in ignorance of our Inner Child would be easier and far less painful, but the cost of doing so is our experience of Life. Life happens when we open the door to relationship with our Inner Child. And though it contains all of the emotions and feelings that we may have resisted throughout our lives, it also heightens our experience of Beauty, Wonder, Joy, and Love.
Feeling the depth of our true reality comes from choosing to be with all of the textures within this moment of our experience. Pretty often for me the present moment does not feel like a pleasurable moment; it is the cumulative result of living so much of my life in disconnection from my Inner Child. It can often feel like an overwhelming amount of responsibility to keep choosing to stay here… but my Inner Child needs me, and I am the only one who can respond to their needs. This is not to say that I do this alone (for God and all of the sources through which God’s love and guidance exists is available to me), but the choice is mine. In the moment of my suffering—of having tried to take the blue pill for instance through some medium of distraction (e.g. the Internet)—I can wish I had not taken the red pill, but it is when I choose to reconnect with my Inner Child and God that I am grateful I did. Life happens here, in connectedness with what is truly alive in me, even if what is alive is painful. When I choose to love my Inner Child in their pain it always opens to beauty, and it is worth it.
Wachowski, L., Wachowski, L., (Directors). (1999). The Matrix. Burbank, CA: Warner Bros.
