My thoughts on trying…

While eating breakfast in the break room at work a thought came to me. It was a thought of Morpheus telling Neo, Come on!!!! Stop trying to hit me and hit me. And then Master Yoda popped in and told Luke, “No! Do or do not. There is no try.” It occurred to me that with most things we do…we are trying to do them. We already have a sense of possible failure. Or that when we do a task we think the two resulting choices are success or failure. But as Yoda said Nonbelief is the true failure. So thinking back to Neo. Did he believe he was actually going to hit Morpheus? Morpheus was indeed getting the best of Neo. But why? Was it experience? Or was it belief? When asked by Morpheus, How did I beat you? Neo said, “You’re faster.” Morpheus was teaching Neo that the matrix is not real so it has no effect on his mind. His muscles, even the air, is not real. Neo was limited by his beliefs.

Before they fought Neo told Morpheus, “I know Kung Fu.” And in reply Morpheus said, “Show me.” Neo knew Kung Fu but perhaps only mentally. It was programmed into him by Tank. But he had just that….the program. Maybe experience had something to do with it. I don’t think so. Imagination goes very far in the matrix. He had the fighting down but his weakness was not his technique as Morpheus said. By the matrix standards….Neo was only limited by his own thinking and belief. In Star Wars, Master Yoda told Luke that size does not matter and that it was only different in his mind. An unlearning or reprogramming needed to take place. How we think of things greatly affects how effective we are in dealing with them. Neo and Luke had the same issue…belief. Even the Oracle told Neo that he was the one but his belief was stopping him. He did not believe he was the one because he believed the program that the machine gave him (conditioned past thinking). In Buddhism there is a technique called “ego dropping”. In a nutshell ego dropping helps you to not think from the ego (conditioned past) POV because it is mere illusion. The result of this marvelous technique is clarity of thought and the ability to see as close as possible the absolute truth. With ego we can only see relative truth or truth from “a certain POV”.

When doing something, there is only one outcome: continuation. A cause and effect which the effect becomes a new cause with its own effect and so on and so forth. The success of a task is not the end because there is always something on the other side, another hill to climb. Therefore we should enjoy the journey along the way. Fall in love with the process and not the result because in all actuality…there is no result. And if everything is a continuation how can there be any failure?

There is only now. Master Yoda said the force is his ally and that we must feel it around us. We should see oneness everywhere. And when you flow with all that there is there is no failure. Failure is a POV. There is only oneness.

Morpheus said to Neo, “Fear, doubt, disbelief. You have to let it go Neo. Free your mind.” In everything you do don’t think you are, know you are. That is feeling the force around you…seeing oneness. You are everything and connected to everything. That is what Master Yoda was telling Luke. You are not only part of it all. You are all of it! As above, so below. As below, so above. When you think you are not embodying. Believe and knowing are the secret. Trying is the same as not knowing or believing. And as Morpheus said, “There is a difference in knowing the path and walking it.”