As much as I love self-development and serious contemplation I do love entertainment and the chance to get some rest from overthinking. If you are a continuous reader you might remember that I love movies. The same goes for Comedy Shows. It can be uplifting to have someone make jokes about current events or political situations and to digest them in a way one can laugh about. Because this is an important issue. Our world is either filled with peace, joy and love or fear, depending on the point of view one chooses to take.
In this article, I would like to talk about an episode in a TV-Show called “Rick and Morty”.
(watching the youtube snippets embedded below is helpful to understand what I am talking about)
In the episode “M. Night Shaym-Aliens!” that I am referring to Rick and Morty, the shows protagonists, are held captive by aliens within a virtual reality (VR) or simulation. The species of aliens seeks to extract the secret recipe for dark matter from Rick because he is the most intelligent being in all the multiverses. This sentence alone could warrant a post about the complexity of the show and how the creators regularly blow the viewers’ minds by exposing them to concepts that are far out.
However, the episode’s main plot is not what I want to talk about. Aside from Rick and Morty, there is also Morty’s father and Ricks Son in Law, Jerry Smith, who is held captive in a separate Simulator. Jerry is depicted as many fathers in American TV shows are. A little dim-witted and self-absorbed. Also, Jerry Smith is often portrayed as somehow pathetic.
To contain Rick’s genius the aliens CPU distribution to Jerry’s simulation is reduced to a minimum. Like I said Jerry is not the smartest and he is unaware that his simulated life differs from his ordinary reality on earth.
With all this out of the way, I would point out why Jerry”s part in the episode is genius and what we can learn from this entertainingly.
Basically what happens is that he co-creates his simulation and it simply keeps responding with YES.
So no matter what he asks for, the simulation allows it to happen. He is successful at work, probably for the first time, gains a lot of confidence and as a result, tells his wife he’d like to sleep with her when he gets home. But at some point he simply can not accept that life is that good so he starts to question himself and begins to believe he is a fraud.
Even though the simulation is still answering with yes, his creative powers turn into destructive ones. He almost gets himself fired until he changes his mind once again, ending up being nominated for a ridiculously made-up award called an “Appley”.
This scene is so enlightening because his boss keeps saying yes to everything and the observer can see how Jerry himself is the “smith” of his fate in his universe.
Two things are important for every person to understand individually. The problem is that until we master this, we need to constantly be aware of our thought patterns and resolve them whenever we encounter them. One is that our universe or God is always answering yes and second, we create our reality through our thoughts, words, and actions.
Within minutes Jerry creates his layoff and promotion, ending up with the above-mentioned award.
The thoughts we have turn into the words that we speak and the things we speak about, we create. This causal chain of events is crucial and needs to be understood. It also warrants for the alertness I mentioned before. If we are careless in observing our thoughts we might miss on the ones that are responsible for keeping our reality “in place”. More importantly, it prevents us from moving towards what we wish to create.
No one has ever taught us how to create or manifest the world we perceive but this is because most of us have been born beginning our journey in a cave, chained to the wall.
Plato’s Allegory of the Cave (Wikipedia)
Now and then someone will try to give us an insight she or he had, doing their best to let us know that we do not have to live like this forever. It could all end with a simple decision. The biggest problem is that to free ourselves from the chains that bind us, we need to do two things.
We need to acknowledge that there is a cave and that the lights and shadows on the wall have only been interpretations of reality.
Secondly, we have to take responsibility for how we wish to continue.
Often it is much easier to stay where we are, in the known, as unfulfilling as it might be. It is the security or certainty of knowing as many factors in the equation as possible. In general, humans don’t like unpredictability. Therefore it is much easier to stay within the confinement of our self-constructed reality.
Don Miguel Ruiz states in “ The Four Agreements” that we would rather assume and distort the objective reality than to stop guessing. We constantly assume. All-day, every day. This is a form of the projection we see on the wall of the cave.
Coming back to the vigilance I mentioned. I have read the four agreements many times by now and will keep doing so. Even though we are talking about four little sentences that almost anyone can recite, it is one of the hardest things I can imagine to abide by them.
I assume and make people right and others wrong. I think I know someone within the first few seconds of meeting. Only when I stop labeling the person or situation, beginning to open up, will I find out I was wrong in my initial assessment.
Coming back to the underlying truth that often can be found on Rick and Morty Episodes.
The concept that the reality we perceive with our senses is incomplete or in other ways, just a simulation is pretty old. In Vedic (Indian) context the word Maya points toward some sort of illusion. The former greek philosopher Plato came up with the famous allegory of the cave.
Many more great minds have come up with similar attempts to explain to others how we are experiencing something we think is real, which is but a reflection or interpretation of what is factually going on.
Maybe more contemporary in the movie “The Matrix” by the Wachowski Brothers. As in Plato’s Cave, we find ourselves accompanying the Hero “Neo” from within the Cave or the Matrix.
Only after Neo gets freed from the chains of the cave is he able to see that the fire and the “show” on the wall have been staged. In this awakened state the hero/in experiences a form of reality s/he didn’t know existed. This process is often painful because the personality or ego is identified with that illusion that it feels like dying. It is a dying process but one of the Self that had been based on an illusion.
As well as Neo in the Matrix is Jerry Smith struggling to accept that his whole experience was based on a lie.
Addendum:
Something I haven’t talked about so far is the “Course in Miracles” by Helen Schucman, which deals with the subject in depth. It is one of many possible solutions to free ourselves.
I often relate to friends and clients, that it is a kind of positive brainwashing. I plan on writing more on the course when I have completed it. It takes a minimum of 365 days to complete it. A maximum of one lesson per day. Many people who go through it realize however that a slower pace is warranted. As an example: today my progress is being in lesson 255. I started with the course 14 months ago.