What is the matrix? It’s all around you.
Metaphorically speaking, it’s the lies and half-truths you pretend to believe to get along with your life.
It’s the roles you play to “fit in,” have a job and be considered a part of society.
But the matrix is not ironclad. It’s not a physical structure, it’s a mental structure.
And you can escape it and free your mind.
In fact, the matrix actually has a back hatch escape door if you know where to find it.
Thankfully I’m a certified matrix-escape-artist.
Here’s a step-by-step guide.
How to free your mind from the matrix and deprogram yourself
1) Hack your system
Human beings are complex creatures mentally, emotionally and physically.
But if we bring self-awareness to ourselves there is a lot we can discover, and a lot we can change.
It starts with a clear intention:
I want to free my mind and be deprogrammed from lies that I have been fed.
This is your starting point.
From there, you begin to hack your system and turn it back to its original nature and purpose.
Find out what narratives are running you, what software is running on your system.
Then you hack it and consciously create new and different software that is in line with your life goal and deepest experiences.
This article will outline how to go about the hacking process.
2) No pain, no gain
Many self-help gurus and philosophies will tell you to just relax and be “at peace.”
They may talk about raising your vibrations, positive visualization and the so-called Law of Attraction.
Here’s the truth:
Without some struggle and pain, you’re not going to see any gain.
As the Armenian Greek mystic George Gurdjieff put it:
“Without struggle, no progress and no result.
“Every breaking of habit produces a change in the machine.”
The truth is that you have to struggle with yourself, with life and sometimes with others in order to free your mind from the matrix and deprogram yourself.
You have to grapple with lies, narratives and comfortable half-truths on the path to becoming a conscious and spiritually awakened individual.
3) Unlock your mind
Are you a spiritual person?
I’m not.
But I am a person with thoughts, emotions and a confusing life.
And over the years that’s made me turn to spirituality and various religious paths in search of answers.
Here’s the problem:
The thing with spirituality is that it’s just like everything else in life:
It can be manipulated.
Unfortunately, not all the gurus and experts that preach spirituality do so with our best interests at heart. Some take advantage to twist spirituality into something toxic – poisonous even.
I learned this from the shaman Rudá Iandé. With over 30 years of experience in the field, he’s seen and experienced it all.
From exhausting positivity to downright harmful spiritual practices, this free video he created tackles a range of toxic spirituality habits.
So what makes Rudá different from the rest? How do you know he’s not also one of the manipulators he warns against?
The answer is simple:
He promotes spiritual empowerment from within.
Click here to watch the free video and bust the spiritual myths you’ve bought for the truth.
Rather than tell you how you should practice spirituality, Rudá puts the focus solely onto you.
Essentially, he puts you back in the driver’s seat of your spiritual journey.
4) Vacuum out your victim mentality
The cheap wine of tragedy can give you a good buzz for awhile, but the hangovers are brutal.
Here’s the thing:
We’ve all experienced tragedies and setbacks in life, some more intense than others.
That’s a fact.
But the victim mentality is not the same thing as recognizing and accepting painful experiences which are part of your life.
The victim mentality is both a story and a tactic.
It’s a story (often unconscious) that life is unfairly victimizing and mistreating you much more than anyone else. Everything that happens to you is then filtered through this false story.
It’s also a tactic (often unconscious) that seeks to gain power, leverage or clarity through being a victim. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work. Instead, the opposite tends to happen and you end up feeling even more disempowered by situations and people who disappoint you.
You can’t free your mind until you free yourself of the victim mentality.
This is a difficult process, but there is an actionable way to go about it, starting with the next step.
5) Make your life happen
For far too many of us, life happens to us.
We are the passive receivers of life, which slowly backs us into a corner and increasingly limits our freedom and power.
We wait for opportunities, big breaks, love and luck.
We curse bad luck, disappointments, breakups and miscommunications.
Life happens to us, for better or for worse (usually for worse).
One of the biggest ways when it comes to freeing your mind from the matrix and deprogramming yourself is to make your life happen instead of waiting for it to happen.
What does that mean?
For starters, it means making decisions and then doing them, starting with the smallest steps.
It also means getting out of the mindset that you need to wait for everything else to come together before you act.
Sometimes you are the first one who has to move, because in 99% of cases nobody else is going to do it for you.
If you want to start your own company, start researching right away.
If you’re trapped in a dead-end relationship or a dead-end job, think hard about making changes, even if it just starts with working out and a keen focus on your own wellbeing.
6) Find your purpose
The next step for how to free your mind from the matrix and deprogram yourself is to find your purpose.
Of course…
These days, the idea of saying humans have a purpose or that we as individuals each have a purpose we can find, might be a controversial statement.
After all, everything is supposed to be changeable, fluid and subjective.
Modern society has increasingly shied away from the idea that anything is inherent or part of our design.
But think about it:
What if you have a purpose that’s inbuilt into who you are or at least closely tied to your experiences and talents?
What if you have a mission in this life that will bring you joy and fulfillment?
I’ll play spoiler here:
You do.
And before you can experience a real change, you need to really know your purpose.
I learned about the power of finding your purpose from watching Ideapod co-founder Justin Brown’s video on how to find out what you’re here for.
Justin used to be addicted to the self-help industry and New Age gurus just like me. They sold him on ineffective visualization and positive thinking techniques.
Four years ago, he traveled to Brazil to meet the renowned shaman Rudá Iandê, for a different perspective.
Rudá taught him a life-changing new way to find your purpose and use it to transform your life.
After watching the video, I also discovered and understood my purpose in life and it’s no exaggeration to say it was a turning point in my life.
I can honestly say that this new way of finding success by finding your purpose actually helped me to enormously improve my own life and relationships.
7) Get out of your head
The matrix of society, social roles and materialism has us all trapped in various ways, including physically.
But it draws its primary power from keeping us locked in our head.
One of the ironies about freeing your mind is that sometimes you have to stop being so focused on your mind and your thoughts in order to free your mind.
Think of it this way:
If you spend too much time in your mind, you dull its focus and turn it on itself, kind of like a car gear that gets worn down from overuse.
Sometimes the solution to all those insoluble problems and frustrations isn’t something you can figure out or even achieve.
Sometimes the solution is your own two feet going for a walk in the woods.
Or your body diving in a clear refreshing river.
Or your lips kissing a beautiful person.
There isn’t always an intellectual answer to life’s challenges and confusions, and that’s alright.
This can sometimes be hardest to accept for intellectual and highly intelligent people, who ironically can tend to become even more trapped in the matrix due to overthinking things.
Get out of your head.
Real life is waiting.
8) Take a peek at your peers
Any article about self-development will urge you not to compare yourself with others.
The Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson urges us to compare our present self to our past self, not to other people.
The point is:
Don’t sell yourself short by comparing yourself to people with different situations and experiences you may not be aware of or be interpreting inaccurately.
Sure…There’s some truth to that.
But I actually think comparison can be good in certain ways if it’s done with humility.
Take a peek at your peers and see what’s motivating them. What jobs are they doing? What matters in their lives? What relationships are they committing to or breaking apart from?
Identify whatever strengths and weaknesses you think you see in your friends and colleagues or just general members of society.
Then take a look at your own life and be honest about how you are doing anything differently than them in a way you believe is empowering.
This is not about being superior, it’s simply about becoming conscious of a kind of social matrix and seeing how far you’re into it as well.
Keep in mind that removing yourself from the matrix is often a subtle process.
It doesn’t mean you won’t work anymore…
Or that you’ll be spiritually superior or enlightened…
What it does mean is that you’ll have a new degree of radical honesty with yourself and others that is liberating and empowering.
What it does mean is that you will be sure of your purpose and have the tools to make your life start happening instead of just happening to you.
9) The positivity game
There’s a lot out there these days about positive thinking, high vibrations, inner peace and all the rest of it.
You know what:
Positivity has its place, and I love positive people!
But I also love people who can be honest about their “dark side” and embrace the harder parts of life with transparency.
I also love those who don’t turn from their disappointments and frustrations and paper it over with feel-good words about how everything is fine or it’s all just a spiritual journey.
You know what:
Some experiences and parts of life are painful, rough and upsetting! Admitting that doesn’t make you bad or stupid, it makes you honest.
Don’t let any feel-good guru with a gold watch tell you about how you have to stay positive if you don’t want to get cancer or die alone.
It’s nonsense.
The truth is that you can’t go about getting free from the matrix and deprogramming yourself if you’re still stuck in the toxic positivity.
Like those who are also stuck in the victim mindset and toxic negativity, those who force themselves to repress difficult emotions and be positive will always remain locked in a binary cycle of good-bad, happy-sad.
It doesn’t end until you say “enough,” and begin to experience life rather than categorize and label every part of it.
We’re all here on this mystery tour figuring it out. That’s what makes it exciting, amazing and sometimes a bit scary and awful.
If you want to get out of the matrix that’s running your thoughts and telling you to conform to certain labels and roles, then you need to face life in all its ugly glory and reject any sanitized, sensationalized Hollywood-ized version of it that’s served to you for consumption.
10) Lower your vibrations
Instead of “raising” your vibrations, I want to suggest lowering them.
I don’t mean to go out and start swearing at people or go down a six pack while running shirtless through the street…
Although you’re welcome to try.
Lowering your vibrations means giving up on the idea of being a good person.
Until you learn to stop clinging to the label of yourself as “good” you will be limited from accessing the truth about human nature and the human experience.
You will also be quite limited in your ability to effect real positive change in the world.
Once you drop the attachment to yourself as a “type” of person filling a set moral category, however, you can begin to act from your truest self.
11) Get radically, roughly honest
What I’ve emphasized in this article about freeing your mind from the matrix and deprogramming yourself is the necessity of honesty.
This means with yourself and with others.
If you want to unplug from the roles which are keeping you tied down and the parts of your life that aren’t meaningful for you, it’s vital that you be radically and roughly honest with yourself.
What’s missing right now in your life?
What makes you feel the most joy?
What makes you feel the most sadness?
As Justin talks about with how to find your purpose, it’s necessary sometimes to focus on what’s going wrong, not just what’s going right in your life.
In fact, a focus on too much positivity can keep you blind to the real challenges and shortcomings that are keeping you plugged into the matrix mainframe.
Welcome to the real world
Breaking your mind free from the matrix and deprogramming yourself is all about discovering your own power and purpose.
It’s also about looking in the mirror and really seeing your reflection for the first time.
Not just your physical appearance, your wrinkles or the shape of your nose.
But seeing the potential that’s contained in you…
The power.
The creativity.
Seeing the ways in which you no longer will sell yourself short or allow others to sell you short.
The thing about how to free your mind from the matrix and deprogram yourself is that it’s surprisingly simple.
It’s not usually the labels and ideas of the matrix that keep people trapped in it, it’s the routine and the belief that it will keep us all safe if we just “play by the rules.”
But it won’t.
As we see now, playing by the rules has led us to the edge of World War Three and environmental destruction.
It’s clearly time for strong individuals and deprogrammed and dedicated people to step forward and build a better future.
Here’s the thing:
You don’t need the matrix to keep you safe, because it was never truly real or meaningful in the first place.
