A lesson from The Matrix: "Terra, it's time you learn to feel content..."
Awww...dang. Well...yes, yes it is--
Contentment. That elusive and wonderful state I imagine most of us strive for. I was feeling it last week and I wrote about it.
I am in equally lovely but different circumstances this week and have not been feeling content at all. That is when I realized I had an issue.
I actually was wrestling with it for a few days in the normal unconscious way most people wrestle with internal issues in The Matrix. I was busy finding reasons in my surroundings for my inner state.
The problem is that my outer surroundings are quite nice.
But that never stops me in The Matrix. I am a Warrior of the Light. I can find a reason for misery in the Garden of Eden if I want, and I was.
I realized it this morning as I was lying in bed facing an unstructured day that offers everything I have been wanting.
I am at another stunning hotel that has been open for only three months, with a beautiful garden, a couple friendly dogs, lots of flowers, and currently, today, am the only guest again as far as I can tell. The coffee is grown on site and a smiling young woman just made me breakfast.
Yes, I understand if you feel jealous.
But stay with me here please because if that is how you feel, perhaps your state, like mine, is an unexpected, and at first, unwelcome Gift from the Matrix.
As I lay in bed, I felt squirmy and I started have a dialogue between Inner Guidance and Discontent that feels slightly shameful to write, but this is how I am learning and it seems important to include.
Inner Guidance: “Terra, if you’re unhappy here, you can leave. You can go somewhere else.”
Discontent (grumpily): “I don’t like the way they designed the bathroom and they don’t make my bed everyday.”
Inner Guidance: “All you have to do is ask. You know they would be happy to do it.”
Discontent (whining): “Well something just doesn’t feel right. I think I need more people around. I feel too isolated here. I am not comfortable tucked away in the mountains. I don’t fit in. I don’t speak Spanish and I am in a culture that isn’t international enough.”
(Intuition considered this for a moment before responding): “Do you really want to move every few days? I thought you wanted to stay places at least a week?”
Discontent (more annoyed): “I don’t like moving around every few days! It’s hard to pack and figure out where I am going. The beach is hot. Sure, I could go back to the beach were I know people and there are lots of visitors, but it’s hot. It’s too hot!”
Intuition: “Hmmmm. Interesting. I wonder, Terra, if you have felt this way before?”
And as I gazed at the early morning light reflected near the bathroom door I had been judging, with the dried eucalyptus branch draped softly over the top of the structure like a gentle hand, I realized that actually, yes, I had felt this way before.
At the young age of about eight years old, on similar mornings as I lay in bed, I remembered feeling squirmy while I worried about the course of my life. I wondered what my purpose was and what future career might serve me. Famous movie stars and people with money seemed content. I knew I needed to figure something out as the squirminess was really getting to me.
Of course, I never did.
I moved further into the future and remembered lying in bed again as a young mother and wondering about life and feeling the now familiar state of squirminess when it came to mine. Don’t get me wrong. I am not talking about a sometimes challenging marriage or discontent with our children. At that moment in bed, I was in a nice house a mile from the ocean in Southern California, I had two young boys I enjoyed and homeschooled off and on and lots of activities that kept me busy. It didn’t make sense to me why I felt squirmy, but I did. Back then, I dealt with it through staying busy. I probably went down and had fun making breakfast for everyone. The squirminess was there, but by then, I knew how to shove it down.
But here in this hotel, lying in bed, it became glaringly obvious to me that my state had nothing to do with my life or environment. It had to do with me. I had an issue with Contentment.
I looked at the light dancing on the wall again and it seemed softer now as I took a breath.
“Ok Matrix, or God. You put me in this beautiful place, which is just what I asked for, I imagine to highlight the issue I have. So, what do I do about it?”
Now, I believe this is absolutely true. The Matrix is here to teach me and operates for my benefit. Sometimes, it places angry women who project their issues at me in the dojo. But this is the first time I realized it put me in Nirvana so I could see that my squirmy discontent has nothing to do with my outward circumstances.
I reminded myself that a job or fame, was not going to fix anything for me, as an image of Van Gough with the missing ear he had cut off floated through my awareness. And I remembered Hemmingway and his struggle with alcoholism.
I had read one of my blog posts from over a year ago late the night before and dumped some self-talk on the fire of my disturbed state: “Terra, that article makes no sense when you read it with some distance. You go all over the place. You are scattered. It is amazing anyone reads your stuff at all.”
But even if I wrote like Hemmingway or painted like Van Gough, I would still be in the dojo struggling with my issue. They had it too.
The soft light continued to dance on the wall in front of me. It was a little after 7am.
I thought about the flow of things for me in this moment. I left the city so I could travel and I am. I like to stay pretty places for at least a week at a time (check). I would like to see both my sons soon and wasn’t sure if I needed to plan a trip with them somewhere or fly to visit them where they are. One is rescuing a dog this week. “Maybe it is better if you come here to visit, Mom.” (check again) The other just got a new job and has a week off before it starts.
I asked him if he needed help moving his things back to California. “No, I think I’ll stay here for a while,” he said.
So I sent him a link to a week-long trip to Machu Picchu, where I have never been. I am not beyond a little Temptation.
“Want to go here? I know you only have a week off and maybe you want to rest? But we could do this?”
“Actually, Mom, I think I may want to drive my things back to California after all.”
“OK, well let me know if you would like me to rent a van and help you.” (check)
The Matrix is moving and I am doing a pretty good job of flowing with it.
My editor has been on a trip and will be back on Friday to start reading the heap of content I have created for my future book and I have a few days in this peaceful place to fine tune things a bit.
My attorney just submitted my paperwork for my permanent residency here this week. Discontent was grumpy it didn’t happen last week, as I am waiting to see if they accept things and if I need to go get a criminal background check here before I depart and my attorney was battling dragons in the Supreme Court here the week before for another client. I reminded Grumpy Discontent that the timing of it all is just fine.
I picked up my phone as I lay in bed and scrolled through some recent photos I took of The Garden of Eden. Intuition must have been taking them to remind me that the issue was not with my surroundings, but with me.
My recent photos are filled with lovely images of peace, beauty, and sweetness. Some are from the church in the local town or the farmer’s market in Nahuizalco, where people are celebrating Semana Santa, the week before Passover (even though I think it is early…maybe they celebrate for more than one week here). The church in Nahuizalco was so crowded, people spilled out through the doors and into the surrounding courtyard. I watched a mother nursing her baby and realized I had never seen anything like it.
And as I saw those photos, I began to realize that my state was not about my circumstances at all, but about me, and that’s when I felt it begin to shift.
That may sound strange to say, and too easy if you are someone trapped in the dark Cave of Depression. But one thing I heard one of my teachers say in the past has served me well in the Matrix. Really well. That saying is:
“Without Awareness, there is no Choice.”
—John Barnes, PT and myofascial release instructor
Discontent took another slow breath as I remembered his words.
Discontent realized that there were always going to be reasons I could find to feel squirmy and that maybe, just maybe, my squirmy state was simply a habit? Maybe I even inherited it, like the mice I read about in an experiment.
In said experiment, which I discuss in my upcoming book, mice were exposed to the smell of cherry blossoms while experiencing an electrical shock. It doesn’t take an expert to realize that those mice learned to avoid that smell. But the interesting thing about the experiment was that their offspring also avoided the smell of cherry blossoms, even though they had never experienced a shock.
I am sure there were many people in my lineage, who wanted to crawl out of their skin at times.
I know about some of the disturbing events that happened in prior generations including two suicidal great grandfathers on my maternal and paternal side.
So those energies are in our family system and if I notice sensations in myself that are less than divine, then perhaps, just through noticing them and not projecting them on Life, or the Dojo I am in, I can begin to change them.
I remembered my maternal Grandfather, a sweet man I was very close to. He seemed content to me and his life had a sort of rhythm. Grandma would make him breakfast and then he would head out to work in the garage, or tend their garden. Many mornings we would rake the leaves that had dropped from the giant avocado tree in their yard that they had planted years before from a seed. At lunch he came in to have a bowl of Campbells Soup, often tomato, with some chips. Then in the early afternoon he came in for “Happy Hour” and enjoyed a glass of Livingston Cream Sherry on ice, which he sipped as he sat on a step stool tucked into a nook next to their gas stove.
In the evenings I sat on his lap while we ate bowls of ice cream.
That energy is in my lineage too.
And I believe I can cultivate it.
There is an eclipse this Friday and I spent part of my squirmy evening last night listening to part of a Pam Gregory astrology video on YouTube about it, but I didn’t finish the video. I heard enough to realize all the uncomfortable feelings she mentioned it could evoke, if one was not careful, were something I was already experiencing. When she said it helps to just take a breath and then started talking about planets in your houses, I gave up. Taking a breath didn’t seem like enough.
And it wasn’t. I had to realize that what I feel is coming from inside of me as God/The Matrix has plopped me in Nirvana and gave me no choice in the matter, really. Certainly, I could have shut my eyes and furrowed my brow while I let Discontent say, “This is not about ME, this is about THE WORLD, or THOSE PEOPLE, or THE ECLIPSE.”
But, I am a Warrior of the Light and I am interested in the dojo. So I let Discontent take a peek around me and I had to laugh when all I could see was Nirvana.
I will post some photos of Nirvana and I hope you can feel the care and beauty in them. I also will include my guided writing from this morning.
We are all Warriors in the Dojo, so I hope these words may resonate with you and serve you as well.
Guided Writing
Tuesday, March 11th, 2025 Juayúa, El Salvador
Guidance:
Yes Terra. You are finding contentment and this is a practice and not for the faint of heart. People in general find it easier to find outward reasons for their circumstances and their sense of things and my darling, this life is an inner experience. One is invited to search inside.
You ask what discontent is?
Where does it come from—the sense of dissatisfaction with what is?
Me:
There seems to be a lot of judgement that comes with it.
Guidance:
My darling, your recent sense of discontent and so called squirminess comes from your sense of disconnection with the divine. Everyone searches for this my darling and it is a practice to allow oneself to feel it (the divine around me) and to take it in. It isn’t as simple as simply noticing and focusing on the present moment.
Notice the feeling that arises and get closer to it, be curious about it.
This is what you did.
We highlighted it for you as we wish you to notice it and to realize it is more a habit in your system than anything else and habits can be changed.
Change this habit in yourself dear one and you change it in others.
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Beautiful. What a gorgeous piece, place, and pictures of peace!! 🤍