It is the energy that matters, when you live in a fractal Matrix movie

Thoughts on how to survive living in different realities from those around you.

A few days ago, I was in Long Beach, California, visiting my family.

One of my favorite things about Long Beach has always been the canals. They are lined with expensive homes and manicured gardens. Expensive areas have a frequency. This one is trash-free. The canals are filled with water from the sea and boats bob gently on tiny, private docks next to the mansions squeezed onto postage-stamp sized lots.

It is pretty.

Except that on my first early-morning walk that I took while the rest of the family slept, I felt I was walking through a strange movie. It must have been about 7am and the scene felt weird to me.

No one was outside on their porch. No one seemed to be home in any of the big houses.

Hardly anyone was walking along the sidewalks.

A few people were out on paddle boards wearing their iPods and staring straight ahead, focused on something I couldn’t see.

I eventually saw one person on a porch dressed in black, reading. She had a scowl on her face and didn’t look up. I wondered if something was troubling her in her life or if her face simply reflected what she was reading in the story?

I told myself it was fine she didn’t look up to say “hi” to me or glance at the lone stranger walking by. I love to get lost in a good book and I love to be outside. I would probably do the same thing. (That’s what I told myself).

And it was odd, because it was starkly, crushingly different from my new life in El Zonte.

Recently in El Zonte, I passed a man outside a Tienda sitting with his friends under fluorescent blue lights chatting outside in the steamy air next to the street. I was on my way to obtain pasta. Not just any pasta. Mostly, I don’t eat pasta anymore. That is, until I went to Low Tide Tacos and ordered the Green Veggie one night when I felt the need for a heavy meal.

Mafer and her boyfriend, David, own and run this little eatery. Mafer mostly likes to greet people like me and take orders. She says she also likes to make specialty drinks. She happens to be a clothing designer, marketing major, and dancer too. But when I see her, she is busy restauranting (yes, I did just make up that word).

David does the cooking. They don’t open until 6:30pm, which is late for me. But that is because they go watch the sunset together before opening. That is a thing in El Zonte. People head to the beach, day after day, for sunset. Tourists and the locals who grew up here line the rocks and lookout points along the shore, sipping beer and chatting with one another. It doesn’t matter that most of them have already spent time on the beach surfing or teaching surfing. This is sunset and they make time for beauty and community.

Mafer and I plan to meet up for coffee when I get back. She is in her 20s I imagine and I have a new friend. David thinks I should learn surfing. I told them if they get married, I want to be invited to their wedding and they looked at each other with a twinkle in their eyes and promised to include me.

So, as you can imagine, I have never looked back after that first decadent night of ordering the Green Veggie and the night before I left town for two weeks, after my week of water and juice fasting, I went for a dose. You really have to taste it to see what I mean. If you just look at it, it seems pretty basic. Some wide noodles swimming in some olive oil and salt, cooked al-dente. Some balls of mozzarella cheese. And then some sliced baby eggplant and what I think is zucchini. Except salty vegetables in the green verde take on a different life completely.

Anyway, on the way there, a man called out hello to me as I passed him on the street and asked if I remembered him.

I did.

I first met him when I was walking back along the river, climbing over rocks that were indented by Mayans who used to live in the vicinity. He was busy taking a bath in his bathing suit and told me how fresh the river was for bathing. I realized he was also next to the rocks where I saw local women washing clothes periodically.

I was hot and sandy, so I slid in and chatted with him a bit.

That is how he knew me.

“Hello Terra! Do you remember me?”

Now I was in Long Beach in a place that I imagined dripped with money and so-called successful living. There was no trash to be seen. The flowers and tiny patches of manicured gardens and vegetables I saw growing along the canals were pretty.

And I felt like I was walking through a version of Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time.

Madeleine L’Engle was fascinated by the new scientific discoveries and theories she read about at the time and she incorporated what she learned into the most amazing stories.

I loved those stories. They had a strong impact on me when I was young and still influence my thinking.

In that particular book, there is a troubled planet the main character, Charles Wallace, goes to visit. The first thing he notices is that all the houses are perfectly manicured and look the same. Even the people follow the same routine. All the children would come outside the houses together and bounce balls they brought with them in sync. All the doors would open and close together. All the mothers would call the children inside at the same time. It was robotic, except they weren’t robots.

Then one little boy dropped his ball and the tension of that moment, as you read, is palpable. Later in the story, he is in a room where he is being taught, or re-programmed, to stay in sync with his ball bouncing and follow the routine.

I think of this as I observe people work their 40, 50, and 60+ hour weeks.

I think of it in regard to schooling and getting “degrees” and student-debt slavery.

I think of it as I watch people rushing to get to lives that are centered around those ways of living with allotted time for “after-school activities,” homework, “happy hour,” and such things.

As I strolled along the beautiful canals past the huge seemingly-empty homes, I thought about that story and I missed El Zonte with its bits of trash on the street and people who knew me and smiled at me.

I felt a little ill.

So I focused on the beauty of the plants I saw. I paused to smell the roses that draped over the various walls. I took in the tranquility.

A well educated young business man and friend had mentioned to me a few months ago that someone he knew felt we are all living in a computer simulation. I have been holding those words in my hands for months now, exploring them gently. In many philosophies, the world is considered illusory. My mother likes to talk about Advaita Vedanta and how nothing here is truly real. You can read about detachment in Buddhism.

Now, there are VR glasses and we are beckoned more and more towards becoming lost in our screens.

I purchased the only fiction book I could find at the Bitcoin Farmer’s market recently called Ready Player One, where the main character spends most of his time in a virtual reality simulation.

Then there is the Matrix movie where Neo thinks he lives in one reality and “wakes up” after choosing to take a Red Pill, to a body plugged into a machine.

I am very aware that in some ways, this is The Matrix, as I am here on the Earth for a temporary time learning things and many things are absolutely not what they seem. I have read of saints who bilocate (had to add that word to my computer dictionary), meaning they can materialize their body in a new place and move around the planet without machines, instantly. I have read about saints that can levitate and then there is the Jesus story when he walked on water (and I am always struck that although many people seem religious, they don’t seem to feel people can walk on water…and I am unclear if they believe he did (which I believe)). I have read that the world is actually 99.9% energy and if you really think about that, it makes solid things suddenly seem a lot less solid and spontaneous healing and lots of things more in the realm of possibility.

Elon Musk wants to put computer chips in people’s brains and Virtual Reality goggles are available now to purchase. My uncle just bought some for his grandchildren for Christmas.

So what is real anyway?

And what I have concluded is that my soul is real and energy is real. I mean, that is what “ALL THIS” is made of, right? I also believe feelings in the body, physical sensations, are our response to energy. Emotions are a form of energy as well.

You know this.

You know when you walk into a funeral, it will likely feel heavy in your body and there will be emotions to go along with the physical sensations.

I think that matters.

We all live in our own version and experience of reality, but these experiences and versions are getting wider all the time. Sometimes, they don’t seem to overlap at all.

I am going to explain this more and talk about how to exist in the midst of it all. But first, it helps to observe these things. Observation and perspective allow for a lot more freedom, in my experience.

So…I was in Long Beach contemplating if I was in a computer simulation and missing a sense of community.

An hour later, my uncle picked me up. We went and had breakfast at a busy place with organic farm to table food. I purchased a matcha latte, a small sandwich, and a piece of cake to share with him. I paid double what I would have in El Zonte. But this is California and everything is expensive now.

And I practiced something new I have been learning. I am going to teach it to you because it has really been helping me.

Recently, I was in Mexico and I saw many pelicans. I also saw them frequently as I walked on the beach during my divorce. I saw them in El Zonte. They felt powerful and supportive to me. With their huge wings, they could fly inches from the water. They were light and free and yet managed to move in harmony with one another. There was a feeling that comes with that I have been calling, “permeability.”

Can you imagine the energy around you expanding and being permeable? You know when some people teach about boundaries? Well, what if you were surrounded by a cloud of Pelican energy and whatever came your way, that you didn’t resonate with, simply flowed right on through. What if your energy was made of fog and things just didn’t stick, if you know what I mean? Like a light, powerful Pelican, floating and gliding through the air, over the sea. Choosing what to do. Completely free.

In Mexico, I found a Pelican wing bone that reminded me of a magic wand, wedged between some rocks in the shallow water near where I had been snorkeling. Earlier I had picked up a feather sitting on the sand, equally light whilst also large. I brought it with me. The feather and the wing bone and remind me to see things from a distance. To embrace my permeability and not simply stand “against” things. Resistance has never freed me from anything. Boundaries take energy. I am not saying don’t have any. I am trying to show you a different way to work with energy, that allows you to remain unaffected by people and energy fields around you.

Ok. So, let’s continue.

I also was thinking of lizards.

In Costa Rica, I was practicing chanting by a river. I was alone at a retreat center and felt totally free to explore deep tones and how they felt in my body. The unexpected thing that happened is that I seemed to attract large lizards.

I have no idea why and it amused me.

Another recently strolled across my patio in El Zonte and a friend mentioned that lizards felt grounding to her. She told me how she felt her root chakra and her connection to the Earth, when she imagined “lizard energy” in her body.

That was when I figured I had a new recipe for my upcoming visit to the US. I tried it out with my friend just as our call was ending. I tried to see if I could feel lizard energy, meaning grounded and attached to the earth in an easeful way in my pelvis and body in general, and also pelican energy, which was expansive and permeable.

My goal was to show up with family and do both those things at the same time. I was curious if I could simply allow things that might trigger me, to flow through my energy field and not lose my own sense of myself.

And so, in Long Beach, I started practicing. My uncle and I were staying with my sister and her family.

In the afternoon, we all walked over to the house of a man who has lived there for 40 years. He grows organic produce on his city lot and when he is not selling it from a little stand next to the sidewalk, he flies around the world and tries to educate people about the issue of plastic in the ocean. His name is Charley. He was wearing denim overalls and was speaking Spanish to a little boy hunting around his yard for a compost bin.

I wandered around admiring the garden while my sister purchased produce for dinner. There were sweet peas and cilantro that had been allowed to go to seed. The cilantro was covered in lacy, white flowers and feathery leaves.

If garden’s have fairies, I am sure Charley’s was packed with them. They had even sprinkled their fairy dust on the garden of the neighbor’s house next door.

Charley and I talked for a few minutes. I was aware that it was very likely we differed in many ways regarding our experience of The Matrix. But the plants didn’t seem to care about such things. They were growing beautifully. Charley was providing joy to many people.

So, when he learned that I lived in El Salvador and made his first non-resonant comment to me, I had an opportunity. I had an opportunity to practice permeability combined with a bit of lizard energy (this visual actually helped me and I used it).

Charley’s comment was that El Salvador needed to become another state of the US. Otherwise, Russia and China were going to take control and he was sure I knew what THAT meant….

Charley wasn’t thinking of sovereignty. Not the sovereignty of El Salvador and the people who lived there.

And he felt strongly about his view.

I could tell.

I did not feel my job was to change Charley, to argue with Charley, or to judge Charley. I simply listened. And I practiced Pelican permeability with root-chakra lizard energy.

I left feeling grateful for my time there.

Charley also mentioned he had recently been at a dinner hosted by Alice Waters, the famous food author and owner of Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California. He told me how Alice put a sprig of coriander (another name for cilantro) on the carrot soup she served. Then he gave me a tiny sprig from his white, flowering cilantro to taste.

It was like magic as I felt how well it would dance with the flavor of carrot and I could taste the carrots in my mouth as he spoke.

Then Charley offered me some dill seeds from another nearby plant that had pushed its way though his white, picket fence and was encroaching on the sidewalk. He mentioned she had used dill in her soup as well.

And I tasted and felt that too.

I overheard Charley tell my sister he enjoyed meeting me.

I enjoyed meeting him too.

I don’t think El Salvador should be a US state. I don’t want to live in Rome or any other country that wants to control the world. I also feel strongly about personal freedom and sovereignty, which is another rabbit hole Charley and I likely could have gone down fighting like cats and dogs. But why?

Every year, Charley celebrates Juneteenth and he wants El Salvador to be a state.

So very many things seemed to get twisted now around agendas that use the care people have for one another to create outcomes that feel far from caring.

Charley is a rainbow-wearing kind of guy I imagine. Who cares about a lot of things and is trying to help the world in his own way.

I imagine that is what matters most.

I imagine that is what God sees.

I say that because of a personal experience I had years ago where I learned it is energy and the feeling that matters most, and not what I am actually thinking.

At that time, I was in my indian-guru phase. My oldest son was asleep nearby on a sheepskin and I was at the home of a prominent psychiatrist in Ocean Beach, busy singing my heart out at his a devotional chanting event, dedicated to an Indian guru-teacher.

This is when I had one of those never-before-or-since experiences of my life.

I was gazing at a portrait of The Guru, surrounded by fresh flowers. At the time, I was told he was a version of God on Earth. This is what The Guru told people he was and what I wanted to believe.

So, I was singing ancient words in Sanskrit, with feelings of devotion in my heart, to that photo in front of me.

I was putting a lot of love and intention into my singing.

When we finished, we closed our eyes for a moment for a brief mediation.

At that moment, energy flew up my spine and I was “plugged” into the Matrix completely. Or more accurately, I was free. I was aware that I could access the knowledge of anything. It was like I was part of and was the computer that contained everything. I understood how spiritual teachers could speak languages they had never been taught. From this state, it was easy. You just accessed the information. It was all there, completely and easily available to me.

At the same time I felt this, I was terrified and just as fast as it began, it ended, never to occur again.

And what got me there, was devotional singing.

Later I left the spiritual teacher. Then I found out he had molested someone I knew. The person seemed to have recovered nicely from the event, and it left me wondering?

That experience didn’t come from who I thought I was singing to at all. It came from how I felt. What mattered, what really mattered, was the energy in my body and the devotion in me.

That is what connected me to divinity and a higher state of consciousness, despite how briefly.

How you feel and your intention, I believe, matters more than anything.

Is God going to send Charley to Hell because he wants to make El Salvador a state (and I feel that is not loving)?

I don’t think so.

I think God will see Charley’s garden and his intention to rid the world of plastics. God will see the friendly way he connects with people.

And permeability feels quite key to me right now.

Because Charley wanting El Salvador to be a state could keep me from connecting with all that beauty in Charley.

So I am practicing permeability.

I don’t always succeed.

But with Charley, I remembered the pelicans and the lizards and just let him be in his reality and felt his beauty.

Failure to do so had helped me.

We often have to fail to succeed.

In fact, I experienced a recent failure to practice permeability before I left El Zonte.

It was there that I met yet another famous person with a lot of on-line followers and fame. He was a medical doctor and I asked him a question at the farmer’s market.

I was told later that I was lucky he gave me the time of day as many people have questions for him. In addition to poking him with my question, I also was bold or insensitive enough to ask his wife for her email address as well. (The man had mentioned he knew of a local person who could install a well on a piece of property and I wanted to be able to contact them in the future if I wanted the man’s name….).

She gave me her contact information and told me if I emailed her too often she wouldn’t respond.

Since I didn’t plan to email her at all unless I was going to dig a well or needed more information on a local optometrist she said she liked, I was confused by her response.

But that is because I am thankfully, not famous and emailed tons of questions every day.

I like my life that way.

Anyway, I had more follow up questions for her husband after the first one and he responded to me in a similar way to how I was treated by a man in my family as a child. He gave me some brief and strong opinions and wasn’t open for discussion. He towered over me and told me that “THIS IS THE WAY IT IS AND I AM NOT HERE TO EXPLAIN ANYTHING TO YOU AND IF YOU DON’T DO AS I TELL YOU, I WILL NOT OFFER YOU ANYMORE OF MY VALUABLE TIME IN THE FUTURE AND WILL IGNORE YOU IF I SEE YOU AND YES I LIKE YOU ENOUGH TO TALK TO YOU RIGHT NOW AND I HOPE YOU DO AS I SAY BECAUSE YOU NEED TO BECAUSE IT IS GOOD FOR YOU AND I KNOW WHAT IS GOOD FOR YOU I ADVISE THE PRESIDENT HERE IF YOU HAVEN’T HEARD!”

(Now that is not a quote and probably not accurate at all. That is simply how I received his response, based on my past childhood experiences. What came out of him was likely completely different. I feel we all receive everything through our own Matrix-like cloud of soul energy and all are always experiencing different versions of reality. I do think he cared about me…as did the authoritative, all-knowing figure in my past. It is not his fault he reminded me of someone from my past. God just sent him as a gift and prompted me to ask a question so I could practice what I am teaching you here. Please keep that in mind in case something similar happens to you. These things can be gifts if you see them as opportunities to grow and don’t try to get it “right” the first time).

In that moment, I forgot about permeability. I forgot about the lizard and pelican energy.

I did a better job of staying centered than I did as a child. I did a better job of not taking it personally than I would have ten years ago. I think it had helped to practice permeability and lizard energy earlier a few times.

And the man is just powerful and his strong feelings came at me with a lot of force. I felt it.

A friend walked me part way home and sat with me while I drank two coconuts before I forded the river back to my casita. I had planned some deep meditative time and I was upset to feel drained by this event, after a week of spiritual and physical preparation.

But I also remembered that things happen for me and not to me. I felt the support of my coconut friend and the empathy he offered and kind words he had just said to me about it all.

I went ahead with my mushroom journey and I showed up here, in the US, or Camazotzt (A Wrinkle in Time), or The Matrix, with a stronger intention and awareness to test out my new tool of permeability.

When strong feelings, or opinions have been expressed, I breathe. I feel my energy expand around me like a pelican. I feel lizard-like in my root chakra and remember my connection to the earth. And I don’t fight the people in front of me. I let them be and I do my thing. I do what feels right for me.

My visit with my family is going well. I feel more compassion in my heart. I feel grateful for the room I am in, and the welcome I have experienced here, despite many things that have happened in the past.

My sister and her family have been kind to me.

Permeability.

It helps to stay free.

And when I get off track, I get little reminders. Like this one:

And across the street:

Which reminded me to be permeable and grounded, to do my best to love more, and then, especially then, to feel my feelings, whatever they are, in my body and allow them to flow or have their place. To make room for them. To not dump them on anyone through blaming stories in my mind, or through trapping them inside myself unconsciously.

How are you doing? How are you feeling?

In your body?

Right now?

That, combined with a bit of pelican and lizard energy, is a way to walk through all these Matrix-like realities and have them be a tiny bit less sticky….if you know what I mean…

Blessings on your journey, from one butterfly-caterpillar to another.