In 2011, a study was published which showed that people choose to believe what they want to believe; and in order to support what they want to believe, they choose to believe evidence that backs up what they want to believe and disregard evidence to the contrary.
People believe what they want to believe, and they see what they want to see. It makes little difference if what they see and believe is true or false. If you think about it, this makes sense. People see what their minds are trained and focused on. For example, if you have ever been in the market for a car, and have your mind set on a certain make and model, you will begin to notice that particular car on the street more than usual. This is not surprising. We all know this phenomenon to be true and reasonable.
This begs the question, is what you have chosen to believe the truth? In other words, is your chosen reality actually true reality?
This is a very important question to ask yourself because there are people out there, and more importantly, the spiritual forces behind them, who want you to think in a certain way, i.e. to live your life according to a false narrative; because by doing so, they maintain their power and control over you.
This truth is brilliantly portrayed in the hit movie, The Matrix. In this movie, computer programmer by day, and hacker by night, Neo, encounters the mysterious Morpheus, who explains to him that he is living a false reality. Life on earth is nothing more than an elaborate façade created by humanity’s captors in order to placate them while their life energy is harvested for their evil purposes.
Morpheus is part of a group which is fighting to free humanity from the bondage of their evil captors. He wonders if Neo is their savior as foretold by their prophet. Morpheus gives Neo a test. He offers Neo 2 pills. The blue pill will cause him to remain in his sleep state where he will live out the rest of his life experiencing a false reality while his captors harvest his energy. By taking this pill, Neo will essentially be agreeing to surrender to the enemy and accept their fate for him, meaning, he is no savior.
The red pill will cause Neo to awaken to true reality where he will have to come to grips with the fallen state of humanity and where he will be compelled to make the decision to join the movement to liberate mankind.
This scene is a brilliant metaphor for a very real and true milestone in every person’s life. That is, the point where one chooses whether to remain asleep in the false reality of the materialist world view or awaken to the truth. In the movie, Neo makes the right decision and chooses the red pill. He embraces true reality and goes on to live out his life’s purpose which is to lead the movement to liberate mankind.
What about you? Will you make the right decision?
Perhaps we should take a step back and define what it means to be asleep and what it means to be awakened.
To be asleep means to function only on a base, materialist level, wrongly assuming that the material world is all there is. It means to deny the spiritual aspect of reality and therefore to function without the benefit of the Creator’s guidance. This means that life is lived without true discernment and wisdom. Instead, it is lived on an instinctual level.
To deny the existence of the spiritual, however, does not mean that the spiritual does not truly exist. Rather, what this means is that you are leaving yourself open to be easily manipulated by the enemy of your soul, i.e. the devil, and he will do so without you realizing it. Indeed, as the dark spirit of the world, he has blinded the vast majority of people to the reality of the spiritual, in effect closing their minds, in order to lead humanity in a materialist stupor on a one way trip to hell.
On the contrary, to be awakened is to discover the truth about reality, to become aware of the fact that there is more to life than what can be discerned with your 5 senses. It is to experience an epiphany where your eyes are opened to the spiritual aspect of reality.
To be awakened is to realize that there are two sides to the spiritual realm. One is righteous, true, and loving and is found with God the Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. The other is pure evil and is found with the devil and his demons. It is also to understand that if you are not on one side, then you are on the other.
To be truly awakened means to discover and embrace a loving relationship with God the Father through your repentance and acceptance of Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, whence you will be endowed with, ministered to, and guided by the Holy Spirit who will illuminate the Word of God for you.
Anything short of this puts you on the wrong side of the spiritual realm aligning you with the devil and sealing your fate in hell. This means that even if you consider yourself to be a spiritual person, even if you consider yourself to be a believer in a higher power, and even if you acknowledge that the higher power is God, you are only fooling yourself if you do not first embrace Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior.
All this discussion about false and true realities, about the spiritual realm, about God, and about Jesus Christ may seem nonsensical, ridiculous even, to a person who is asleep. This is because such a person has been lulled into a frame of mind where the ridiculous is blindly taken for granted as the rock solid truth, and the truth is perverted in perception to be ridiculous.
In the next installment of this article, we will consider an example of what I am referring to.
Resources:
Matthew 13:15 (NIV) “For this people’s heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them.’
Matthew 7: 7-8 (NIV) “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.
“Wishful Thinking – Belief, Desire, and the Motivated Evaluation of Scientific Evidence” by Anthony Bastardi, Eric Luis, and Lee Ross: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797611406447
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