Perspective is everything. What else is the red pill but a change in perspective? What else did the red pill offer Neo besides a change in perspective?

Several years ago I managed to catch depression like one would catch a cold. My fiancee and I had just broken up and I had a terrible case of oneitis. I think it was the way she didn't seem to mind when I demanded the ring back. It stuck with me. I came back the very next day but she had moved on already. So I questioned my attractiveness and my worth constantly for months, and I became convinced that my sadness was a direct result of no longer being with her. I put her on that pedestal and built her up into a Colossus. Every day she would weigh on my mind. The romantic beast within me had been fed too well for too long and it was now calling the psychological shots.

It was an idea that made me sick and it was another idea that eventually made me well. Luckily for me I read this book that inspired me to close my eyes when I was feeling negativity and to imagine my body flying up through my roof, up through the clouds, and finally up into orbit around the earth where it was quiet, and there wasn't another soul but mine for miles. From that perspective I would look down upon the world, contemplate the many people in it and the myriad troubles they faced, and then I would talk to myself from that position, asking me honest questions about how I was seeing things and what I thought about how I was seeing things. It was a bit like praying, only I played the role of both parties. Rather than waiting on a voice to speak to me from eternity I simply became the voice, and said what I thought such a voice would say.

I found that after I started doing that, the need to do so began to lessen very quickly. At first I would do it several times per day. Within a month I was only doing it once a week. And within six months I wasn't doing it at all anymore. It wasn't necessary to put on those goggles when I knew damn well what I was going to see with them. The invisible became the visible. By reinterpreting reality from a new perspective that perspective became my reality. And just like that...my depression was gone and my life turned around in virtually every way.

Many times in this sub specifically (not so much on the main sub) the more seasoned posters with some real wisdom to offer will go after somebody for being autistic in their advice, for missing the forest for the trees, for focusing on techniques rather than mindsets. They often quote the conversation between Neo and Morpheus we're all so familiar with by now "are you saying I can dodge bullets?...No Neo, I'm saying you won't have to..."

I know how frustrating that can be. I have always like self help books. Steps. Rules. I didn't realize what an I autist I really was, or at least had become. But there really is a better way.

I was watching the Netflix documentary, "Jim and Andy: the Great Beyond" the other day and holy shit, if you haven't see it, first of all, get ready to feel weird. But if you can brush that off you can see something truly brilliant happening. Jim Carrey did not PLAY Andy Kaufman in the movie "Man on the Moon" he CHANNELED him. He didn't sit around asking himself what Andy Kaufman would say or do in a particular situation. He looked in the mirror and FELT Andy Kaufman, and became him, and then everything he did, even if he KNEW that Andy himself would have made a different choice and even DID make different choices than he was making, something about his adoption of the character NOW was so real, so completely authentic, that he would do it anyway. Jim Carrey wouldn't show up at the set every day and play Andy Kaufman, Andy Kaufman would show up at the set every day and play Andy Kaufman. Jim Carrey was back in the trailer watching tv.

Anyway, there's a red pill principle in there somewhere. If you can get out of your head, sidestep the self-talk completely, and step right into the shoes of the man you know you should be, you don't have to wait for reality to catch up. You don't have to wait for your muscles or social circle or bank account to grow for the dynamic between you and your wife to slowly shift, for your sex life to slowly get better, nothing. You can get up from your computer right now, take a deep breath, look in the mirror, ask yourself who you want to be, and then you can just BE that guy the rest of the day, or for as long as you want, and get the results that guy would get. No kidding.

They say good things take time, and often they do, but with the mind, quantum leaps are possible. When I was 17 my best friend and I were workout buddies. I could bench 205 and his max was 175. He was tired of feeling weak so he went to the supplement shop next to our gym and asked the guy what the closest thing to steroids was that he could sell him. Some sublingual snake oil bullshit that tasted like ass was what he recommended. I laughed about it inside but felt sorry for him so I didn't say anything. The next day he comes running down the hall after gym class yelling "205! 205!" I said "205, what?" He said "I just benched 205! TWICE!"

I thought "Right. Your max bench jumped 30 lbs in 12 hours." Again, I felt sorry for him so let it drop. Until 24 hours later he comes running down that hall again yelling "225! 225!" I immediately called bullshit. After all, two days ago I could lift 30 lbs more than he could, now he's claiming he can lift 20 lbs more than me? I followed him to the gym incredulously and watched in complete disbelief as he pressed two plates two full times right in front of me.

For anyone who knows anything about steroids, you know that not even THEY can produce that kind of result overnight. Like literally no amount of steroids could ever do that. That's not how they work.

But I didn't know that. Hell I didn't really know anything. I just knew I just saw what I saw and it was real, and then something inside me snapped and I jumped on the bench myself and wouldn't you know it? I put that bitch up twice as well. 20 lbs more than my 1rep max had ever been.

The mind, guys. The mind is an amazing thing. I'm not a religious person anymore but I've witnesses physiological miracles, and been a part of them. I think the irreligious or formerly religious like myself disdain the concept or are very suspicious of it probably because we know that religious people like to use it as proof of God's existence, but for whatever reason it doesn't affect me that way. I still think God is bullshit.

But when you think about it all scientific studies have to test against a placebo group. Expectation fluctuates so much from person to person it can be really hard to control for and it can really fuck up your study--not because people are lying about their results, but because people who are taking sugar pills, but think they're taking cancer pills, have literally been known to see their cancer disappear during the trials. This is one of the reasons researchers will often do double and triple blind studies, so they can REALLY find out what works and what doesn't, absent expectations.

I realize I'm rambling, but I think I've made my point. Stop practicing dodging bullets. Stop tiptoeing around your progress and hoping that some day this will all pay off and your wife will fuck you again the way you want to be fucked, or your job will pay you what you want to get paid, or people will respond to you the way you want them to respond to you--whatever it is. Stop TRYING. Stop thinking it has to take time. Just channel it. Summon it. Again, I'm not religious, but if Jesus was a real person who did the things he did it wasn't because he practiced being a son of God every day. He probably didn't practice walking on water. Maybe he practiced public reading and speaking but no public speaking skill is going to move people the way he moved people--not a skill that can be learned anyway. That's something you summon. Consider that.

Psalms 82:6 says "Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High."

Believe that, and you're already there.