Red pill and blue pill

Red pill and blue pill, symbols originating from the 1999 science fiction film The Matrix. The pills represent a choice between remaining in a state of blissful ignorance (blue) or accepting a painful reality (red). 

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Computer hacker Neo meets the mysterious guru Morpheus. As Morpheus describes, “You take the blue pill, the story ends. You wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland. And I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.” Neo takes the red pill and wakes up in the real world.

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The Matrix also draws on ideas from gnosticism and Buddhism about ignorance and enlightenment.

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Ironically, the red pill has been seized by alt-right groups as a metaphor for freeing oneself from so-called liberal viewpoints.

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The red pill functions similarly in the so-called “manosphere.” The manosphere generally refers to a vast network of websites and blogs frequented by online misogynist groups.

red pill and blue pill symbolism

Written by Allison Rauch, Encyclopedia Britannica 

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The second-century Christian Gnostic sect leader Valentinus would love The Matrix’s Gnosticism. Gnostics like Valentinus believed that the world we encounter every day is pain and suffering, an evil falsehood created not by God but by a lower deity of God’s creation, a figure called the Demiurge. To escape from the falseness of the material world and save your soul, you must achieve gnosis, or knowledge.

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Valentinus would no doubt recognize in the movie his own worldview: the false world of the Matrix; the godlike Demiurge personified in Agent Smith; the enlightened savior Neo, who arrives to rescue humanity.

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Nineteen centuries after Valentinus and other early mystics first began preaching, Gnosticism is thriving as the native belief system of the social-media-era internet. It’s just that we know it as “red-pilling” — because, of course, there is no religious text more foundational to the internet than The Matrix. Online, “to red pill” is to learn that you’ve been defrauded and misled, that you’ve bought into a false and diabolical lie, and that your only way out is to obtain true knowledge about the way the world works. “Remember — all I am offering is the truth, nothing more,” Morpheus tells Neo.

How The Matrix’s Red Pill Became the Internet’s Delusional Drug of Choice

By Max Read, The Vulture 

The Harder It Is To Believe In It All

I'd got used to accepting some very, very traditional points of view on Catholicism, and that was all turned upside down. There was a time after I'd been studying theology for about a year, that I was really scared that it was going to ruin my soul, and I was going to lose my faith completely. And I did struggle with my faith for a while. I found the more you know about the Christian history and the way the scriptures were put together and things, the more questions you've got, and the harder it is to believe in it all.

A former nun explains why she ran away from her 'Cloistered' life

MARCH 20, 2024 Fresh Air with Terri Gross

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In Christian theology, sin needed to be judged by a just God; there needed to be an atonement, a concept that Christians share with Jews. But the way Christians believe it played out is that Jesus—“the Lamb of God who was slain”—took on himself the sins of the world so that others may live.

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I have taken comfort during my own times of grief and pain in believing that God can empathize with my experience. It’s reassuring to believe that heartbreak and suffering, even tears, aren’t alien concepts to Jesus. This doeshat is shattered; it doesn’t reclaim what is lost. But it does make the loss more tolerable. I’m not quite sure why. Perhaps it’s a sense of feeling known, a kind of solidarity in suffering.

That, of course, doesn’t answer why an all-good and all-powerful God would allow suffering to exist rather than eradicate it. Christianity doesn’t provide an explanation; what it does is place pain into a larger narrative, one in which the crucifixion of Jesus gives way to his resurrection. Death gives way to life. Fractured lives are repaired. Restorative justice happens.

THE GREATEST CONTRIBUTION OF CHRISTIANITY

Good Friday reminds us of the ephemerality of human power.

By Peter Wehner

The Power of Prayer

My spiritual journey never ceases to amaze me. Twenty minutes before a meeting to deal with a difficult situation created by a church member, my pastor (P) calls me in tears and asks me to pray with (P). I have led prayers in church that were written or that I prepared. I have also been called on in the past by church members to pray extemporaneously at events when a pastor wasn't available. I was actually called on with little notice to pray at a wedding of a cultural situation I was unfamiliar with. I recently had a friend call me to pray for me and with me on the phone about my cancer and the health issues this person was facing. I was surprised and didn't add to the prayer.

This was most surprising though, to be called by an ordained minister to pray for and with this person on the spot, with no explanation except for what I knew of the situation. I don't remember what I prayed. I realize now I didn't give them space to pray. Before I knew it, I said Amen, and I was probably thanked before the person said goodbye and hung up. I think of the tremendous trust this person put in me to see them in such a vulnerable situation. They were also not afraid to put me on the spot and with no lengthy explanation, they just had the confidence I could do it.

I think it's a bit challenging to talk about prayer in Buddhism because the word is such a western concept and you pretty much have to be praying to something or somebody, typically God. I looked back at these blog posts and also did a fresh Google search on prayer today as I thought about what happened.

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While externally, Buddhism has the trappings and rituals of prayer, the idea is not to petition an external being for assistance in our daily lives. The Buddhas and bodhisattvas are perfect role models, who show the path from where we are now, to full enlightenment. By praying to Buddhas and bodhisattvas, we derive inspiration from them and awaken our own inner capabilities: the limitless compassion, love, and wisdom that we all have the potential for inside of us.

What Is Prayer in Buddhism?

Dr. Alexander Berzin, Matt Lindén

Keep praying: Prayer is reminding us that God is with us - Blog post

Three Main Components to Dharma

Rough unedited transcript 

When we look at the dharma as a whole, as we've talked about before, There are three main components to it. In practice. There is the cultivation of insight. Which is basically big. The not just the intellectual understanding, but the felt sense. That there's no fixed self here. And the other way of saying that is that everything is interconnected, everything is a whole, you can't just talk about separate things and separate parts. Everything is connected to everything else. So the more Quick at that clarity. You know, experience that everything is into connected. Then that naturally leads to more altruism and more empathy. Because if everything is myself, than i want to look after it others, as i would myself. So it comes from that place. And the other aspect of practice is meditation. And it's through meditation that we develop a more refined sensitivity, particularly through the body, that's clearer, more discerning. 

The Buddhist and the Ethicist. A book review talk by Geoff Dawson, March 19, 2024 Ordinary Mind School of Sydney

Ready for this Moment

I have a strange sense of peace and feel I have been preparing for this moment. I wrote in 2006 about my realization how I had feared having a heart attack but how yoga and Buddhism stilled those fears. Buddhism definitely believes one prepares by being open about the fact that everyone will die eventually. Last month Geoff Dawson, Ordinary Mind School of Sydney, said "even life and death in itself is a rhythm."

This is our situation. We are probably in peril. We’re on a branch in the middle of a river. It’s not a good place for a cricket to be, especially if there are some rapids ahead. And yet, what does the cricket do? It sings...

Jane Hirshfield - Interview with Christa Tippet

The Buddha said: “You have to make the present moment the most wonderful moment of your life.” When I first learned the initial diagnosis about a month ago, I found this teaching by Thich Nhat Hanh to be a good preface to my thoughts.

The Healthy Effects of Touch — Come From Moving the Skin

Even During Quarantine, You Need A 'Daily Dose Of Touch'

Anne Strainchamps, To The Best of Our Knowledge 

Dr. Tiffany Field, founder and director of the Touch Research Institute at the University of Miami Medical School and a pioneer in the field of therapeutic touch

The positive effects — the healthy effects of touch — come from moving the skin. That stimulates the pressure receptors under the skin, which send messages to the brain — mainly to the vagus nerve, which has branches in virtually every part of the body — that slow the nervous system down. So you get decreases in heart rate, blood pressure and stress hormones. You get changes in the brain waves to theta activity, or relaxation waves. You also increase the natural killer cells, which ward off viral cells, bacterial cells, and cancer cells. 

Touching and moving the skin has a huge effect on the immune system.

But just think about the fact that we’re washing our hands all the time now. Assuming you’re doing it correctly, you’re moving the skin of your hands. And that helps you stay healthy not only by washing the virus off, but by stimulating your pressure receptors.

What I'm saying to single people who don't have anybody touching them is that they need to do self-touch. They need to do yoga. They need to walk around the room stimulating the pressure receptors on their feet. They can get the stimulation they need by lying on the floor and doing crunches or sit ups. All of that will contribute very similar effects to being hugged or just shaking someone else’s hand.

AS: Sounds like we should be thinking about touch the same way we think about diet and exercise?

TF: You’re right on. It’s just like that. We all need a daily dose of touch.