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Shifting Perceived Realities
What you perceive to be reality magnifies™ ... beca lewis

ENCHANTED VERSUS MATRIX POINT OF VIEW
by Beca Lewis © 3/2008

I confess - I love movies, especially perception shifting ones.  Actually I love what Del calls my “happy movies” and he keeps surprising me with a DVD to add to my collection.

When we visited my parents over Easter weekend I brought along his latest gift to me, a “happy movie” called “Enchanted” and we all watched it together. It was my second time through and once again I was enchanted.

But, since I had seen the story before I could look at it through my favorite lens, the perception shifting lens.

This is what brought me to examining what may seem like a strange comparison between the movie “Enchanted” and the movie “The Matrix.” It’s not really as strange as it may seem at first because each movie approaches and deals with the subject of “what is illusion and what is reality.” It is not a perfect analogy, but it is close enough to have some fun with the idea.

Both movies allude to what I call the big R Reality, the Reality behind the façade that we accept as normal life.

The movie “Enchanted” begins with a fun montage of all the fairy tales that in hearts we wish were actually true. There are beautiful scenes, the princess in the tower, the animals and birds, nature as her friend, the prince looking for her, true love, and “happily ever after.”

Of course evil is also present represented in both movies, in “The Matrix” by the machines and in “Enchanted” by the evil step-mother. 

In “The Matrix” Neo consciously chooses the red pill knowing it will lead him to the truth, but not realizing that he will discover another world then the one he just left, a simulated reality, an illusion, created by sentient machines in order to pacify the human population so they could use them as a energy source.

In the movie “Enchanted” Giselle does not consciously choose, but is tricked by her evil step- mother into a different reality, the world as we know it today, a manufactured illusion, an agreed perception, where there is no “happy ever after.”

Unlike the characters in “The Matrix” she brings with her and never leaves, her state of mind and point of view that love always prevails, and that there is a “happy ever after.”  In fact another character in “Enchanted” says, “She is not from anyplace I can find, it’s more like she is from a state of mind.”

In “The Matrix” although Neo wants to know the big R Reality behind what appears as reality he never leaves the idea that it will be complicated.  The point of view and state of mind he accepts is that we must suffer to find it, we need mentors and fight trainers, there is one person who will save us all, and of course we need bullets.

In “Enchanted” the state of mind and point of view is simple. It is a beautiful girl who knows only Love and sees everything through that filter.  She adapts her actions somewhat to the world she finds herself with, but stays true to what she sees as Big R reality.

Her grace and love transforms everyone around her.  That’s not her intention, that’s not her mission, it happens because that is who she is and what she does. 

In the park she sings about Love and collects people as she celebrates love and joy until a huge crowd joins her in a glorious song of celebration.  Her friend says, “Am I the only one who doesn’t know this (love) song?”  And that is the beginning of his transformation.

We don’t need to struggle to see Reality.  We don’t have to fight with weapons. It doesn’t have to be complicated.  We don’t have to go back and destroy.  We don’t have to have a dark and dreary period of wrestling with evil.

In the end of “Enchanted” the evil step-mother shows her true colors as a huge monster, all the more easily destroyed. Actually she is self destroyed because of ego. She is destroyed through the qualities of loyalty, persistence, caring, love and courage appearing as a tiny chipmunk who takes one simple step which causes evil to fall to its destruction.

It’s a modern fairytale, but so is “The Matrix.”  Both are wonderful movies, but since I get to choose which point of view and state of mind I wish to stay in as we shift to a complete awareness of the Reality of One Love, I choose “Enchanted.”

With Love,

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