In the museum called Reality

Jon Rappoport

April 2, 2019

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You stroll through a museum.

Many rooms, many paintings.

You come upon a large landscape. Fields, cottages, hills, valleys, mountains rising in the background.

While other people move past it with a glance, you walk closer.

It’s lovely.

There, in the lower left-hand corner, you see the beginning of a narrow trail among a stand of pines. You wish you could…

A man is suddenly standing next to you. He’s smiling.

“Go ahead,” he says. “You can do it.”

Absurd. And yet…

You wonder.

“All it takes is conviction,” he says.

You look closer at that trail. Beyond the trees, there is a small cabin. It’s perfect.

And then…you’re walking along the trail. You can feel the soft earth under your shoes. You can smell the pines.

You walk faster, and in a few minutes you arrive at the cabin.

The door is ajar.

You enter.

One room. A bed, a small table, a chair, a fireplace.

On the mantle, there is a book bound in cracked leather. You walk over, pick it up, and open it.

You see drawings of a city. Crowded streets, people sitting in sidewalk cafes, cars, tall buildings. You can hear the noise on the streets.

It’s the kind of city you’d like to visit. There you would be free, unattached. You would walk and live as an unknown person. You would be a stranger, but no one would know that.

The cabin is gone. You’re exiting a ground-floor apartment in the city. You’re emerging on to a street with a briefcase in your hand.

You open the briefcase. In it are several file folders.

You see a sheaf of papers. They seem to be a report. The name of the author…you sense it’s your name.

You have a job. You think about it for a few seconds, and you realize you know where your office is. It’s up the street and over three blocks.

Suddenly, you’re sitting in that office. You look out the window. You’re a dozen floors above the street.

A woman walks in and sets down a cup of coffee on your desk.

She lays a key next to the coffee.

“This is the one you wanted,” she says. “I did a little research and found out it used to be a freight elevator.”

She walks out.

You pick up the key and examine it. It’s made of gray metal. There is a circle inscribed in it, and inside the circle is a square.

You stand up and walk out of the office, along a corridor, and through an exit. There on your left is a large set of double doors.

You insert the key into a hole and the doors open. You step in.

The doors close and you feel the elevator descend.

After a minute, it stops and opens. You step out. The doors close behind you.

You’re standing in a small room. On the walls, you see drawings and inscriptions, pictographs. Maps. Labyrinths. You see five, six, and eight-pointed stars. Animals. Circles containing squares. Other geometric figures. Numbers. Faces.

You turn back to the elevator. You look but you can’t find a place to insert the key. You try to pry the doors apart, but they won’t budge.

…Now, you feel as if you’ve been standing in that room for a very long time. You have memories of trying to decipher the drawings on the walls. You have memories of having almost succeeded, only to be stymied.

It seems you have a long history of having tried to decode secrets.

A man is standing next to you. He’s smiling. His face is familiar.

“I only encouraged you,” he says. “I’m no magician. I just gave you a little push. You supplied the conviction. That’s the main thing you have to understand.”

What does he mean?

A vague memory becomes sharper.

You were walking, a long time ago, in a museum. Yes.

And then you entered…something. And now you’re here.

Without thinking, you say, “There’s a rule against being bigger.”

He nods as if he understands perfectly.

“If I were to exit this place, this whole place,” you say, “I would be bigger. That’s not permitted. It’s a sign of…”

“Excessive pride,” he says.

“Yes,” you say.

“It indicates you’re trying to become ‘better than everyone else’. Which is a criminal offense.”

You think about his words. They spell out a rule, but who made the rule?

“Everybody who is here,” you say, “is smaller than they want to be?”

He smiles again. “That depends on what you mean by ‘want.’”

You repeat, “In this place, ‘bigger’ means ‘criminal.’ But who decided that?”

Then you realize you had a chain wrapped around your neck.

You reach up, and you can feel where the chain was. There is still an ache there.

The man is waiting. He’s looking at you.

“Why are you doing this?” you say.

“Doing what?”

He shakes his head.

He slowly fades out.

He was some kind of artifact. He was a construct that appeared out of your own voice and your own thoughts.

You made him.

You made him out of the scent of pines trees and the sound of water running through the forest and clouds and a desire whose substance you can’t quite fathom.

You sense you are betraying other people. That thought is made out of an old obsession to be like everyone else.

The obsession can become a life, a holy crusade.

But, you realize, it’s not your life or your crusade.

There is a soft explosion just behind your head.

You feel an impulse that is going to lift you off the floor.

And then…

You’re back in the museum.

You’re standing in front of the painting of the pine trees and the trail and the cabin and the fields and the mountains and the sky.

You’re trembling with relief.

A museum guard steps over to you.

“Are you all right, sir?” he says.

“Yes,” you say. “Yes, I’m fine.”

He nods.

You look into his eyes, and you see the small room just outside the elevator. That room is inside him.

“How about you?” you say.

His face flushes.

“Have a nice day,” he says.

“You, too.”

He starts to turn away, but then he doesn’t.

“Do you come to the museum often?” he says.

“I like the paintings,” you say. “I’m here several times a week. It’s a fine place.”

“Yes,” he says. “It is. I’ve wanted this job for a long time.”

“Why?”

“I’m protecting something important. I watch the people moving through the rooms and looking at the paintings. I watch them walk into the paintings…”

You nod.

He strolls away.

You continue to walk through the museum.

There are many paintings. Many entrances.

How many people are living inside those paintings? How many ever get out?


Exit From the Matrix

(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, Exit From The Matrix, click here.)


Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.

12 comments on “In the museum called Reality

  1. Sean Garrisson says:

    nice

  2. WHAT NEXT

    Eight-carbon molecules in rivers of waste, and the sun in a sack cloth hauls itself up again into the sky. And looks down in disgust at what was…a good idea.

    These mayfly lives, passing through and piling up, one upon the other as sediments on the basement of this world. Built up in that wake of seconds upon seconds. Relent.

    Red cushion for a place to sit, amidst rancor. Nihilism for a heart and reluctance. And crazed mystics still keep pushing shopping carts up hills of abuse.

    And in a dream old Denis said, “Paint that woman there, for she is the queen of the world…and she is angered by all this…”, we standing in water up to our knees.

    I use to fish here back when the caretaker asked us to leave the garden. I was alone then, the only one. It was a good spot to fish. I had drifted in from the galaxy next door, with the horde not too far behind me. I had travelled so far and had slept for a thousand years through that lightless drift. And something gained in a sleep. A measure of respect for the infinity.

    She and I were lovers from the start, refugees fleeing from a war fought a million years ago. While the nit pickers searched for reasons to abolish joy. Players look you in the eye when they lie with such a bold face. Believing themselves as truth. Those were the times that started that dull ache in the back of my head, that won’t ever leave now.

    And prophets stand on every street corner and scream foul, and Buddha is now rebranded into a more colloquial type, and the slogan is “What we think we might become.”

    The mediterranean was a valley back then, filled with the most unusual of wonders. Trees reached high, in what could make a city from their bodies. And burley men planted crops of rich food sown from sacks woven of gold, on the bottom of that future sea. And then the water came and sent them all to paradise on the back of their God.

    The moon is full tonight, all dressed up and ready for the insane. I watch you put layers of pretense on yourself. One by one, in hope of covering, what I feel is the best in you. They told you lies and you believed them, and you can’t break the habit now.

    Soon I will slip into the dark again, and hide away into the long, long night. And fly the endless voyage, and in that time forgetting that I am this. And wake up all fresh, and new, starlight will fall on me for the first time, and I will have been reborn, again…

  3. Larry C says:

    This offering gives me the oddest feeling…

  4. Bob Juniper says:

    Great work Jon! *Bob Juniper*

  5. Greg C. says:

    This one deserves a lot of contemplation. How many people walk into a new magical life, then get stuck there, they can’t move on? They can’t find the exit, or they don’t want to. They want a new normal. Life bids us to keep moving, exploring – which means, claim no territory as your own. Calmly walk into new territory and accept the unfamiliar as the norm.

    • Larry C says:

      “Calmly walk into new territory and accept the unfamiliar as the norm.”

      Greg, I’m going to pin that one to the wall where I can see it every day.

  6. Nothere says:

    Mu

    The Muses of Mu
    usually wind up in a MuSeum
    and Mused upon therein,
    while Mu remains unrealized

    The teaching of the insentient:
    if you try to grasp it, you will miss it—
    it has no form.
    If you try to let it go, you cannot separate from it—
    it is not formless.
    Subtle and wondrously inconceivable,
    the Muse constantly reveals the mysterious teachings
    of the ten thousand things.
    Dogen300

    An after-thought
    Anagram of unrealized = neutralized
    Seum From Arabic سم‎ (samm, “venom, poison”)
    the Anagram of Muse

  7. Matrix with a “twist”, Jon.

    I’m not a great fan of the “surreal”, but the end gave this one perspective. Excellent job.

    Cheers
    Steve

  8. britinara says:

    Frisson. This is a keeper. Lots of neurons firing deep underground. Want to read again. And again.

  9. Erika says:

    As Inspired by your collection (jack true in Exit from the Matrix collection in particular), i had been taking little trips to imagination land & writing it on paper as i went, which was cumbersome and broke the flow of imagery. Was thinking of using a digital recorder instead..

    My imagination tends to the fantastical and bizarre,, the last escapade featuring a subterranean cavern , a bonfire, a purple cartoon dragon, and a circle of dancing Trollie dolls. It was alot of fun.

    Thank you Jon for the Inspiration.

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