Are We in The Matrix?

Are We in The Matrix?

By Sue Greenwald

In the late ’90s I worked in corporate sales and spent a lot of time behind the wheel. One afternoon I was driving west on the PA Turnpike toward home when something strange happened.

A huge shadow ran perpendicular across the road — massive, sudden, and perfectly dark. It stretched across all lanes, across the median with its groves of trees, and continued across the other side. I looked up through the skylight to see what cast it. Nothing. No cloud, no plane, no object of any kind. The shadow kept moving forward as I drove, always a little ahead of me and sometimes right over me. I kept searching the sky and still saw nothing.

For a moment I felt like I was inside a giant video game, the scenery being refreshed as I moved forward — an illusion of landscape reforming as I reached each new stretch. It reminded me of The Truman Show, where the protagonist believes the world is bigger than it is because he’s never seen past the set. Back then, The Matrix had just hit theaters and those ideas — of hidden layers and programmed reality — were new. The movie was bold, even edgy for the time, and many of its visual techniques (the slow-motion, the stylized action) set a template we still see in films today. More than anything, it nudged people to look beyond the five senses.

Over the years I’ve had other moments that made me suspect the world might be more program than pure substance. Once I was in a public place and saw Katie Couric on TV. Instead of the usual perky, familiar face, I saw something else: a holographic-like alteration — an eyebrow appearing toward the middle of her forehead, a horrific, distorted look. I mentioned it to people and filed it away in my mind.

In 2020 I wandered down the makeup aisle of a drugstore and was stunned by the model photos on the packaging. Instead of beautiful people, I saw ugly, unusual beings. I stood there for a long time, recognizing the illusion: advertisements cloaked these beings to the general population, tricking people into emulating something that wasn’t what it appeared to be. The same goes for the music and entertainment industry — so much of it is curated, altered, or simply not what it seems, yet people chase fame and outfits and lifestyles as if the image were the thing.

Around 2010 I was in a familiar yoga class. The instructor put his hand on my hip to help with a posture and, in that instant, I saw geographic lines of energy forming what we usually call solid matter. For a few seconds I witnessed bodies and objects as moving lines of energy — like the green code in The Matrix. I also felt a sudden, effortless oneness with the universe, a state people strive for and often struggle to reach. It was quick, unplanned, and unforgettable.

Then there are the everyday, unnerving coincidences. Years ago I’d talk on the phone about a product and immediately see ads for that product pop up online. Once that felt like being spied on; these days we all know cameras and tracking are everywhere. Remember, what we take for granted today was brand new technology just a short few years ago! I’ve also had strange syncs between devices.

I once searched photos of lenticular clouds on my phone (my laptop was off), then turned the laptop on and found a lenticular cloud image as the sign-in background. While writing offline about ancient Egyptian baboons, an article about them appeared on my phone — even though my devices weren’t synced and I hadn’t spoken the words aloud or posted anything online. Is this AI predicting us? Is it people with higher knowing? It feels too consistent to be coincidence.

One incident in late 2019 really unsettled me. I woke in the middle of the night with a completely random, unique, very odd thought — something I didn’t say out loud, didn’t type, didn’t voice to anyone. The next morning I turned on the computer and there it was: information about that exact thought. I hadn’t searched for it. It was as if something had listened and then responded. That one stuck with me.

Science tells us that we are mostly space and moving atoms — buzzing particles forming patterns that look solid to our senses. If we are both energetic patterns and seemingly solid beings, what does that say about our reality? Could our perception be just one layer of a more complex arrangement?

We’re programmed early in life to hold certain societal beliefs, and breaking out of those is hard. First you have to want to know. Then you gather information and widen your view. In school we’re told matter is solid; later we learn it’s made of moving particles. If you take a little more time to look beyond the surface — to consider agendas and hidden systems — you might see further into the “matrix” of our shared reality.

I try to stay observant and open-minded. Hearing other people’s stories has expanded my thinking and helped me notice things I wouldn’t have before.

What do you think — what is our reality like?