What we’re about
COMMUNITY REBOOT AND RENAME IN 2025!
MUSE: Conscious Discussion for Creative Minds has transformed into Awakening Within the Matrix, a mixed media discussion group that leads to conscious discussions for, um, creative minds. Events will focus on watching movies, movie clips, TV series, video game cut scenes, books, and recorded lectures and discussing them as a group.
Awakening Within the Matrix started as a video group discussion series produced by the Awareness & Consciousness Group of Southern Nevada. Back then it was "Sean" and "Tristan" and "Kitty" leading the group conversations with many of the events held at Rev. Sophia Falke's Unity Church. Today "Sean" has begun embracing his first name, "Michael," and 11 year old "Tristan" has long transitioned to "Orion," with "Kitty" having run off into the jungle as a grown up "Kat."
So Michael or Sean or however you know him as and a 26 year old Orion are starting the series back up, and the first rule is, if it's your first Awakening Within the Matrix, you gotta talk. 'Cause our first movie is the remarkable psychological mind blower, Fight Club with AAA+ performances by Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, and Helena Bonham Carter.
If you are unaware of the psychological nature of the movie and have written it off as gratuitous violence, consider opening yourself up to figuring out why so many spiritual and peaceful people love the movie. It's one of the best contemporary portrayals of the battle of the Ego and the Higher Self. I absolutely do not want to give anything away for those that don't know what's coming, and IS THERE SOMETHING COMING!
Furthermore, Fight Club is a great metaphor for the spiritual and metaphysical dynamics that often take place in spiritual and metaphysical group discussions. You can learn how your exchange in these groups is essentially an exchange between you and your own Ego, as nothing outside of Self exists. But that's a great topic for the group discussion. ;)
MOVIE WATCHING + MOVIE DISCUSSION EVENTS
Fight Club is a great movie to discuss afterward, once the whole plot device has been laid bare. So for this event we're going to watch it straight through and hold the group discussion until after the movie ends. Events like this will include "MOVIE WATCHING" in the title and will be immediately followed by a "MOVIE DISCUSSION" event. This will allow those who have already seen the movie to plan to arrive when the discussion begins.
WATCH-AND-DISCUSS EVENTS
There will be other movies like The Matrix where we will be stop-starting the video, or featuring targeted clips instead of watching the movie together. This is typically the format for movies that most people have already seen and it's easy to dive right into the discussion. These events will include "WATCH-AND-DISCUSS" in the event header.
BOOK DISCUSSION GROUPS
Some people in this community have an addiction to books and we should probably start up a Book Buying Addiction Support group, but I think we'd, er, they'd all just find ways to justify their book buying addiction. For those of you who can control your book buying urges we're going to add Book Discussion Groups to Awakening Within the Matrix. The discussions will be led by anyone in the community wanting to lead a discussion about a particular book, so the topics will span a broad spectrum of non-fiction and fiction and the format will vary from discussion leader to discussion leader.
FWIW, it would be awesome to get recurring study groups for books like The Bible, A Course in Miracles (ACIM), and The Golden Dawn. We'll be looking to add existing book discussions that are taking place in the local spiritual and metaphysical community including the active ACIM meetings found on other Meetup Event Calendars. If you would like to lead a book discussion group please contact one of the Awareness Group organizers or active community members that has our ear.
INFERNO DIVINE COMEDY
"Flaming hot spiritual and metaphysical comedy with an edge."
How many times have you heard one of your friends say how funny and clever they think they are? How many have actually heard their friends say they should be up on a stage, they are so funny? How many of you are constantly finding humor throughout your day while integrating (or avoiding integrating) the spiritual and metaphysical concepts that we discuss at all of these meetings?
How many have the balls to prove it? ("Eeeep, honey, he said BALLS!") Inferno Divine Comedy is a battle of Angels and Demons for the title of reigning Paradise's Court Jester (since we're just south of the Paradise township line). Whoever thinks they are funny will drop their name in a hat to be pulled at random to go head to head (or head to head to head) until the last comic is standing. Round 1 is 1 minute per comic, Round 2 is 2 minutes, and Round 3, if we ever get that kind of turnout, is 3 minutes, with the winner getting a final closing act that can run as long as people keep laughing.
The content focuses on spiritual and metaphysical humor, oddities, and extremes, and things can get a bit edgy. Not as edgy as Edge Lords at Skankfest, so there are definite off-limits topics like race, gender, and politics. It's not that you aren't welcome to have your own opinions, but this event series is not a place for that. Explore the edge of the edge while others are honing the edge of their Sword of Truth.
CODING THE GAME: VIDEO GAMES AS A LIFE METAPHOR
Eric Kohn likes to use Video Games as a metaphor for life, and it resonates with a lot of people. Eric and Kileen are going to host a Coding the Game event series at their house in Summerlin starting the last half of March. During the series the group will be codeveloping a metaphor and lexicon that we can use as a group to quickly convey concepts as well as evolutions and improvements to those concepts.
This event series is going to run in parallel to a Coding the Game Podcast with Sean Brown joining Eric as the co-hosts of the weekly show. The show will initially focus on the video game metaphor and the insights and group realizations during the weekly event. The show will evolve to meet the interests of the people who tune in to watch or listen to the show. It will feature individuals in the local and global spiritual and metaphysical community allowing them to highlight and share their insights and evolving talents.
BOARD GAMES: HOW YOU PLAY A GAME IS HOW YOU PLAY THE GAME
Board Games are a great form of media that exposes how well (or not) that you are integrating the concepts that we discuss in the groups. Does your friend cheat, stack the deck, pilfer cash, in their attempt to win? Does the group leader have temper tantrums when a die roll or card flip doesn't go their way? Does your spiritual partner check out and scroll their phone when it becomes obvious they aren't going to win? This is how they will behave, unconsciously, in life. They can't help it. You can't help it. But you can become aware and then hyper aware of it, and you can learn to adapt your programming so that you behave in a more evolved manner.
Besides, board games are fun. A lot of fun. Games we'll be playing include: Shadows Over Camelot, Dominion, Ascension, Settlers of Catan, DaVinci's Challenge, Cryptic Mandala, T'zolkin, Stone Age, Small World, Terramistica, Wizardology, Dragonology, Dune, and Walking Dead. Then there's the more casual, social, easier games like Apples To Apples, Zathura, Jumanji, Risk, Monopoly, Pictionary, The Joke Game, Malarkey, etc. Then there's the card games which especially includes Texas Hold Em.
OTHER MIXED MEDIA
What other forms of media are out there that would fit into this groups calendar? Let us know. If you are a poet and want to do a reading, by all means, help raise the culture of the group and let your talent shine. Can you share a divination process like tarot, runes, palmistry, or glass ball reading? By definition, divination uses some form of media to look into the past or future, so all forms of divination would be suitable.
WELCOME TO THE NEXT CHAPTER OF THIS GROUP
As you can see, the evolution of MUSE into Awakening Within the Matrix is an easy transition from general discussion about creativity into the process of using media to awaken from the stupor of media. Whether you're looking to get involved by participating in the events or hosting a few yourself, check out what's new on the Event Calendar and start getting involved.
