In life the first step to happiness starts with unplugging an overwhelming sense of disgust, despair, and contempt with life, the world, and everything. For many it begins at the home, with family members, possibly via "romantic" relationships, in which we begin to feel the terrible burden of other people's thoughts and expectations.

The first step is to start distrusting our own thoughts, habits, and assumptions about the way things are. We need to become aware of the manner in which everyday social constructs, norms, rules, and conventions are basically set against us, that is, against the freedom of the individual. But be warned: these steps to lucidity are indistinguishable from the onset of schizophrenia, which is perhaps why "schizophrenia" is so prevalent in modern day society.'

Once you've started to unplug, you'll have to face the dangers. You'll be leaving the collective and striking out alone in a fierce and hostile universe. But the primary danger is really imaginary, the fear of being rejected by the collective. Since this danger is also the objective of the warrior on his path to unplugging, his fear, though admittedly daunting, is unfounded.

Humans basically cannot exist, or feel secure, unless the social consensus accepts and approves their actions. The only way to be sure of this, however, is to do, say and think only that which the social consensus tells us to. In other words, security is found only in complete slavery. Freedom, even partial freedom, means to lay one's life and sanity on the line. Since one is no longer shielded by the "womb" of matrix life, one is vulnerable to all manner of onslaughts from without. Yet such onslaughts are merely the stimuli of real life, without which we cannot ever grow into adults.

To emerge from the matrix means to leave the comfort and security therein and face unimaginable dangers without; but it is also an awesome new stage of existence that cannot be avoided indefinitely, so it may as well be embraced.

But you won't be entirely defenceless. Fearlessness is the primary requirement of being a warrior within the matrix. The matrix feeds on our fears and uses them to keep us enslaved to it. Once we cease to fear what others think of us, we become free to act accordingly, to fulfil our true wills, to follow our passions, and let the chips fall where they may. The warrior's primary weapon is his mood. This mood is a mixture of control and abandon, and centers around an awareness of the inevitability of death. Once we accept that our death is completely inevitable, and really but moments away, we are free to live life to the fullest.