Tag Archives: Consciousness

BE YOUR OWN SAVIOR WHILE YOU STILL CAN

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By Gary Z McGee

Source: Waking Times

“Stop drifting—sprint to the finish. Write off your hopes, and if your well-being matters to you, be your own savior while you can.” ~Marcus Aurelius

In a world on fire, it’s on you to be water. It’s on you to put out the flames. It’s on you to become the savior you’ve been waiting for. Idleness makes you mere kindling; boldness makes you a force of nature to contend with.

If, as Steve Jobs advised, “remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose,” then it stands to reason that you use death as a guide for redeeming your life.

Because you are going to die. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But someday you will be pushing up daisies along with every other human being who has ever existed.

The question is: will it be death by boredom and banality pining for a savior, or death by passion and curiosity becoming your own savior?

You have from this day until the day you die to live the life you want to live. You might as well make it a healthy life. You might as well make it a heroic life.

You had an eternity before you existed to do nothing. You’ll have an eternity after you exist to do nothing. Now is your time to actually do something, to find something you love to do and then use it to save your life.

Place the oxygen mask on yourself before assisting others:

“Once you fall in love with yourself, their game is over.” ~Alamir Guard

Focus on you until the focus is on you, then focus on the world.

The best way to do this is to imagine your life as a crashing plane. In the crashing plane that is your life, you must be capable of putting the oxygen mask (health) on yourself before assisting others. Once you have your mask set right, you can begin attempting to set the world right.

If you attempt to set the world right without your oxygen mask on, you risk not being able to help because you can’t function. You risk ill-health and incompetence. You risk death before your time.

With your oxygen mask secure, however, you will have the health and confidence needed to engage the world with strength and vitality. You will be a force to be reckoned with. Such a force can bring balance to an otherwise imbalanced world. Such a force can even prevent the plane from crashing before its time.

Seen in this light, you can see how there is a virtue in selfishness. For it is selfishness with good intent. The selfishness of putting the oxygen mask on yourself leads to the selflessness of helping others do the same.

Pride up; ego down. Confidence up; conceit down. Chin up; foot down. Self-esteem leads to prestige when you use it toward the wellbeing of others and to ground the world in health.

Be counteractive with answers and proactive with questions:

“Be a free thinker and don’t accept everything you hear as truth. Be critical and evaluate what you believe in.” ~Aristotle

Sometimes saving yourself means freeing yourself from what has been preventing you from flourishing. Often what prevents you from flourishing is not so obvious. It can be as simple as an outdated law or as complex as a limited worldview. Paradoxically, the only way to know for sure of what’s preventing you from flourishing is to not be sure.

Ironically, when you’re not sure of anything, you free yourself to be sure of what’s possible and what’s not. This is because when you sacrifice certainty, you resurrect curiosity. You get out in front of what you think you know so that what you don’t know can at least potentially become knowable.

This requires a questioning disposition. It requires the ability to face an “answer” with credulity and circumspection; to, as Aristotle suggested, “entertain a thought without accepting it.” It requires the fortitude to cut through orthodoxy with an unorthodox sword.

In the spirit of becoming your own savior, there is perhaps nothing more powerful than questioning the answers that came before you. Nothing is more powerful than an unorthodox question mark planted over an orthodox period.

The questioner is the redeemer. For what must be redeemed is the Truth Quest itself, and it is redeemed from the trap of the so-called “truth.”

In a world full of toxic positivity be authentic chaos:

“In each one of you there is a call, a will, an impulse of nature, an impulse toward the future, the new, the higher. Let it mature, let it resound, nurture it! Your future, your hard dangerous path is this: to mature and to find God in yourselves.” ~Hermann Hesse

What does it mean to be authentic chaos in a world full of toxic positivity? It means recognizing when comfort has become a prison and acting in such a way that you break free and stretch your comfort zone. It means recognizing when a lifejacket has become a limitation to swimming. It means casting security aside so that courage can be self-actualized. It means realizing that there’s more happiness in a spoonful of hard-earned self-improvement than in an ocean-full of easy self-affirmation.

Authentic chaos is introducing a little strategic disorder into the current order to alchemize a higher order. It’s controlled anarchy like the native American concept of counting coup. It’s the personification of a social leveling mechanism that levels the playing field of all finite games while introducing the higher perspective of the Infinite Game of life.

More importantly, authentic chaos is a deep reconnecting to our primal nature. It’s a vital hard reset into sacred alignment. It’s becoming a force of nature first and a person second. Written laws shrivel into nothingness beneath the primacy of the unwritten law of the interconnected cosmos. Self-as-world and world-as-self becomes the supreme perspective. Egocentrism is trumped by eco-centrism. One-dimensional independence is subsumed by multidimensional interdependence.

The world opens, the fountainhead overflows, the Philosopher’s Stone reveals itself, as the authentic chaos of the individuated cuts through toxic positivity like a hot blade through cold butter.

Practice Fait Sur Mesure:

“The spiritual journey is individual, highly personal. It can’t be organized or regulated. It isn’t true that everyone should follow one path. Listen to your own truth.” ~Ram Dass

One powerful way to listen to your own truth is to practice fait sur mesure. Which is French for ‘made to your measure.’ A huge part of becoming your own savior is realizing when what your culture has given you is not to your measure and then having the courage to create a way of living that is to your measure.

This means accepting that you are the only benchmark for your life. You are the measure. Nobody else can determine what is or is not to your measure. Only you have the power to either remain a culturally conditioned cog or to become a courageously reconditioned catalyst.

Don’t fall into the trap of following someone else’s plan. Deconstruct, analyze, and scrutinize their plan, then improvise it. Stand on the shoulders of giants. Customize your life to your own fitting. Take this piece from this ideology and that piece from that ideology, but then connect it all to your own unique imagination. Be creative. Think outside the box. Push your culturally-prescribed comfort zone as far as it will go. It’s all yours for the making.

Understand: In the Matrix of the world, you are “the one.” Just don’t get a big head about it. Because everyone is “the one.” It’s just that not everyone has the capacity to act on it. It is your responsibility alone to gain the capacity to act on it. It is your responsibility alone to create your own destiny.

So, existentially crush out. No holds barred. Go full frontal boss mode on living life to the fullest. Dive into the cosmic ocean with Death for a lifejacket. Become your own savior before it’s too late.

Pandemic? Great Reset? How about… a beginner’s mind?

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By Mickey Z.

Source: Dissident Voice

“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities. In the expert’s, there are few.” 1

Has there ever been a more urgent time to embrace many possibilities? This age of pervasive uncertainty and division may well be very fertile ground for questioning our assumptions and interrogating our beliefs. In fact, we just might be living in the ideal time to accept that there are limitless ways to perceive even the most contentious issues.

Expert vs. Beginner

The expert’s mind is over-secure in its prowess. Such a mentality may promote shortsighted habits like confirmation bias. Many “authorities” will only seek out (read: cherry-pick) information that validates and justifies their behavior because expertise — real or imagined — causes us to grow less curious.

If we already feel well-versed in a topic, we tend to pay less attention to it. We ask fewer questions. This is a stifling choice even if we know 95 percent of what there is to know about a particular subject. Ideally, this is when we should be paying more attention to it in order to discern the nuances that remain to be learned.

Conversely, the beginner’s mind is ever-hungry for input — regardless of its source or its tendency to reinforce existing beliefs. In the beginner’s mind, there are fewer limits and fewer expectations. There is much more room for revelation and awe. Nothing is taken for granted and even the tiniest detail has the potential to inspire reverence.

The beginner’s mind is basically the polar opposite of today’s social media algorithms, mainstream news headlines, and popular political discourse.

3 (of the many) Benefits of a Beginner’s Mind

Creativity

Habits and structure can be incredibly useful. They can also become an obstacle to innovation. A beginner’s mind encourages us to approach familiar problems with a fresh perspective. This mindset often results in the exploration of avenues that an expert would casually dismiss as “been there, done that.”

Gratitude

A beginner’s mind awakens each morning, ready to wipe the slate clean and start anew. From this fresh perspective, it feels more natural to identify and appreciate your blessings.

Mindfulness

Seeing the world like a beginner prevents you from “going through the motions.” There is a clearer understanding that the present is all you have. The past is where guilt and regret dwell. In the future may lie apprehension and anxiety. Right here, right now, the moment is enough.

How to Rediscover a Beginner’s Mind

By its very definition, there are an infinite number of ways to occupy a beginner’s mind. To follow are some basic guidelines but think of them like Bruce Lee’s finger pointing a way to the moon. As Lee urged, “Don’t concentrate on the finger or you’ll miss all that heavenly glory.”2

1. Reject your ego’s need to be an expert

Eavesdrop on a conversation at the local supermarket. Even better, scroll (without reacting) through most threads on social media. You’ll see and hear so many people pretending they know“what’s really happening” and “what’s gonna happen.” Your ego craves the status of being right. The beginner in you would rather open-mindedly look for reality than be deemed an expert at anything.

2. Slow down

As touched on above, we must avoid going through the motions. Whenever possible, slow down to question and explore. Take your time to learn — even from the most unlikely of sources.

3. Channel your inner child

Re-introduce yourself to some of your closest childhood friends: wonder, mischief, and playfulness. Reject the cynical adult premise of “same shit, different day.”

4. See with new eyes

In the words of Marcel Proust: “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”3 Practically speaking, your quest for new eyes can begin with simple exercises like treating your hometown as if you were a tourist and seeing what you can discover.

5. Embrace nonsense 

As Gary Zukav, author of Dancing Wu Li Masters: An Overview of the New Physics, (1979), posits: “Nonsense is nonsense only when we have not yet found that point of view from which it makes sense.”

6. Meditation

Perhaps the most time-worn path to a beginner’s mind is the practice of mindful meditation. Whether you choose a spiritual or secular approach, even ten minutes a day of meditation will expand your consciousness.

“The child is in me still and sometimes not so still.”4

There is no one right way to inhabit a beginner’s mind. After all, it is not a destination. It’s all about the process, the learning, and those moments of epiphany made possible by not closing off your options… so re-activate your inner child.

Keep re-evaluating what you believe before your perceptions can grow ossified. Don’t limit your explorations by choosing in advance what it is you wish to find. Turn your truth over and over, again and again. Avoid accumulating old answers. Instead, dedicate far more of your time to conjuring up new questions. Through it all, let compassion serve as your compass.

The experts [sic] have gotten us into this mess.

It’s time to give beginners their opportunity to shine.

  1. Shunryu Suzuki, Prologue Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, (1973). []
  2. Bruce Lee, Enter the Dragon, 1973. []
  3. The Captive. (La Prisonnière, the fifth volume of Remembrance of Things Past), 1923. []
  4. Fred Rogers, (2003). The World According to Mister Rogers: Important Things to Remember, p. 45, Hachette UK. []

‘Us vs. Them’ Thinking Is Hardwired—But Consciousness Can Overpower It

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By Joe Martino

Source: The Pulse

Are we hardwired to categorize each other into ‘Us vs Them?’ Simply put, yes. But this hardwiring is remarkably easy to break. It’s time we equip ourselves with the knowledge and tools to do so.

Why? Well, anything from powerful governments to mainstream and alternative media is consistently trying to divide us by focusing aggressively on our differences. When we know how these mechanisms work and focus our consciousness in an effective way, these attempts to divide fail.

First a quick story.

When we first launched our membership I hired marketing teams to help. They would always tell me “in the sales messaging we need to create an ‘Us vs Them dynamic’ in order to get people to buy.” I resisted.

I felt like that wasn’t necessary and also contrary to our mission of unifying people to create a better world. But, the marketers were right. When we would A/B test sales messaging without ‘Us vs Them’ compared to sales messaging with it, the ‘Us vs Them’ messaging always won.

I have to admit this made me a bit sad. Was I thinking too idealistically about human beings? Maybe. But I always asked ‘Why doesn’t Us vs Them messaging work on me?” Before you suggest I’m naive and think “of course the messaging works on you,” read to the end of this piece. You’ll see how simply it is for this messaging not to work on anyone should they choose.

Neuroscience suggests that this Us vs Them biological trait developed thousands of years ago. As you might imagine, it had much to do with survival in much different times than we live in today.

It essentially states that human beings are primed to make very basic and categorical Us vs Them judgments. In fact, your brain is processing these Us vs Them differences in a twentieth of a second. These noticed differences are your classically promoted artificial constructs of: ethnicity, gender, skin color, age, socioeconomic class, and even something like sports team preference.

(I say artificial because social constructs tell us we should focus on these as differences. We don’t actually have to see them as differences as we are ALL one species. Other animals do not engage their Us vs Them biology within their species – only we do – and it’s a taught behaviour.)

All of this is enhanced by a multi-purposed hormone in our brain called Oxytocin.

Oxytocin has been shown to be a wonderful hormone for connecting and bonding with others that we know in our communities, ‘Us’. It’s often referred to as the love hormone or connection hormone. It essentially heightens meaningful connections with our in-group.

But on the flip side, studies have shown that when it comes to people who we see as strangers (Them), oxytocin creates a decrease in cooperation and increases envy when people are struggling. Further, it pushes one to gloat when they are ‘winning.’ In fact, there are many ways in which oxytocin is linked to dividing ourselves from ‘Them’ and keeping it that way.

In short, oxytocin enhances this Us vs Them divide. But, while this sounds like we may be doomed for division and judgment of others forever, what has also been shown is that these almost instantaneous judgements we make can be manipulated incredibly easily. And that’s without bringing in a little bit of conscious awareness and presence.

Studies have shown that when you expose people to others who look different from them, the ‘Us’ wiring often turns on when people look similar, and the ‘Them’ wiring turns on when people look different. This showed an implicit judgment based on ethnicity.

Yet when those same people were exposed to people who looked the same and different from them but were now wearing baseball hats with team logos, things changed. Suddenly the participants brains indicated that Us and Them had nothing to do with ethnicity anymore, it was about which team they supported.

A tiny change created an instantaneous manipulation of who is Us vs Them. I wrote about a similar phenomenon in a recent piece called Racism Plummeted When People Were Told Aliens Exist. This showed that when humans were told aliens existed, the Us became humans, and the Them became aliens. Suddenly people were nicer to each other and more accepting of differences.

The point? It doesn’t take much to for us to see each other as one, we just have to focus our consciousness a bit.

Consciousness Is Everything

There is much gained in our well being and in society when we become more self-aware, reflective and present. It moves unconscious and often automatic behaviour into a lens where we can ask: why do we do this?

Further, an increase in the above mentioned traits can lead to something as simple as stopping ourselves before we do something destructive out of anger. We can then pause for a short period, reflect, and respond.

The more we move from automatic, unconscious and reactive ways of living to present, reflective and conscious ways of living, the more harmony surrounds our lives.

What I’m saying can bring up similarities to new-agey, online influencer judgments that the ‘conscious’ are more than the ‘unconscious,’ this is not at all what I’m saying here. And I will expand in a moment.

First, I trust it’s clear that we can be manipulated into different Us vs Them dichotomies very easily. Studies exploring implicit bias also show that when we are exposed to different people regularly, we become less judgemental towards their differences.

Even still, we can build self awareness around how WE play into these divides in order to diffuse them.

For example, during COVID government leaders like Justin Trudeau sowed division in Canada by making unvaccinated Canadians less than. He did this by calling them names and characterizing them in ways that would cause the general population to dislike them.

“They [the unvaccinated] don’t believe in science/progress and are very often misogynistic and racist. It’s a very small group of people, but that doesn’t shy away from the fact that they take up some space.”Justin Trudeau

He combined this rhetoric with un-contextualized and false data around vaccination status in Canada to strengthen his propaganda.

Note, I’m not focusing on Trudeau here because I’m “a Poilievre fan” or anything. In fact, I don’t feel our current structure of politics is healthy nor serving us as people. I’m simply illustrating the ways in which our society has become ‘lost’ in division. Getting out of it requires us to take a close examination of what is happening so we can choose a different path.

In contrast, some unvaccinated people around the world began to refer to themselves as ‘pure bloods’ because they were not vaccinated. This led to memes, hateful rhetoric, and actions like avoiding and separating themselves from their vaccinated friends and families. Instead of attempting to understand why some became vaccinated, it was often simply seen as ‘the vaccinated are sheep.’

Once again we see division, in/out groups, and greater than/less than beliefs.

In both cases we are seeing the destruction and damage that can occur when we allow our flimsy biological traits around Us vs Them to be fed and upheld by faulty information and propaganda.

What is also important to note is that our ‘authoritative’ institutions of government and mainstream media will often be guilty of this destructive behaviour which deeply normalizes it amongst the masses.

That said, we are not doomed. Consciousness is everything. By that I mean, the quality of our consciousness. The ways in which we slow down, reflect, and become more present in everyday life becomes an antidote to propaganda feeding Us vs Them.

This is why we have the section at the top of our articles to “Pause and set your pulse.” To cultivate more presence and self awareness, check out a couple of the pieces of content I list at the bottom of this piece.

Let’s go deeper. Perhaps why I have felt Us vs Them messaging does not work on me stems from: what happens when we have experiences that lead us to feel we are all one and interconnected with everything? I have had these experiences many times in my life. I experienced them through meditation, breath work, and even randomly.

Thrust into what can be best described as ‘sensing the nature of our reality,’ when you have these transcendental experiences you do not see yourself as all that separate from everything else. Sure, you are YOU, and you know you are an individual, but you also have a knowing of the connection and sameness you share with everything.

What happens if we nurture and hold that knowing in our consciousness and allow it to form our worldview? Does our sense of Us vs Them get triggered as easily? I don’t think so. But that’s my experience.

This direct experience has led me to believe that a shift in our consciousness can be one of the most powerful tools in changing the way we see each other and ultimately re-design our society – because it has to happen.

Albert Einstein had some thoughts on this as well:

“A human being is part of a whole, called by us the ‘Universe’ —a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts, and feelings, as something separated from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”Albert Einstein

A task indeed, but one that is very possible with the right practice and focus.

Education Is Key Too

Why are things the way they are? We have to explore content that seeks to answer these questions. Instead of using social media for fast memes, 15 second videos, and short out of context video clips, deepen your knowledge. Consume less, but spend MORE time on each thing you consume.

Buying into this fast and distracting culture of information consumption is only furthering the problems we have. Social media algorithms are rigged to build an echo chamber around you and to give you ‘truth’ that confirms your existing bias’. This is not real education.

As for the biological trait itself, why can’t we focus our attention on our human similarities instead of our differences? We can. But culturally we have learned not to because somewhere along the lines it’s what we chose to obsess over.

Perhaps because powerful people glean more power by dividing masses. Perhaps because our current economic systems thrive off division, competition, and having various classes. Either way, we’re making this all up as we go. It doesn’t have to be like this.

For those who might think “this is our biology. We will always do best in small groups of the same type of people,” this doesn’t appear to be true. Studies have shown that diversity trumps ability. Diversity significantly enhances the level of innovation in organizations around the world.

Groups of only ‘like-minds’ become echo chambers and our efficiency and innovation suffers. Yet another reason we must learn to love, respect and communicate with one another.

(Note: here I’m pointing to the uncovering our potential as humans and having that be our driver. Not productivity and innovation tied to making more money and having a ‘bullish market economy’)

The Takeaway

The key is that consciousness can overcome a flimsy biological trait that produces Us vs Them thinking within us. We can engage experience and education that connects us to our similarities, adopts a consciousness of interconnection and a shared stewardship of our planet and people.

Everything from ‘woke ideology’ constantly obsessing over our differences, to political news commentary always inviting people to ‘dislike the other side’ is contributing to a worse direction for humanity. Don’t just sit there and blame it though, simply choose to engage differently. Improve how you use social media. Consume less content but go deeper.

Consciousness is the power here. Why can’t we extend our worldview of who we are into oneness and a deeper connectedness? Why must we fight to shut off our wonder and hold to petty differences?

FILMMAKER REVEALS THE TRUTH ABOUT SUBLIMINAL MESSAGES

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By Dylan Charles

Source: Waking Times

We’re all being conditioned to think and believe certain things without any rational explanation through subliminal messaging in advertising, music, film, television, political propaganda, and military psychological operations.

Considering the definition of the word subliminal – ‘existing or functioning below the threshold of consciousness’ – it is easy to downplay the power of this brainwashing technique because most people are not consciously aware that it is happening, yet, it is affecting their lives. Once you realize that subliminal messaging is real and start to pay attention, it becomes much easier to recognize the we are, indeed, all being conditioned to behave a certain way, to want certain things, and to believe in ideas, without being able to rationally explain why.

Below is a short video in which Jeff Warrick, the director of Programming the Nation (2011), offers his take on the truth about subliminal messaging. Warrick shares a few examples of messages embedded within ads, which are not likely to be seen consciously, but are admitted into the subconscious mind.

A common response to this type of revealing information is skepticism and disbelief that sexual innuendos or random words embedded in pictures or film will not impact a person’s willingness to buy a product.

Although it is a common assumption that sex sells because for most people it is associated with feelings of pleasure, excitement, enjoyment or even love, subliminal messaging is about much more than helping advertisers sell more product. These messages are designed to have an impact on general consumer behavior and affect people’s life patterns, thus molding society as a whole, creating and captivating more and more receptive consumers.

When bombarded with subliminal messaging, the mind is likely to trigger emotions, memories or feelings, without a person’s conscious recognition of why they feel a certain way. A person may not consciously realize why they start to become more attracted to certain behaviors, lifestyles or products, but they are more likely to succumb to the attraction.

“..subliminal ads are used as a technique not only to increase sales but is also used to divert youth and involve them in such type of behaviour which is only hazardous to the consumer.” ~ (Impact of Subliminal Messaging in TV Advertisements on Consumer Behaviour – A Case Study of Youth in Kashmir Province of J&K, Blue Ocean Research Journals, source)

Are subliminal messages contributing to a variety of economic, social, and political problems currently present in our culture, such as over-competitiveness, low self-esteem, obesity, over-consumption and debt? There are many examples that support this idea and demonstrate that subliminal messaging, over time, can have a powerful impact.

Take, for instance, advertising to women. If you look at any variety of ads that are targeted at women ages 18-35, an overwhelming majority will personify that women and girls should be thin, wear lots of makeup, style their hair in certain ways, and, of course, look very sexy. It almost appears as though it is the advertisers’ job to make young women feel bad about themselves.

See the following example of women in advertising in the video below:

Other examples are films such as the Rambo series of the 1980’s and the more resent American Sniper, which glorify mindless military self-sacrifice, torture and violence. They romanticize obedience to authority and unquestioning loyalty to a war-mongering government.

“‘American Sniper’ lionizes the most despicable aspects of U.S. society—the gun culture, the blind adoration of the military, the belief that we have an innate right as a “Christian” nation to exterminate the “lesser breeds” of the earth, a grotesque hypermasculinity that banishes compassion and pity, a denial of inconvenient facts and historical truth, and a belittling of critical thinking and artistic expression.” – Chris Hedges

Below is the complete documentary by Jeff Warrick, Programming the Nation, that offers a full history behind subliminal message. In the film, Warrick examines if subliminal messaging and other subconscious techniques have conditioned the United States public to become one of the highest consuming nations in the world, accounting for about 25 percent use of the worlds natural resources even though its populace makes up less than 5 percent of the global population.

Consider the Chickens

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Intelligence, ethics, and the inner lives of animals

By Rafia Zakaria

Source: The Baffler

I OWE CHICKENS AN APOLOGY. Not only have I been eating them until very recently, but I have refused to even consider the possibility of a chicken having any kind of inner life. This estimation was not made from a lack of interaction. As children, my twin brother and I purchased baby chicks from a street vendor. We did this unfazed by the fact that quite often, the chickens would die. Once, when we were nine, we had two that lived, a hen and a rooster. No one told us that we should probably get more hens. Not having any other female companions, the rooster exerted his attentions on the one chicken. She would lay an egg or two every day, much to our delight, but soon sickened and died. Then there was only an incel rooster who roamed our compound and terrorized the women. After a few ugly incidents, he was “given away” to one of the women who worked at our house. We were never told what happened to him, and I didn’t care. There is nothing worse than an incel rooster patrolling your house all day long.

Now, so many years later, I’ve found my way to animal behaviorist Justin Gregg’s brilliant new book If Nietzsche Were a Narwhal: What Animal Intelligence Reveals About Human Stupidity. Gregg’s chicken coop is “a huge enclosed area” with high rafters, because as an animal scientist, he knows them to be jungle birds who need perches on which to sleep at night. But it is not only the magisterial heights of Gregg’s discussion of chickens that stayed with me. I was struck also by Gregg’s description of his chickens’ varied personalities, one anxious, another friendly, and so on; he tells us that these chickens do have inner lives and thus a consciousness of themselves as distinct from others. Instead of the feckless creatures I (and most people) assume them to be, chickens have just the sort of intelligence that is necessary for their own survival. They don’t think like humans, Gregg tells us, because they do not need to.

Intelligence, in Gregg’s explanation, does not exist in the way SATs or other IQ tests would have you believe. Those tests quantify a certain kind of ability to process information. People who do not do well on such tests may have other kinds of abilities that simply are not being measured. Intelligence is not one easily definable thing; engineers working on artificial intelligence cannot agree on a definition of it. But what humans have is a tendency to ask why things operate in a certain way. In Gregg’s terminology, humans are “why specialists,” a proclivity that in natural selection terms is no advantage and perhaps even a liability. A narwhal swimming around in the sea, for instance, would never have the kind of mental breakdown that the German philosopher pondering nihilism suffered toward the end of his life. Animal intelligence is practical and does not get caught up in abstract thought. By and large, animals make calculations based on what they can observe; ideas such as “causality,” which lie at the crux of human intelligence, are outside their capacity for thought.

Humans evolved to become why specialists. As Gregg tells it, 200,000 years ago, humans were hanging out with chimpanzees and exhibited no interest in the whys. They could make rudimentary tools and had some kind of assemblage of grunts that allowed for basic communication. He notes that roughly 40,000 years ago, cave paintings were created. Here were humans asking the whys; symbolic representation is an exclusively human thing.

Inability to be why specialists does not mean that animals are not capable of “metacognition,” the ability to be conscious of their own thinking or cognition. One of the most stunning examples in this book full of stunning examples is that of Natua, a dolphin at the Dolphin Research Center in Florida. An experiment was set up where Natua was exposed to two kinds of sounds, one a very high tone and one a very low tone. After hearing the sound, Natua had to choose between two paddles, one for the high and another for the low. If he chose correctly, he was given a fish for a reward. If he did not, he was sent for a long time-out, in that the experiment stopped. As the experiment progressed, the high tone sound came very close to the low sound such that they were nearly indistinguishable. At this point, Natua was unable to tell the difference; “he just started randomly pressing paddles,” Gregg writes. His behavior proved that some animals are capable of metacognition, the awareness that they do not know, or that their thinking about something is wrong.

It is no surprise that Gregg is pessimistic about how humans have used their abilities as why specialists, and he thinks that there is a chance that humans might not even survive over another century. The prospect of nuclear war and the climate crisis suggest, in Gregg’s view, that the end is possible. In the meantime, developing a consciousness of animals as beings who are capable of metacognition, of having individual personalities and so on, points to the need for a new ethics. This new set of basic premises would abandon the centering principle that the animal-human relationship must always be of one having dominion over the other.

But if you consider the continued resistance to the idea of animal rights, it is hard to be optimistic about the emergence of a new ethics of mutuality that eschews the dominion portion. Too many human rationalizations, attached to what we eat, what we wear, how we live, are predicated on the belief that we are the only feeling beings and that our actions upon animals are independent of consequences. If you know the fear of a chicken or a cow or a pig about to be slaughtered, you may look at your food in a different way. You might eschew fried chicken or beef or pork completely. If you understand that a horse being whipped is suffering terribly, is extremely scared and dissolute, you can also understand that there is a need for a radical expansion of mindfulness and a concomitant shrinking of power.

In the moral universe informed by Gregg’s argument, the survival of the human race is not an imperative for the planet because humans as a species have been far more disastrous for the world than others. “Prognostic myopia” keeps us horribly and condemnably in the moment, burning fossil fuels and trashing the oceans even though we know that it is terrible for the environment. This is a unique position among philosophers, a lot of whom have lately concerned themselves with questions of ethics and planetary survival. 

As a contrast to Gregg, the Oxford Associate Professor in Philosophy William MacAskill, in his What We Owe the Future, proposes “effective altruism” as a way to live ethically in times of climate crisis. If Gregg argues against human exceptionalism, MacAskill reduces humans to data points, where the survival of the most, and the most benefit to the planet, are guideposts to a present and future ethics. Using Gregg’s arguments, however, effective altruism is rendered meaningless. Even those who live sparingly on twenty-six thousand pounds a year, like MacAskill, are still a burdensome threat, unless we define their worth according to tiresome illusions of human exceptionalism.

If Nietzsche Were A Narwhal is the sort of critical look at human dominion that our world needs. A few years ago, Brown University environmental historian Bathsheba R. Demuth wrote Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait, a similarly groundbreaking look at the consequences of the extractive relationship humans have had with the environment. Just as Gregg reveals the risks of humans imagining their power over animals as shorn of consequences, Demuth reveals the consequences of human dominion over nature.

Thinkers and scientists like Gregg and Demuth are presenting readers with the urgent and pressing necessity for a new ethics. The unthinking, extractive, and dominant human treats animals as a lower form of existence, rather than a different form; we assess the environment based on what can be extracted from it. Like our means of communication, our means of travel, of treating disease, and so much else, our ethics need an urgent and pressing update that takes into consideration the understanding of animals. Factory farms, the constant consumption of animal products, and the greedy use of fossil fuels are the seeds of destruction.

I am not sure I could have offered the chicken and rooster of my childhood a deluxe chicken coop with high rafters, but an argument for better living conditions and the introduction of new companions for the rooster would have been easier if we had understood the first thing about the animals around us. I do not need to underscore the rapid pace at which our world is changing. If Nietzsche Were A Narwhal is a must-read because it explains how we can save the world only if we exist in symbiosis with the thinking, feeling creatures that have had the misfortune of sharing the planet with humans, who turn out not to be as intelligent as they believe themselves to be.

LIFE… IN REVERSAL

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By Kingsley L. Dennis

Source: Waking Times

‘We must distinguish between real change and fictitious change. The change that comes from without, from externally imposed training and discipline, is fictitious…Real change comes from within, by conscious work intentionally performed by the being himself.’ ~J.G. Bennett 

It is increasingly difficult in these times to speak of ‘non-verifiable’ or unprovable matters, especially concerns of the spirit-consciousness, for too many people are inculcated with fixed beliefs and thinking patterns. This is itself a sign of social conditioning and of a certain ‘management of mind.’ We should not be surprised that this situation is rife throughout our societies and cultures and is becoming increasingly predominant. Social norms are persuading many people to prefer safety and security rather than the potential discomfort that comes from gaining new realizations and understanding.

An ex-officer of the Soviet secret police who defected to the West (Gregory Klimov), revealed that in the fields of Soviet psychological warfare (and social psychology) they utilized the principles of psychoanalysis. In this, they saw the phenomena of evil as a ‘complicated, complex social illness.’ The psychoanalysts within the KGB equated evil with illness, especially an illness of the human psyche. This perspective places demonic actors and events as ‘objective realities;’ i.e., as various forms of illness of ‘psyche and soul.’ As the Russian anthroposophist G.A. Bondarev writes: ‘The devils represents an involved and complex process of degeneracy or retrogression that in the main consists of three parts: sexual deviation, psychic illnesses and some physical deformities of the organism.

The number of humans already afflicted with this degeneration is legion.’1 Bondarev goes on to say that, based on certain social-psychological testing, the greatest degeneracy exists within the so-called elite of the world (as much as 75%). What this points to, concludes Bondarev, is a drastic decline of the human spirit. What it also tells us is that the phenomenon of ‘evil’ does not necessarily need to be personified or projected into certain personages as it represents an illness of the human psyche. We can recognize its presence operating within psychic imbalance and internal disconnect and detachment. And I would concur with Bondarev’s conclusion in that such psychic dis-ease represents an inner disconnect with the transcendental impulse. This disconnect, or splintering, from a sacred source has now come to signify the nature of the reversal that epitomizes much of contemporary life.

It is within this reversal that we see much of the negating, or counter-evolutionary, forces within humanity. And these forces have been dominating much of our everyday lives and continue to do so. I would suggest that it is our individual responsibility to recognize these forces, attempt to comprehend them, and to transform them into impulses that can work for humankind’s evolvement. In this, we need to come to grips with the presence and activity of those aspects that signify a psychic illness, or dis-ease, within life. Such aspects are a feature of existence as much as positive, developmental forces. They all act within the playground of attraction, repulsion, and the expression of energy. The Rosicrucians recognized these forces when they referred to the Deus Inversus – or the ‘Reversed God.’ This nature of reversal works on humanity through the spheres of imbalance and disharmony to counteract civilizational development. The Austrian mystic Rudolf Steiner was aware of the future impact of such forces when he stated that: ‘It is essential that the forces which manifest as evil if they appear at the wrong place must be taken in hand…in such a way that humanity can achieve something with these forces of evil that will be beneficial for the future of the whole of world evolution.’2 In this regard, it is important that the individual becomes aware of the metaphysical realm that lies beyond the threshold of normal, or every day, consciousness.

If we remain unawares to our own forces of spirit-consciousness, then we are more susceptible to the manipulations of such counter-developmental forces. Those readers familiar with my writings will know that I have attempted to draw attention to certain aspects of our consensus reality in order to gain greater clarity about how we may respond to the situation in a constructive way. I stand by what was written in the Gnostic Gospel of Philip: ‘For so long as the root of wickedness is hidden, it is strong. But when it is recognized, it is dissolved. When it is revealed, it perishes.’ Recognition, through heightened awareness and perception, brings more choice into play. The individual needs to be conscious of certain facts before they can manifest the correct intention and focus of will. What is needed is a culture of revelation – of ‘uncovering’ – rather than of cover up. It is through revelation that insight into the metaphysical foundation of life can be sustained within our increasingly materialistic societies. This access to metaphysical realities can never be wholly eradicated. Yet just a cursory glance at modern life indicates that there are attempts to deepen peoples’ immersion into deteriorating forms of dissonance and distraction. This can be seen as a form of reality deceit.

Reality Deceit

The great deceit that is coming upon us is the unveiling of a so-called ‘utopia’ based on the isolation of the human spirit-consciousness. This fake promise is wrapped up in tech-salvationist terms, heralding a false ideal future. The real dis-ease of the human condition is to be in a state of estrangement. That is, estranged and alienated from any metaphysical influence or nourishment. It is not that the metaphysical background to life must necessarily be obvious to us, or tangible in our daily lives – only that we are cognizant of its existence and continual influence. Yet once this sense of recognition (the act of aware cognition) is dissolved, a barren soulless life is the result. And yet, in most circumstances, people will not be cognizant of this loss – this lack of the transcendental impulse in their lives – for they will be entrained into a reality consisting of a physical-digital mesh that keeps them attached to their lower nature and desires. This deceit consists of a most heinous form of enslavement, for it shall both be a willing one as well as an ignorant one. The splintering of the human being from its metaphysical connection shall go almost unnoticed, and the transfer into a reality of limited consciousness will have been enacted quite skillfully. This sly route to a human condition of alienation, procured through the guise of technological advancement and progress, will be a coup against the creative spirit. And this shall be the reversal of the human reality – the reality deceit.

The almost imperceptible dangers are that we have been slipping into a reversed reality, constructed through a realm of fantasy and make-believe, which now fuels the crass and superficial culture industries that dominate modern life. Any notion of Higher Reality has been twisted into an artificial lesser reality that attempts to hinder, as far as is possible, the developmental impulse from penetrating. This arrangement has culminated in dissociating humankind not only from its natural, organic, carbon-based environment, but also from an inherent contact with its origin – Source consciousness. This increasing disembodiment is reflected in such forms as the techno-digital ecosystem, extended reality (the Metaverse), computerization (including algorithms), and artificial intelligence. For many people today, their digital devices have become their instruments of salvation. But this salvation, this divine deliverance, belongs to the Deus Inversus – and we should choose our gods carefully. We should be careful too, not to be pulled into the encroaching banalization of life. And we should be on the look-out for signs and signals.

If anyone wishes to see how ‘signals’ can operate within the reality deceit, then watch all the episodes in the recent Westworld TV series (2016-2022). In Season Four, the machinic android ‘hosts’ have taken control of the world using a bioengineered virus that infects humans over the course of a generation, turning them docile and susceptible to AI and ‘host’ control. Storylines and narratives are created in order to give people their roles and characters in life, which they passively follow believing them to be their own life stories. Humankind is managed through these manufactured ‘storylines’ (a.k.a. socio-cultural narratives) that are transmitted directly to the minds and lives of humans through a series of radio-sonic transmission signals via the global technological infrastructure…But then again, this is just a fantasy story after all.

The course of external events that inform our political, economic, and cultural systems are not arbitrary, coincidental or natural. The modern human has been subtly manipulated into disconnecting from, and even shunning, the guidance of higher impulses. We are being told that the human being alone is the sole and dominant driving force for the future. And by this, we are propelled ever further into the personality construct with the human ego at the wheel. We are standing at the threshold of adopting a glorified materialistic view of life and the world. The spell of this disease is working to over-materialize materialism in a very deliberate and nefarious way. There may be some discomfort in the unfoldment of awareness, yet this is part of the transmutation of the dis-ease.

Life ‘in reversal’ is working hard and fast on this intensifying of materialism. This deepening materialism not only denies the expansion of consciousness but is actively working to stagnate it. At the same time, we are moving through an impulse of increasing individual awareness against the backdrop of this over-materialization. Yet it is an awareness through the few, and not the many (yet). By recognizing that certain forces within the world are using processes of mass suggestion to introduce a simplification – or ‘dumbing down’ – of human consciousness, we can gain greater awareness over our condition and predicament. And in this awareness, we can gain a natural resistance and protection, as recognition allows a discernment to be made. It is this discernment to step away from the negating energies and frequencies of toxicity that can help a person to attune to a resonance of perceptive consciousness. By choosing where we place ourselves – our focus and attention – we can either take a step forward or stay where we are and stagnate. As always, the choice remains with us.

Cultivate a habit of small acts of sedition

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By Caitlin Johnstone

Source: Intrepid Report

It is not easy being someone who cares about the world and opposes the status quo. It’s a series of disheartening failures and crushing disappointments amid an endless deluge of information saying that everything is getting worse and worse.

The environment keeps degrading. Ruling power structures keep getting more and more controlling. Capitalism gets more and more imbalanced and exploitative. World powers get closer and closer to a mass military confrontation of unspeakable horror.

And what do we get when we try to oppose these things? Letdown after letdown. Politicians we support lose their elections, often after brazen interference from the very power structures we’d hoped they’d oppose. Political organizing breaks down in sectarian infighting. Activist leaders get caught up in sex scandals. Agendas we helped push for fizzle into impotence. Power wins time after time.

What passes for “the left” in the English-speaking world is basically either controlled opposition or a glorified online hobby group. Or both. The real left has been so successfully subverted by power that the mainstream public doesn’t even know what it is anymore; most think the left is either a mainstream political party that’s wholly owned and operated by the empire or a loose bunch of vaguely related ideas like having pink hair or saying your pronouns. The left really has been so successfully dismantled that it has almost been purged from memory.

Every time, at every turn, power wins and the people lose. After a while it starts to feel like you’re bashing your head against an immovable object. Some people fall down after a few hard bashes. Some don’t get back up again. Others keep bashing away, becoming harder and harder and more and more miserable and neurotic the longer they go at it.

And most people don’t even know any of this is happening, that’s what can really make it hard. You talk to your loved ones about what you’re seeing and they just get uncomfortable or look at you like you’re crazy. They don’t see the problems you’re pointing to because none of the places they’re getting their information from tell them it’s happening, because the powerful control those information sources.

As Terence McKenna put it, “The cost of sanity in this society is a certain level of alienation.” And as Marshall McLuhan put it, “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is a hallucinating idiot.”

And it sucks. No matter how you slice it, it sucks. It sucks watching this massive juggernaut slowly devour your world and see everyone’s attempts to stop it fail, and to have most people in your life not understand it or even see what it is you’re pointing to.

So what can you do? Is there a way to beat the bastards? Is there a way to stop the machine in its tracks and turn this thing around?

Well, no. Not right this moment anyway, and not by yourself. The machine’s far too big, far too entrenched, and its control over information systems means you’re not going to get help from other people in the numbers that you will need them. It’s just you and a few others against an entire globe-spanning power structure.

But that doesn’t mean you are powerless, and it doesn’t mean there’s nothing you can do. It just means you’re not going to be single-handedly knocking out the bad guy and saving the world in some grand, ego-pleasing way like an action hero in some stupid Hollywood movie.

What you can do as an individual is cultivate a habit of committing small acts of sedition. Making little paper cuts in the flesh of the beast which add up over time. You can’t stop the machine by yourself, but you can sure as hell throw sand in its gears.

Giving a receptive listener some information about what’s going on in the world. Creating dissident media online. Graffiti with a powerful message. Amplifying an inconvenient voice. Sharing a disruptive idea. Supporting an unauthorized cause. Organizing toward forbidden ends. Distributing literature. Creating literature. Having authentic conversations about real things with anyone who can hear you.

Every day there’s something you can do. After you start pointing your creativity at cultivating this habit, you’ll surprise yourself with the innovative ideas you come up with. Even a well-placed meme or tweet can open a bunch of eyes to a reality they’d previously been closed to. Remember, they wouldn’t be working so frantically to restrict online speech if it didn’t pose a genuine threat to the empire.

People tend to overestimate how much they can accomplish in a day, but sorely underestimate how much they can accomplish over a span of several years. Finding little ways to undermine the oppression machine every day gradually adds up to hundreds of acts of defiance in a year, which after a few years becomes thousands.

Do this, and then relax. Don’t expect yourself to save the world on your own. You’re only human, and there’s only one of you. You can only do what you can do, and humanity will either make the leap into health or it won’t. Just exert influence over the things you can exert influence over, and outside that little sphere of influence you’ve got to let go and let be. Don’t put any unfair or unreasonable pressures on yourself.

Perpetrate regular small acts of sedition, and then surrender to whatever life brings. I personally see many reasons to hold out hope that we can bring that machine crashing down together one day.

RE-WIRING FOR THE FOUNDATIONS OF A NEW WORLD

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By Kingsley L. Dennis

Source: Waking Times

‘You are the foundation in which a new world needs to be built upon – each and every one of you are a part of this foundation.’ – Abe

There have always been individuals among the population that exhibit a higher resonance, and this enables them, whether they are conscious of it or not, to act as ‘alarm clocks’ for others. What may be the real issue here is not so much the chaos unfolding in the physical world but rather that not enough people are enabling an appropriate resonance to take root and to become established within humanity. The real ‘apocalyptic’ scenario is the breaking down of old ways and the bringing in of new resonant alignments. It is difficult for humans to accept that great change and shifts come about through breakdown, and what appears as destruction. That is, beginnings need a new space from which to emerge, both physically and energetically.

The current reality of the modern world has much within it to overload the human senses. There are many factors that contribute to vibrational dissonance, and this seems to be increasing, not lessening. Part of this is related to our advancing technologies, especially our digital devices and communications infrastructure. Other aspects are related to the human psyche, and its individual and collective state of psychological (dis)equilibrium. Both elements – the technological and the psychological – are interrelated and affect one another. Moreover, there are also deliberate human strategies to maintain this dissonance and state of fragmentation as a means to manipulate, control, divide, and box up each individual inside their own conscious experience. If placed into specific labelled boxes, then human thinking patterns and fields of consciousness will become artificially restricted. Unfortunately, many people have become so used to experiencing consciousness within limited parameters. These are our restrictive thinking patterns, that then go on to form belief systems, intellectual structures, and programmed perspectives. We are literally living out of boxes – psychologically homeless – with our genuine freedoms curtailed. We are so used to projecting our psychological attachments upon so many unnecessary things, which we then get entangled with.

It is understandable that there is a confusion around the concept of resonance. There is a popular notion that resonance is something to be ‘raised’ through certain actions such as positive thinking. Yet ultimately, this may be little more than sugar-coating – a ‘band-aid treatment’ as it is called.[1] That is, people end up masking the issue without actually getting to the root of it. And this appears to be fast becoming a default setting in modern life. By seeking out positive thinking ‘feel good’ type of practices, this is like using medication to mask the pain without finding out the root cause. And in the end, it may serve as a distraction rather than a benefit for there is still an attachment to the old patterns and feel-good factors may function more as a delay rather than as a remedy. Positive thought is not a bad thing, but it should not detract from the understanding that a person is, relatively speaking, already imbued with their own potentials. The misunderstanding here is that people are pushing to ‘raise something.’ But in this, people often remain clinging to all the old baggage of seeking salvation away from the circumstances of everyday life. And this can make it harder still for people to let go, to disconnect, from their unhealthy entanglements. Natural resonance is more a question of being receptive rather than pushing to ‘raise’ something. That is, we are being reminded to refine what we already are – there is no need to feel compelled to go anywhere ‘higher.’

A person’s energetic state and resonance is relational to how they feel within. As such, it is strongly connected to our mental and emotional states. As it is now broadly recognized, the human being is highly socially conditioned. We are easily influenced and manipulated to give away our inner authority onto external structures and supports. The more things that we link our energy up to, the more we can be influenced. In this, we can be giving our energies away without a reciprocal exchange. This can be through linking up to other people, as well as with possessions, ideas, desires, etc.

The more we send out our vibrational tentacles, the more we are liable, often unknowingly, to give a little away of ourselves each time. We easily forget to ‘draw back the links,’ and to reevaluate our psychological, emotional, and physical attachments. It is often through our own unawareness that we block or distort our natural resonance – our flow. Just as we arrange our house to the way we like it, to give us the energetic feel that makes it right for us, so too should we arrange our life, our connections and relations, in a way that harmonizes with us. Humans have the advantage over other animals that we have a high degree of self-awareness. Yet because of this, we often over-complicate matters; whereby animals, on the other hand, are much more instinctive and responsive to fields of energy. It may be good to remind ourselves that we each have the capacity to literally re-wire our internal connections that then will manifest in our external relations. In the end, human survival is dependent upon the connections we make to the world around us. We cannot evolve as a species cut off from its environment, energetically isolated.

It seems that humanity is being nudged down its rabbit hole, but all alone. We have lost part of our essential connection in how we resonate to the planet, the animal kingdom, with the ecosystem, and within the larger cosmos. We are severing our resonance with the very environment that sustains and nourishes us – it is like we are peeing in our own bathwater. In the end, any imbalance will cause our species the greatest upset. The planet, and its environment, can always find rebalance, for this is their natural resonance. On the other hand, humanity has placed this disequilibrium and off-kilter resonance upon themselves – or else allowed others to place it. Yet now is the moment to step away from these pathways of dissonance and disequilibrium and to allow for the establishment of a new foundation.

Beginnings need a new space from which to emerge, both physically and energetically.

The path of self-development – ‘a process of human becoming’ – is something that generally goes against all that we have been taught. Or rather, against all the social programming and conditioning that we were brought up within. We may even be asking ourselves: ‘why be the foundation in which a new world needs to be built upon when I have a hard enough time dealing with my regular everyday life?’ It may also sound like pseudo-science when it is said that the creation of new neural pathways in the human brain can allow for a new resonance pattern. Yet this is how new thinking operates – it starts to establish new patterns of neuronal connection. And this is where the initial re-wiring should occur – in our own internal workings, not out there in the physical world. Besides, what happens within will also be reflected without: this is also part of the relational aspect of energy. It is about reprogramming ourselves first, before we rush off trying to reorder and reorganize the world around us. We need to take time to reassess and to question ourselves and the world we perceive. It is time for us to take a good, deep look at our own human programming.

Humanity (broadly speaking) has seemingly got itself embedded into a ‘vicious cycle,’ or loop pattern. Our socializing processes literally hypnotize us, and we create a myriad of manifestos and ideologies to keep us entertained (or transfixed). We easily become trapped within our own rankings and system of hierarchies, and little realize how much we smother ourselves.  After putting on so many outer layers (like overcoats) – socially, psychologically, emotionally, etc. – it is now time to start stripping them back. We often refer to the life experience as the ‘game of life,’ yet we often miss the point in that games are meant to be played – and we need to learn how to play our ‘selves.’ In playing our Self, we also should be playing our own truths. Yet most of the time we end up playing someone else’s truths. We need to ground ourselves first. Otherwise, we are liable to be swung around by the events, influences, and manipulations of life.

We are not here to pre-define to ourselves where we may find our truths or not, for then we are already creating limitations and confinements. The barriers, blockages, and illusions that we may have built up around us need now to be dropped. After all, life often has a way of circumnavigating our expectations and presenting us with incredible, spontaneous opportunities. Let us just say that it is timely to be now taking time out to re-align with our ‘home resonance’ and to root this. It is important that we each find the space to refocus, to readjust, and realign. To find our balance – our resonance/equilibrium – is not rocket-science, as they say.

If a person wishes to use certain practices/tools to re-sync back up, then this is fine – so long as they realize that these are tools and not the thing itself. Of course, it can be said that humans have always used tools throughout their history; tools have helped us navigate through the material world and to mediate our experiences. The danger here, though, is when we start to over-identify with them; when we say, ‘my practice or meditation is more spiritual, more aligned than yours,’ then such an attitude as this helps no one. Readjustment is not a forced process; it is a natural re-alignment and, as such, should be as normal as possible and not strained. Our tools and practices should not end up getting in the way by becoming our crutches. Once the ‘work is done,’ so to speak, we can put them down again and stop carrying them with us. After all, we wouldn’t continue to use a hammer if it is not needed, for it would only damage the wood.

Ultimately, those structures and groupings that favour separation, division, and control will fall for they are not sustainable or relatable to natural law. If the energy upon this planet increasingly shifts to one of unity and togetherness, then this will attract others into this alignment. People, structures, and groupings that have previously favoured separation and discord may then be compelled to realign if the prominent energies upon the planet shift. Not only is this scenario possible, it may even be likely, due to cosmic factors which then influence planetary ones. This realignment upon the planet may be chaotic initially, yet such chaos generally has a function. And let us also be honest: this re-wiring for the foundations of a new world will not attract everyone. Not everyone is ready for it yet. There are a great many people not yet actively seeking this type of information or understanding. And that is fine. Nothing can be forced – that is the nature of natural resonance. Yet if enough people start to manifest a new harmonic resonance, the collective instrument that is humanity can be re-tuned. After all, it only takes a few musicians to hear the new pitch in order to guide the orchestra.