Changing Our Thoughts

We’ve all known people who are chronic complainers. They complain about this, they complain about that. It seems that they never run out of things to complain about. Of course there’s a reason for that, and the reason lies in how our thoughts and the words we express them with bring what we think and talk about into our lives. By complaining, we create more to complain about. Conversely, if we express gratitude we bring ourselves more to be grateful for. Have you noticed?

We’re powerful creators, all of us. For most of us it’s an inadvertent process; we aren’t aware of the mechanism that causes these things to happen. What we put out to the universe in the form of thought and verbal expression will inevitably come back to us, and when there is emotion behind it, what comes back is even more powerful than it would be otherwise. It’s Law of Attraction.

Give you an example: I had a friend I met with for breakfast every month or so. She is very intuitive and to some degree a kindred spirit. I really like this lady; she is very loving and has a huge heart. Unfortunately, she also has a very challenging life and would complain constantly about how unhappy her life is, and the complaints manifested in (guess what?) a miserable life and fibromyalgia. I don't normally see energy, but one time I actually saw blackness emanating from her. Another time, when I was at a particularly high vibration, I was inspired to walk her through shifting her thoughts and frequency right at the restaurant table. She was wide-eyed with amazement at the result. Still, she wouldn't subsequently apply what I had shown her because she is, I’m sorry to say, addicted to her misery. I bought her books and counseled her to no avail. Why? She’s seen herself as a victim for so long it’s become her comfort zone, and creating more misery is so habitual she can’t break the habit. Even though we met infrequently I could very accurately predict what our conversations would be like. It became very tiresome.

One day she called me to describe more negative experiences, and I told her I didn't want to hear any more of it. I told her not to call me until she could describe what she was doing to change her life, and how she visualized it changing. Well, that was over two years ago and I haven't heard from her since. We really do get addicted to our misery, and create more of it through focusing on and talking about it, and sometimes we just don't want to change it because doing that involves leaving our comfort zone.

OK, so your life is a bucket of shit, your breath is bad, your dog ignores you, and all these nasty experiences keep befalling you. But you really, really want to change all that! How do you do it?

When we strive to change our lives and/or our health, we first need to fundamentally change our thought patterns and the emotions that spring from those thoughts. So take a look, a very hard look, at your thinking and how you feel as a result of the thoughts you have. How often do you think about the situation you’re in? How does that make you feel? Take a look at your talk. How often do you verbalize your unhappiness?

Every time you think about it, every time you talk about it, every time you allow yourself to feel like a victim of it, you affirm and empower it. By doing that, you continue to create more and more of what you don’t want. In order to break that pattern, you’re going to have to change your thinking. By changing how you think you’ll also change how you feel. The emotional charge that is such a powerful element in creating what you don’t want will begin to diminish as a result, and so will the level of crap in the bucket.

The thought patterns you have are literally hard-wired into the synapses of your brain in what are called neural networks, or neuronets. If you change the thought patterns to something else, something positively affirming, the old neuronets will break down from disuse and be replaced by the new ones you create. This is scientific fact. However, accomplishing this requires you to vigilantly observe your mental state, and when you see thoughts and feelings that don’t serve you begin to surface, you need to immediately shift them to something positive.

What do I mean by “something positive”? Make a list of your negative thoughts. Next to each negative one write a positive substitute. For example:

I’m fat and ugly — I’m thin and beautiful
I do stupid stuff without thinking — I deliberate before I act
I have this ___________ illness — I am vibrantly healthy

Note the absence of terms like “not” and “don’t” on the positive side. Law of Attraction doesn’t differentiate between your thinking or saying you “are” something, “aren’t something, “do” something, or “don’t” something. The universe only sees the “something” and brings that something to you. In other words, if you express you’re “not fat”, what the universe sees is “fat”, and brings you fat! The key is to use words only for what you WANT, and not use words for what you don’t want.

Memorize the list of substitutes and watch your thoughts. When the negative ones begin to surface QUICKLY replace them with the positive substitute.

Do NOT give thought to diseases or illnesses. By giving thought to illness you empower it and dis-empower yourself. Give thought only to health.

Imagine what it feels like to have what you want, and FEEL it. Bring that powerful element of emotion into it.

It’s going to take some practice and a lot of work for you to alter your thinking. Didn’t you say you really want to change your life? If that’s actually true and genuine then you won’t give up. Changing our thinking is not an easy task; we have to keep working at it. In many cases the existing neural networks have been in force for years, or decades, and even lifetimes, so you’re not going to dissolve them overnight. Over time, though, you will find yourself beginning to naturally go to the positive thought, rather than the negative one, as your new neuronets form. You will also become aware of other negative thought patterns to work with. And your life will improve as you see and confirm the sheer goodness of it.

Find things to be grateful for. Even if your life is a bucket of shit you have things to be grateful for. For starters be grateful for the opportunity you have to shift the shit to something better. Be grateful for every day you’re alive. Be grateful for the opportunities you have to learn something, anything. Express your gratitude, feel your gratitude, and the universe will automatically bring you more to be grateful for. That’s how it works.

So much of life comes down to the choices we make in response to the challenges we face. Do we choose to be a victim of circumstance? Or do we recognize that there are no accidents, that everything happens for a reason, and the reason is to provide us with opportunities for personal growth? It all comes down to attitude.

I’ll share more techniques for life-changing with you in later articles.

It's Christmas Eve. Peace and happiness to all.

Who Are We?

Who are we, and what does our interest in metaphysical matters say about us? It could safely be said that we're people who don’t necessarily accept what we’re told. In many cases we intuitively know there’s more to something than what we’ve been told, and we seek to find what that “more” is. There’s a “knowing” involved that extends far beyond what we hear.

Spirituality is a good example. Although many accept the mainstream religious interpretations of God, for some of us the conventional explanation is lacking at best. At worst, it seems shallow and controlling. We know within ourselves that there’s much more to God and the nature of reality than what we’re told.

Often this means we strike out on our own in search of our own Truth. We attract others of a similar persuasion and learn with and from them. Much reading and listening commonly take place. Seemingly endless discussions ensue, as we try to get a grasp of how things really work.

Ours is typically a personal path within a community of other seekers. As our ideas and concepts evolve, we may decide to apply what we’ve learned to improve ourselves and help others. Some of us realize that yes, we can act as a conduit for God’s healing energy, and we become healers. Others step onto the path of enlightenment. The personal work, the Great Work, can impact people to the point they become teachers (like Eckhart Tolle), or intuitives and channelers.

So, who are you? Could you be described as a spiritual being in physical lesson? Are you becoming the Master you’ve always been in Spirit, bringing that Mastership to Earth? That is indeed who you are. And to some degree you’re conscious of it, or you wouldn’t be here reading this.

Peace to all.

Birth of the Metaphysician

I suppose I’ve always had metaphysical inclinations. For as long as I can remember I’ve been sensitive to energy, although I haven’t always been aware that energy is what I’ve been feeling. When I was eighteen I received a powerful intuitive message, one that told me not to be somewhere at a certain time. Heeding that saved me from a very unpleasant experience. In the more recent past I had visions that, had I heeded them, would have also spared me from a really horrid experience. Learned a lot from that one, though.

Probably the most significant factor, the one thing that pushed me hardest in a spiritual direction was drugs.

Human beings have used drugs for their spiritual benefits since pre-history. I read an article the other day about archaeologists finding tools with which prehistoric humans ground-up and sniffed mind-altering substances. Why? For the same reason these avenues are pursued today. Some of the natural and synthetic substances induce powerful spiritual states. Other substances increase awareness. This is not to say that all psychotropic drugs are useful. All mind-altering substances do just that. Some drugs, like the hard ones, may not be very beneficial. In my personal experience even the hard ones can induce very pleasant experiences. Up to a point. The fact that their use can bring on pleasurable states explains their popularity.

Some of us self-medicate in order to smooth the bumps on our path. Others of us are medicated by our doctors (the real street-level drug pushers), most of whom don’t seem to have a clue about what may or may not be good for their patients. Hence the widespread use of SSRIs, like Paxil or Prozac. Some of us use drugs as a spiritual sacrament, although this is rare in western society. Before the 1960s explosion in recreational drug use, when therapeutic LSD sessions were not uncommon, the spiritual aspects of these sessions were found to be useful in treating a number of psychological conditions, including alcoholism. Current research at Johns Hopkins is exploring the benefits of psilocybin-induced transcendent states. The beat goes on.

In the mid-1960s, when I was a wee lad of seventeen living in Chicago, I hooked-up with a tablet of pharmaceutical LSD-25 from Sandoz Laboratories in Belgium. At the time my drug experience was limited to alcohol, which I didn’t much care for, and cannabis, which I very much enjoyed.

LSD-25 was synthesized in 1938 at Sandoz Laboratories in Basel, Switzerland by Albert Hofmann (1906-2008). It was in widespread therapeutic use from the 1950s until the mid-1960s. I was able to get my hands on it through a connection at the University of Chicago. The tablet was round, elliptical in profile, and factory-wrapped in a protective layer of very thin foil, much thinner than any foil you could purchase in a store. I was told the dosage was 300 micrograms.

The LSD that most people in my generation saw was a result of LSD becoming illegal, making the Sandoz version unavailable. Once that happened LSD was produced by underground chemists like Owsley Stanley. In my experience, and I had a lot of experiences in those days, it didn’t compare with the factory product. Of course that's a subjective observation.

Back to the LSD-25 experience: My friend Peter lived with his parents in a brownstone on Chicago’s near-north side. Peter had an interesting family. His father was Russian and had been friends with Leon Trotsky. His dad had also hung-out in Paris with people like Ezra Pound and TS Elliot. His sister married Country Joe McDonald a couple years after the night I’m about to describe. They were later divorced and she went on to make some movies.

Peter introduced me to cannabis and DMT, or dimethyltryptamine. DMT is the active ingredient in ayahuasca, the hallucinatory herbal drink used as sacrament by Peruvian shamans and the Santo Diame religion. We smoked DMT crystals sprinkled on top of a pipe bowl of marijuana.

I'm describing all this to give you an idea of the place I was in at the time, and the company I was keeping.

It was a pretty good, although not ideal, setting. I had brought along a young lady I knew from school named Rosamond. Peter’s girlfriend, whose name I don’t recall, was there too. We were all in Peter’s bedroom when Rosamond and I split the tablet. About twenty minutes later I began to have chills to the point that I was on my back on the floor, shivering. Rosamond threw my coat over me and jumped on top of it, trying to warm me. Peter astutely observed, “It’s only ego-loss, man,” and I immediately came out of it. He then began reading aloud from the Ralph Metzner, Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert (aka Ram Dass) book, The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead. It was supposed to be a good guide for tripping, but I think he had to stop reading because I found it so hilarious. At that point I was most definitely tripping, big time.

Rosamond and I were relegated to the living room shortly thereafter, when everyone else went to bed. That’s when it got really interesting. The lights were out and the hallucinations were indescribable. Visually, everything was churning and changing, radically morphing second-by-second. The walls were breathing. I don’t think we spoke for the next five hours. We were both having such transcendent, inter-dimensional experiences that for two teenagers with teenage vocabularies to try to put any of it into words would have been impossible. Much of it was beyond our understanding, and from that perspective could have been wasted on us. In retrospect I can't really say. It was a formidable experience, cosmic in its breadth. Perhaps since our natural state is one of transcendance and we were essentially visiting home, it may not have been wasted. It has certainly stuck with me, decades later.

One thing that really struck me was a vision of the DNA double-helix on the wall. It was such a powerful image, I’ve never forgotten it. Many years later I learned the metaphysical importance of DNA. I also learned, many years later, that in the 1950s scientists were taking low dosages of LSD and using the insights from that to work out complex scientific problems. One of those researchers was Francis Crick, discoverer of the DNA double-helix model. Makes you wonder.

The effects wore off as the sun came up. I remember feeling quite fine. I wanted to be alone to absorb the experience, and Rosamond and I went back to our respective homes. I don’t remember seeing much of her after that, and didn’t discuss the experience with her. Would we have had words for it? I sometimes wonder what she thought of it and if she could express those thoughts.

As time went by I experimented with underground LSD, mescaline and psilocybin. Nothing came close, however, to the half-tablet from Sandoz. The last time I took a hallucinogen was in 1981, at the insistence of a Dead Head Berkeley graduate I was dating when I lived in La-La. She thought it would be fun on a day trip to Disneyland. There was nothing metaphysical about it.

The 1966 episode was the beginning of my spiritual quest in this lifetime. Once you start down that path you can never turn around and go back. I can't imagine why you would want to.

Peace to all.

That Bright, Beautiful Shining Light

This is the first I’ve written about it, but I talk some about the process of spreading Light worldwide. One of my favorite activities is to get into a relaxed state and visualize the Earth being illuminated with golden light, then the green light of love and healing, and finally violet light, which has an amazing ability to transmute negative energy on a number of levels. Because of its selfless nature this practice produces a wonderfully gratifying personal experience. It can also be done in groups, although personalities can have an impact on group effectiveness. What’s really beautiful is this procedure is being done by tens of millions of people worldwide, both alone and in groups. Since everything is comprised of energy, from gross matter to thought, and energy effects energy, this bringing-in of Light energy is having a profound effect upon what’s happening in the world and world consciousness in general. There’s a new energy and new consciousness forming, right here and right now, and it’s being assisted by people working with Light.

Darkness is simply an absence of light and light displaces darkness. Open the door between a lighted room and an adjoining dark room, and what happens? The darkness does not spread into the lighted room. Instead the light illuminates the darkened room. This is the phenomenon that is rapidly spreading worldwide and soon the people who operate from darkness will have no dark places left in which to hide. Isn’t it wonderful?

Corrupt people and institutions are being exposed for what they are, and can no longer sustain themselves in the new consciousness. Compare how long it took during the Vietnam era for the Pentagon Papers to surface — uncovering the real reasons behind the Vietnam war and leading to its end — with how long it took the lies and deceptions behind the Iraq war to be exposed. See how little confidence people have in government and how government can’t seem to avoid eroding that confidence even further. Look at what’s happened on Wall St, where the greed and incompetence of so many bankers has come to light and institutions are crumbling. Look how many corrupt politicians are being put on trial. It’s a wonderful time, isn’t it?

The world economy is collapsing due to greed, and although it will be a rough ride for a while, the end result will be downright wonderful. Why do I say that? The worldwide financial system — the century-old pyramid scheme of fractional banking and the debt it’s founded upon, is going to collapse. The US and other countries will no longer be able to sustain their mounting debts to the central banks and will have no choice but to cancel their debt and issue their own money once again. This will effectively spell the end of the central banks and their control over national economies. Light is coming in and these institutions simply cannot survive the exposure.

(For excellent explanations of how the current monetary system works, see Paul Grignon's animated Money as Debt or Peter Joseph's just-released Zeitgeist Addendum)

As people become more aware, and more and more are becoming aware, things are going to change. Look at how the American people screamed at their representatives to NOT give $700 billion to bail out the people responsible for the economic mess we’re in. A few years ago this wouldn't have happened; the majority of people would have blindly agreed with any plan the government proposed. Predictably, the corrupt leadership of the Senate completely ignored the wishes of their constituents and pushed the bailout through anyway. And they may have done it illegally by attaching it to another piece of legislation that had already passed the House. In their corruption they couldn’t help themselves, lol. It’s too late for alternative candidates to take to the field for next month’s elections, but in two years? Oh my. The times they (truly) are a-changin’. Whoopee.

Just five years ago fear was a powerful and effective tool for manipulating the masses. Not anymore. Although fear is still useful for manipulating people stuck in lower states of consciousness, the majority have become inured to it. The government did their best to play the fear card once again in selling their “solution” to the financial crisis, and the people recognized it for the manipulation it was and said NO. One could pun-fully say they’re seeing the Light.

Who are these Lightworkers, the ones bringing in the Light? It’s not only people creating Light energy through visualization and illuminating the planet with it. That’s just part of it. Many, many people are Lightworkers and don’t even know it. There are countless degrees of consciousness and corresponding levels of Light Work. If you’re conscious and aware of what’s happening around you and communicating what you know to others and waking them up as a result, you are a Lightworker! It’s amazing the effect a well-placed comment here and there can have on people. You’re shining Light on how things work. If you’re intending a better future for humanity, you’re a Lightworker. If you use Light energy in healing work, you’re a Lightworker. If you have transmuted negative and fearful thoughts into positive ones, you’re a Lightworker. If you help others in any way, you’re a Lightworker. Each and every one of us who works to raise our own consciousness is raising the overall consciousness of humanity in general, and thus bringing in Light.

One of the most important tools for Light transmission is the internet. The internet has enabled worldwide communication within and between groups of Lightworkers, who are now able to work together in unison.

Research at Stanford University has shown how the focused intention of a handful of people can have a significant, measurable effect on matter. The energetic power of the simultaneously focused intention of millions of people is beyond description, and has been a key factor in the ongoing transformation of our world.

We live in the most astonishing times. Nothing like what’s happening today has ever happened before. All current events, no matter how negative some may appear to be, are helping to create an evolution in human consciousness unlike anything we’ve ever experienced. We’re right on track for more amazing changes as we approach the 2012 galactic alignment and the transformational Shift of the Ages: the mass human ascension to the fifth dimension.

Stay tuned. Peace to all.

Creating Earth Changes

Some form of Earth changes are always occurring; the Earth is perpetually "under construction". That's simply how it is and I expect we'll see more changes as geological time speeds up. However, people keep wanting to discuss cataclysmic Earth changes as a future scenario and it's time to explain why the topic holds no interest for me.

Long ago I realized the future is not chiseled in granite and that to a certain degree I can, through intention, create my own. As I walked further down the long and far-from-completed path of shedding ego I lost interest in speculating about topics I have no personal knowledge or intuitive knowing of. (To give you an idea, these topics include Atlantis, the Mayan Calendar and UFOs) I recognized this kind of speculation as ego-based, and since ego is what stands in the way of real consciousness, I no longer cared to engage in it. From my perspective, speculation in the forum of discussion is simply showing-off. Otherwise, what's the point? If you can't at least bring intuitive information to the table then it's all a game of vanity in the form of verbal expression, the goal being to gain the admiration of others. Also, isn't it wise, metaphysically, to be present in the present, instead of head-tripping about the past or future? So, rather than waste time joining in and speculating about whatever things people speculate about, I began to rely more upon what I feel than what I think. It became about getting out of my head and into my heart.

Coincidentally, this was about the time I stopped seeing myself as a victim of anything. It became clear that nothing "bad" has ever happened to me that I did not somewhere, on some level, somehow allow to happen. I intuited that it was time to formally declare full responsibility for everything in my life, past, present and future, with ritual to make the declaration more powerful. It seemed like the right thing to do at the time. So I did it. I had no idea how much it would change things.

For me those realizations and ritual were the catalyst for a significant shift in consciousness. After that occurred, a different kind of information, some of it about a different kind of future, began to come to me. As a result of the shift my vibrational frequency had changed and so did the frequency of the information I began attracting. That's how it works. If information is outside your vibratory alignment it's not going to be visible to you until you align with it.

Some time later I read a wonderful book filled with revelations, Dr David Hawkins' Power Vs. (versus) Force - The Hidden Determinants Of Human Behavior. Hawkins is a clinical psychiatrist who has calibrated and quantified states of consciousness from the lowest and weakest to the highest and most powerful. He identifies the point where people take true personal responsibility, and stop placing blame on things external to themselves, as the point where they cross the line from being weak and unconscious to being conscious with power. That process is precisely what had happened with me, although I didn't realize it at the time. By declaring full responsibility for everything in my life, I had stepped into what Hawkins defines as the consciousness of Courage. It was a life-changing event that gave me an entirely new, and much different, perspective.

For those who are into Earth changes, I have a warning: it's quite possible your fear and sense of victimization will create cataclysms for you to contend with. If those things do happen it will be appropriate to pat yourselves on the back for doing such a splendid job of manifesting your fears into reality! You will have created the circumstances you fear by putting your words about Earth upheavals, as well as the aligning thought energy, out to the universe through speculation. Once you put it out there it's going to come back to you. Can you see that? Metaphysically it's Universal Law>Law of Attraction 101.

Discussing and fretting over how to "prepare" for these "changes" affirms that you see the potential of somehow becoming a victim of the whole bloody scenario. To avoid that one must be prepared, right? That's a victim mentality whether you care to acknowledge it or not. A victim or potential victim is still a victim. If Earth changes do occur in your reality, rest assured that you worked long and hard to create that scenario. You won't be a victim of it because the truth is there are no victims. "Victims" are those who refuse to recognize and accept their own responsibility for whatever event has "happened" to them. Events are not random. We create them, one way or another.

Sure, you can cling to the old, obsolete prophecies even though they can no longer come to pass. Have you noticed? What happened to Nostradamus' predicted millennial disaster? Were Gordon-Michael Scallion's apocalyptic visions realized? Are we sailing our way across a vast inland sea like he predicted we would? Did Mark Hazlewood’s Niburu/Planet X scenario ever materialize?

These people and others like them weren’t wrong about what they envisioned. They simply saw potential futures that they couldn't perceive weren't going to happen. Some even capitalized on those visions. Or others did and still are. Fear will always be profitable as long as there is a victim mentality to profit from. If I had a dollar for every “prophetic” dream someone has had, or every fearful apocalyptic fantasy some attention-craving hoaxer posts on a thread in an internet forum somewhere... well, it certainly would be easier to pay the bills.

The future is not set in stone and the recent past has not played out according to the prophecies. This is because the future is a flexible set of potentials, and as our planet reaches alignment with the galactic center (the astronomical event that will occur in 2012, predicted by ancient esoteric traditions worldwide, and heralding a major shift in human consciousness) the energy transformation will be such that we’ll likely get to enjoy whatever future we've been intending. If our intention is not focused on consciously creating a positive experience for ourselves and our world, we will attract whatever it is we've been focused on.

You can choose to ignore the fact that your own energy and the fabric of the energy around you has changed dramatically over the years, and continues to change. Are you the same person you were twenty years ago? Ten years ago? Your consciousness has changed, hasn't it? So has the consciousness of the planet you're on. Earth is a conscious entity also and has been evolving like the rest of us and even in response to us. Future potentials have been evolving in response to how everything else is changing. Human intention plays a big part in that dynamic. Experiments have shown that our intention can not only effect the state of matter, but can even alter what's happened in the past. Likewise, what we intend today effects the various potentials for what happens in the future.

My vibratory realignment tells me there is now tremendous potential for something quite different to happen, something not covered in the prophecies. Many of us are not vibrating to the likelihood of Earth changes occurring. Instead we are resonating with the possibility of an enormous shift in human and planetary consciousness, as terrestrial and human consciousness evolve to the next level.

The new potential is for ascension, the process through which one shifts to a dimensionally higher level, a higher frequency, in physicality as well as consciousness. The procedure for achieving the ascension state requires, among other things, consciously altering much of our thinking and focusing on a positive future. Positivity raises consciousness and vibratory frequency to a higher alignment, which further increases the potential for making a shift.

The potential for ascension is greater now than it ever has been. In the past, one had to achieve Mastership of all seven levels of dimensional consciousness possible while occupying a human body, thus acquiring the skill to physically vibrate beyond the three-dimensional world. That's the classic concept of ascension, the one the Ascended Masters achieved. The new ascension will be fourth-dimensional. One will still have a physical body, but thanks to its fourth-dimensional density it will be unaffected by any goings on in the three-dimensional world. It will be a profound vibratory shift into a world of spiritual consciousness, a world of peace.

From what I can see, information regarding this process as a likely scenario has been available from a variety of sources for at least twenty years. If, however, your personal frequency is not attuned to the concept, you’re not going to see it even if someone waves it in front of your face. (Which is why I didn't see it until I aligned with it) You have to be open in your mind to see it, and not view yourself as a potential victim of a future beyond your control.

Am I being speculative about this? No, I'm being intuitive.

That's the fourth-dimensional perspective. If in 2013 you're still living in a three-dimensional world your viewpoint could be quite different. Earth in the third dimension may still undergo geologically tumultuous events. The question is: would you rather have destruction and scarcity, or ascension to a higher level of Being where there is no lack? If you could indeed create your own reality, which reality would you choose to create?

By dwelling on Earth changes and pole shifts, and all the fear-driven lack and scarcity-related thoughts those scenarios encourage, you’ve chosen to put yourself way behind the curve metaphysically. You can’t, however, vibrate to anything higher than what you're focused on. Calamity is desirable in some lessons, and if that’s what you really want for yourself then keep focusing on it. In a free will universe there are no wrong choices.

Understand, though, that if Earth changes are your concern then the world you’re choosing to live in is not the same world I and others have chosen. We don't foresee that kind of future and likewise see no point in giving energy to it. Our focus is on intending peace and harmony.

In the interest of putting my mouth where my intention is, this is all I'll be saying on the Earth changes topic.

Peace to all.

Cognitive Dissonance

From Wikipedia: cognitive dissonance is an uncomfortable feeling or stress caused by holding two contradictory ideas simultaneously. The theory of cognitive dissonance proposes that people have a fundamental cognitive drive to reduce this dissonance by modifying an existing belief, or rejecting one of the contradictory ideas. Prevention of cognitive dissonance may also contribute to confirmation bias or denial of discomforting evidence.

I submit that "denial of discomforting evidence" can also include denial of reality. When we're faced with facts that are contrary to our beliefs, many of us will deny those facts if they're outside our comfort zones. God forbid we should be uncomfortable even if it means turning a blind eye to the truth.

Which brings me to politics. I used to get all fired-up over politics, but now see no point in it. This is because I recognize that here in the US the political system is rigged. The level of corruption is such that I feel one is wasting one's energy to even be involved. That may change, however, as the world changes.

Now we have the Obama-O-Rama. To me it seems like more of the same, designed to draw in the discontented and make them feel as though there’s real change on the horizon, when really there isn’t. Same old same old, folks, don’t you get it? Maybe this is what’s needed, though, to convince an awakening populace that the whole system is corrupt from top to bottom. The candidates who supported the interests of the people, rather than the special interests, are the ones most marginalized by the corporate-controlled news media. Once again the powers that be have pushed their own hand-picked people on the public, and the MSM made it appear that a democratic process is actually taking place.

Not hardly.

Some folks are going to label me a conspiracy theorist for expressing that view. I urge them to put their fears and prejudices aside and take a cold and objective look around. Is the media reporting the news? Are they asking hard questions? Is covering the lives and times of celebrities in some way reporting on the issues, the real issues that affect our lives? Watch the body language of the people delivering the news. See the timing of the smiles, the raised eyebrows and the sneers. Are they reporting or are they helping you to form an opinion? Can you form your own opinions? Watch the news from Europe. It’s not reported this way. The manipulation is so obvious it would be hard to classify it as a conspiracy.

Try something: next time someone comes out with information challenging the status quo and the “balanced” news media goes after them like snarling attack dogs, take a thorough and objective look at what it is they’re attacking. You’ll find that whatever it is has validity, most of the time. It wouldn’t be assailed like that if it didn’t. They’re just trying to convince you not to take a look. They’re forming your opinion in advance so you won’t take a look. Heaven forbid you should know the truth. A classic example of this is GW Bush’s military records. They couldn’t challenge the records themselves but could successfully assail the source, so that’s what they did. By doing that, they diminished the whole story. Did you notice? Did you buy into it?

The real conspiracy is taking place in the voting booths. Don’t believe me? Download and watch this video. It’s an interview of Stephen Spoonamore, a top computer security expert and lifelong Republican, done by ABC in 2006. That ABC never aired it should tell us something about the degree to which the information we receive is being controlled. That’s the degree to which we’re being manipulated. If after seeing that interview you still don’t believe it, it’s because you don’t want to. Denial is a powerful thing. As the Jack Nicholson character in the movie A Few Good Men so famously said, “You can't handle the truth!” It's that cognitive dissonance thing again.

Yup, it’s all a beautifully orchestrated dog-and-pony show that fortunately fewer and fewer people are falling for. Seeing that gives me hope.

What's that mean?

What, pray tell, is this "metaphysician" thing? To borrow from Webster's definition of metaphysics, a metaphysician is someone "concerned with the fundamental nature of reality and being". The reality beneath the one we perceive with our senses. I am interested in the nature and behavior of things, as well as the rules governing them, outside the realm of normal perception.

Here I’ll share some perceptions and (hopefully) provide insight into how things work. These will be my personal insights, and as such they’re subject to change as I learn and grow. You, of course, have your perceptions and are welcome to comment on mine and share your own. It is my hope that you’ll be motivated to look at things a little more closely, to be less accepting of what you’re told, and to step out of your mind a little bit and see how things feel to you. The heart can be a wonderful guidance system if we use it. Truly, it’s the process of thought that prevents us from seeing the deeper levels of reality.

As this blog progresses I’ll be addressing topics like:

The fake "reality" of politics

Opinions: why opinions are meaningless

Judgments: how our judgments damage us

Victims: in the metaphysical world there really are no victims

Spirit: oh, glorious Spirit!

Soul: the Book of Life

Personal energy: what personal power is and how we piss it away

Consciousness versus intelligence: the limitations of intellect