Category Archives: Health / General Awareness

Health / General Awareness

“Alcohol” is said to come from the arabic term “Al-khul” which means “BODY-EATING SPIRIT”

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The word “alcohol” is said to come from the arabic term “Al-khul” which means “BODY-EATING SPIRIT” (also, is the origin of the term” ghoul”).

In alchemy, alcohol is used to extract the soul essence of an entity. Hence its’ use in extracting essences for essential oils, and the sterilization of medical instruments. By consuming alcohol into the body, it in effect extracts the very essence of the soul, allowing the body to be more susceptible to neighboring entities most of which are of low frequencies. (why do you think we call certain alcoholic beverages “SPIRITS”). That is why people who consume excessive amounts of alcohol often black out, not remembering what happened. This happens when the good soul (we were sent here with) leaves because the living conditions are too polluted and too traumatic to tolerate. The good soul jettisons the body, staying connected on a tether, and a dark entity takes the body for a joy ride around the block, often in a hedonistic and self serving illogical rampage. Our bodies are cars for spirits. If one leaves, another can take the car for a ride.

Essentially when someone goes dark after drinking alcohol or polluting themselves in many other ways, their body often becomes possessed by another entity. Have you ever felt different, more sexual, more violent, less rational and less logical………after drinking alcohol? Are you aware we already live inside an ancient religious cult who are schooled concerning the dark powers of alcohol? It is this cult that popularizes alcohol, through the media and government it controls, to serve a very ancient and dark agenda.

The solutions to our crumbling society are only to be found within our non polluted collective humanity, not within modern science and the death cult it represents, Our dark and immoral human farmers masquerade as altruistic governments, who then serve us up to dark spiritual entities that feed off our energies when we consume alcohol and a host of other toxic substances they rain down from the top of the ruling pyramid. We’re slaves living on an elaborate control grid…..based on indoctrination, propaganda, chemical sedation, toxic medication and we’re even used as food energy for dark spirits who live outside the frequency of visible sight. I haven’t drank alcohol in almost 5 years. Now, the dark spirits are in fear of me and that’s the way it was always meant to be. Join the moral rebirth of humanity, unslave, reject the poison and lets get to work doing what we know has to be done.

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Chemtrails, FBI/CIA, Health / General Awareness

No Longer A Conspiracy Theory: CIA Director Admits Plans Of Aerosol Spraying For Geoengineering

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By Matt Agorist
thefreethoughtproject.com

In June 2016, , the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, John O. Brennan addressed instability and transnational threats to global security at a meeting with the Council on Foreign Relations. During his long-winded talk of threats to US interests and how the largely CIA-created ISIL threat is impacting the world, Brennan brought up the topic of geoengineering.

Another example is the array of technologies—often referred to collectively as geoengineering—that potentially could help reverse the warming effects of global climate change. One that has gained my personal attention is stratospheric aerosol injection, or SAI, a method of seeding the stratosphere with particles that can help reflect the sun’s heat, in much the same way that volcanic eruptions do.

Brennan went on to echo the calls from some scientists who have called for aerial spraying.

An SAI program could limit global temperature increases, reducing some risks associated with higher temperatures and providing the world economy additional time to transition from fossil fuels. The process is also relatively inexpensive—the National Research Council estimates that a fully deployed SAI program would cost about $10 billion yearly.

The extent at which Brennan talked about stratospheric aerosol injection shows that he and the CIA have likely been considering this for some time.

As promising as it may be, moving forward on SAI would raise a number of challenges for our government and for the international community. On the technical side, greenhouse gas emission reductions would still have to accompany SAI to address other climate change effects, such as ocean acidification, because SAI alone would not remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.

On the geopolitical side, the technology’s potential to alter weather patterns and benefit certain regions at the expense of others could trigger sharp opposition by some nations. Others might seize on SAI’s benefits and back away from their commitment to carbon dioxide reductions. And, as with other breakthrough technologies, global norms and standards are lacking to guide the deployment and implementation of SAI.

“Chemtrails” have long been the talk of conspiracy theories with massive amounts of disinformation being posted all over the internet including fake studies and photos. However, several real studies show that some ‘seeding’ or geoengineering may be taking place.

A study published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health is suggesting that geoengineering has already begun, and the substance being used is a toxic by-product of coal burning call coal-fly ash.

“The widespread, intentional and increasingly frequent chemical emplacement in the troposphere has gone unidentified and unremarked in the scientific literature for years. The author presents evidence that toxic coal combustion fly ash is the most likely aerosolized particulate sprayed by tanker-jets for geoengineering, weather-modification and climate-modification purposes and describes some of the multifold consequences on public health.

Also, it has been proposed that unintentional geoengineering may already be taking place as well. As Derrick Broze points out, researchers with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are suggesting contrails from airplanes may be inadvertently geoengineering the skies.

Chuck Long is a researcher with the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at the NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory at the University of Colorado in Boulder. At the recent American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting, Long and his team released their paper, “Evidence of Clear-Sky Daylight Whitening: Are we already conducting geoengineering?” The analysis found that vapor from airplanes may be altering the climate through accidental geoengineering.

It may be a very long time before we know what, if anything, is actually going on in our skies. However, when the CIA, who is responsible for so much turmoil on a global scale, begins talking about geoengineering, we should listen.

Please share this story with your friends and family who think it’s only conspiracy nuts who talk about spraying things into the sky.

The part of the speech where Brennan talks about geoengineering begins at the 12:05 marker.

Health / General Awareness

Dumbing Down of Society

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There is a growing and disturbing trend of anti-intellectual elitism especially within American culture. It’s the dismissal of science, the arts, and humanities and their replacement by entertainment, self-righteousness, ignorance, and deliberate gullibility.

Susan Jacoby, author of The Age of American Unreason, says in an article in the Washington Post, “Dumbness, to paraphrase the late senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, has been steadily defined downward for several decades, by a combination of heretofore irresistible forces. These include the triumph of video culture over print culture; a disjunction between Americans’ rising level of formal education and their shaky grasp of basic geography, science and history; and the fusion of anti-rationalism with anti-intellectualism.”

There has been a long tradition of anti-intellectualism in America, unlike most other Western countries. Richard Hofstadter, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1964 for his book, Anti-Intellectualism In American Life, describes how the vast underlying foundations of anti-elite, anti-reason and anti-science have been infused into America’s political and social fabric. Famous science fiction writer Isaac Asimov once said: “There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”

Mark Bauerlein, in his book, The Dumbest Generation, reveals how a whole generation of youth is being dumbed down by their aversion to reading anything of substance and their addiction to digital “crap” via social media.

Journalist Charles Pierce, author of Idiot America, adds another perspective: “The rise of idiot America today represents–for profit mainly, but also and more cynically, for political advantage in the pursuit of power–the breakdown of a consensus that the pursuit of knowledge is a good. It also represents the ascendancy of the notion that the people whom we should trust the least are the people who best know what they are talking about. In the new media age, everybody is an expert.”

“There’s a pervasive suspicion of rights, privileges, knowledge and specialization,” says Catherine Liu, the author of American Idyll: Academic Antielitism as Cultural Critique (link is external)and a film and media studies professor at University of California. The very mission of universities has changed, argues Liu. “We don’t educate people anymore. We train them to get jobs.”

Part of the reason for the rising anti-intellectualism can be found in the declining state of education in the U.S. compared to other advanced countries:

After leading the world for decades in 25-34 year olds with university degrees, the U.S. is now in 12th place. The World Economic Forum ranked the U.S. at 52nd among 139 nations in the quality of its university math and science instruction in 2010. Nearly 50% of all graduate students in the sciences in the U.S. are foreigners, most of whom are returning to their home countries;

The Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs commissioned a civic education poll among public school students. A surprising 77% didn’t know that George Washington was the first President; couldn’t name Thomas Jefferson as the author of the Declaration of Independence; and only 2.8% of the students actually passed the citizenship test. Along similar lines, the Goldwater Institute of Phoenix did the same survey and only 3.5% of students passed the civics test;

According to the National Research Council report, only 28% of high school science teachers consistently follow the National Research Council guidelines on teaching evolution, and 13% of those teachers explicitly advocate creationism or “intelligent design;”

18% of Americans still believe that the sun revolves around the earth, according to a Gallup poll;

The American Association of State Colleges and Universities report on education shows that the U.S. ranks second among all nations in the proportion of the population aged 35-64 with a college degree, but 19th in the percentage of those aged 25-34 with an associate or high school diploma, which means that for the first time, the educational attainment of young people will be lower than their parents;

74% of Republicans in the U.S. Senate and 53% in the House of Representatives deny the validity of climate change despite the findings of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and every other significant scientific organization in the world;

According to the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress, 68% of public school children in the U.S. do not read proficiently by the time they finish third grade. And the U.S. News & World reported that barely 50% of students are ready for college level reading when they graduate;

According to a 2006 survey by National Geographic-Roper, nearly half of Americans between ages 18 and 24 do not think it necessary to know the location of other countries in which important news is being made. More than a third consider it “not at all important” to know a foreign language, and only 14 percent consider it “very important;”

According to the National Endowment for the Arts report in 1982, 82% of college graduates read novels or poems for pleasure; two decades later only 67% did. And more than 40% of Americans under 44 did not read a single book–fiction or nonfiction–over the course of a year. The proportion of 17 year olds who read nothing (unless required by school ) has doubled between 1984-2004;

Gallup released a poll indicating 42 percent of Americans still believe God created human beings in their present form less than 10,000 years ago;

A 2008 University of Texas study found that 25 percent of public school biology teachers believe that humans and dinosaurs inhabited the earth simultaneously.

In American schools, the culture exalts the athlete and good-looking cheerleader. Well-educated and intellectual students are commonly referred to in public schools and the media as “nerds,” “dweebs,” “dorks,” and “geeks,” and are relentlessly harassed and even assaulted by the more popular “jocks” for openly displaying any intellect. These anti-intellectual attitudes are not reflected in students in most European or Asian countries, whose educational levels have now equaled and and will surpass that of the U.S. And most TV shows or movies such as The Big Bang Theory depict intellectuals as being geeks if not effeminate.

John W. Traphaga, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Texas, argues the problem is that Asian countries have core cultural values that are more akin to a cult of intelligence and education than a cult of ignorance and anti-intellectualism. In Japan, for example, teachers are held in high esteem and normally viewed as among the most important members of a community. There is suspicion and even disdain for the work of teachers that occurs in the U.S. Teachers in Japan typically are paid significantly more than their peers in the U.S. The profession of teaching is one that is seen as being of central value in Japanese society and those who choose that profession are well compensated in terms of salary, pension, and respect for their knowledge and their efforts on behalf of children.

In addition, we do not see in Japan significant numbers of the types of religious schools that are designed to shield children from knowledge about basic tenets of science and accepted understandings of history–such as evolutionary theory or the religious views of the Founding Fathers, who were largely deists–which are essential to having a fundamental understanding of the world, Traphagan contends. The reason for this is because in general Japanese value education, value the work of intellectuals, and see a well-educated public with a basic common knowledge in areas of scientific fact, math, history, literature, etc. as being an essential foundation to a successful democracy.

We’re creating a world of dummies. Angry dummies who feel they have the right, the authority and the need not only to comment on everything, but to make sure their voice is heard above the rest, and to drag down any opposing views through personal attacks, loud repetition and confrontation.

Bill Keller, writing in the New York Times argues that the anti-intellectual elitism is not an elitism of wisdom, education, experience or knowledge. The new elite are the angry social media posters, those who can shout loudest and more often, a clique of bullies and malcontents baying together like dogs cornering a fox. Too often it’s a combined elite of the anti-intellectuals and the conspiracy followers – not those who can voice the most cogent, most coherent response. Together they forment a rabid culture of anti-rationalism where every fact is suspect; every shadow holds a secret conspiracy. Rational thought is the enemy. Critical thinking is the devil’s tool.

Keller also notes that the herd mentality takes over online; the anti-intellectuals become the metaphorical equivalent of an angry lynch mob when anyone either challenges one of the mob beliefs or posts anything outside the mob’s self-limiting set of values.

Keller blames this in part to the online universe that “skews young, educated and attentive to fashions.” Fashion, entertainment, spectacle, voyeurism – we’re directed towards trivia, towards the inconsequential, towards unquestioning and blatant consumerism. This results in intellectual complacency. People accept without questioning, believe without weighing the choices, join the pack because in a culture where convenience rules, real individualism is too hard work. Thinking takes too much time: it gets in the way of the immediacy of the online experience.

Reality TV and pop culture presented in magazines and online sites claim to provide useful information about the importance of The Housewives of [you name the city] that can somehow enrich our lives. After all, how else can one explain the insipid and pointless stories that tout divorces, cheating and weight gain? How else can we explain how the Kardashians,or Paris Hilton are known for being famous for being famous without actually contributing anything worth discussion? The artificial events of their lives become the mainstay of populist media to distract people from the real issues and concerns facing us.

The current trend of increasing anti-intellectualism now establishing itself in politics and business leadership, and supported by a declining education system should be a cause for concern for leaders and the general population,one that needs to be addressed now.

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Health / General Awareness, Spirituality

The Awakening of the Thinking Machine

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Stop thinking… now stop it… just stop it… stop thinking. See you can’t do it…

The Awakening of the Thinking Machine

Please, carry out a simple, nonetheless astonishing experiment:

Take a watch or a stopwatch, and decide that you are not going to think for a while, as long as you are able to do so! Well, how long has it taken until the first thought slipped into your mind? 5-10 seconds? Are you able to avoid thinking for minutes?

You will be astonished: you are incapable of not thinking. Thinking takes place, it happens to you. The thoughts thinks you, and it is not you who thinks it. You do not do it at will (if it depended it on your will, you could simply avoid thinking), and you are unable to suppress thinking or keep it under control.

We are proud of capable of thinking, as this is what elevates us above the animal kingdom, and our personal identity is also rooted in our thoughts to a large extent. Philosopher René Déscartes declared ”I think, therefore I am.” But is this really thinking that makes us what we are? Would we exist if we did not think?

If we devote some time to monitoring our thoughts, we soon realize that thoughts in our mind keep shifting and changing: a thought appears, then it vanishes, and is replaced by another thought, linked, associated to the previous one–that is how thoughts stream continually, without a stop. Where is this vast stream of thoughts coming from, how has that stream become the foundation of our identity?

The Unconscious Deep Programs of the Mind

When we come to this world as newborn babies, we do not have thoughts, we only have an unconsciously experienced uniform experience. From that, the world of forms and shapes gradually unfolds and, with the help of the language, we learn to categorize our experiences, to put them into conceptual pigeonholes. ”She is mother, that is a tree, and this here is a house.” The language appears, and together with it, the thoughts.

As small children we are extremely open to the outside world, we want to know all about it, we want to conquer it. But we have very little experience in connection with the world, so we apply to the adults around us: parents and teachers. The adults are pleased and willing to tell us how the world works–that is, the way they perceive the world, with their own eyes and in their own beliefs. We are fed partial, fragmented pieces and bits of information, and that is what we devour and believe without hesitation–the program of a system of beliefs.

These explanations run like some sort of programs in the child’s mind. Children are willing to accept unconditionally what they hear from the adults, who are, in a child’s mind, authorities like a God or a sorcerer. Children believe that in this way they will be able to understand the world around them. Parents, kindergarten nurses, teachers, the priests of the congregation and later politicians–who were previously programmed by their own parents, teachers, priests and politicians in a similar manner– form ideas in the children’s minds that are presented as unquestionable truths. These ideas are fixed in the subconscious parts of our minds as a complex system of beliefs that are built upon each other as complementary elements and determine how we see the world and how we act in it.

The beliefs function as hypnotic programs in the computer of the mind, and we are hardly able to resist them. What I have already believed, what is a part of my own ideas, is something that I do not question, that is ”my own truth” and I live my life according to those truths. Our beliefs and convictions are like programs running automatically in the hardware of a computer.

These systems of beliefs that have been installed into us will then do strange things to us. As these are usually unconscious rules, they tend to largely inhibit our creativity. Our beliefs clearly determine what we should think and do and how we should think and do that. I cannot do this, I should not do that, I should not be thinking like that, and must not feel this etc.

A number of the programs are “good” and ethical, as these prevent the impulsive and aggressive outbursts of the Ego, the small ”Self” but, unfortunately, most of the programming is harmful, since these systems of beliefs make us predictable and easy to control.

The Phantom who Lives in Us and Says that it is Us

It is important to understand that during most of our life we are asleep, we live in deep narcosis. Even when our eyes are open, we are still in the dreams of our thoughts, in the imaginary world of our desires and fears, and we are no fully aware of the depths of the present moment. The pure space of Consciousness is shrouded with the clouds of more and more thoughts, the thoughts are joined with emotions, and the thoughts and emotions develop into intricate systems of beliefs which, in the end, cover up the entire space of Consciousness–keeping it in a narcosis, in the narcosis of the systems of beliefs until the end of the person’s life.

Inside the Consciousness a condensed core of thoughts is generated: the Ego, a phantom that does not even have an existence of its own. It is but a mere idea, which calls itself ”ME!” Through self-observation and meditation you are able to look beyond thoughts, in search of your thinking Self, and you are surprised to find that the voice chattering in your head is not somebody, it does not have an existence of its own, it is just a bundle of the systems of beliefs and the emotions connected to these.

Expressions like “my religion,” “my tribe,” “my country,” “my faith,” or “my principles” indicate how deeply we identify with some sort of a system of beliefs. So much so that we do not even know who is ”I,” because we fully identify with a role, with the ideological mask we are wearing.

Waking up from the Hypnotic Dream

It is worth monitoring our thoughts. At all times and under every circumstance. Especially when we need to make a decision in an apparently important issue. We then may observe that though we make a seemingly rational decision, the decision is in fact based upon the systems of beliefs petrified in us. We cannot speak about free will and freedom when we are the captives of some dogma: it is the dogma that makes the decision. For us and instead of us!

Let us make a habit out of examining our thoughts! Let them emerge, and let us contemplate them peacefully–but keep a little distance from them. We should not believe our thoughts, we should not believe in the absolute truth of our thoughts. We must realize that they are only the ”tentacles” of the systems of beliefs that wind themselves around us and eventually strangle us. Free ourselves from the obligation of confusing our systems of beliefs with absolute truths.

Watch carefully our thoughts, derived from our beliefs, and notice that they keep us in some sort of a dazed state, a hypnosis. Once we have experienced that, we are free to wake up from a hypnosis of thousands of years.

Unleash the self-inhibiting beliefs in order to–finally!–allow Life, the Miracle emerge in us and through us.

Consciousness: the Ultimate Mystery

Have you ever been thinking about what is hiding behind your eyes, contemplating the world through your eyes? Who is experiencing its environment through your body? Who is that knows your emotions and thoughts?

Tasting a Newly Discoverable State of Consciousness

Have you ever been thinking about what is hiding behind your eyes, contemplating the world through your eyes? What is the thing that is experiencing its environment through your body? What is the thing that knows your emotions and thoughts? Please, in this very moment turn your attention to the intellect, awareness reading these lines! Watch the observer hiding in you!

What you may find is an existing, real ”something,” and not some abstract metaphysical concept, new age-, esoteric or religious-dogmatic thing that you must believe in. You do not need to believe in it, as it is there in everybody as an alert, intelligent space. It is possible to experience it directly.

This is a new concept that has so far escaped our attention. This is, in fact, the only existing dimension into which the objects and forms of the external world are projected, and that is where we experience our bodily sensations, emotions and thoughts, which are no more than the phenomena of this dimension.

There are basically three–entirely different–states of consciousness:

*The ordinary state of consciousness, which is unaware of the space in which patterns and forms (an image of the world, thoughts, emotions and feelings) appear. This is our everyday consciousness, when we are submerged in forms and shapes – in the contents of the consciousness

*The state of identifying with the pure consciousness, free from forms and shapes. Initiated, mystic or spiritual disciplines call this state ”divine.”

*The experience of completeness, which is equally aware of the domain of forms and shapes and the space-like consciousness.

Space as a Reality which is Hard to Understand

We do not sense the space in which the forms appear, since our attention is diverted by our identification with the forms, the emotions and thoughts. Our like or dislike of various forms prevents us from experiencing the space, where forms and shapes appears. We are abandoned in the play of the actors so much that the stage as such ceases to exist for us.

It is a familiar experience that while we are watching a movie that we find exciting, we tend to forget that it is only a movie, a virtual reality. We are so deeply involved in the magic of the images that we experience intensive emotions: we shed tears when the protagonist dies, though all this is just an illusion. The only real thing is the movie screen.

Relax, and release all thougths and emotions whirling in you.

Look around! Look at the objects surrounding you. With your eyes, scan all the objects in your environment and take notice of them. Then concentrate on the empty space separating the objects! Sense the ”no-thingness” between the objects, the space in which the objects appear. Sense as the objects emerge from the space. Watch for the space!

It appears to be a simple exercise but sometimes we encounter unexpected difficulties. Although we are intellectually aware that objects exist in a space, we are still unable to focus on the space itself, as we consider space as an emptiness, as nothing. As reasonable creatures, we cannot comprehend the concept of ”nothing” (no thing). We believe that space is ”nothing,” and we do not pay attention to the ”nothing,” to the non-existent, though we are aware that space must exist. If space did not exist, objects would be scattered on each other, and we would not be able to separate and identify them. This very gap between things, this spaciousness enables the objects to appear separately, and this is the way we are able to take notice of the objects around us.

Our culture recognizes material, substance the only existing reality, and places material into the focus of its attention. Everything material is important for us, and what is not of material nature will be ignored. Our conscious attention is directed towards material, and space around the material is considered as non-existent. It is, however, space in which all creatures appear, it is the silence on the surface of which sounds dance, and Consciousness in which thoughts, emotions and images of the world appear.

There is no form without space and there is no space without forms–forms appear in space, and every form exists in a surrounding space. That is what Buddha asserts in the famous Heart Sutra: “Form is emptiness, and emptiness is form.”

The Miracle of Space

Once we are able to concentrate on the gap, space between the objects, a strange change of state of consciousness takes place in us. We experience the same emotion as we do when we concentrate on the attention hiding inside us.

You identify with the thing your attention is focusing on.

Before concentration, all observed, experienced things are of material nature: solid furniture, our own solid body; we only sense things that are manifested–we are deeply involved in the material world and all its details: the mutual transformation of things and phenomena into each other.

Once we are able to concentrate on our own attention or on the space between the objects, our state of consciousness changes, and we have a peculiar experience that challenges all our previous systems of beliefs about ourselves and the world around us.

We experience an entirely new dimension of our self, and this dimension is in fact an ancient, undescribable, intelligent, living, endless space, an emptiness, in which bodily sensations, emotions and thoughts as well as material objects appear and vanish, like the waves on the surface of the ocean.

We know that it exists, it is the one and only Life, and at the same time it is the essence in us we call ”I” (The ”I am” sensation). It exists as an ancient, living empty space, a Consciousness conscious of its own existence that comprises everything. Nothing exists outside it, and everything that exists is born inside it: within its space and as its own manifestation.

This state is characterized by tranquillity, deep silence, peace and all-permeating love. We know that this mysterious ”something” is beyond time, it does not have a beginning and end, it was never born and it will never die. If there are no forms and shapes inside it, it will not be conscious of itself, it simply, ”passively” exists, in a sort of dreamless sleep.

Once it has created forms and shapes, it will awake to the existence of the forms and, as it recognizes itself as the creator of the forms and shapes, it will awake to its own existence, too.

It creates forms and shapes in Its own space, in the space of the Consciousness. It permeates the forms and appears as life in them, and plays the role and life of the forms. Once the form has been used up and is no longer suitable for the one and only Life to live Its life through it and experience Itself through that particular form, the Life sheds the form and assumes a new one to experience itself in a different form. The more forms it identifies with, the more experience it gathers about its own individual characteristics.

It is most easily approached through paradoxical statements, like: It exists and is still beyond existence. Only It exists, the forms coming into being in It are all transient and, as they are temporary, transient, they are in fact but illusions.

It is more difficult to describe It in traditional concepts: it is not possible to learn anything about It; we are only able to exprience It in a direct way. Perhaps that is why Jewish mysticists said that it is not possible to pronounce God’s name, and that is why the commandment of the Christians says, ”Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.”

Buddha never spoke about God, because he was sure that once he had called It God, his followers would identify It with beliefs and concepts they create about God. The one and only existing ”something”–which remains a mystery forever–the human mind is unable to comprehend as It is beyond comprehension:

It is the knower of all thoughts, the mysterious Consciousness.

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Health / General Awareness

The Reason You Work So Hard to Participate in the Rat Race

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Stop and think…

The Reason You Work So Hard to Participate in the Rat Race

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “A man in debt is so far a slave.” Money has no intrinsic value yet we spend our days damaging our health and spirit in order to obtain it. Why do we sacrifice our well-being for it? Is it the cliché that “we just want to provide a better life for our kids than we had?” Is it just way of the civilized world? The most important question to ask, however, is what power do we have to change this way of thinking and living? The reality is simple: money is a vehicle for social control. Debt makes us good, obedient workers and citizens.

The traditional workweek started in 1908 at The New England Cotton Mill in order to allow followers of the Jewish religion to adhere to Sabbath. With the passage of The Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938, the 40-hour workweek became the norm. Data from the 2013 American Community Survey showed that the average commute time in America is about 26 minutes each way. According to a Gallup poll, the average workweek in America is 34.4 hours, however, when only taking into account full time workers, that average shoots up to 47, or 9.4 hours per day during a 5-day workweek. Keeping averages in mind then, between commuting, working and figuring in an hour for lunch (usually less), that puts us at approximately 11 hours and 40 minutes for the average full time worker. If you have a family with young kids, just add in another few hours for homework, baths, etc.

When the day is done, how much time do you have for yourself? To exercise, meditate or otherwise unwind the way that all the healthy living gurus preach? And how much of yourself, your presence of mind, is left to devote to family? We give the company the heat of our most intense mental fire while our families get the smoke. Yet Jeb Bush, the 2016 GOP presidential hopeful, says we need to work more.

The answer to why we put ourselves through this daily grind is multifaceted. The most pervasive reason is workplace and societal pressures. We are raised in a matrix of sorts. The cycle starts around the age of five when we are expected to adhere to a regimented 8-hour day of school. At this age, we don’t have the intellect to question why, so we mechanistically follow the path that’s laid out. This daily path becomes engraved in our minds and becomes as automatic as the sun’s daily journey. Our school system is adept at churning out working class individuals en masse. We are taught along the way not to question authority, again adhering to the working class mentality.

On the opposite end of the spectrum are those in power. They are the ones that like to color outside the lines. Many books abound with titles such as The Wisdom of Psychopaths that illustrate how people with psychopathic traits, ones who don’t tend to follow rules, are often found in managerial roles such as CEOs all the way up to presidents of countries. With these rare manipulative, coldhearted personalities in place and the rest of us following like good sheeple without questioning, the stage is set for compliance.

If you have been in the working world long enough, then the following statement should ring true: if you work extra hours, you are a great worker; if you decline, you’re useless and apathetic. In the work world, there’s typically no in between. The pressure to succeed for the pride and benefit of the company unfortunately supersedes that of the pressure to be a good parent, sibling, son or daughter. According to a study done by the economic policy institute, between 1948 and 2013, productivity has grown 240% while income for non-managerial workers has grown by 108%. To make up for this discordance, pride of doing what’s best for the company has been employed as a motivational tactic. This tactic has been used as a sharp IV needle that’s been inserted into our veins and we have willingly ingested the contents that are injected through it. Pressure to conform toward achieving the company’s goals has overcome our will to be compensated accordingly.

The other side of this pressure comes from society as a whole outside the education/workplace. A close friend of mine works for a state court and makes about $40K/year. He is also a self-employed business owner on the off hours. I estimate that he works about 70-80 hours a week. He owns a home in a well-to do neighborhood and he drives a seventy thousand dollar luxury car. This crystallizes the saying ‘big hat, no cattle.’ But when a lie is told over and over, the lie becomes the truth.

When we look at someone who drives a luxury car and lives in an upscale part of town, we see this as success because of how often that visual of it has been pounded tirelessly into our minds. We fail to see that these are nothing but symbols of success and false ones at that. They appear real because as a society, we have been conditioned to see them this way by the advertising industry.

In the book, The Millionaire Next Door, the authors annihilate this illusion. Numbers don’t lie and the statistics show that most true millionaires, those with a net worth of over one million dollars, do not own those luxuries that we typically associate with success and wealth. They view them as the reality of what they are: a depreciating liability. According to the book, the typical millionaire owns a home in the two to three hundred thousand dollar-range and a non-luxury automobile. If something goes wrong with either, they have the cash reserves to fix it. On the other hand, the commonplace owner of the luxury home and car can’t afford the roof and the tires respectively without going deeper into debt if they should need replacing.

Ownership of these symbols of wealth becomes a self-perpetuating illusion to satisfy the psychological need for acceptance. Unfortunately, human behavior dictates that emotional needs often override logical thinking. It’s been said that the borrower is slave to the debt-owner and with luxury items, debt is the rule, not the exception. Debt is healthy for those in power and contributes to a needy and thus obligated worker.

The current wisdom of slave, spend and save for retirement has only one destiny. That destiny can be summed up in three sentences. Spend your healthiest and most productive years working to support a life of materials and thus illusions of success while elevated stress damage your health. During this time, be sure to save enough money for retirement so you can enjoy those years of the subsequent poor health. And lastly, do it in the name of pride for your company and country.

I take pride in being American, as I’m sure most Americans do, however, if you’re reading this you’re likely smart enough to see the holes in the daily grind. It saps our creative potential and our physical, as well as our spiritual energy. We don’t need any studies to tell us how stressed we are and subsequently, how unhealthy we are. The physical manifestations of stress such as obesity, hypertension, heart disease, increased risk of cancer, depression, anxiety and many others tell us all we need to know. They tell us that we need a better work/life balance. They tell us that the pendulum has swung too much in the direction of work and away from life. Fortunately, there’s a way that we can take it back.

MEME – Tyler Durden

The most important way to restore this balance is to realize the power that we, as consumers, hold. Tyler Durden, the protagonist in the film, Fight Club said it best…

“…advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need.”

The marketing and advertising industry know, more than anyone else, what motivates the human mind and how to tap into those instinctual drives. To defend against this industries seductiveness, we need to journey within ourselves and bring to light what’s really important to us. What most of us will find is that experiences and time well spent, not materials, are what makes us happy. In the book, aptly titled Well Being, the authors Tom Rath and Jim Harter discuss how experiences have been proven to make us happier than material possessions.

We revel in the anticipation of the experience, we enjoy the experience itself and we look back on it fondly for as long as we live. We do this while the expensive car or house that we borrowed money long ago to obtain falls apart causing us to borrow more money. If we live according to the rule that everything we purchase, with the exception of a home, is acquired by cash, then we fail to become slaves to debt and by extension, work. We no longer relinquish our power to creditors.

Oscar Wilde was famously quoted as saying that anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination. Materialistically speaking, living by this notion will bind us with shackles to a life of debt servitude. When we rip those shackles of debt from our wrists, our minds become clear and we see what truly makes us happy. We spend more time with friends and family. We focus on our passions and hobbies. In essence, we get back to the foundation of what it means to be human. After all, none of us will ever arrive upon the mountain of our last moments of existence wishing we spent more time at the office. We will instead arrive wishing we completed that book, that painting or that experience with those we love most. For those can be purchased not with debt, but with time. And there is no more cunning, covert and deceitful thief of time as that villain we call debt.

How Student Loan Debt is Turning Us Into Serfs

The Medieval era is well known for being littered with feudal societies, ruled by royalty and served by serfs who kept the system running with back-breaking labor. Contrary to popular opinion, though, the serfs weren’t exactly what we would call ‘slaves.’ They definitely had more rights and opportunities than many of their ancestors from the Roman Empire, and they weren’t owned by other people.

Instead, they were merely ‘tied down.’ They often didn’t have the freedom to move about, not because there were walls and watchtowers keeping them penned up, but because they were beholden to the land. They had to pay part of their income if they wanted to stay on that land, and if they wanted any kind of protection.

And because their world was far more dangerous than ours, they desperately needed the protection of the lords and their soldiers, which meant that they couldn’t risk leaving their land for better opportunities. In most feudal societies, it wasn’t politics that kept the people down, it was their financial situation.

In much the same way that feudalism kept its people tied to the land for multiple generations, our current financial system is also producing a perpetual serf class; mainly through the issuance of student loans. Unlike most debts (of which we have plenty) there is no escaping these loans. In most cases, you don’t have the option to declare bankruptcy and start anew with a clean slate. As a result, many of our citizens are not only carrying heavy debts, they’re laying the groundwork for having indebted children as well.

Data analyzed exclusively by the AP, along with surveys about families and rising student-debt loads, show that:

• School loans increasingly belong to Americans over 40. This group accounts for 35% of education debt, up from 25% in 2004, according to the New York Federal Reserve. Contributing to this surge are longer repayment schedules, more midcareer workers returning to school, and additional borrowing for children’s education.

• Generation X adults — those 35 to 50 — owe about as much as people fresh out of college do. Student-loan balances average $20,000 for Generation X. Millennials, 34 and younger, have roughly the same average debt, according to a report by Pew Charitable Trusts.

• Gen X parents who carry student debt and have teenage children have struggled to save for their children’s educations. The average they have in college savings plans is just $4,000, compared with a $20,000 average for teenagers’ parents who aren’t still repaying their own school loans, Pew found. A result is that many of their children will need to borrow heavily for college or pursue cheaper alternatives, thereby perpetuating a cycle of family debt.

• Student debt is surpassing groceries as a primary expense for many borrowers, with the gap widening most for younger families. The average college-educated head of the household under 40 owes $404 a month in student debt payments, according to an AP analysis of Fed data. That’s slightly more than what the government says the average college-educated family spends at the supermarket.

There are now two separate debt cycles at work here. Ever since the government started issuing these loans and made them nearly impossible to default on, it has given the colleges an incentive to raise prices. And since these loans allowed more people to go to college, the marketplace is saturated with college grads, and their education quality is often watered down. This means that the average person now needs a higher education to set themselves apart from their peers, which of course costs more money. And on and on it goes.

And these massive debts have spawned another horrible cycle between parents and their children. It’s already incredibly difficult to start a family when you owe tens of thousands of dollars, but for those who do, they now have less money to save for their children’s education. Surely, their progeny will also be burdened with debt if they decide to follow their parent’s footsteps. Considering that around half of America’s college graduates are stuck in jobs that don’t require a college degree, that would probably be an awful mistake to make.

Our society is already populated by millions of people working menial jobs while burdened with absurd debts that will keep them ‘tied down’ for the rest of their lives. So there really isn’t much distance left between us and our medieval ancestors. The only thing that was missing from this situation, was the passing of these debts to our children. However, we’re no longer robbing our future progeny with these debts. Now it’s happening to our children in the present. Feudal America has officially arrived for those who are trying to improve their lot in life with a college education.

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