The Power of One

Living in the world some days can seem frustrating. Sometimes it seems that no matter what we do, our actions and intent make little difference in healing the world at large around us. It seems there is only so much one can control in the external world using external means. We can't stop a hurricane with the wave of our arms any more than we can put out a wildfire with a garden hose. Watching the violence of the riots around the country, it can be discouraging to know that no matter how much we care, we cannot impact or change the behavior of others in conflict, even if we really want to help them lead more peaceful and fulfilled lives. Nor can we predict or control the outcome of the coming election, as important as it may seem to our very future. Deep within it is too often easy to doubt whether one vote even matters.

It is important to remember that just as a healthy body depends upon the health of each of its individual cells, a healthy society depends upon the calm, peaceful, harmonious well-being of each individual that comprises it. In the greater scheme of reality, what one says, what one does, and one's energy vibration matter more than one may imagine.

I like to believe that when only one of us has a focused conscious connection to our Source, it is more powerful than thousands who do not. And I like to think that even if I cannot single-handedly change outcomes in the world at large by any external measure, when I am consciously feeling connected to the Divine within, I have the vibrational energy to lessen the impact of the strongest storms, ease the extent of the wildest fires, and move the needle of the entire human race toward a more loving outcome. I like to believe that when I am in tune with the Infinite, I am plugged into the ultimate power that creates the world.

If nothing else, somewhere within, I know without question that as long as I maintain a loving vibration, I will be guided to live a more peaceful, happy, safe, and harmonious life, no matter what is going on in the rest of the world. And as long as I am relating to the world at large with Love, I am in unison with Source.

How do I maintain that connection in every moment? Whenever I appreciate the feel of the sun on my face, the rain on my skin, and feel the grass or earth under my feet, the Love of the universe flows through me. Anytime I allow myself to think thoughts that make me feel good within, or appreciate the good in those around me, finding the spark of light within each person I share the world with, whoever they may be, Love flows through me.

Every day holds a million tiny opportunities to connect with Love, with the Divine within, with the Source of all goodness. The more each of us does this with intent, the kinder, calmer, safer, healthier, and happier each of our lives will be individually and together. That may be the greatest contribution any of us can give to the world. It is a beginning.

I invite others to give it a try. Take notice of any good feelings, joy along the journey, ease, grace, guidance, synchronicities, flow, connections with other helpful souls, and eventually, all that we dream will manifest in our lives.

In a connected reality, we are the contribution. Some will contribute with inspired effort; some with inspired words; some will make a difference simply by living a happy, peaceful life that ripples out into the universe at large, impacting all in its path. That's enough.

Each of us is inspired (in spirit) to do something, even if that something is nothing. Just to be at rest and find peace at the center of the storm, emanating waves of calm into a chaotic world is enough. More than you know!

The world is undergoing an incredible restructuring. There is a great stirring occurring upon Mother Earth, releasing pent up energies of the entire human race. Most of us feel this unrest within, or a certain anxiety or deep urge to do something, but what?

It's all okay. I breathe deeply and focus upon my ultimate connection with Source, with Love. That's all we are called to do. Living moment to moment with a more loving vibration, each of us will find the reality at large becoming kinder and kinder as we grow in Love and Gratitude. Individual Action Counts. Be the Change.

Just for Chuckles

Hello, welcome to the Psychiatric Hotline.

If you are obsessive-compulsive, please press 1 repeatedly.

If you are co-dependent, please ask someone to press 2.

If you have mutilple personalities, please press 3, 4, 5, an 6.

If you are paranoid-delusional, we know who you are and what you want, so please stay on the line so we can trace the call.

If you are schizophrenic, listen carefully and a little voice will tell you which number to press.

If you are manic-depressive, it doesn't matter which number you press.  No one will answer.

If you are anxious, please start pressing numbers at random.

If you are phobic, don't press anything.

If you are anal-retentive, please hold.

The Internet as Divider

 

Of all the changes in modern times, the internet has had the most significant effect upon moving the world in new directions. While it has connected the world in ways only Ayn Rand, Arthur C. Clarke, or Alvin Toffler may have imagined, it has not brought us closer together, person to person, nation to nation. If anything, it has accentuated our differences and pushed us away from each other. The internet was supposed to bring about a transparent society, but the opposite has occurred.

Much of the world seems to have gone crazy. It is all but certain that many people think that I have gone crazy; I have been told as much. There was a time – not so long ago – where the world I was seeing was essentially the same world that everybody else was seeing. We all got our news from the same three networks in a time when investigative journalism was not so stained by politics and partisanship. Different points of view were given seemingly equal air time and due consideration.

The internet has expanded the number of sources we can turn to to find out what is happening. In and of itself, that is a good thing... or so we've been taught -  evolutionary success is strongly dependent upon a healthy degree of diversity. But we get our information from a broadly expanding diversity of sources today, thanks to the internet. And while diversity is good, we have not become more diverse in our individual resourcefulness. If anything, we have individually narrowed our focus and become cloistered in our gathering of news and with the conclusions we draw from it.

I make no bones about publicly acknowledging that I support a conservative agenda based upon freedom. Some people think that is absolutely nuts. But I think proponents of the liberal agenda are nuts. Are we further apart today than ever before? Why can't we meet in the middle and understand our differences instead of resorting to name-calling???

What is really going on is that each of us, more than ever before, see less of what others are seeing, and so have less opportunity to understand each other. Sure, I monitor the content of web sites than seem dramatically contrary to what I believe so that I can see what it is that other people are seeing. And I enjoy intelligent conversation with those who disagree with me, as long as we can shelve emotion and not resort to name-calling.

I really work hard at not judging other people. I know that I will never have all the facts or background on someone to understand why they did what they did or said what they said. I increasingly suspect most people do not share the same intent, however.

Internet news sources don't seem to help much when they cut and paste only the content that serves their agenda, without including the context. For instance, I watched a news video of a police officer violently pushing a suspect to the ground, knee on the his neck, attempting to handcuff him and bring him under control. What the news failed to share with us is what events led to this interaction. I want to know what caused the officer to react with such extreme measures before drawing a conclusion as to whether he was justified in his actions or not.

I once helped two police officers pin a PCP freak to the ground to prevent him from doing further property damage or hurting himself. The confrontation was extremely physical, quick-lived, but tentative. It was all that the three of us could do to bring him under control without becoming bloodied casualties of the encounter as well. The man was clearly a danger to others and the police were without question within their right to detain and remove him. Extreme force was justified.

While the courts exonerate law enforcement officials more than the viewing public would agree with, had everyone that judged against the police officer in the example above been exposed to the available video footage, the facts would have clearly exonerated his efforts in the court of public opinion from the beginning. Instead, public reaction became divided to the extreme and many more individuals lost their lives or were injured in subsequent rioting over the incident – all because of selective reporting on the internet to satisfy an agenda.

Such edited news reporting from the recorded images of a smart phone held by nearly everyone on the street today only serves to divide us because of a reporting prejudice that shouldn't be so starkly evident. That's what the instant internet gives us these days. Those willing to withhold judgement until all the facts are in seem crazy to those who take up signs to protest any apparent injustice before knowing what really happened. And vice versa.

When you can only see how someone else behaves, but not the experiences that influenced their behavior, it becomes harder to draw any meaningful conclusion. Our collective view of the world has become divided as the result of selective internet reporting that guarantees that the version of the world that I see remains invisible to the people who misunderstand me and think I am crazy... and vice versa.

The Foundering of Social Empathy

A couple friends came to visit two weeks ago. With my wife and I, they joined us in the living room to visit and catch up, and to otherwise enjoy each other's company as friends do. With their smart phones in hand, we engaged in idle chatter, but it was clear they were drawn as if by some spell to check the messages on their smart phones and see what was going on in their larger world. For a moment, I ceased my line of conversation and the room went quiet. They were totally absorbed in a world apart from the “real” world of our get-together in our living room.

If you share a space with people who aren't looking at their smart phones, you are all in that space together (unless someone is daydreaming). You are sharing a common base of experience... and it can be amazing to get on the same wave length as those in close proximity. That's why people go out to clubs, sporting events, and houses of worship – for the social rewards of just being with other people in some common experience.

But when you are with someone who is fixated on their smart phone, you have less of a feeling for what is going on with them. Their attention is not on the immediate reality you are sharing. Their moment is being curated by some faraway digital algorithm that is invisible to everyone else. You no longer share the same “real” experience. Since I have no way of seeing someone else's social media feed, I have lessened powers to empathize with what they think and feel. Because we are creatures that cannot focus well on two things at once, we cannot build any kind of unmolested commonality with others unless all phones are put away.

The ultimate result is an increasing loss of empathy with others in the modern world. But it is empathy, that ability to understand what other people are experiencing and why, and the ability to imagine being in another's place, that is fundamental to a healthy society. Without it, only dry rules and competitions for power are left.

I still do not own a smart phone. The less time I spend on the phone and the less time I interact with some form of technology or media, the more time I have available for a direct interaction with other people and the natural world that surrounds us all. Perhaps, my sentiments can be easily written off as just old-school, but as I watch with sadness as people grow further and further apart, I think there may be something valuable in reminding the world of the way things used to be.

Seeking a Theory of Everything

It’s not every day that we come across a paper that attempts to redefine reality. A novel theory has been proposed that the universe could be a sort of neural network — an interconnected computatioral network of various nodes — equivalent to biological neurons — that a system similar in structure to the human brain operates throughout the universe at the fundamental level.

This controversial notion has been proposed by a physics professor at the University of Minnesota at Duluth named Vitaly Vanchurin as a way to reconcile areas of so-called ‘classical’ physics with those of quantum mechanics — a long-standing conundrum in physics. ‘We are not just saying that artificial neural networks can be useful for analyzing physical systems, or for discovering physical laws — we are saying that this is how the world around us actually works,’ Professor Vanchurin wrote. Bold as it may sound, he continues: ‘It could be considered as a proposal for the theory of everything, and as such it should be easy to prove it wrong.’

‘All that is needed is to find a physical phenomenon which cannot be described by neural networks. Unfortunately, this is easier said than done.’ When considering the workings of the universe on a large scale, physicists use a particular set of theories as tools. These are tools of ‘classical mechanics’ — built upon Newton’s laws of motion — and Einstein’s theories of relativity, which explain the relationship between space and time, and how mass distorts the fabric of spacetime to create gravitational effects.

To explain phenomena on the atomic and subatomic scales, however, physicists have found that the universe is better explained by theory of  ‘quantum mechanics’. In this theory, quantities like energy and momentum are restricted to having discrete, non continuous values (known as ‘quanta’), all objects have properties of both particles and waves, and measuring any system changes it.

This last point, the essence of Heisenberg’s ‘uncertainty principle’, means that certain linked properties — such as an object’s position and velocity — cannot both be precisely known at the same time, bringing probabilities into play.

Vanchurin's controversial notion has been proposed as a way to reconcile areas of so-called ‘classical’ physics (including general relativity, which explains how mass and energy distort spacetime to create gravitational effects) with those of quantum mechanics. This ‘quantum gravity problem’ has been a long-standing hurdle in physics. While the two theories explain the universe very well on their own scales, physicists have long struggled to reconcile them together into a single universal theory.

For the two theories to mesh, gravity — described by general relativity as the curving of spacetime by matter/energy — would likely need to be made up of quanta and therefore have its own elementary particle, the graviton.  Unfortunately, the effects generated by a single graviton on matter would be extraordinarily weak — making theories of quantum gravity seemingly impossible to test and ultimately determine which, if any, are correct.

Instead of trying to reconcile general relativity and quantum mechanics into one fundamental universal theory, the neural network idea suggests that the behaviors seen in both theories emerge from something much deeper. In his study, Professor Vanchurin set out to create a model of how neural networks work — in particular, in a system with a large number of individual nodes. He says that, in certain conditions — near equilibrium — the learning behavior of a neural network can be approximately explained with the equations of quantum mechanics, while further away the laws of classical physics come into play instead. ‘The idea is definitely crazy, but perhaps crazy enough to be true. That remains to be seen,’ he added.

In addition, he explained, the theory could account for so-called ‘hidden variables’ — unknown properties of objects proposed by some physicists to explain away the uncertainty inherent in most theories of quantum mechanics.

‘In the emergent quantum mechanics which I considered, the hidden variables are the states of the individual neurons and the trainable variables - such as bias vector and weight matrix - are quantum variables,' Professor Vanchurin said.

In such a neural network, everything - from particles and atoms to cells and beyond - would emerge in a process analogous to evolution/natural selection, Professor Vanchurin has suggested.

‘There are structures of the microscopic neural network which are more stable and there are other structures which are less stable,’ he told Futurism.

‘The more stable structures would survive the evolution, and the less stable structures would be exterminated.’ ‘On the smallest scales I expect that the natural selection should produce some very low complexity structures such as chains of neurons, but on larger scales the structures would be more complicated.

‘I see no reason why this process should be confined to a particular length scale and so the claim is that everything that we see around us — e.g. particles, atoms, cells, observers, etc. — is the outcome of natural selection.’

As to whether the universe-as-neural-network theory has merit — the rest of the physics community appears unlikely to be on board. As Professor Vanchurin concedes, ’99 percent of physicists would tell you that quantum mechanics is the main theory and everything else should somehow emerge from it’ — a tenet at odds with the notion that it is not fundamental. Most experts in the field of both physics and machine learning have expressed skepticism over the idea, declining to comment on the record. Given that this is exactly how most revolutionary ideas begin, the proposal certainly merits further consideration.

5G Space Clutter

 On July 29, 2020, the FCC granted Amazon’s application to launch 3,236 satellites into the ionosphere. Like the satellites of SpaceX and OneWeb, Amazon’s satellites will operate at millimeter wave frequencies and use phased array technology to cover the Earth with focused beams of radiation enabling customers to access the Internet from anywhere on Earth, on land or ocean.

The satellites of SpaceX, OneWeb and Amazon alone, if they are all launched, will total, together, about 92,000 satellites. If you add in Iridium and Globalstar, which are already operating small constellations, and the plans of Facebook, Link, Canadian companies Kepler and Telesat, the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation, Russia’s Roscosmos, and other competitors, there could soon be 100,000 satellites orbiting in the ionosphere.

The out-of-control satellite industry is one of the stupidest things humankind has ever created. It treats the life-giving envelope of our atmosphere as if we don’t depend on it. It poses an immediate threat to life on Earth, in so many ways.

The 100,000 planned 5G satellites, each with a designed lifespan of 5 to 10 years, must be constantly de-orbited and replaced. This means that at least 10,000 satellites will have to be launched every year, forever into the future. If an average of 50 satellites can be launched on each rocket, that’s 200 rocket launches per year, just to maintain the satellites used for cell phones and Internet. And it means the de-orbiting of 10,000 worn out satellites per year, burning them up in the atmosphere and turning them into toxic dust and smoke. And that’s not counting the ever-increasing numbers of weather, research, tracking, monitoring, surveillance, military, and other kinds of satellites and missiles being launched in what will soon be a parade of rockets burning prodigious quantities of fossil fuels, punching holes in our atmosphere on a daily basis, and treating the source of all life as Earth’s largest garbage pit.

Martin Ross of the Aerospace Corporation and other researchers have been modeling the effects of daily rocket launches on ozone and global temperatures. Rocket exhaust, depending on the type of fuel used, may contain chlorine and/or oxides of nitrogen, hydrogen, and/or aluminum, all of which destroy ozone. SpaceX’s kerosene-fueled rockets deposit enormous amounts of black soot into the stratosphere, where it accumulates, absorbing solar radiation and warming the stratosphere.

The warming of the stratosphere accelerates the chemical reactions that destroy ozone. Most rockets are launched from the northern hemisphere. And the winter and spring of 2020 saw the largest and longest-lasting Arctic ozone hole in history. Ozone-watchers did not know what caused it, but they were not communicating with the scientists who are studying rocket exhaust. Our world is full of specialists, deaf and blind to other specialties, collectively asleep and marching toward oblivion. Atmospheric physicists do not study astronomy. Astronomers do not study electricity. Electricians do not study biology. Medical doctors do not study acupuncture. Doctors of oriental medicine do not study atmospheric physics.

But the universe is not fragmented It is a whole, and our culture has forgotten what that is, to its peril and to the peril of everything alive. The ionosphere is a source of high voltage that controls the electric circuitry of the biosphere and everything in it, including the fine-tuned circuitry of every human, every animal, every tree, and every fish. If we do not immediately stop the destruction of our fragile blanket of electrified air, upon which we depend for growth, healing, and life itself, climate change and ozone destruction may not matter. Beta testing has already begun this month.

Adapted from an article by Arthur Firstenberg at https://www.cellphonetaskforce.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Online-Meeting-about-5G-Satellites-August-11-2020.pdf

A Future Retrospect

All truth passes through three stages.

First, it is ridiculed.

Secondly, it is violently opposed.

Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

Arthur Schopenhauer

Note the date of the twitter feed above. The battle plan against the Deep State was prepared long before Trump stepped into the political field of fire. Years from now, when the swamp has been drained completely, the plan that has been so ridiculed and violently opposed will be viewed as brilliant in its strategy and execution. History will be very generous in its summary of these tenous years, admitting that the truth was always self-evident, and all will agree. Those in opposition today will ultimately be but forgotten footnotes in the forward progress of a renewed republic that will rank Trump as one of the greatest presidents ever.

Do Masks Work?

A study published in 1981, in the Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, clearly seems to indicate that they do not, and may even be detrimental. Dr. Neil Orr was a surgeon in the Severalls Surgical Unit in Colchester, England, and for six months, from March through August 1980, the surgeons and staff in that unit decided to see what would happen if they did not wear masks during surgeries. They wore no masks for six months, and compared the rate of surgical wound infections with the rate of wound infections from March through August of the previous four years. What they discovered, to their amazement, was that when nobody wore masks during surgeries, the rate of wound infections was less than half what it was when everyone wore masks. Their conclusion: “It would appear that minimum contamination can best be achieved by not wearing a mask at all” and that wearing a mask during surgery “is a standard procedure that could be abandoned.”

Amazingly, when one scours the medical literature, thinking that this was a fluke and that newer studies must certainly must show the utility of masks in preventing the spread of disease, it may come as a shock that for the past forty-five years findings have been consistent: masks are useless in preventing the spread of disease and, if anything, are unsanitary objects that themselves may spread bacteria and viruses.

• Ritter et al., in 1975, found that “the wearing of a surgical face mask had no effect upon the overall operating room environmental contamination.”

• Ha’eri and Wiley, in 1980, applied human albumin microspheres to the interior of surgical masks in 20 operations. At the end of each operation, wound washings were examined under the microscope. “Particle contamination of the wound was demonstrated in all experiments.”

• Laslett and Sabin, in 1989, found that caps and masks were not necessary during cardiac catheterization. “No infections were found in any patient, regardless of whether a cap or mask was used,” they wrote. Sjøl and Kelbaek came to the same conclusion in 2002.

• In Tunevall’s 1991 study, a general surgical team wore no masks in half of their surgeries for two years. After 1,537 operations performed with masks, the wound infection rate was 4.7%, while after 1,551 operations performed without masks, the wound infection rate was only 3.5%.

• A review by Skinner and Sutton in 2001 concluded that “The evidence for discontinuing the use of surgical face masks would appear to be stronger than the evidence available to support their continued use.”

• Lahme et al., in 2001, wrote that “surgical face masks worn by patients during regional anesthesia, did not reduce the concentration of airborne bacteria over the operation field in our study. Thus they are dispensable.”

• Figueiredo et al., in 2001, reported that in five years of doing peritoneal dialysis without masks, rates of peritonitis in their unit were no different than rates in hospitals where masks were worn.

• Bahli did a systematic literature review in 2009 and found that “no significant difference in the incidence of postoperative wound infection was observed between masks groups and groups operated with no masks.”

• Surgeons at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, recognizing the lack of evidence supporting the use of masks, ceased requiring them in 2010 for anesthesiologists and other non-scrubbed personnel in the operating room. “Our decision to no longer require routine surgical masks for personnel not scrubbed for surgery is a departure from common practice. But the evidence to support this practice does not exist,” wrote Dr. Eva Sellden.

• Webster et al., in 2010, reported on obstetric, gynecological, general, orthopaedic, breast and urological surgeries performed on 827 patients. All non-scrubbed staff wore masks in half the surgeries, and none of the non-scrubbed staff wore masks in half the surgeries. Surgical site infections occurred in 11.5% of the Mask group, and in only 9.0% of the No Mask group.

• Lipp and Edwards reviewed the surgical literature in 2014 and found “no statistically significant difference in infection rates between the masked and unmasked group in any of the trials.” Vincent and Edwards updated this review in 2016 and the conclusion was the same.

• Carøe, in a 2014 review based on four studies and 6,006 patients, wrote that “none of the four studies found a difference in the number of post-operative infections whether you used a surgical mask or not.”

• Salassa and Swiontkowski, in 2014, investigated the necessity of scrubs, masks and head coverings in the operating room and concluded that “there is no evidence that these measures reduce the prevalence of surgical site infection.”

• Da Zhou et al., reviewing the literature in 2015, concluded that “there is a lack of substantial evidence to support claims that face masks protect either patient or surgeon from infectious contamination.”

Mandating masks has not kept death rates down anywhere. The 20 U.S. states that have never ordered people to wear face masks indoors and out have dramatically lower COVID-19 death rates than the 30 states that have mandated masks. Most of the no-mask states have COVID-19 death rates below 20 per 100,000 population, and none have a death rate higher than 55. All 13 states that have death rates higher than 55 are states that have required the wearing of masks in all public places. It has not protected them.

Adapted from an article by Arthur Firstenberg at https://www.cellphonetaskforce.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Online-Meeting-about-5G-Satellites-August-11-2020.pdf

Beggar's Game

She took me in on a winter's night
The air was brittle and the moon was bright
My heart was heavy but her touch was light
Deep in the dance we wandered
Deep in my heart she fell.

The candles glistened and the water gleamed
She drew a bath and the windows steamed
She looked like every woman ever dreamed
In the heart of a lonely man.
In the heart of a lonely man.

She took my blindness and she led me through
As night retreated and the daylight grew
And with the first rays of the sun I knew
Love had another captive
Love had another fool.

The spell is broken and the chains fall free
Finally my heart has come home to me
It seems I've waited an eternity.

These lyrics from Dan Fogelberg's Beggar's Game are words that most of us would like to be able to say to someone we care about, but few of us feel such poetry, such depth of expression within us. Why? It's societal programming, plain and simple. These are sentiments from another time and place for most of us. We are taught to believe men are from Mars and women are from Venus, entirely different in our programming. Generally, the culture within which we live focuses on the differences between us rather than what we have in common.

But men and women share a lot more in common than one is led to believe. But you would never guess that from what you read in the news or watch on TV or at the theater, or by listening in to most any conversation between a woman and a man. Again, why is it this way?

Men have been led to believe that by somehow thinking or acting romantically, it is a sign of weakness, and that others are going to view them as soft – too soft to be a real man. On the flip side, women too often skip over romance because they have pre-judged that it won't work with men – that it will fall upon deaf ears, as that is the ruling narrative that we encounter at every turn in society.

So the beautiful poetry and glorious appeal of Love as we find above is lost in the day-to-day interactions between women and men because most of us have allowed society at large and other people to control our natural instincts toward relationships. We all lose. We pave over our vulnerabilities and give up before we even begin to play the game.Perhaps to explore, to discover true Love is the whole reason we are here. It is time for each of us to “break the spell” and let the “chains fall free”.

In Judgement of Monsters

Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame is set in Paris during the 15th Century. The story centers on Quasimodo, the deformed bell ringer of Notre-Dame Cathedral, and his unrequited love for the beautiful dancer Esmeralda. Born Agnès, Esmeralda is perceived to be a French Roma girl. Her biological mother is a former prostitute; her paternity is unknown. Fifteen years before the events of the novel, a group of Roma kidnapped the infant Agnès from her mother’s room. Esmeralda has no knowledge of her kidnapping, so she lives and travels with the Roma as if she is one of them.

Quasimodo first meets Esmeralda at the Feast of Fools, an annual festival parodying ecclesiastical ritual and cardinal elections. During the Feast of Fools, a crowd of people arrive at the Grand Hall of the Palace of Justice where Gringoire introduces them to a play written by him, but is soon interrupted by Clopin Trouillefou, the King of Truands. During the festival, Quasimodo is elected “Pope of the Fools” and subsequently beaten by an angry mob. Esmeralda takes pity on him and offers him a drink of water. Quasimodo thereafter falls in love with the dancer and decides to devote himself to protecting her.

Unbeknownst to Quasimodo, two other men vie for Esmeralda’s affection - Quasimodo’s adoptive father, Archdeacon Dom Claude Frollo, and the womanizing captain Phoebus de Châteaupers. Esmeralda, for her part, has fallen hopelessly in love with Captain Phoebus. When he asks her to meet him in secret late one night, she enthusiastically agrees.

That night Phoebus tries to persuade Esmeralda to sleep with him. From a closet in Phoebus’s room, a disguised Frollo spies on the couple. After he sees Phoebus kiss Esmeralda’s shoulder, the archdeacon, in a fit of jealous rage, breaks down the closet door and stabs Phoebus in the back. Phoebus collapses before he can see his assailant. Esmeralda also loses consciousness, and Frollo escapes, leaving Esmeralda as the only suspect for the attempted murder.

Esmeralda is quickly captured by the king’s guard. Master Jacques Charmolue presides over her trial. Charmolue sentences her to death after she falsely confesses to witchcraft and to murdering Phoebus. (Esmeralda is unaware that Phoebus is alive.) Quasimodo attempts to shelter Esmeralda in Notre Dame, but he is ultimately unable to save her. Frollo betrays Quasimodo and Esmeralda by taking Esmeralda from the cathedral and releasing her to an angry mob of Parisians. Shortly thereafter Esmeralda is hanged, and Quasimodo, in his grief and despair, pushes Frollo from the cathedral tower. The novel ends many years later, when two skeletons—that of a hunchback and that of a woman—are found embracing in Esmeralda’s tomb.

Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame considers what it means to be a monster. The novel makes Quasimodo’s defining characteristic his physical monstrosity, and his entire identity is constructed around being perceived as a monster. He is described by one of the women of Paris as a “wicked” ugly man. Several characters suggest that he is some kind of supernatural being that prowls around Paris, casting spells on its citizens.

Quasimodo is juxtaposed with the dashing Captain Phoebus, who shares his name with the Greco-Roman god of the Sun. Phoebus is described as an imposing young man, “one of those handsome fellows whom all women agree to admire.” Yet it is Quasimodo—not Captain Phoebus—who attempts to save Esmeralda and who ultimately kills the archdeacon, thereby ending his reign of terror.

Esmeralda is also perceived as a kind of monster. Although she is not, in fact, a Roma, she is seen and treated as one. In The Hunchback of Notre Dame the Roma are associated with witchcraft and the supernatural. They are viewed as exotic outsiders and are said to practice magic, possess satanic goats, and kidnap Parisian children among other things. Frollo exploits their association with the supernatural to sanction a Roma purge, just as Charmolue uses it to authorize Esmeralda’s execution. The novel condemns the society that heaps misery on the likes of Quasimodo and Esmeralda. In the end, Hugo indicates that the real monsters are not Quasimodo and Esmeralda, but Frollo and Phoebus.

Setting all appearances aside, we live in a starkly dichotomous world today where each side viciously denigrates the monsters on the other. Are there monsters on both sides today, or have some of us made a terrible misjudgement? If we are still here by the end of the play, will we have seen through the story line and judged the archetypes in the dream correctly?

Desire and Focus

 

One should want only one thing,

and want it constantly.

Then one is sure of getting it.

But I desire everything equally!

Consequently, I end up with nothing.

Each time I discover,

and always too late,

that one thing had come

while I was running after another.

Author unknown

I Am Wolf

 The price of being a sheep is boredom.

The price of being a wolf is loneliness.

I am Wolf, and I am a lone Warrior. I live in the high country of the mind “where one has to become adjusted to the thinner air of uncertainty,” in the words of Robert Pirsig, “and to the enormous magnitude of questions asked.” I sometimes hesitate to follow where the questions lead for fear of getting lost and never finding my way back. Boredom is something I have never known. Living is eternally mysterious and fascinating, and I am forever focused on trying to understand it. But it is a lonely path.

From my vantage point, I quietly gaze upon the world of sheep below, grazing their wide pastures from sunup to sundown, and I wonder how they manage to live so simply in their unchanging reactive world of consumption and fear. They quiver at my howl and stampede at the sight of my shadow in the moon, yet while they fear becoming prey to my stealth, my hunger is for a different kind of nourishment.

I am very comfortable leading a solitary existence, but need to run with the pack from time to time to keep balance. It is a life of intellectual caution balanced with carefree playfulness. I think for myself, improvise, and create. I scavenge, hunt, and hide. And I howl once in awhile, not out of loneliness, but out of a pure exuberance in living.

It is necessary to spend most of my time alone and away from the pecking order of the pack. Alone, one is forced to get in touch with the larger reality that doesn't care what society thinks. If I don't find water and shelter, I shall perish; I have to scavenge and hunt for myself, and solve problems on the basis of evidence I gather on my own, instead of reacting to group perception. The scientist and the artist within rise to their finest expression in my solitary world.

When I spend time with the pack, the rewards and social status therein become more immediate that the larger reality and greater mystery that holds my attention when I howl at the moon alone in high country. When the moon rises, I hear a distant call that will always lead me away. I am Wolf. Quietly I will endure. Silently I will suffer. Patiently I will wait. For I am a Warrior. And I will survive.

Artwork by Breanna Kay Cornell

Entitlement

Some people are swimmers, but too many just stand on the shore and throw stones. Too many people stand back and wonder why the universe is not more grateful for their mere presence on this earth. Too many people are waiting for the doors of heaven to open wide, when they should be putting in a sustained effort to make life the paradise they believe they deserve.

It is easy to expect other people to make life better, but what have you done lately to advance in the direction of your own dreams? No one owes you anything. Whatever it is you desire, don't stand on the sidelines and wait for someone else to deliver it. You've got to jump into the water and get wet.

Unplugging

I do not own a smartphone. I do not want to be connected to the world all the time. I cut that umbilical cord a long time ago when I moved away from the hurry-worry working world. If you need to communicate with me – you can wait. As I watch the world around me becoming increasingly hypnotized by these little handheld go-everywhere-with-you pieces of technology, I am increasingly glad to say: “it ain't me”. As far as I'm concerned they are Trojan horses; they're tracking devices at the least and behavior modification instruments at worst. Those looking at their smartphone screens more than twice a day are essentially providing a continual stream of feedback sharing personal information with technicians we don't know, working for some of the largest companies the world has ever seen, for purposes we should all be suspicious of.

Whether you use a smartphone or any other computing device, someone is collecting a data base on you that grows by the second. What they already know about you is more than you might imagine. What kinds of links do you click on? What videos do you watch all the way through? How quickly are you moving from one thing to the next? Where are you on the planet when you do these things? Who are you connecting to in person and online? What facial expressions do you make? What were you doing just before you decided to buy something or not? The algorithms tracking you are constantly correlating your behavior with that of everyone else. All these measurements add up essentially to spying on us all.

As individuals, mostly you and I don't matter to the machines monitoring us. But there is considerable value in large numbers, trends, and patterns. Advertisers stand at the ready to influence us with messages that have worked on other people that share traits and situations with us. They call it advertising. I call it unauthorized direct behavioral manipulation. Whatever connected device we are using these days, we are increasingly getting bombarded with individualized, continuously adjusted, never ceasing promotional stimulation.

These attempts at behavior modification are unprecedented. We're all becoming conditioned pets of the machine – well-trained lab rats controlled more and more by huge corporations for their benefit, not ours. The frightening part is that the lab rat being conditioned by very successful behavior modification techniques generally doesn't even know it.

I like to think becoming aware of what is happening is liberating, or at least it enables us to make a choice to disconnect, at least some of the time. The pervasive surveillance and constant subtle manipulation we are being subjected to has become the new norm, however, and goes largely unquestioned. I find it unethical, cruel, and potentially dangerous – for who knows exactly who is going to use the power of the data you generate, and for what!

Many insiders, some of them founders of the mighty social media empires are sounding alarm over our collective loss of control over the momentum of the machine. Here's a warming shot the first president of Facebook, Sean Parker, fired over the bow of all Facebook users:

“We need to sort of give you a little dopamine hit every once in awhile, because someone liked or commented on a photo or a post or whatever.... It's a social validation feedback loop... exactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with, because you're exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology.... The inventors, creators – it's me, its Mark [Zuckererg], its Kevin Systrom on Instagram, its all of these people – understood this consciously. And we did it anyway... it literally changes your relationship with society, with each other.... It probably interferes with productivity in weird ways. God only knows what it's doing to our children's brains.”

Here is what former vice president of user growth at Facebook, Chamath Palihapitaya had to say:

“The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops we've created are destroying how society works.... No civil discourse, no cooperation; misinformation; mis-truth. And it's not an American problem – this is not about Russian ads. This is a global problem.... I feel tremendous guilt. I think we all knew in the back of our minds – even though we figured this whole line of, like, there probably aren't any bad unintended consequences. I think in the back, deep, deep recesses of, we kind of knew something bad could happen.... So we are in a really bad state of affairs right now, in my opinion. It is eroding the core foundation of how people behave by and between each other. And I don;t have a good solution. My solution is I just don't use these tools anymore. I haven't for years.”

If the people running these companies don't use, nor allow their children to use, their own social media applications, what does that say? It is quite revealing to learn that many, if not most, social media administrators in Silicon Valley send their children to Waldorf Schools which generally forbid all electronics.

No one at the top is denying that the technology may be harming us, but are they admitting by their personal choices that it may be beyond their control? The question that remains may be that if you and I - the users of such technology – the ones generating all the data – can resist the temptation to be ever in touch with the world, can we begin to steer it in a better direction????

You're the Doctor: You Decide

Drinking Chlorox will kill the coronavirus. No question. But given the fact that it will also kill you if you drink it, it is not a very practical treatment. The media got all excited thinking the President was recommending that people drink bleach for coronavirus, but that was just more fake news. Bleach is liquid sodium hypochlorite, whose formula is NaClO. It is quite different from chlorine dioxide, whose formula is ClO2, which is a gaseous compound that works to disinfect pathogens very effectively through oxidation and is quite practical for killing the virus responsible for the recent outbreak.

ClO2 kills bacteria, viruses, and even cancer cells. Chlorine dioxide gas penetrates deep into every surface it comes into contact with. ClO2 has a molecular size of 0.124 nanometers. To get an idea of what that means, approximately 800 chlorine dioxide gas molecules would fit inside one ozone molecule. It is small enough that it can selectively target anaerobic pathogens and kill them through oxidation, an electrical reaction where one chemical steals the electrons of another. It works the same way as food grade hydrogen peroxide and ozone therapy. When a ClO2 molecule comes into contact with a virus or bacteria cell, it rips electrons from the cell and destroys it. Because of its sterilization ability and relative cheapness, this compound is commonly used in a variety of industries such as hospitals and restaurants.

The Environmental Protection Agency has it registered for these purposes. However, ClO2 isn't just used as an industrial cleaner, a stabilized version is commonly used by hikers and campers to kill waterborne pathogens for clean drinking water. I have used it in this way for many years before using UV Radiation to purify water. These potable water drops and tablets have chlorine dioxide listed as the main ingredient and can be easily purchased at any camping supply store.

Probably because it is inexpensive and yet very effective, the medical establishment has been trying to suppress the sharing of any potential health benefits of ClO2. Additionally, the FDA puts out warning letters about ClO2, calling it a deadly bleach without explanation, citing zero science or research about the compound. Yet, the military and the EPA use ClO2 at high dosages to tackle extreme contaminants like Anthrax and Ebola, and the USDA and even the FDA itself have chlorine dioxide registered to decontaminate with. Very unquestionable studies have been done showing chlorine dioxide to be effective at killing the coronavirus too. And while high dosages of most decontaminates are not safe to consume, low doses (like what hikers like me use for potable water and those drinking it internally to kill pathogens) can be very safe. Anything can harm or help depending on how you use it. Conscious usage is key.

Once upon a time I was a high school chemistry teacher, so I taught about chlorine dioxide for health supporting purposes. Today, many call it the “master mineral solution" or “miracle mineral supplement” or just MMS. Due to the viral nature of social media and with so many people waking up, information about MMS has become widespread. The FDA has attempted to counter the growing interest in MMS with two press releases. The first in 2010 was then re-released in 2019, entitled: “FDA warns consumers about the dangerous and potentially life threatening side effects of Miracle Mineral Solution." This from the FDA - a financially motivated agency that racks up millions in user fees per year (as part of their Prescription Drug User Fee Act), has approved deadly drugs like opioid painkillers, and only approved 'medical marijuana' after a man-made pharmaceutical version was created.

There used to be a considerable amount of information available about ClO2 on the internet, but that has been scrubbed off for at least three years now. The way they operate is that they censor the truth beforehand, then publish smears and lies afterward so that no one can search for any real information. Then, once they print that it’s a dangerous deadly bleach and claim people were harmed, the FDA is “forced” to take action. It's information warfare. Welcome to the new world.

There are some vendors that still sell it online, or you can make your own ClO2 gas. An easy way to make it is by combining sodium chlorite and citric acid solution in a small 1:1 ratio of drops in a clean glass and allow 30-60 seconds to activate. That’s pretty much it. When mixing the drops, it’s commonly referred to as 1 “drop of MMS/chlorine dioxide” when 1 drop of sodium chlorite is added to 1 drop of citric acid. 1+1=1 drop MMS. Easily dispensable bottles of sodium chlorite and citric acid can be purchased online at kvlab.com.

What about when to take these drops and how many? One of the more well known (but intensive) regimens is Jim Humble’s Protocol 1000, whereby one takes 3 drops of MMS (3+3) every hour for 8-12 hours a day. With a protocol like this where a small amount of ClO2 is getting into the blood for a prolonged period of time, it allows the compound to do more work on the pathogens in the body. If it were only taken twice a day, even in higher amounts, it still wouldn’t be in the body as long. One can also do “maintenance doses” of 5-10 drops of MMS once or twice a day. One can also use chlorine dioxide gas to help clear and cleanse the sinuses and respiratory tract by gently inhaling, holding, and exhaling for a few repetitions. An important warning about using ClO2 is the “Herxheimer Effect”, named after the doctor who first studied it. Essentially, if the body detoxifies too fast, it can cause nausea, stomach distress, or diarrhea. As such, it's important to start slow when detoxing the body.

The only anecdote I have to share is about a woman with stage 4 ovarian cancer who refused chemotherapy and successfully healed herself with a modified regimen of MMS and the Gerson Therapy. Take it or leave it. You can believe what the fake news and fake science would have you believe, or you can research for yourself and put their narratives to the test. Be aware that many organizations have special interests and will cite their own sources to promote a particular narrative. I’ve always found there to be no better teacher than personal experience. No source can surpass the knowledge you’ve gained from witnessing something first hand. The more knowledge you have from your research and experiences, the more you will know the truth of what’s really going on in the world, and how to manage any circumstances that may arise. I don't refer to anything as a "cure," for truly there are no cure-alls. I don’t believe in banking on one compound or pill to be our savior, which is why I don’t refer to chlorine dioxide as “magic.” Instead, I believe that we should be looking holistically at ourselves to figure out how we can practice prevention or to keep a situation from progressing. There are many powerful substances that are cheap, safe, natural, and readily available that can be used as part of this holistic regimen. It is only through our own ignorance that we don't know how to use them, let alone realize they exist. We must undo the mass programming. Knowledge is power.

Shattering Conventional Perceptions

Are we metaphysical beings?

What impact does our collective consciousness have on our physical material reality and the overall human experience?

Nikola Tesla is often attributed with saying, “The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence.” Many scientists, perhaps the majority of scientists in this field feel the same way, yet there is still a tremendous lack of attention paid to immaterial science in the mainstream academic world. This is odd given the fact that at the highest levels of government, usually with the Department of Defense, non physical phenomenon like telepathy, clairvoyance, remote viewing, pre-cognition and more are all and have been heavily studied and verified for a very long time. These phenomena are within the realm of parapsychology, which is directly intertwined with quantum physics.

In 2005, Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Johns Hopkins University, Richard Conn Henry, wrote: “A fundamental conclusion of the new physics also acknowledges that the observer creates the reality. As observers, we are personally involved with the creation of our own reality. Physicists are being forced to admit that the universe is a “mental” construction.”

Then pioneering physicist Sir James Jeans wrote: “The stream of knowledge is heading toward a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter, we ought rather hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter… The universe is immaterial - mental and spiritual.”

The underlying idea he makes with this statement is that in some way, shape, or form, consciousness is directly intertwined with what we perceive to be our physical material world, and that the nature of reality is made up of non-physical “stuff.” He goes on to emphasize how, in the modern day scientific world, “there have been serious attempts to preserve a material world – but they produce no new physics, and serve only to preserve an illusion.” This illusion he refers to is the idea that “the make up of our reality is strictly and fundamentally physical.”

So why is there such a strong resistance to adopting a quantum understanding of the world, leaving behind our Newtonian paradigm? Could it simply be the implications with regards to the findings within these realms are too great? When physics changes, so do global paradigms and the perceptions people have of our world. Some discoveries literally have the ability to shatter the way we perceive our world, and perhaps change the way we live and even have us question the way we live.

With so much evidence now showing us that human consciousness is directly intertwined with our physical material reality, it further suggests that our own feelings, emotions, perceptions, and ‘state of consciousness’ are key factors when it comes to creating and shaping the human experience. What state of being are we all operating from on a daily basis, and what impact does this have on our reality, on our human experience? If we want to change the world, how important is it that we create from a place of peace, and love?

What kind of reality are we going to create if our thoughts and perceptions of major global events are not really ours, but fabricated for us by some outside source like the mainstream media? How do we react to events? Are your thoughts and feelings about what happens on planet earth even yours? Or is your consciousness manipulated by powerful people with a selfish agenda? What kind of impact does this have on our state of being? If we want to create a new human experience, one thing is becoming increasingly clear - we can’t do it from the same level of consciousness that got us here in the first place.

Adapted from an article by Arjun Walia on 10.7.2020 in Collective-Evolution