“6 Steps to Release Your Fear and Feel Peaceful”

“6 Steps to Release Your Fear and Feel Peaceful”

by Nicolas Perrin

“We are not what we know but what we are willing to learn.”

~ Mary Catherine Bateson

“It was a balmy spring morning and I started my day as per usual, but I soon realized that my mind was entertaining fearful thoughts about my financial insecurity. With many new ventures within the seedling stage, my income flow was erratic and unpredictable, while my financial responsibilities were consistent and guaranteed. At the time I ignored these thoughts as “petty,” like a parent dismissing a crying child after a mild fall on the pavement.

What I didn’t realize was that my mind wanted to entertain these fear-based thoughts like a Hollywood blockbuster, and as you may know, what you focus on expands. Before I knew it, my body was in a state of complete anxiety and fear. I literally felt my cognitive and creative centers shutting down. I felt completely powerless, a hostage to my own mind. My body felt paralyzed, and I felt disconnected from my talents and gifts. I felt separate, isolated, and vulnerable. I became a victim of the fear. In this moment I realized the powerful impact thoughts can have on how we feel, mentally and physically. Here is what unfolded through me, and the lessons I treasured from this experience.

Fear is a closed energy, referred to as inverted faith. Fear exists when we do not trust our connection to the infinite part of who we are and buy into a story about what’s unfolding in our life. The emotions we feel are created from the thoughts that we choose to focus on, consciously or unconsciously. The emotions act as markers to let us know if we are focusing on expansive, empowering thoughts or fearful, limiting thoughts.

If I were to relate this in a story, it may be like a pilot believing he no longer had any guidance or support from the airport control tower in a large storm, and no instruments on board to detect if he was on a collision course with another airplane. If the control tower represents the infinite part of who we are, which always knows what’s best for us, it can be understandable why the pilot with no other guidance except for his own eye sight would be fearful of the situation at hand. An alarm on the plane beeping at the pilot would represent the emotions. The alarm’s purpose is to get the attention of the pilot so he can focus and realize he is off the path. Once our emotions start to take a grip of our physical body, what can we do to move from a state of limitation and fear into an open, tranquil, peaceful state?

1. Come back to the present moment. The first step is to bring your awareness to the present moment. To do this, take three deep breaths through your nose and exhale through your mouth. After the air has filled your lungs and you’ve felt your stomach rise, exhale through your mouth by forcing the air through your teeth, as if you were hissing out loud. This detoxifies your body from the heavy emotions you’re experiencing and brings you back into the present moment. When I do this, I place my awareness into my feet so I am in a feeling space within my body, rather than being in my mind, entertaining the stories that swirl around with vigor, like a dangerous hurricane. Imagine that all your emotions are in a large sludge bucket. This breathing technique will empty the bucket out so you are empty and free.

2. Put things in perspective. Now that you are present, acknowledge the experience and ask yourself this question: “What is the worst case scenario that can happen to me?” Once we can accept this and realize we will be okay if that happens, we are free from the fear. When I realized I’d blown things out of proportion with my fears, I was able to detach from the story and put things into perspective. I like to imagine that in every moment I have two wolves I can feed (per the Native American myth): the fear wolf or the love wolf. The one that gets stronger and wins is the one I feed.

3. Become an observer of your thoughts. What has served me well in moments like this is to say, “I’m not these thoughts. I’m not these emotions. I’m not this body. I’m an infinite being having a human experience.” In saying this, we immediately detach from the story and allow ourselves the choice of suffering or to become the observer. Imagine that your life is represented in a book, and the story you are living out comes from the words on the page. We can change the words of the story at any point in time.

4. Change your experience. The fourth step is to place your awareness and your right hand on the heart center, which is located near the sternum. Close your eyes, take three deep breaths, and make the following command: “I am now connected to the infinite part of who I am, which already knows how to be whole and complete. I take full responsibility and accountability for this creation, I recognize how it has served me, and I am now ready to let it go. I command that the fear energy be transmuted into unconditional love now. Thank you. It is now done.” This process is incredibly empowering. We allow ourselves the opportunity to experience being our own inner master and a co-creator of our reality.

5. Prevent your mind from sabotaging you. Visualize a stone being thrown into a pond. Observe the ripples it creates when it enters the water. This is to simply distract your mind and allow the process to unfold without doubt or self-sabotage. It is only our mind that can interfere with our own healing.

6. Be grateful. Express gratitude and appreciation for the integration and healing you have received. The key to happiness is awareness. When we become aware that our mind is wandering, we can gently bring it back to the present moment. It’s only in the present moment that we are empowered and can consciously choose the thoughts we engage with. The thoughts we focus on will determine where our energy flows, and thus what is created in our life. Each thought has a vibration, which is reflected by the feeling we experience in our body. To be able to move from a fear-based experience to an open, peaceful experience we must first take full responsibility and accountability that on some level we created the experience, and nobody else is to blame. The choice is truly ours. Do we choose to experience a fearful, limited life or do we choose a happy joyful life?"

- http://tinybuddha.com/

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Reduce fear, good. Reduce stress also...

Full screen recommended.

Marconi Union, "Weightless"

"Neuroscience Says Listening to This Song 

Reduces Anxiety by Up to 65 Percent"

- https://www.inc.com/melanie-curtin/

○

Think more clearly...

"Cognition Enhancer For Clearer and Faster Thinking - 

Isochronic Tones"

Full screen recommended.

"This session stimulates Beta, SMR and Alpha to train your 

brain for better cognition, such as clearer and faster thinking."

"So It Was All A Lie In Ukraine And They Can't Hide It Anymore"

Scott Ritter, 7/24/23

"Ukraine, An In-depth Analysis"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Redacted, 7/24/23

"So It Was All A Lie In Ukraine And 

They Can't Hide It Anymore"

"Redacted is back with a big update on military advancements in Ukraine as the western media runs out of lies to tell about the war. Col. Douglad MacGregor joins Redacted to discuss the latest news. "

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

The Daily "Near You?"

Camberwell, Southwark, United Kingdom. Thanks for stopping by!

"Life Comes at You Fast, So You Better Be Ready"

"Life Comes at You Fast, So You Better Be Ready"

by Ryan Holiday

"In 1880, Theodore Roosevelt wrote to his brother, “My happiness is so great that it makes me almost afraid.” In October of that year, life got even better. As he wrote in his diary the night of his wedding to Alice Hathaway Lee, “Our intense happiness is too sacred to be written about.” He would consider it to be one of the best years of his life: he got married, wrote a book, attended law school, and won his first election for public office.

The streak continued. In 1883, he wrote “I can imagine nothing more happy in life than an evening spent in the cozy little sitting room, before a bright fire of soft coal, my books all around me, and playing backgammon with my own dainty mistress.” And that’s how he and Alice spent that cold winter as it crawled into the new year. He wrote in late January that he felt he was fully coming into his own. “I feel now as though I have the reins in my hand.” On February 12th, 1884 his first daughter was born.

Two days later, his wife would be dead of Bright’s disease (now known as kidney failure). His mother had died only hours earlier in the same house, of typhoid fever. Roosevelt marked the day in his diary with a large “X.” Next to it, he wrote, “The light has gone out of my life.”

Life comes at us fast, don’t it?  It can change in an instant. Everything you built, everyone you hold dear, can be taken from you. For absolutely no reason. Just as easily, you can be taken from them. This is why the Stoics say we need to be prepared, constantly, for the twists and turns of Fortune. It’s why Seneca said that nothing happens to the wise man contrary to his expectation, because the wise man has considered every possibility—even the cruel and heartbreaking ones.

And yet even Seneca was blindsided by a health scare in his early twenties that forced him to spend nearly a decade in Egypt to recover. He lost his father less than a year before he lost his first-born son, and twenty days after burying his son he was exiled by the emperor Caligula. He lived through the destruction of one city by a fire and another by an earthquake, before being exiled two more times.

One needs only to read his letters and essays, written on a rock off the coast of Italy, to get a sense that even a philosopher can get knocked on their ass and feel sorry for themselves from time to time.

What do we do? Well, first, knowing that life comes at us fast, we should be always prepared. Seneca wrote that the fighter who has “seen his own blood, who has felt his teeth rattle beneath his opponent’s fist… who has been downed in body but not in spirit…” - only they can go into the ring confident of their chances of winning. They know they can take getting bloodied and bruised. They know what the darkness before the proverbial dawn feels like. They have a true and accurate sense for the rhythms of a fight and what winning requires. That sense only comes from getting knocked around. That sense is only possible because of their training.

In his own life, Seneca bloodied and bruised himself through a practice called premeditatio malorum (“the premeditation of evils”). Rehearsing his plans, say to take a trip, he would go over the things that could go wrong or prevent the trip from happening - a storm could spring up, the captain could fall ill, the ship could be attacked by pirates, he could be banished to the island of Corsica the morning of the trip. By doing what he called a premeditatio malorum, Seneca was always prepared for disruption and always working that disruption into his plans. He was fitted for defeat or victory. He stepped into the ring confident he could take any blow. Nothing happened contrary to his expectations.

Life comes at us fast… but that doesn’t mean we should be stupid. We also shouldn’t be arrogant.

We have to hang on. Remember, that in the depths of both of Seneca’s darkest moments, he was unexpectedly saved. From exile, he was suddenly recalled to be the emperor’s tutor. In the words of the historian Richard M. Gummere, “Fortune, whom Seneca as a Stoic often ridicules, came to his rescue.” But Churchill, as always, put it better: “Sometimes when Fortune scowls most spitefully, she is preparing her most dazzling gifts.”

Life is like this. It gives us bad breaks - heartbreakingly bad breaks - and it also gives us incredible lucky breaks. Sometimes the ball that should have gone in, bounces out. Sometimes the ball that had no business going in surprises both the athlete and the crowd when it eventually, after several bounces, somehow manages to pass through the net.

When we’re going through a bad break, we should never forget Fortune’s power to redeem us. When we’re walking through the roses, we should never forget how easily the thorns can tear us upon, how quickly we can be humbled. Sometimes life goes your way, sometimes it doesn’t.

This is what Theodore Roosevelt learned, too. Despite what he wrote in his diary that day in 1884, the light did not completely go out of Roosevelt’s life. Sure, it flickered. It looked like the flame might have been cruelly extinguished. But with time and incredible energy and force of will, he came back from those tragedies. He became a great father, a great husband, and a great leader. He came back and the world was better for it. He was better for it.

Life comes at us fast. Today. Tomorrow. When we least expect it. Be ready. Be strong. Don’t let your light be snuffed out."

- https://ryanholiday.net/

The Poet: Mary Oliver, "What I Have Learned So Far"

"What I Have Learned So Far"

"Meditation is old and honorable, so why should I

not sit, every morning of my life, on the hillside,

looking into the shining world? Because, properly

attended to, delight, as well as havoc, is suggestion.

Can one be passionate about the just, the

ideal, the sublime, and the holy, and yet commit

to no labor in its cause? I don't think so.

All summations have a beginning, all effect has a

story, all kindness begins with the sown seed.

Thought buds toward radiance. The gospel of

light is the crossroads of - indolence, or action.

Be ignited, or be gone."

~ Mary Oliver

"Figuring Forward in an Uncertain Universe"

"Figuring Forward in an Uncertain Universe"

by Maria Popova

"We make things and seed them into the world, never fully knowing - often never knowing at all - whom they will reach and how they will blossom in other hearts, how their meaning will unfold in contexts we never imagined. (W.S. Merwin captured this poignantly in the final lines of his gorgeous poem “Berryman.”)

Today I offer something a little apart from the usual, or sidelong rather, amid these unusual times: A couple of days ago, I received a moving note from a woman who had read "Figuring" and found herself revisiting the final page - it was helping her, she said, live through the terror and confusion of these uncertain times. I figured I’d share that page - which comes after 544 others, tracing centuries of human loves and losses, trials and triumphs, that gave us some of the crowning achievements of our civilization - in case it helps anyone else.

Click image for larger size.

Meanwhile, someplace in the world, somebody is making love and another a poem. Elsewhere in the universe, a star manyfold the mass of our third-rate sun is living out its final moments in a wild spin before collapsing into a black hole, its exhale bending spacetime itself into a well of nothingness that can swallow every atom that ever touched us and every datum we ever produced, every poem and statue and symphony we’ve ever known - an entropic spectacle insentient to questions of blame and mercy, devoid of why.

In four billion years, our own star will follow its fate, collapsing into a white dwarf. We exist only by chance, after all. The Voyager will still be sailing into the interstellar shorelessness on the wings of the “heavenly breezes” Kepler had once imagined, carrying Beethoven on a golden disc crafted by a symphonic civilization that long ago made love and war and mathematics on a distant blue dot.

But until that day comes, nothing once created ever fully leaves us. Seeds are planted and come abloom generations, centuries, civilizations later, migrating across coteries and countries and continents. Meanwhile, people live and people die - in peace as war rages on, in poverty and disrepute as latent fame awaits, with much that never meets its more, in shipwrecked love.

I will die.

You will die.

The atoms that huddled for a cosmic blink around the shadow of a self will return to the seas that made us. What will survive of us are shoreless seeds and stardust."

- https://www.brainpickings.org/

"How It Really Is"

Bill Bonner, "The Big Switch"

"The Big Switch"

From the monetary front to the fiscal front, 

inflation continues to rage...

by Bill Bonner

Poitou, France - “He just refuses to die.” Our neighbor came over for an ‘apero’ yesterday. She told us about her poor father. “He’s 96 years old. He and my mother have been married more than 70 years. But he pointed to her last week and asked me: “Who’s that woman?” “It’s sad. He’s lived in that house for 50 years…but he can’t remember where the bathroom is. “When he got the Covid virus, we all thought he was going to die. But he just lost his mind.” What has to happen will happen, sooner or later. Often, it takes longer than you expect.

The Fed has increased its key lending rate faster and more than any Fed ever did. But the stock market hasn’t crashed. Unemployment is still low. And we’re still waiting for the recession. How come?

The Big Switch: Last week, we were exploring the issue. The secret, we believe, is that the federales have lost their minds. The Trump Team went bonkers in the Covid Hysteria, with a deficit of $4.2 trillion in 2020…then the Biden Bunch followed up with another $1.4 trillion deficit in 2021. (On Friday, we got distracted by RFK, Jr.’s congressional testimony…to which we will return tomorrow.) In the meantime…

It’s still ‘inflate or die.’ But now, consumer prices are coming down (No, they're not. - CP)…and the economy still lives. The reason, we believe, is that the source of inflation has largely switched from the monetary front (the Fed’s interest rates) to the fiscal front (federal deficits). The Fed is still lending at around zero cost in real terms. But now, in addition, the federal government is running the biggest budget deficits in history.

‘Inflation’ refers, technically, to an increase in the money supply…which typically leads to an increase in prices. In today’s global economy, you don’t even have to spike your own punchbowl; about half of the world’s central banks are still lending money below the inflation rate…some as low as 6% below consumer price increases. Some of it is likely to leak in your direction. But there are other ways to enliven a party. Turn up the music. Bring in a stripper. Pass out the hard drugs.

For the last 12 months, the US government has been throwing the biggest shindig in history – spending about $130 billion per week – or nearly 14% more than the year before…and 40% more than before the Covid era blowout. Bank bailouts…the slaughter in the Ukraine…a boondoggle for the silicon chip industry – it adds up. And now, government spending is headed toward 39% of the US economy (see below). Not since WWII has so much of US output been squandered by the government.

Bananaless Republic: The federales are taking charge of everything – deciding which industries will prosper and which won’t ...which news reports are ‘disinformation’ and which are truth…telling foreigners what kind of governments they must have, where their borders should be, and with whom they should trade. The feds rig US markets…crony-fy its capitalism…and run deficits more suited to a Banana Republic (without the bananas!) than to a serious, developed country.

The Biden administration, like the Trump Team before it, is not holding back. David Stockman: "For fiscal year 2023 to date the U.S. federal deficit is up a staggering $900 billion to nearly $1.4 trillion. That’s because YTD revenues are down $422 billion while outlays are higher by $455 billion."

You can’t make this up. The one-time capital gains windfall harvested in FY 2022 is long gone, but they are still spending like drunken sailors. During the first nine months of FY 2023 receipts of $3.4 trillion covered only 71% of outlays at $4.8 trillion. Back in the day that would have been called Keynesian fiscal stimulus with a vengeance. But, alas, we supposedly have an overheated economy with a historically low unemployment rate of 3.6%, but are running a budget deficit at 7% of GDP. (That's incorrect. "May 2023 ShadowStats Alternate Unemployment increased to 24.7% from 24.6% on top of U.6 increasing to 6.7% from 6.6%"

 - CP)

Here’s the Financial Times with further comment: "Within 10 years, US government interest payments will exceed spending on defense and on social programs such as Medicaid. Through 2025, the trillions unleashed by this administration will push government spending up to 39 per cent of GDP, most of it not covered by new revenue. In other big developed economies, spending is poised to fall sharply as a share of GDP, while revenues hold up relatively well. Under pressure from Congress last month, Biden signed the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023, creating the appearance of a new restraint. Despite what look like large spending cuts of $1.3tn over 10 years, the US deficit is still projected to hover near 6 per cent of GDP throughout the next decade."

When the Music Stops: The Fed, trying to pin the blame on anyone but itself, did a study showing that while more than 60% of the price increases came from ‘excess demand,’ half of that demand came from the federal government’s deficits.

Government spending is not in itself “inflationary.” If the funds were borrowed honestly, the money supply would not increase. Consumer prices would not necessarily go up. Instead, as the feds’ borrowing increased, eventually interest rates would go up…stifling investment and spending, leading to a weaker economy and lower prices. That is what is happening now…but slowly. The yield on the US 2-year note has gone from around 2.7% a year ago, to nearly 5% today…while the price of oil has fallen from over $120 a barrel last summer to under $80 today.

Like monetary inflation, fiscal inflation (bigger deficits) can keep the party going…for a while. But the underlying pattern is much the same – bringing spending forward, while depriving the future of savings and investment. And either way, whether the source is fiscal or monetary, the formula is the same: either the inflation continues…or the boom dies."

- https://bonnerprivateresearch.substack.com/

Jim Kunstler, "The Purple Hour"

"The Purple Hour"

by Jim Kunstler

“I have a dream that the people we elect to run the 

government will be the ones who actually run the government.”

- Vivek Ramaswamy

"The hour is late for “Joe Biden.” His sojourn in America’s highest office was one long twilight of pretending to be effectual, or merely present, and now even that abject pantomime slips into a place of nullity, where all is still and dark. What does he do these languorous weekends at the fabled Delaware beach house? Stare out at the empty Atlantic horizon over an uneaten egg salad sandwich with the crusts cut off? Does he even suspect that the world is already turning without him?

The pressure is mounting for some group of somebodies to arrange his exit from the scene. Of course, there is no public discussion of that among the somebodies because everything they have been doing for years happens sub rosa, in addition to being of dubious legality. Despite the most formidable praetorian protections - a depraved Justice Department, a Gestapo-caliber FBI, a debauched news media - the arrows of culpability are flying clean through the beach house windows at that immobilized figure sitting in the crepuscular gloom.

Forgive me for bringing this up, but remember the first impeachment of Mr. Trump on the grounds of a phone call to freshly-minted President Z in Ukraine pertaining to some fishy matters around the Burisma gas company? Yes, Mr. T was impeached over a mere inquiry into possible misconduct by a former high US official (being one “Joe Biden,” ex-veep) and his bag-man son. The setup was patently obvious even to us bloggers who enjoy no intimate correspondence with organelles of the DC Blob. A CIA spook “whistleblower” named Eric Ciaramella (sssshhhh) was injected into the scene with help from the devious Col. Vindman at NSA and an assist from Intel Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson…and voila! Recall the solemn pageantry of Nancy Pelosi’s march across the Capitol rotunda with the hallowed bill of impeachment on a satin pillow….

And now, more than three years later, the nation is informed of all the particulars around those Burisma Company’s doings with the Biden family in granular detail ($5-million plus $5-million), laying out just one instance of treasonous moneygrubbing by this family among many grifts in other nations. And in case of any lingering questions - if the news media were not a pseudopod of the Blob - a long roster of bank transfer records has been assembled by Rep. Comer of the House Oversight Committee to validate the deal memos, emails and audio recordings already available for inspection in the alt.news.

You realize, don’t you, that the DOJ and the FBI had all of this info (a.k.a evidence) in its possession even before Trump impeachment number one? AG William Barr and FBI Director Wray could have stepped up at any time after October, 2019, and said, “Oh, here’s what that phone call to Z was about.” That they didn’t is arguably the most blatant crime among scores of crimes committed by the Blob in the Trump and post-Trump years.

"Federal Justice Manual 9-5.000, Section B: Constitutional obligation to ensure a fair trial and disclose material exculpatory and impeachment evidence. Government disclosure of material exculpatory and impeachment evidence is part of the constitutional guarantee to a fair trial. Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83, 87 (1963). The law requires the disclosure of exculpatory and impeachment evidence when such evidence is material to guilt or punishment.”

So now the Blob is desperate to jettison this embodiment of its corruption and lawlessness, “Joe Biden,” before the Trump-deranged masses start paying attention to the distant yelling from the asteroid belt of actual news beyond noisy Planet MSNBC. The Blob will be fighting for its very life anyway. The Ukraine operation is not proceeding according to plan. Do you know why? Answer: because it was a stupid plan concocted by purblind Neocon idiots. Russia has been insulted to the degree that it deems America unworthy of negotiation - meaning Russia will bring the Ukraine mess to a conclusion on its terms. They will take care to do it gingerly, so as not to further inflame the psychosis afflicting America and tempt us into even grosser stupidities. Namely, they will insist on a neutral Ukraine with no foreign operators in it and some rearrangement of Ukraine’s borders. America will have to lump it. The Blob Neocon faction will blame the whole lamentable affair on “Joe Biden,” who, by then, will be gone from the White House.

How does that happen? The 25th Amendment, since we are now at the point where his infirmity is as hard to ignore as the evidence of his crimes. How the Blob deals with his successor, the distressing Ms. Harris, is another bridge to cross. The switcheroo itself may be enough to tank the financial markets, which will give the restive nation something else to think about: the personal ruin of every household in the land. Then, things get really interesting."

- https://kunstler.com/

"Cash Will Be A Crime"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly 7/24/23

"Cash Will Be A Crime"

"Where did your money come from? This will be the question of the day. We are seeing banks limit cash deposits. This is only going to get worse."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"India's Export Ban On Rice Will Affect The Entire World! Prices Surge & Shortages Coming!"

Adventures With Danno, 7/24/23

"India's Export Ban On Rice Will Affect 

The Entire World! Prices Surge & Shortages Coming!"

"In today's vlog, we notice that India has put an export ban on rice, which is 40% of the world's rice supply. This is troubling news as we are already struggling with inflation at an all-time high and will surely cause prices to skyrocket! In our discussion, we talk about how we must prepare for this situation and plan accordingly!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

"World Food Supply Panic As India Bans Rice Exports"

"Expect A 'Severe' Economic Downturn And More Inflation, Here's Why"

Gregory Mannarino, 7/24/23

"Expect A 'Severe' Economic Downturn 

And More Inflation, Here's Why"

- https://traderschoice.net/

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Economic Market Snapshot 7/24/23"

"Economic Market Snapshot 7/24/23"

Market Data Center, Live Updates:

- https://www.marketwatch.com/market-data 

○

Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...

Only the consequences are real - to you!

○

"It's a Big Club, and you ain't in it. 

You and I are not in the Big Club."

- George Carlin

○

- https://www.asktraders.com/analysis/

○

A comprehensive, essential daily read.

- http://www.shadowstats.com/

○

Financial Stress Index

"The OFR Financial Stress Index (OFR FSI) is a daily market-based snapshot of stress in global financial markets. It is constructed from 33 financial market variables, such as yield spreads, valuation measures, and interest rates. The OFR FSI is positive when stress levels are above average, and negative when stress levels are below average. The OFR FSI incorporates five categories of indicators: credit, equity valuation, funding, safe assets and volatility. The FSI shows stress contributions by three regions: United States, other advanced economies, and emerging markets."

○

- https://www.dailyjobcuts.com/

Job cuts and much more.

○

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

○

- https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/

○

- https://wallstreetonparade.com/

○

- https://www.whatreallyhappened.com/

○

- https://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/

○

Commentary, highly recommended:

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

○

"The more I see of the monied classes,

the better I understand the guillotine."

- George Bernard Shaw

○

Oh yeah... beyond words. Any I know anyway...

○

And now... The End Game...

o

"Ukraine Cannot Win This War: It's Time To Negotiate With Putin"

Col. Douglas Macgregor, 7/23/23

"Ukraine Cannot Win This War:

 It's Time To Negotiate With Putin"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com

- https://londonreal.tv/

o

Scott Ritter, 7/23/23

"No Choice But to End the War"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Working At Lowe's Is Dangerous; Your Pension Might Be In Trouble; Housing Crash 2.0"

Jeremiah Babe, 7/23/23

"Working At Lowe's Is Dangerous; 

Your Pension Might Be In Trouble; Housing Crash 2.0"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"15 Big Box Retailers Collapsing Before Our Eyes"

Full screen recommended.

"15 Big Box Retailers Collapsing Before Our Eyes"

by Epic Economist

"This is the toughest economic environment many famous retailers have ever been in, and recent numbers are proof of that. Retail sales just fell again last month, as inflation continued to hit shoppers' buying power and rising interest rates limited access to credit. Meanwhile, companies are paying more for their merchandise, labor, energy, and transportation while their profit margins continue to shrink and their debt reaches unprecedented levels. Many of them have been struggling way before the current crisis began, and they've been hanging by a very thin thread that may break as economic conditions worsen this year.

For example, even after experiencing a major revamp since it filed for bankruptcy in 2020, the apparel retailer Victoria's Secret hasn’t seen a notable improvement in its financial results. After reporting a 9% sales decline in January, Q2 sales fell by an additional 7% as high-priced items pushed away American consumers trying to save. The rise of independent and online brands is making Victoria’s Secret products less and less attractive in this highly competitive market. Over 300 stores have been permanently closed in the past three years, and at least another 50 are scheduled to close in 2023. The pricey brand’s woes are likely to intensify as consumer spending dries up amid deteriorating economic conditions and limited credit. Retail experts say that a second bankruptcy may be in the cards for the chain given that profitability issues have further aggravated in the past 12 months.

Similarly, Shoe retailer Foot Locker is on bankruptcy watchlist as performance continues to disappoint amid falling foot traffic. In March, the company said it could shutter 400 U.S. retail stores, and close another 125 stores operated by its Champs Sports subsidiary. The retailer’s total sales for Q1 2023 were $1.92 billion compared to $2.17 billion year-over-year. Net income for the three-month period ending April 29 was $36 million — a sharp drop from the $132 million reported for the period in 2022. CEO Mary Dillon attributed Foot Locker’s sales decline to the “tough macroeconomic backdrop” that forced the company to lower product prices to “both drive demand and manage inventory.” As a result, the company’s revenue is expected to shrink by a whopping 10% for the year. The 11.4% drop in sales in the past quarter also led Foot Locker’s stock to crash by 27% in a single day. The outlook is getting ugly for the brand, which desperately needs a new reorganization plan to survive the recession.

Popular discount store chain Marshalls hasn’t been immune from store closings and higher costs in the past few years. Right now, the company is conducting dozens of store closings, with locations in Minnesota and Pennsylvania shutting down this month. The brand is failing to differentiate itself from other discount retailers in the same category, and even after it launched a website in 2022, sales remained flat or in negative territory in the past 12 months. The firm blamed the slowdown in underlying sales on the ‘uncertain macro-economic climate’. Executives also warned that full-year results would miss expectations, which led shares to drop by 15%, reversing all of its 2021 gains.

Businesses are in for some major turbulence in the second half of 2023 and well into 2024. American consumers are still hurting, and spending is expected to continue to decline as job losses rise, and stagflation hits the U.S. A historic economic downturn is already in motion, and by the time we reach the end of it, hundreds of iconic stores will be long gone. That's why today, we listed several declining popular brands that may disappear before the end of 2023."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Watch How Fast This Falls"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly 7/23/23

"Watch How Fast This Falls"

"Yellow Trucking is one of the largest trucking companies in the United States. They’re about to file bankruptcy. This is bad for two reasons. 22,000 employees will lose their union jobs and it shows the state of the economy when it comes to the lack of shipping. Plus, restaurants are adding surcharges that are completely outrageous right now."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

"'This Company Is Likely Done': Yellow Truck Drivers 

Ponder Next Moves Amid Potential Bankruptcy"

Musical Interlude: 2002, "An Ocean Apart"

Full screen recommended.

2002, "An Ocean Apart"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"In the lower left corner, surrounded by blue spiral arms, is spiral galaxy M81. In the upper right corner, marked by red gas and dust clouds, is irregular galaxy M82. This stunning vista shows these two mammoth galaxies locked in gravitational combat, as they have been for the past billion years. The gravity from each galaxy dramatically affects the other during each hundred million-year pass.

Click image for larger size.

Last go-round, M82's gravity likely raised density waves rippling around M81, resulting in the richness of M81's spiral arms. But M81 left M82 with violent star forming regions and colliding gas clouds so energetic the galaxy glows in X-rays. This big battle is seen from Earth through the faint glow of an Integrated Flux Nebula, a little studied complex of diffuse gas and dust clouds in our Milky Way Galaxy. In a few billion years only one galaxy will remain."

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap160203.html

o

"When observing the stars, you should see them in another perspective. Take into account what they really are: the mothers of the atoms from which we are constituted, the atoms that constitute the mortal and thinking species that admire the sun as a god, a father or a nuclear power station. The particles that were composed at the beginning of the Universe, the atoms that were forged in the stars, the molecules that were constituted on Earth or in another place… all that is also inside us."

- Michel Cassé, French astro-physicist, "Desafio do Século XXI"

Chet Raymo, "As Time Goes By"

"As Time Goes By"

by Chet Raymo

"Is time something that is defined by the ticking of a cosmic clock, God's wristwatch say? Time doesn't exist except for the current tick. The past is irretrievably gone. The future does not yet exist. Consciousness is awareness of a moment. Or is time a dimension like space? We move through time as we move through space. The past is still there; we're just not there anymore. The future exists; we'll get there. We experience time as we experience space, say, by looking out the window of a moving train. Or is time…

Physicists and philosophers have been debating these questions since the pre-Socratics. Plato. Newton. Einstein. Most recently, Lee Smolin. Without resolution. What makes the question so difficult, it seems to me, is that time is inextricably tied up with consciousness. We won't understand time until we understand consciousness, and vice versa. So far, consciousness is a mystery, in spite of books with titles like "Consciousness Explained". Will consciousness be explained? Can consciousness be explained? If so, will it require a conceptual breakthrough of revolutionary proportions? Or is the Darwinian/material paradigm enough? Are we in for an insight, or for a surprise?

As I sit here at my desk under the hill, looking out at a vast panorama of earth, sea and sky, filled, it would seem, infinitely full of detail, so full that my awareness can only skim the surface, I have that uneasy sense that it's going to be damnably difficult to extract consciousness, as a thing, from the universe in its totality. I think of that word "entanglement," from quantum theory, and I wonder to what extent consciousness is entangled, perhaps even with past and future.

Who knows? Perhaps consciousness, or what I think of as my consciousness, is just a slice of cosmic consciousness, in the same way that the present is a slice of cosmic time. As a good Ockhamist, I am loathe to needlessly multiply hypotheses. But time will tell. Or consciousness will tell. Or something.”

- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/

o

The Alan Parsons Project, "Time"

The Poet: Linda Pastan, “What We Want”

“What We Want”

“What we want

is never simple.

We move among the things

we thought we wanted:

a face, a room, an open book

and these things bear our names-

now they want us.

But what we want appears

in dreams, wearing disguises.

We fall past,

holding out our arms

and in the morning

our arms ache.

We don’t remember the dream,

but the dream remembers us.

It is there all day

as an animal is there

under the table,

as the stars are there

even in full sun.”

- Linda Pastan

"And The Hell Of It Is..."

“You go up to a man, and you say, “How are things going, Joe?” and he says, “Oh fine, fine... couldn’t be better.” And you look into his eyes, and you see things really couldn’t be much worse. When you get right down to it, everybody’s having a perfectly lousy time of it, and I mean everybody. And the hell of it is, nothing seems to help much.” - Kurt Vonnegut

"People are sad. People are broke. People are worried about money, people are worried that they're not enough and not amounting to anything and they don't feel good about themselves. People have rough times, and everybody's pretending it's not true, and we need to break that veneer." - Eve Ensler

The Daily "Near You?"

Richland Center, Wisconsin, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"How to Handle the Beast"

"How to Handle the Beast"

by David Cain

"The Beast showed up around Christmas last year, and stayed till April. During those months it was difficult to get anything done, or believe getting things done was a thing I could still do. You might know the Beast too. It has many forms. The Doom-Anxiety Beast. The Regret Beast. The Despair Beast. The Shame Beast. Psychologists have names for some of them.

Whatever the form, the Beast has certain characteristics. It saps your sense of agency and forward motion. It robs you of what might feel like your birthright: the basic ability to function to society’s standards. You lose the sense that you can steer the boat. The Beast may stay away for weeks or months or years. Then one Thursday afternoon, when one too many things goes wrong, it darkens your doorway again and you know that life might be different for a while.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, that’s a good thing. Many of you do though. For what it’s worth, I’ll share what I’ve learned about tangling with the Beast.

As you already know, the Beast especially likes to visit during the holidays, or sometimes just after. It takes advantage of stress, isolation, and any sense of non-belonging you already feel. It wants to reduce you to a robotic pattern of habits and appetites. However, it can never quite steal that last bit of agency from you. There is always enough wriggle-space beneath it to do small, defiant things. This bit of space is what we will use to handle the Beast.

Assume your full height: Physically, I mean. The Beast can’t stop you from standing up straight, but it sure doesn’t want you to. It wants you to lower your head and drop your shoulders forward, especially in public – otherwise you might start to consider the possibility that you are in some way worthy, or even formidable. Upright posture doesn’t just symbolize resilience in the face of suffering, it creates the resilience. Be your full height. Return to it again and again.

Remember that the Beast is survivable: The Beast’s presence feels like you’ve been evicted from normal life, at least for now. Nothing is stable, and you can’t do what you need to do. It feels like you can’t possibly live at all until the Beast is gone. Human history proves this is false. While the Beast can’t be ignored or destroyed, it can be lived with, and it has been. Human beings have cohabited with Beasts forever, often for years at a time. Life still happens during those years. Choices are still made, and good things are still accomplished.

What I’m trying to say is that taking action and finding meaning are possible even while the Beast is present. The conditions are different, but you still have agency. Life is still happening, and it still counts.

Discover the power of small acts of defiance: Whenever you feel the Beast sapping your will, do something – anything – that will improve your situation in even the smallest way. Straighten a crooked picture. Put all your stray pencils into a cup. The point isn’t so much to get things done, it’s to exercise the small bit agency you do have. One little act of defiance proves to both you and the Beast that it cannot clamp down on you completely. The earlier you do this in a day, the greater the effect. Anything you do get done can weaken the Beast in a different way. By changing the state of things around you, you may be removing one of the Beast’s handholds, such as the laundry on your floor or the call you are not returning.

Lift things and clean: Physical exertion and cleaning up are the closest thing I’ve found to kryptonite for the Beast. A little of either can change a day’s trajectory, and remove more handholds. Do a daily movement routine, even if it’s really easy. Even if it’s the equivalent of three pushups. Each one weakens the Beast, because it is an act against gravity. You are exercising your agency indirect opposition to the Beast’s inertia. Get the house to a tidyish state if you can - a single room if you can’t - and keep it that way the best you’re able. Clutter is madness congealed.

Talk to people who know the Beast: Nothing has been as helpful for me as getting to know other people who know the Beast and are willing talk about it. There is tremendous relief to be found just describing your experience to someone:

“Mental pain is less dramatic than physical pain, but it is more common and also more hard to bear. The frequent attempt to conceal mental pain increases the burden: it is easier to say “My tooth is aching” than to say “My heart is broken.”

- C.S. Lewis

The goal of talking is not to problem-solve, but to break the illusion that something has gone uniquely wrong for you. Our species knows the Beast well, but we don’t talk about it much. I suppose that’s because it’s hard to win at the rat race and other public-facing status games when you admit you are suffering. But suffering less is more important."

- https://www.raptitude.com/

"Challenges..."

"When we least expect it, life sets us a challenge to test our courage and willingness to change; at such a moment, there is no point in pretending that nothing has happened or in saying that we are not yet ready. The challenge will not wait. Life does not look back."

- Paulo Coelho

"Global Planned Financial Tsunami Has Just Begun" (Excerpt)

"Global Planned Financial Tsunami Has Just Begun"

by F. William Engdahl

Excerpt: "Since the creation of the US Federal Reserve over a century ago, every major financial market collapse has been deliberately triggered for political motives by the central bank. The situation is no different today, as clearly the US Fed is acting with its interest rate weapon to crash what is the greatest speculative financial bubble in human history, a bubble it created. Global crash events always begin on the periphery, such as with the 1931 Austrian Creditanstalt or the Lehman Bros. failure in September 2008. The June 15 decision by the Fed to impose the largest single rate hike in almost 30 years as financial markets are already in a meltdown, now guarantees a global depression and worse.

The extent of the “cheap credit” bubble that the Fed, the ECB and Bank of Japan have engineered with buying up of bonds and maintaining unprecedented near-zero or even negative interest rates for now 14 years, is beyond imagination. Financial media cover it over with daily nonsense reporting , while the world economy is being readied, not for so-called “stagflation” or recession. What is coming now in the coming months, barring a dramatic policy reversal, is the worst economic depression in history to date. Thank you, globalization and Davos."

Full, highly recommended article is here:

- https://www.globalresearch.ca/