“In one of the brightest parts of Milky Way lies a nebula where some of the oddest things occur. NGC 3372, known as the Great Nebula in Carina, is home to massive stars and changing nebulas. The Keyhole Nebula (NGC 3324), the bright structure just above the image center, houses several of these massive stars and has itself changed its appearance.
The entire Carina Nebula spans over 300 light years and lies about 7,500 light-years away in the constellation of Carina. Eta Carinae, the most energetic star in the nebula, was one of the brightest stars in the sky in the 1830s, but then faded dramatically. Eta Carinae is the brightest star near the image center, just left of the Keyhole Nebula. While Eta Carinae itself maybe on the verge of a supernova explosion, X-ray images indicate that much of the Great Carina Nebula has been a veritable supernova factory.”
“Several years ago, I attended a seminar on the foundations of ethical systems. The participants quoted Plato, Jesus, Heidegger, and a host of other authorities; they trotted out every philosophical and theological reason why we can or should be good. Of course, prominent among the arguments was that old canard: Without the promise of eternal salvation or the threat of damnation, we would all be scoundrels.
No one mentioned that we are first of all biological creatures with an evolutionary history, and that altruism, aggression, fidelity, promiscuity, nurturing and violence might be part of our animal natures.
I looked around the auditorium and saw folks of every religious and philosophical persuasion, and of many cultural and ethnic backgrounds, and I thought, "Gee, I'd trust any one of these folks not to take my wallet in a dark alley." Sure, humans are capable of great evil, but most of us are pretty good most of the time, and I suspect that it has more to do with where we have been as a biological species than with where we hope to be going in some airy-fairy afterlife.
We are animals who have evolved the capacity to cherish our fellow humans and to resist for the common good our innate tendencies to aggression and selfishness, not because we have been plucked out of our animal selves by some sky hook from above, but because we have been nudged into reflective consciousness by evolution. When it comes to living in a civilized way on a crowded planet, I choose to put my faith in the long leash of the genes rather than fear of hellfire or the chance to walk on streets of gold.”
"Well, it is our fate to live in a time of crisis. To live in a time when all forms and values are being challenged. In other and more easy times, it was not, perhaps, necessary for the individual to confront himself with a clear question: What is it that you really believe? What is it that you really cherish? What is it for which you might, actually, in a showdown, be willing to die? I say, with all the reticence which such large, pathetic words evoke, that one cannot exist today as a person – one cannot exist in full consciousness – without having to have a showdown with one’s self, without having to define what it is that one lives by, without being clear in one’s mind what matters and what does not matter.”
"In 1906, Alfred Henry Lewis stated, “There are only nine meals between mankind and anarchy.” Since then, his observation has been echoed by people as disparate as Robert Heinlein and Leon Trotsky. The key here is that, unlike all other commodities, food is the one essential that cannot be postponed. If there were a shortage of, say, shoes, we could make do for months or even years. A shortage of gasoline would be worse, but we could survive it, through mass transport or even walking, if necessary.
But food is different. If there were an interruption in the supply of food, fear would set in immediately. And, if the resumption of the food supply were uncertain, the fear would become pronounced. After only nine missed meals, it’s not unlikely that we’d panic and be prepared to commit a crime to acquire food. If we were to see our neighbor with a loaf of bread, and we owned a gun, we might well say, “I’m sorry, you’re a good neighbor and we’ve been friends for years, but my children haven’t eaten today – I have to have that bread – even if I have to shoot you.”
There’s no need to speculate on this concern yet. There’s nothing so alarming on the evening news yet to suggest that such a problem might be on the horizon. So, let’s have a closer look at the actual food distribution industry, compare it to the present direction of the economy, and see whether there might be reason for concern.
The food industry typically operates on very small margins – often below 2%. Traditionally, wholesalers and retailers have relied on a two-week turnaround of supply and anywhere up to a 30-day payment plan. But an increasing tightening of the economic system for the last eight years has resulted in a turnaround time of just three days for both supply and payment for many in the industry. This a system that’s still fully operative, but with no further wiggle room, should it take a significant further hit.
If there were a month where significant inflation took place (The Feds lie say 9.1%; really now at least 17%), all profits would be lost for the month for both suppliers and retailers, but goods could still be replaced and sold for a higher price next month. But, if there were three or more consecutive months of inflation, the industry would be unable to bridge the gap, even if better conditions were expected to develop in future months. A failure to pay in full for several months would mean smaller orders by those who could not pay. That would mean fewer goods on the shelves. The longer the inflationary trend continued, the more quickly prices would rise to hopefully offset the inflation. And ever-fewer items on the shelves.
From Germany in 1922, to Argentina in 2000, and to Venezuela in 2016, this has been the pattern whenever inflation has become systemic, rather than sporadic. Each month, some stores close, beginning with those that are the most poorly capitalized.
In good economic times, this would mean more business for those stores that were still solvent, but in an inflationary situation, they would be in no position to take on more unprofitable business. The result is that the volume of food on offer at retailers would decrease at a pace with the severity of the inflation.
However, the demand for food would not decrease by a single loaf of bread. Store closings would be felt most immediately in inner cities, when one closing would send customers to the next neighborhood seeking food. The real danger would come when that store also closes and both neighborhoods descended on a third store in yet another neighborhood. That’s when one loaf of bread for every three potential purchasers would become worth killing over. Virtually no one would long tolerate seeing his children go without food because others had “invaded” his local supermarket.
In addition to retailers, the entire industry would be impacted and, as retailers disappeared, so would suppliers, and so on, up the food chain. This would not occur in an orderly fashion, or in one specific area. The problem would be a national one. Closures would be all over the map, seemingly at random, affecting all areas. Food riots would take place, first in the inner cities then spread to other communities. Buyers, fearful of shortages, would clean out the shelves.
Importantly, it’s the very unpredictability of food delivery that increases fear, creating panic and violence. And, again, none of the above is speculation; it’s a historical pattern – a reaction based upon human nature whenever systemic inflation occurs.
Then… unfortunately… the cavalry arrives. At that point, it would be very likely that the central government would step in and issue controls to the food industry that served political needs rather than business needs, greatly exacerbating the problem. Suppliers would be ordered to deliver to those neighborhoods where the riots are the worst, even if those retailers are unable to pay. This would increase the number of closings of suppliers.
Along the way, truckers would begin to refuse to enter troubled neighborhoods, and the military might well be brought in to force deliveries to take place. (If truckers could afford $5.75 a gallon diesel fuel.)
So, what would it take for the above to occur? Well, historically, it has always begun with excessive debt. We know that the debt level is now the highest it has ever been in world history. (US debt as of October 2022: $31.12 trillion; World debt as of Feb. 2022: $303 trillion.) In addition, the stock and bond markets are in bubbles of historic proportions. They will most certainly pop.
With a crash in the markets, deflation always follows as people try to unload assets to cover for their losses. The Federal Reserve (and other central banks) has stated that it will unquestionably print as much money as it takes to counter deflation. Unfortunately, inflation has a far greater effect on the price of commodities than assets. Therefore, the prices of commodities will rise dramatically, further squeezing the purchasing power of the consumer, thereby decreasing the likelihood that he will buy assets, even if they’re bargain priced. Therefore, asset holders will drop their prices repeatedly as they become more desperate. The Fed then prints more to counter the deeper deflation and we enter a period when deflation and inflation are increasing concurrently.
Historically, when this point has been reached, no government has ever done the right thing. They have, instead, done the very opposite – keep printing. A by-product of this conundrum is reflected in the photo above. Food still exists, but retailers shut down because they cannot pay for goods. Suppliers shut down because they’re not receiving payments from retailers. Producers cut production because sales are plummeting.
In every country that has passed through such a period, the government has eventually gotten out of the way and the free market has prevailed, re-energizing the industry and creating a return to normal. The question is not whether civilization will come to an end. (It will not.) The question is the liveability of a society that is experiencing a food crisis, as even the best of people are likely to panic and become a potential threat to anyone who is known to store a case of soup in his cellar.
Fear of starvation is fundamentally different from other fears of shortages. Even good people panic. In such times, it’s advantageous to be living in a rural setting, as far from the centre of panic as possible. It’s also advantageous to store food in advance that will last for several months, if necessary. However, even these measures are no guarantee, as, today, modern highways and efficient cars make it easy for anyone to travel quickly to where the goods are. The ideal is to be prepared to sit out the crisis in a country that will be less likely to be impacted by dramatic inflation – where the likelihood of a food crisis is low and basic safety is more assured."
"Rice is one of the most important staple foods for more than 3 billion people around the world, and the nation of India accounts for approximately 40 percent of all global rice exports. So if India decides to start placing restrictions on rice exports, that is a really big deal. Unfortunately, that is precisely what just happened on July 20th. Less than a week ago, India “banned the export of non-basmati white rice”, and that has created a tremendous wave of panic all over the planet…
"The Food and Consumer Affairs Ministry on July 20 banned the export of non-basmati white rice, with immediate effect, to stabilize the volatile retail prices in the country. Rice production has taken a hit owing to vagaries of weather such as heavy monsoon rains in rice-producing States in the north and deficit rainfall in other parts of the country." Non-basmati rice is by far the most common rice used in Asian and Mexican cuisine.
Normally, an enormous amount of non-basmati rice is exported from India to the United States, but very unusual weather patterns have been devastating crops in key rice-producing areas of India…"But heavy rain in the north of India over the last few weeks has damaged newly-planted crops in Punjab and Haryana states. Paddy fields have been submerged for over a week, destroying seedlings, and forcing farmers to wait before they can replant the rice seeds. In other major rice-growing states, farmers have prepared paddy nurseries but have been unable to transplant the seedlings due to inadequate rainfall."
So authorities decided to ban the export of non-basmati rice, and news spread quickly among Indian-Americans here in the United States…"India’s decision to impose a ban on the export of non-basmati white rice has triggered panic buying among NRIs (non-residential Indians) in the US. India accounts for more than 40 percent of world rice exports, and a cut in shipments could inflate food prices in the US."
This is how fast it can happen. Just days after the export ban was announced, social media was filled with videos of panic buying from coast to coast…"Videos and reports shared on social media over the weekend show Indian-Americans standing in long lines or panic-buying rice in Texas, Michigan, New Jersey Alabama, Ohio, Illinois and California."
When people get desperate, they can do crazy things. In fact, there was one report of some very desperate consumers “wrestling for a bag of rice in Dallas, Texas”…"There is a mad rush for rice in the United States after India banned exports. Several Indians were seen wrestling for a bag of rice in Dallas, Texas. Long queues to stock up on rice at supermarkets were also witnessed."
Some of the videos that are currently circulating are just nuts. I didn’t think that we would see anything of this nature in the United States this summer. But here we are.
Some retailers responded to this frenzy by dramatically hiking prices on bags of rice. In one particular case, the price of a bag of rice approximately tripled…"The Business Line reported that several grocery stores across America had increased the price of rice bags, seeing the frenzy. The report quoted an NRI as saying that a bag of 9 kg of rice, which used to cost $15-16 (Rs 1,222-1309) earlier, was now being sold at $46.99 (Rs 3,846)."
Other retailers responded by placing limits on the amount of rice that each customer could purchase…"Other stores unable to keep up with the demand for rice were implementing rationing schemes or deploying innovative methods to stop the panic buying of rice. For instance, the owner of a store stocking Indian products in Mason town in Ohio enforced rationing by asking customers to restrict their purchase to one 20-pound bag (9.07 kg) of ordinary white rice per head, costing $24 (Rs 1,964)."
Gouging consumers during a crisis such as this is just wrong, and so I like the second option much better. Of course it isn’t just the United States where panic buying is happening. Up in Canada, a grocery store in Toronto has also decided to limit each customer to just one bag of rice…"Rice is a staple for billions of people around the world but India has imposed a ban on the export of non-Basmati white rice products. A Toronto South Asian grocery store says it is already feeling the pinch, leading to a spike in panic buying.
“What happened in the last couple of days, it’s only a panic purchase,” Salam Hasan, general manager at Mississauga’s Iqbal Halal Foods, tells CityNews. “We used to have enough for three to four weeks. The stock was sold in just a couple of days.” Hasan says for the time being the popular South Asian grocery store has implemented a restriction, allowing each family to buy just one bag of rice."
Needless to say, this rice panic is taking place at a time when hunger is rapidly growing all over the world. According to the United Nations, 2.4 billion people already do not have enough food to eat. And 900 million of them are facing severe food insecurity. Now the deal that had allowed Ukraine to ship grain through the Black Sea has been terminated and India has decided to completely ban the export of non-basmati rice. Global hunger is going to get even worse during the weeks and months that are in front of us, and I am extremely concerned about where all of this is eventually heading.
But you aren’t hearing much about this from the mainstream media here in the United States, are you? Even though the presidential election is more than 15 months away, our major news networks are obsessively focused on it. That is extremely unfortunate, because historic changes are taking place all over the world right now, but most Americans don’t even realize that they are happening."
Excerpt: "In Part 1 of this article, I explored how Huxley, Orwell, and Bradbury foretold the use of technology by totalitarians to subjugate and control the masses. Now we move on to a currently hot topic – censorship.
“Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth.” - Aldous Huxley, "Brave New World"
Censorship: “There was always a minority afraid of something, and a great majority afraid of the dark, afraid of the future, afraid of the past, afraid of the present, afraid of themselves and shadows of themselves” - Ray Bradbury, "Fahrenheit 451"
“There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.” – Ray Bradbury
The primary theme of "Fahrenheit 451" is censorship. In Bradbury’s dystopia, burning books was the principal method of censorship, directed by the government, but generally supported by the masses. A form of self-censorship developed, as the dullards, intellectually lazy, and willfully ignorant, preferred books to be burned so they felt that would put them on a level playing field with the critical thinkers and intellectually curious minded.
It always comes back to the government doing everything in their power to keep the masses apathetic, ill-informed, entertained, and distracted, to ensure their continued control over society. Bradbury believed the masses would go along with censorship because they already had television, radio, and fast cars, with vacuous programming, loud music, and unceasing advertising creating over-stimulation and distraction for the populace. They were too distracted to read a book, learn, think critically, or question the authorities.
In Part 1 of this article, I explored how Huxley, Orwell, and Bradbury foretold the use of technology by totalitarians to subjugate and control the masses. Now we move on to a currently hot topic – censorship.
“Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth.” - Aldous Huxley, "Brave New World"
Bradbury doesn’t have much faith in either government or the people they rule. His view of humanity in general was not positive in the early 1950s. Imagine what he would think of American society seventy years later. The hostility towards books in "Fahrenheit 451" for many was based on envy. The lazy, willfully ignorant masses didn’t want to feel intellectually inferior to those who wanted to read books, learn, inquire, think, and question the government narrative.
Seeing your neighbor’s books burned gave a warped sense of satisfaction to the intentionally ignorant. When your government wants to keep you ignorant to better control you and you choose ignorance because it’s easier to not think, you’ve achieved dystopian perfection. Thinking is hard. Watching a screen is easy.
The 1930’s and 1940’s saw the height of book burnings, with Goebbels and the Nazis burning books contrary to their ideology in the early 1930s, and then the counter book burnings of Nazi literature after 1945. It spread to the U.S., with the Karens of their day burning textbooks and literature they didn’t agree with. There will always be an authoritarian-minded segment of the population who seek power to decide what you should read or see. They do not believe freedom of speech as defined in the Constitution should be available to those they disagree with.
“I wasn’t worried about freedom, I was worried about people being turned into morons by TV…the moronic influence of popular culture through local TV news and the proliferation of giant screens and the bombardment of factoids.” – Ray Bradbury
Censorship is the cudgel they utilize to keep you from making up your own mind about ideas, historical events, opinions, and facts. If you don’t want the masses to know the truth, don’t let them see both sides of issues, keep them distracted by technology, and overload their brains with meaningless drivel. Bradbury’s dystopian fears have come to fruition, seventy years later. We are now a nation of low IQ sheep who “feel” smart because their overlords have lowered the bar so low, every dullard believes themselves to be smarter than Einstein, even though they can’t subtract 57 cents from $1.00 in their head. Generations have been indoctrinated to feel rather than think. They don’t even know what thinking means.
"Conspiracy theorist!" And other baseless, nonsensical claims...
by Bill Bonner
"Well, they'll stone ya when you're trying to be so good.
They'll stone ya just a-like they said they would.
They'll stone ya when you're tryin' to go home,
Then they'll stone ya when you're there all alone.
But I would not feel so all alone,
Everybody must get stoned..."
~ Bob Dylan
Poitou, France - "Robert F. Kennedy is undergoing a modern day lapidation…a stoning…by an angry mob. Another rock landed yesterday; Kennedy reports: "The New York Society for Ethical Culture @EthicalNYC just CANCELED my event with @RabbiShmuley scheduled for tomorrow night. They're evidently under tremendous pressure since they violated a binding contract and canceled without explanation…"
The Military/Industrial/Spook Complex: Some are angry because he has dared to challenge his own party. They think he may be playing into the hands of evil Republicans. Some are angry because he threatens the medical/pharmacy/insurance industry – by wondering if its vaccines are all they’re cracked up to be.
Some are mad at him because he menaces the military/industrial/spook complex, with its forever wars, body bags and trillion-dollar budgets. This just in from the Fabius Maximus website: "Summary: The Department of Defense uses obscure accounting to conceal its true cost from America’s citizens, assisted by the mainstream press. Long-time DoD expert Winslow Wheeler shows the real cost for our War Department. Like all debunking of our mad military industrial complex since President Eisenhower warned us in 1961, he has been ignored. The US National Security Budget for 2023/24 is …approximately $1.5 Trillion."
Fabius Maximus was a Roman consul and dictator who saved Rome from the Carthaginians. First after the battle of Lake Trasimene. Second, after the disastrous encounter at Cannae. He is called the ‘Cunctator’ – the delayer – because he realized that it was unwise to meet Hannibal in open battle. Better to harass him…to cut his supply lines…and to wait for him to run out of supplies and soldiers. Generations of military leaders have studied The Cunctator.
Meanwhile, some people despise Kennedy simply because ‘the system’ has made them rich and powerful, and they don’t appreciate his criticisms. He’s betrayed his class, (the liberal elite), they say. Even his own cousin, Jack Schlossberg, says he’s a disgrace to the Kennedy clan. The New York Post: "Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s 2024 presidential run is a “vanity project” and an “embarrassment” that’s “trading in on Camelot, celebrity, conspiracy theories and conflict,” his cousin Jack Schlossberg decried Friday.
The 30-year-old son of Caroline Kennedy - and only grandson of her late father, President John F. Kennedy - went one step further and officially endorsed President Biden, who “shares his grandfather’s vision for America” and is “the greatest progressive president we’ve ever had.” Really?
Contra Empire: But the most dangerous characters in the mob are those with the black masks. They say nothing. They admit nothing. They claim they don’t exist. While the superficial ‘political’ reasons for wanting to discredit Kennedy are obvious, the deeper, megapolitical reasons are more important: RFK, Jr. is not just running against Joe Biden, nor only against the swamp…the military/industrial/spook/medical/university/media complex…and the entire elite Establishment of both political parties…and the Deep State. Kennedy is at odds with The Empire.
That’s where the fight really matters. It was a battle his uncle and his father took up more than half a century ago, a fight to keep a decent republic from turning into a rapacious empire. They lost. Now, the contest will determine how the empire declines – peacefully…or disgracefully.
America’s rendezvous with imperial greatness came with the end of WWII. After the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the US was cock of the walk. Then, for half a century, it was the world’s hegemon. But it peaked out in the late ‘90s and has since become the ‘late, degenerate empire’ that we see in the daily news.
Kennedy lived through this period, as most of us did. But he saw it taking place up close, and far too personally. His father and his uncle, both were murdered. He then watched as the empire grew and corroded. The Tafts, Cabot Lodges, Dirksens and the Kennedys were mostly driven out of politics. In their place came Biden, Hillary, AOC, Santos, Taylor-Greene. America’s military posture grew larger and larger while Congress turned into a convention of midgets.
A Threat to ‘The System’: Small wonder! It is not hard to see why good men and women stay away from politics. Who would want reporters checking out his high school yearbook…or what he wrote in a letter to the editor in 1985? Who would want political hacks calling up ex-wives…disgruntled former employees…or jealous rivals? Who would put his family through the kind of malign media attention that Donald Trump…and now Robert Kennedy…endure? What kind of power-mad, pathological egomaniac would want it for himself…let alone the people he cared about?
Joe Biden spent his whole life as a hack politician. For him, the move to the White House was merely the natural summa of a tawdry career. Likewise, Donald Trump always craved fame and fortune. He had no real plan, no principles and no program for the US; he had only a goal for himself – to dominate the headlines and prove that he really wasn’t the loser that everybody thought he was.
Kennedy? His is a more complex personality. But whatever it is that drives him has so far made him the victim of the most vicious and hysterically dishonest attack we’ve ever seen. The antagonists – politicians as well as the propaganda press – know perfectly well that Kennedy does not hate Jews. They know he is no more ‘racist’ than they are. They know too that he’s not intentionally spreading ‘misinformation’ about vaccines. He says the things he says because he believes them to be true. Right? Wrong? Who knows? But worth discussing.
But Kennedy represents a threat to ‘the system’…to the empire…to the Deep State, and all the malignant jackassery that comes with it. So, they try to bury him in a pile of rocks. Antisemite! Racist! Vaccine denier! Conspiracy theorist! Kennedy says he is being slammed much harder than even Donald Trump ever was. But Trump was never a real threat. Kennedy is. Today, no sparrow can tumble off a limb without setting off sensors in Langley, Virginia. And no politician can challenge the Empire without being struck by a granite rock."
Joel’s Note: "What you can hear and what you can’t. What you might like to read, versus what you’re “protected” from viewing. Disinformation, misinformation and so-called “malinformation”… all are curtailments on your right to hear, read and think whatsoever you wish… and to make up your mind for yourself on any given matter of importance.
The Founding Fathers, much maligned today, and after a similar fashion to RFK, Jr. (racists, misogynists, anything-a-phobes, etc.), were unequivocal in their determination regarding the paramount importance of freedom of speech… so much so, that they enumerated it as the very first, and most important, amendment in the Bill of Rights… the basic freedom upon which all others depend. For anyone in need of a quick refresher, it reads…
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
~ First Amendment to the Constitution fo the United States of America
Agreed with him or not, RFK, Jr.’s campaign represents adult Americans’ right to determine for themselves what they agrees with… and what they does not. It stands for the right not to have “The Message” dictated to you by some faceless, nameless, deep state cronies. To hear that which may be challenging, upsetting, even…gulp!… “offensive!”
As always, feel free to opine in the comments section below… What do you agree with? What to you shudder at? What would you like to see more or less of? What resonates with you, as an American voter, in the upcoming electoral campaign?"
"Experts have sounded the horn that commercial real estate is going to be a huge problem in the coming months. Buildings cannot be refinanced and some are even being given back to the banks. People are getting denied for loans all over the place."
"Panic buying on rice has begun in the United States due to the rice export ban in India. This is a concern as we have already seen massive price increases on such products."
"Stocking Up At Meijer! Be Prepared! What's Coming?"
"In today's vlog, we are at Meijer and are noticing more price increases on groceries. We are stocking up on our preps on all the sales we find. Inflation is causing major problems at supermarkets, and we are doing what we can to be prepared!"
"Ukraine Is Disintegrating, The Hospitals Are Full"
"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. Douglas MacGregor joins Redacted to discuss the latest breakthroughs in the war indicating that the "Europeans have had it" with this war. Events on the ground are beginning to overtake the carefully orchestrated charade in Kiev. So what now?'
"We discuss my thoughts on the movie Sound Of Freedom and how it is absolutely terrifying. Although this movie can be unsettling at times, it is one that I feel we must all see, and understand the message it brings across."
“A star cluster around 2 million years young surrounded by natal clouds of dust and glowing gas, M16 is also known as The Eagle Nebula. This beautifully detailed image of the region adopts the colorful Hubble palette and includes cosmic sculptures made famous in Hubble Space Telescope close-ups of the starforming complex. Described as elephant trunks or Pillars of Creation, dense, dusty columns rising near the center are light-years in length but are gravitationally contracting to form stars.
Energetic radiation from the cluster stars erodes material near the tips, eventually exposing the embedded new stars. Extending from the ridge of bright emission left of center is another dusty starforming column known as the Fairy of Eagle Nebula. M16 lies about 7,000 light-years away, an easy target for binoculars or small telescopes in a nebula rich part of the sky toward the split constellation Serpens Cauda (the tail of the snake).”
“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?"
"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. "
"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."
