Please do your own research. The information I share is only a catalyst to expanding ones confined consciousness. I have NO desire for anyone to blindly believe or agree with what I share. Seek the truth for yourself and put your own puzzle together that has been presented to you. I'm not here to teach, preach or lead, but rather assist in awakening the consciousness of the collective from its temporary dormancy.
“I believe in everything; nothing is sacred. I believe in nothing; everything is sacred.” – Tom Robbins
Some say death is a compass. Others say it’s a crossroads. Some say death is the beginning of time. Others say it’s the end of the beginning. But no matter what people say, death is nonnegotiable. It is coming for us all. We ignore this knowledge at our own great peril.
Staring into the headlights of our own death, some of us are consciously aware of these lights, but a lot of us are unconscious to them. For some of us, the lights are speeding right towards us, and death is nigh. For most of us, the lights are far off, dimly lit on the horizon. But all of us will eventually be ran over by the vehicle of Death.
So, what is a stumbling, fumbling mortal to do? How do we square the circle of knowing that we will die? How do we navigate this Mobius Strip of doom? How do we loosen the noose so that we can at least live a decent life?
Knowing how to deal with the fear of mortality is probably the most important life skill that we can have. But it’s a two-sided coin. On the one side, the fear of mortality is the fear of death. On the other side, the fear of mortality is the fear of life. Both must be honored, honed, and humored before sublimity is ours.
The fear of death:
“The more unlived your life, the greater your death anxiety. The more you fail to experience your life fully, the more you will fear death.” – Irvin Yalom
Know this, right at the jump: There is no escape. You can’t have your cake and eat it too. A life well-lived is a life lived staring death in the face. You can’t be an adventurous artist or a drunken spirit and still be a law-abiding citizen or solid oak in a comfortable yard. If you want to get drunk, you have to accept the nausea and the hangover. If you want to say yes to sunlight and adventure, you have to say yes to filth and danger.
Everything is within you, demon and diamond, power and pain, the laughter of life and the trepidation of death. Say yes to it all, shirk nothing. Don’t try to lie to yourself. You are not going to live forever. You are not immortal. You are a butterfly in a tsunami. Don’t fight it. Surrender to it. Let it guide you. Let it drive you. Become one with the tempest. You have this one life. Make the best of it.
Reconcile your mortal fear, assimilate your existential angst, integrate your death anxiety. Defy death by confronting it head-on. Die inside it. Burn off the dross.
Lose your sentimental baggage, your naivete, your innocence. Then resurrect yourself into a person with the fortitude to handle the pain. For Pain is the ultimate teacher. Especially the pain that Death teaches. Learn from it. Let it shape you. Let it sharpen you into an instrument worthy of magnificence. As Atticus cryptically stated, “Let my death be a long and magnificent life.”
In the end, death makes philosophers of us all.
The fear of life:
“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.” – Louise Erdrich
Life will break your heart. Oh well. Let it break. Your heart was made to break open, suck the whole of experience into it — good and bad — and then come back together again. That’s what makes you stronger. Paraphrasing Samuel Becket here: Ever loving. Ever broken hearted. No matter. Love again. Break your heart open again. Break it better.
Life is less about receiving flowers, rainbows, and sunshine and more about how well you navigate thorns, storms, and darkness. Don’t avoid the thorns at the expense of the rose. Don’t avoid the storm at the expense of adventure. Don’t avoid the darkness at the expense of seeing beyond the light. Pain should not be avoided at the expense of wholeness; wholeness should be embraced at the risk of pain.
As James Hillman powerfully stated, “We are composed of agonies not polarities.”
It’s what you do with these agonies that will decide the wholeness of your life. Being whole is not never breaking. Not at all. Being whole is breaking and then coming back together again stronger than you were before. And it never ends. It’s a constant: get wounded, mend your wounds, and then transform them into sacred wounds. That’s a well-lived life.
Another way of looking at the life-death-rebirth cycle is in terms of wholeness. There is no point in the cycle that is not the beginning and the end of every other point in the cycle. That is what you are. You are wholeness perceiving fractured aspects of the whole as points along the way.
During dark times, when it feels like you’ve been buried in failure and pain, remember this feeling of wholeness, and then flip the script and imagine you’ve been planted instead. Now all there is left to do is to take this wholeness and bloom into sublimity.
Discover the Sublime:
“There are heights of the soul from which even tragedy ceases to look tragic.” – Nietzsche
When you assimilate your fear of life and death, you experience a state of cosmic sublimity. You rise above all the pains and pleasures, all the ups and downs, all the fear and angst and hunger.
All the heaviness of mortality slips away into lightheartedness. Amor fati overwhelms you and all you can do is step into the powerful role of being love itself. You fall in love with being in love with your fate.
In this state of cosmic sublimity, all the pain, all the pleasure, all the ups and downs, all the fear and love of life become mere ingredients for your own immortality project, your magnum opus, your ultimate work of art.
Where a plant blooms into a flower, a human blooms into a piece of art. When you’re in the throes of an artistic process, you are flourishing. You touch the Philosopher’s Stone. The transcendent shines through the art. The sublime shines through you. It all comes together in that sacred space between life and death: surrender.
The cosmic sublime is an ontological pivot point, a perspective in which death is also rapture and resurrection, and the death of the ego is linked to creativity. It’s a movement into psychological depth.
If you want to discover the sublime, meditate on death. Meditate on eternity. Meditate on interconnectedness. Meditate on pain and probability. When you become deeply aware of your mortality it gives you a sense of purpose and energy.
Find ways to transform this purpose and energy into vitality, creativity, and power. Seek expansion. Transform energy into synergy. Express the infinite in the tangible and bounded form of a work of art. Bring magic elixir back to “the tribe” and change the way the tribe sees the world.
This post is part of TED’s “How to Be a Better Human” series, each of which contains a piece of helpful advice from people in the TED community; browse through all the posts here.
Have you ever tried to fix an ongoing lack of energy by getting more sleep — only to do so and still feel exhausted?
If that’s you, here’s the secret: Sleep and rest are not the same thing, although many of us incorrectly confuse the two.
We go through life thinking we’ve rested because we have gotten enough sleep — but in reality we are missing out on the other types of rest we desperately need. The result is a culture of high-achieving, high-producing, chronically tired and chronically burned-out individuals. We’re suffering from a rest deficit because we don’t understand the true power of rest.
Rest should equal restoration in seven key areas of your life.
The first type of rest we need is physical rest, which can be passive or active. Passive physical rest includes sleeping and napping, while active physical rest means restorative activities such as yoga, stretching and massage therapy that help improve the body’s circulation and flexibility.
The second type of rest is mental rest. Do you know that coworker who starts work every day with a huge cup of coffee? He’s often irritable and forgetful, and he has a difficult time concentrating on his work. When he lies down at night to sleep, he frequently struggles to turn off his brain as conversations from the day fill his thoughts. And despite sleeping seven to eight hours, he wakes up feeling as if he never went to bed. He has a mental rest deficit.
The good news is you don’t have to quit your job or go on vacation to fix this. Schedule short breaks to occur every two hours throughout your workday; these breaks can remind you to slow down. You might also keep a notepad by the bed to jot down any nagging thoughts that would keep you awake.
The third type of rest we need is sensory rest. Bright lights, computer screens, background noise and multiple conversations — whether they’re in an office or on Zoom calls — can cause our senses to feel overwhelmed. This can be countered by doing something as simple as closing your eyes for a minute in the middle of the day, as well as by intentionally unplugging from electronics at the end of every day. Intentional moments of sensory deprivation can begin to undo the damage inflicted by the over-stimulating world.
The fourth type of rest is creative rest. This type of rest is especially important for anyone who must solve problems or brainstorm new ideas. Creative rest reawakens the awe and wonder inside each of us. Do you recall the first time you saw the Grand Canyon, the ocean or a waterfall? Allowing yourself to take in the beauty of the outdoors — even if it’s at a local park or in your backyard — provides you with creative rest.
But creative rest isn’t simply about appreciating nature; it also includes enjoying the arts. Turn your workspace into a place of inspiration by displaying images of places you love and works of art that speak to you. You can’t spend 40 hours a week staring at blank or jumbled surroundings and expect to feel passionate about anything, much less come up with innovative ideas.
Now let’s take a look at another individual — the friend whom everyone thinks is the nicest person they’ve ever met. It’s the person everyone depends on, the one you’d call if you needed a favor because even if they don’t want to do it, you know they’ll give you a reluctant “yes” rather than a truthful “no”. But when this person is alone, they feel unappreciated and like others are taking advantage of them.
This person requires emotional rest, which means having the time and space to freely express your feelings and cut back on people pleasing. Emotional rest also requires the courage to be authentic. An emotionally rested person can answer the question “How are you today?” with a truthful “I’m not okay” — and then go on to share some hard things that otherwise go unsaid.
If you’re in need of emotional rest, you probably have a social rest deficit too. This occurs when we fail to differentiate between those relationships that revive us from those relationships that exhaust us. To experience more social rest, surround yourself with positive and supportive people. Even if your interactions have to occur virtually, you can choose to engage more fully in them by turning on your camera and focusing on who you’re speaking to.
The final type of rest is spiritual rest, which is the ability to connect beyond the physical and mental and feel a deep sense of belonging, love, acceptance and purpose. To receive this, engage in something greater than yourself and add prayer, meditation or community involvement to your daily routine.
As you can see, sleep alone can’t restore us to the point we feel rested. So it’s time for us to begin focusing on getting the right type of rest we need.
Editor’s note: Fatigue can also be associated with numerous health problems, so please get checked out by your physician if it persists.
To learn more about Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith and her work, visit her website. This post was adapted from her TEDxAtlanta Talk. Watch it here:
1.) Above all else, be direct and be honest. Be the one that says what has for too long gone unsaid.
2.) Love insanely. Let it all out into the open. You don’t have time to hold back any longer.
3.) Make yourself strong. Physically strong, emotionally strong, spiritually strong.
4.) Practice radical detachment and letting go. We need to create space for the new paradigm to emerge.
5.) Learn to enjoy being patient in allowing things to unfold naturally without forcing anything.
6.) Express yourself like you never have before. Be more real. Be more raw. Be more open. Be more bad ass. Be more you.
7.) Let death be all the motivation you need to do anything you want to do. The clock is ticking faster than ever.
8.) Don’t be surprised when things work out far better than you could have imagined.
9.) Give away as much freedom to others as you can stand, then give them more. Let them have their stupid differing opinions, or whatever, and just keep on loving them with everything you’ve got.
10.) Do not allow your mind to take the wheel. Steer with your heart.
11.) Make personal evolution your prime directive and watch how quickly your life changes for the better.
12.) Be the person in the room that laughs and smiles the most, showing others how to brush off the madness of the world.
13.) Conserve your energy until it is time to move, then do so with maximum potency.
14.) Stay close to the things you can control and distance yourself from those things which you cannot.
15.) Teach everything you’ve learned so far. Participate fully in our the growth of others.
16.) Create relationships, fix relationships, find common ground, build bridges, and be there for others.
17.) Learn to fiercely observe the world and the people around you.
18.) Rewrite the rules as needed for maximum ease and minimum stress.
19.) Let yourself cry, scream or whatever as needed in order make sure you are a conduit for negative emotions, not a reservoir.
20.) Practice, practice, practice. Engage in your daily practice every single day. Cultivate your inner peace and strength through the continuity of your intentions.
21.) Maintain the highest possible vibration you can and make a point of being infectious to others.
According to media reports, COVID-19 “cases,” meaning positive PCR test results, are soaring across the U.S. and around the world, leading to the implementation of measures that in some cases are stricter than what we endured during the initial wave.
However, as detailed in several recent articles, including “Why COVID-19 Testing Is a Tragic Waste,” PCR tests are being used incorrectly, resulting in the false appearance of widespread transmission.
In reality, the vast majority of people who end up with a positive test will not develop symptoms and aren’t infectious.
Needless to say, if you’re not infectious, you pose no health risk to anyone, and being placed under what amounts to house arrest is nothing but cruel and unusual punishment for no reason whatsoever.
In The Highwire report above, Del Bigtree breaks down how excessively high test sensitivity leads to falsely elevated “case” numbers that in reality tell us nothing about the situation at hand.
As noted by Bigtree, what’s missing from the COVID-19 conversation is the actual death rate.
“If COVID is a deadly virus, what should we see when cases increase?” he asks. The answer, of course, is an increase in deaths. However, that’s not what’s happening.
Aside from a small bump at the beginning, when doctors were unsure of the appropriate treatment and some states recklessly and irresponsibly sent infected patients into ill equipped nursing homes, the death rate has remained relatively flat while positive test rates have dramatically risen and fallen in intervals.
In the video, Bigtree features a November 4, 2020, tweet1 by White House coronavirus adviser Dr. Scott Atlas showing the number of positive tests (aka “cases”) in blue and COVID-19 related deaths in red, since the start of the pandemic up until the end of October 2020.
As you can see, there’s no correlation between the positive test rate and subsequent deaths.
They simply aren’t sick. The PCR test is merely picking up inactive (noninfectious) viral particles.
In one study,2 which looked at pregnant women admitted for delivery, 87.9% of the women who tested positive for the presence of SARS-CoV-2 had no symptoms.
Another study3 looked at a large homeless shelter in Boston. After a cluster of COVID-19 cases was observed there, researchers conducted symptoms assessments and testing among all guests residing at the shelter over a two-day period.
Of 408 people tested, 147, or 36%, were positive, yet symptoms were conspicuously absent. Cough occurred in only 7.5% of cases, shortness of breath in 1.4% and fever in 0.7%.
All symptoms were “uncommon among COVID-positive individuals,” the researchers noted.
Asymptomatic Transmission Is Very Rare
During a June 8, 2020, press briefing, Maria Van Kerkhove, the World Health Organization’s technical lead for the COVID-19 pandemic, made it very clear that asymptomatic transmission is very rare, meaning an individual who tests positive but does not exhibit symptoms is highly unlikely to transmit live virus to others.
“We have a number of reports from countries who are doing very detailed contact tracing. They’re following asymptomatic cases, they’re following contacts, and they’re not finding secondary transmission … it’s very rare, and much of that is not published in the literature,” Van Kerkhove said.
Just one day later, Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO’s emergencies program, backpedaled Van Kerkhove’s statement, saying the remarks were “misinterpreted.”4
Needless to say, when you’re trying to justify the implementation of a vast surveillance network, it’s no good to admit a vast majority of people are having their privacy infringed upon for no good reason whatsoever.
Asymptomatic People Pose No Risk To Others
Most recently, a study5 in Nature Communications assessed the risk posed by asymptomatic people by looking at the data from a mass screening program in Wuhan, China.
The city had been under strict lockdown between January 23 and April 8, 2020. Between May 14 and June 1, 2020, 9,899,828 residents of Wuhan city over the age of 6 underwent PCR testing.
In all, 92.9% of the entire city population participated in the testing. Of these, 9,865,404 had no previous diagnosis of COVID-19 and 34,424 were recovered COVID-19 patients.
In all, there were zero symptomatic cases and only 300 asymptomatic cases detected. (The overall detection rate was 0.3 per 10,000.)
Importantly, not a single one of the 1,174 people who had been in close contact with an asymptomatic individual tested positive.
Additionally, of the 34,424 participants with a history of COVID-19, 107 individuals (0.310%) tested positive again, but none were symptomatic. As noted by the authors:6
“Virus cultures were negative for all asymptomatic positive and repositive cases, indicating no ‘viable virus’ in positive cases detected in this study … The 300 asymptomatic positive persons aged from 10 to 89 years …
“The asymptomatic positive rate was the lowest in children or adolescents aged 17 and below (0.124/10,000), and the highest among the elderly aged 60 years and above (0.442/10,000). The asymptomatic positive rate in females (0.355/10,000) was higher than that in males (0.256/10,000).”
Asymptomatic People Have Low Viral Load
Interestingly, when they further tested asymptomatic patients for antibodies, they discovered that 190 of the 300, or 63.3%, had actually had a “hot” or productive infection resulting in the production of antibodies.
Still, none of their contacts had been infected.
In other words, even though asymptomatics were (or had been) carriers of apparently live virus, they still did not transmit it to others.
As noted by the authors, “there was no evidence of transmission from asymptomatic positive persons to traced close contacts.”
They further added:7
“Compared with symptomatic patients, asymptomatic infected persons generally have low quantity of viral loads and a short duration of viral shedding, which decrease the transmission risk of SARS-CoV-2.
“In the present study, virus culture was carried out on samples from asymptomatic positive cases, and found no viable SARS-CoV-2 virus. All close contacts of the asymptomatic positive cases tested negative, indicating that the asymptomatic positive cases detected in this study were unlikely to be infectious.”
Reinfected Individuals Are Not Infectious Either
The same held true for people who tested positive a second time after having recovered from an active infection.
“Results of virus culturing and contract [sic] tracing found no evidence that repositive cases in recovered COVID-19 patients were infectious, which is consistent with evidence from other sources,” the authors said.8
The researchers also pointed out that virus cultures and genetic studies have shown the virulence of SARS-CoV-2 appears to be weakening over time, and that newly infected individuals are more likely to be asymptomatic and have a lower viral load than the cases seen earlier in the outbreak.
What does all of this tell us? It tells us there’s no reason to panic simply because the number of positive tests are on the rise.
Remember, the more people you test using a PCR test that is set to an excessive cycle threshold, the more false positives you’ll get.
As explained in “Asymptomatic ‘Casedemic’ Is a Perpetuation of Needless Fear,” by using an excessive cycle threshold that amplifies the viral RNA to the point that it detects inactive (noninfectious) particles is at the heart of this so-called pandemic.
It’s what keeps the pandemic narrative going, when in fact it’s long since over.
CDC Uses Questionable Sources To Counter China Study
Interestingly, the same day the China study came out, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated its guidance9,10 on mask wearing, claiming asymptomatic people account for more than half of all transmissions.
Where did they get that from?
The two references listed as support for that claim include a study11 from July 2020, and CDC data that haven’t even been published yet.12
It just says it was “submitted” for publication sometime in 2020, therefore, we are unable to provide any source link. The CDC makes no mention of the China study, which included nearly 10 million individuals.
CNN, which reported the CDC’s update, parroting the idea that asymptomatic spread is why it’s so important to wear a mask, also made no mention of the landmark study from China.
Curious, don’t you think? It’s almost as though the CDC doesn’t want us to know we have nothing to fear from healthy people.
German Lawyers Sue Fact Checkers Over Censorship
Many doctors, scientists and lawyers have now become wise to the fact that it is these flawed tests, and their fraudulent use, that is keeping the fear narrative alive — and they’re taking action.
In the video above, Ben Swann talks to Dr. Reiner Fuellmich,13 a consumer protection trial lawyer14 and founding member of the German Corona Extra-Parliamentary Inquiry Committee (Außerparlamentarischer Corona Untersuchungsausschuss15),16,17 which is seeking to expose how fraudulent testing has been and continues to be used to engineer the appearance of a dangerous pandemic when in fact there is none.
The committee is now filing the first of many lawsuits to come, this one against so-called fact checkers on social media.
They opted to file a defamation lawsuit on behalf of Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg, a former member of the German Congress and the Council of Europe who has been an outspoken critic of PCR testing, as it cannot be used to diagnose infection.
Social media companies have labeled Wodarg’s statements as “false,” and by filing a defamation suit, the burden of proof now falls on the fact checkers to prove that they are correct.
In other words, to win, the fact checkers must prove that PCR tests diagnose active infection. The scientific evidence proves they don’t, so this case could turn out to be pivotal in the fight against the big tech censorship that keeps the fearmongering alive.
COVID-19 Pandemic — The Greatest Psyop In History?
While Fuellmich and his team make no claims about WHY the pandemic is being kept alive using fraudulent science, they are unequivocal in their assertion that it is in fact a fake pandemic and that it has had devastating health and economic consequences around the world.
For the why, we have to turn to the geopolitical scene to see what narratives have rolled out in tandem with the pandemic.
What we find is that leaders across the world are now calling for a “reset” of the global economy in the wake of the destruction brought by the pandemic.
In reality, of course, it is the global response to the pandemic that created the economic devastation, not the virus itself.
Either way, the call to “build back better” is being heard around the world, and such plans include the elimination of conventional capitalism, free enterprise and private ownership, replacing them with a technocratic resource-based economic system in which energy and social engineering run the economy rather than pricing mechanisms such as supply and demand.
Leaders are also calling for invasive health surveillance, and there appear to be plans in place to use biometric surveillance via vaccines, all of which feed into the technocratic system in which this kind of mass surveillance is not only paramount but also foundational.
The reason surveillance is so crucial is because the functioning of this system hinges on artificial intelligence-driven social engineering and manipulation of the masses.
Unless people are locked into what could be described as a digital prison, they won’t comply with what’s coming.
Hook everyone up to a digital centralized banking system, a digital ID and a social credit score, however, and few will have the fortitude to object or speak out against the unelected rulers.
Your entire life could easily be upended with the push of a button.
We’ve already seen how many people have not only been deplatformed for speaking out against one thing or another this past year, they’ve also had their digital payment accounts closed down, effectively destroying their ability to earn a living.
Imagine if there were nothing but a centralized digital currency system and your accounts got shut down. How would you live?
Fear Is A Highly Effective Manipulation Tool
No person in their right mind would agree to this Great Reset plan if they were aware of all the details and its ultimate implications for humanity as a whole. So, to roll it out, they had to use psychological manipulation, and fear is the most effective tool there is.
As explained by psychiatrist Dr. Peter Breggin, there’s an entire school of public health research that focuses on identifying the most effective ways to frighten people into accepting desired public health measures.
By adding confusion and uncertainty to the mix, you can bring an individual from fear to anxiety — a state of confusion in which you can no longer think logically — and in this state, you are more easily manipulated.
The following graphic illustrates the central role of fearmongering for the successful rollout of the Great Reset.
In closing, testing asymptomatic people and isolating people who test positive even when they have no symptoms is a key strategy that keeps the fear level high.
There simply aren’t enough hospitalized COVID-19 patients to keep the ruse going, and far too few actually die to make the narrative work. That’s why we hear nothing about those statistics anymore.
Instead, all we hear about are the “cases” — the positive tests which have no bearing on mortality rates.
Fear of asymptomatics also drive the narrative that we must all wear face masks everywhere we go, because you don’t know who might be infected and not know it. It instills fear of others, as even seemingly healthy people might make you deathly ill.
The featured study from Wuhan demonstrates the fallacy of such fears. People who test positive but have no symptoms are not infectious and pose no risk to others. They don’t need to wear masks and they don’t need to be isolated.
12 Johansson MA, Quandelacy TM, Kada S, et al. Controlling COVID-19 requires preventing SARS-CoV-2 transmission from people without symptoms. submitted.
Do you look on with astonishment at Antifa and other extreme groups rioting and shouting “death to America?” How could all this happen? Where did all these young people come from who hate the US?
We’ve talked about why homeschooling is an excellent choice from an academic, independence, and character-building standpoint in previous articles. In this discussion, we’ll talk about protecting your children from indoctrination.
Distance Learning Is Starting To Show Some Of The Cracks With Schooling.
Reports are starting to surface of parents uncomfortable with the political patina of their children’s online classrooms. Police visited one family because a boy’s BB gun was visible behind him in an online classroom session, and the teacher reported the “gun” to the police.
Another teacher caught a glimpse of a 12-year old’s Nerf gun, and instead of asking him or the parents about it, she reported it to the sheriff. The child was accidentally suspended for a week for having a toy gun at home during a Zoom class!
One teacher expressed that he has to be more careful with his words now that parents can listen to online class sessions. Some school districts have gone so far as to ask parents to sign a disclaimer that they will not watch class sessions with their children to protect other children’s privacy in the online classroom.
Could it be that teachers, their unions, and school administrations are concerned about being exposed as rhetoric spreaders in the classroom?
Have We Forgotten Our Children Are Our Responsibility?
Rearing them, teaching them, caring for them, and loving them is our responsibility. In this country, it seems we have abdicated that responsibility and ceded it over to the state.
We believe the government owes our children free education, free medical care, and even free meals.
I don’t know about you, but I suspect there is a string attached when I hear something is free. That string is the ability to mold our children’s minds.
I’m not comfortable with people I don’t know taking full responsibility for my children’s care, their thoughts, and their beliefs.
Don’t we suspect that this current civil unrest was born in the classroom some years ago? While “it takes a village” has a nice familial ring to it, do we want the state to be that village?
Do We Want Our Children To Have Our Values Or Someone Else’s?
If you’re a person of faith, you will undoubtedly want your children to share your faith and not that of a secular system. Teach your children how to think and help them to develop good character.
I know many teachers who take their jobs seriously, who go to work faithfully every day and try to do a good job.
The best of them end up being frustrated by a system that doesn’t support them and is heavily influenced by the teacher’s unions and political correctness.
They don’t want to be responsible for both their children and yours. They want to educate your children in reading, writing, and arithmetic.
Still, their latitude in teaching has been severely limited by common core standards, teaching to the test, and political correctness.
Their job performance is now dependent upon how much your children learn from the required curriculum and how well they can perform on a standardized test.
Children spend countless hours preparing for these tests that show only memorized information regurgitated onto the bubble-filled page. Do we want children who can memorize or do we want critical thinkers?
Students are encouraged, “get a good night’s sleep, and eat a good breakfast” on test days, as if this is not important on every other school day.
The teacher’s ability to advance to the next performance level or pay grade depends on your child’s test performance. That’s a lot of pressure for both the teacher and your child.
Don’t we want our kids to be able to read, write, and do the math, and when they’ve learned that, to be able to think critically?
As A Parent, You Have Tremendous Influence And Responsibility
You create an atmosphere of helping your children understand and make sense of the world around them by just listening and having a conversation.
Could you do that over breakfast? How about around the dinner table?
If you don’t have a meal together as a family, start now. It’s a time to reconnect with each other, discuss the day’s events, or sort out difficulties someone is having. Mealtime is a time when the family knows everyone will listen to each other.
I’ve seen variations on the family meal. Some families discuss the events of the day. Others will pose a question and ask everyone’s opinion before the parent gives his/her view.
Others recite memorized poetry or Bible verses, and others use the time to pray. Mealtime can become a sacred time – a time for the family to lift one another, work through difficulties, and talk about what was essential to each one.
We didn’t realize how important mealtime was until my son had a group of friends over. When it was dinnertime, my son called them to the table. They said they’d come in to eat later.
My son explained that we all eat together in our house. Reluctantly, they all came in to eat. At the end of the meal, my son’s friends said they enjoyed eating together.
The only time they did that in their homes was during the holidays. I think they wished their own families did the same.
You have the power to create a safe and comforting place in your home at mealtime, not just for your children but also for their friends.
Even if the food is simple, or God forbid, scarce, don’t discard the opportunity to reconnect.
What About Homeschooling?
The decision of whether to homeschool – or even if they’re qualified to do so – has been a difficult one for many parents.
I’ve read that parents are concerned about the cost of homeschooling, hiring a tutor or a teacher for their micro-school or learning pod of children. They are desperate to keep working and earning to pay someone else to educate their children and maintain their same lifestyle.
If you can afford to hire a teacher, even part-time, to educate your and your friend’s kids in a one-room schoolhouse in your converted garage, more power to you. Many don’t have that financial flexibility to hire someone else to teach.
My advice to you would be to join forces with other parents, share the load, learn to teach your children, and teach them to learn from you. Here are some tips to help you do so.
Be flexible. Some parents may be able to teach during part of the day, and some may be available for tutoring at night. Another parent may teach archery, bushcraft skills, gardening, food preservation, or backpacking on the weekend.
Be creative. Pull together something that works for you and the other families. A kitchen table is all you need.
Divide the work fairly. I belonged to a babysitting co-op, and we created laminated cards to exchange babysitting services.One card for one hour of babysitting for up to two children was the baseline. We all started with the same number of cards and exchanged and received them as we used and provided babysitting to the other co-op members. Parent educators could design a similar system — one card per adult for two hours of teaching for up to four children.
Using an established system, you could help one another in other ways. Perhaps one family gardens, another knows how to do car maintenance, another has an abundance of chicken eggs, and another has skills in the medical field.
Could you exchange what you have or know for what another family has or knows? Could you save money by exchanging for needs?
Think about it because this kind of system could help you navigate not only homeschooling, but also a collapse in the supply chain, rapid inflationary pressures on food or medicine, or securing neighborhoods from civil unrest.
Why Do I Push Homeschooling?
Homeschooling can form the baseline for all other thought processes.
Homeschooling creates solid values in your children, supporting one another through thick and thin, and finding others who are like-minded.
Homeschooling can be your lifeline, not just for your children, but also for your entire family.
It’s also the best way I know to have a stable and fulfilling relationship with your grown children.
Homeschooling is just part of a mindset that is undergirded by a belief in self-sufficiency. And by self-sufficiency, I don’t necessarily mean going it all alone.
I mean figuring out a way to make it a win-win for others with a similar mindset to you and getting what both you and they need.
Some people find a group of like-minded people in a church, within your own family, and others find them on a blog like this.
Find your people and figure out a way to help one another, not just in homeschooling, but also in doing life together.
I used to say it was time to leave this country if homeschooling was outlawed because I believed that was the final step in indoctrination and in limiting our freedom.
While it is not outlawed, it may become more and more regulated. I urge you to take this time to explore your options, to understand what you want for your family’s future, and to take action now to achieve that.
I believe we have a window of opportunity that may close in the years ahead. Learn to protect your children from the indoctrination of others who don’t have their best interests in mind.
Fear is one of the most powerful tools the elites have at their disposal. Using the mainstream media, politicians and others who want world domination can inject fear into the public at the drop of a hat, making them easy to manipulate and control.
Aristotle once said: “He who has overcome his fears will truly be free.” Fear is a powerful weapon, and it’s been used globally for the past few months.
People have shown that the instant the media tells them to live a life scared in their homes, they will comply in order to “stay safe.”
Whether the virus is real or not, is not the point. The elitists must keep the public in a constant state of panic in order to control them.
Unafraid and compassionate people are impossible to control.
Unfortunately and unsurprisingly, the propaganda was injected into schools to eliminate critical thinking.
At school, we were taught to think in certain ways. They taught us what to think, but not how to develop our thinking. And everyone was taught the same. If we thought in different ways than our classmates, teachers would tell us we are bad students.
They would give us bad grades and might even expel us from school. Therefore, as students we learned to compromise our thinking so as to get away with trouble. – The Bounded Spirit
The other hard truth most will not like to hear is that if you are still stuck in the left vs. right paradigm, you still haven’t figured any of it out yet. Left vs. right only exists to give us the illusion of choice.
It’s time to question what we’ve been programmed to think, and it should start there. The fear of not electing the right candidate drives people to polls to vote for evil every year. (The lesser of two evils is still evil.)
Fear is the best weapon of all great manipulators. It can move people to do anything, no matter how nonsensical it is. Take, for example, the COVID-19 scam.
People are still terrified of a virus that even the government has admitted isn’t any worse than the flu. Why? Because the media, the government’s lapdog, is telling them they still need to be afraid.
The elites have learned to manipulate the public’s emotions to their advantage. With global media corporations in place, controlled and operated BY the elite, they can amplify that fear quite easily.
Turn on the news, open a newspaper and you’ll see this.
We have been taught to be distrustful of the mind, however, and of our thoughts. This has been by design and has been perpetuated through society by the elite of this world who understand the power of thought and the nature of the mind.
In fact, most of us have been through a long period of mind-programming since we were born to separate our mind from itself so that it does not know or experience this truth. – With One Breath
Obey. That is the name of the game of control. And controlled you are if you do not recognize how innately powerful, creative, and safe you really are. This life is not all you are, but it is everything you’ve been taught to believe.
Our emotions are energy and they all have a frequency. The closer you are to the bottom, the easier it will be to manipulate you into obeying and complying with tyranny.
In a time of disconnection, deep conversations can make all the difference.
David Brooks, the opinion columnist for The New York Times, wrote an article last month titled “Mental Health in the Age of the Coronavirus,” describing how the anxiety and isolation of the pandemic were impacting everyone in some way. He quoted Bonnie Badenoch, an expert in trauma, who felt one antidote to this stress was a need to have “deep reciprocal attunement (with others) that makes you feel viscerally safe,” and Martha Welch, a professor at Columbia University, who stressed the need to connect with others by having “vulnerable,” deep conversations.
Deep conversations may be an important way to connect with those we care about in these difficult times, but they are always a good idea. They are the foundation of strong intimate relationships — those “we talked all night” conversations when dating, or those seemingly rare but cherished, heartfelt times when you lowered your guard and spoke from your heart with someone you trust. They connect you to the human race, to those important in your life, in some way to yourself.
Good idea, but often easier said than done. Here are some tips of going deeper into your conversations:
Make sure it’s a good time to talk
This is a matter of logistics. It’s hard to have a deep conversation when someone is on their cell phone driving to the grocery store or when they are trying to get their three kids to bed. These times are for quick check-ins — how-you-doing, catch-you-later speed conversations. For those deeper conversations you need time; find out if the other person has some. Simple question: Is this a good time to talk?
Set the tone
Because you’re the one initiating this, you need to be the one to set the tone, the one to let the other person know that you’re interested in having more than a how-you-doing check-in. There are two ways of doing this.
One is to set the tone by talking about yourself more deeply than you usually do. You want to move beyond the standard, “I’m good,” to more honest statements about how you are really doing – I’ve been feeling down lately; I don’t know about you, but my kids are driving me crazy; I had been doing okay until Tom and I had this argument last night. This is about self-disclosure and revealing more of you and your feelings. With this introduction, you are letting the other person know what kind of conversation you want to have, what emotional level you are comfortable talking about. You can then turn the conversation towards them.
The other approach is to ask hard questions at the start: Not the “Doing okay?” but “Have you been having a hard time?” “Have you been feeling depressed or worried?” “Are your kids driving you crazy or struggling?” People only know what is safe to talk about based on what you talk about and what you ask. By drilling down into specific, more emotionally difficult conversations, you are letting the other person know that you are ready to hear what they have to say, that you are ready to go there.
Ask about details
Good therapists do this instinctively. They try to move from broad statements (“I’ve been feeling anxious“) to the details: What about, what thoughts have you had, how do you talk to yourself? You don’t need to be a therapist and try to deconstruct the other person’s psychology, but you want to ask about details (about an argument they had or about how the kids are driving them crazy) because emotions ride on content. Broad questions yield broad, bland emotions; detailed questions stir deeper, more poignant feelings. And expressing these deeper emotions and having them accepted glues people together.
Give space between emotions
And when these emotions arise, you only need to acknowledge them (“That must have been hurtful; that sounds so frustrating”) and then stop and be silent. This can be hard—our instincts are to repair, to fix, to make it better by saying the right thing right then to calm the waters. Don’t. Take a few deep breaths, allow room for you both to absorb what has been said (or for them to finish ranting or crying).
Slow down, focus on them
In the same vein, you want to slow the conversation overall. Move through the conversation like a turtle, not a jackrabbit. Keep the focus on them, give them the room and attention they need, and resist using their stories as launchpads to talk about your own. Only when they are done is it time to turn the conversation towards you.
Take risks
You know if you are moving into more vulnerable and intimate territory if what you want to say makes you feel uncomfortable, you get those butterflies of anxiety. Intimacy is not about disclosing some big, dark secret, but saying anything that is, for you, difficult to say. Take that risk for yourself, and listen for it in the other person. They may say “I’ve never said this before or thought about this before,” or there may be a hesitation or an unfinished sentence and a sigh. Ask them to finish the sentence. Give them space to say what is hard to say.
Use your anxiety as a sign that you are emotionally plowing new ground. Go deeper to connect.
Do you display emotional intelligence (EQ) when working with others? How would you know? Over the years I’ve found that EQ does its best work when things get a bit hairy due to opposing personalities and agendas, a stressful work environment, or when your buttons are pushed.
As leaders, when we are being impulsive, shortsighted, reacting with anger in the heat of the moment, or not making decisions in our “right minds,” we are sorely lacking EQ.
People with emotional intelligence have the learned capacity to process a situation gone bad, get perspective, and hold back from going to that “bad place.”
By processing over things with a rational and level-headed mind, you’ll eventually arrive at another, more sane conclusion.
That begs the question, how can you assess your own EQ as a way to measure yourself against its desired behaviors? Simple. Ask yourself these 5 questions:
1. Do you respond to people and situations instead of reacting?
There is a difference. In reacting to a stressful moment that’s going south fast, you may end up clouding your thinking and judgment and escalate what should’ve been a manageable dispute into an all-out war. But by responding, rather than reacting, emotionally-intelligent people step back, create space to consider the situation from all angles, and decide the best approach to handle things.
2. During conflict, are you able to cut through the drama and stick to the facts?
In emotionally-charged moments under pressure-cooker environments, a person with high EQ will explain the outcome she is hoping for and will ask for other ideas for solutions with an open mind. This typically leads to a constructive discussion that may resolve an ongoing issue to everyone’s satisfaction.
3. Do you take in the whole view of the problem and look at all sides of the issue?
People with emotional intelligence look at all sides of the issue and tap into their feelings and those of others to choose a different, and better, outcome. They seek out varied perspectives and solicit opinions of others before acting.
4. Do you manage your emotions better than most people?
Self-control is a personal competence developed in every person. The question behind self-control is: Can I manage my emotions and behavior to a positive outcome? Emotional intelligence expert and bestselling author Daniel Goleman explains:
Reasonable people–the ones who maintain control over their emotions–are the people who can sustain safe, fair environments. In these settings, drama is very low and productivity is very high. Top performers flock to these organizations and are not apt to leave them.
Self-control gives one the capacity to be present, calm, and focused during times of high stress. It’s a necessary virtue with long-term payoff.
5. Are you naturally positive and optimistic?
Emotionally intelligent people are positive thinkers who don’t get caught up in things they can’t control, like obsessing over politics or Covid-19. They put their energy and effort on the things within their power — the things that matter most in life, like their business and relationships. Because they’re naturally optimistic, you may find that they are physically and psychologically healthier than those with a negative outlook on life
While mass media is steadily encouraging fear and panic, we actually need to calm down and take a deep breath. Here are some things to remember in these trying times.
In these past weeks, we’ve witnessed a series of major historical events of a magnitude that is still difficult to fathom. With these events came a wave of panic that is palpable both on a local and a global level. And, in some ways, that panic is understandable. The specter of an invisible yet deadly disease spreading at an exponential rate has terrified humans for centuries.
At the time of writing these lines, we’re at this strange period of uncertainty where we have no idea where this is going and what kind of impact it will have on humanity. How long will this last? How many people will die? Will the world economy collapse?
This unprecedented situation has triggered in many individuals a great deal of fear and anxiety – steadily fed by a constant influx of alarming news by mass media. Meanwhile, while the masses are physically confined in small spaces and mentally paralyzed with fear, things are happening behind the scenes.
In these trying times, vigilant citizens need to be more vigilant than ever. And that means taking a step back, taking a deep breath and remaining clear-headed.
With that being said, here are a few things we need to remember now and always.
1- “This Too Shall Pass”
If COVID-19 is causing in you feelings of fear, panic, and anxiety, please repeat to yourself this timeless saying: “This too shall pass”. Because it will.
In 1858, Abraham Lincoln famously recounted:
“It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence, to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words: “And this, too, shall pass away.” How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction!
Often found in wisdom literature of the ancient Near East, the adage “this too shall pass” aptly sums up the unconditionally temporary nature of human condition. It is a reminder that every single event in human history, whether it is a negative or a positive one, inevitably becomes a thing of the past. And, although there doesn’t seem to be a light at the end of the tunnel right now, this virus will also inevitably become a thing of the past.
The only question is “when?”. Not unlike all other living things in the world, epidemics rise, peak and decline. Sooner or later, this thing will peak and it will decline. In the past decades, SARS and H1N1 caused a great deal of panic. However, the only thing they are infecting now is history books.
While current world events might seem overwhelming, we still have full control of ourselves and our surroundings. Which leads me to my next point.
2- You Don’t Need Up-to-the-Minute News Updates
If you can take away one thing from this site is that critical thinking is required when dealing with mass media. Sometimes, it doesn’t have our best interest at heart and, sometimes, it is even outright toxic. As people are confined to their homes with little to do, the urge to keep up with the news is constant. However, not all news is good to consume. Some of it actually is vile, toxic crap.
For instance, an article in Canada’s National Post titled What might our lives look like when Canada is in the full grip of COVID-19? dug up an obscure report dating from 2009, quoted its grimmest parts and linked them to what is happening now. I will spare you the details, but the article talks about things such as “stockpiling body bags, choosing a central place where people bring corpses of family members and identifying hockey and curling rinks cold enough to be temporary morgue sites”.
The article brought forth no useful information, just wild speculations that poke on people’s latent fears. Gladly, not every reader lapped up the unnecessary fear-mongering. Here are two comments from the article.
Another article from another Canadian publication titled Cancel your March Break straight-up begins with these words:
“Fear is the right reaction to the coronavirus”.
I’m sorry, but no. The only time that fear is the “right reaction” is when a bear is chasing you and you need the adrenaline boost to outrun it. In the case of a global crisis with lots of moving parts that require careful planning, fear is not the “right reaction”. Fear leads to panic-induced, irrational decisions. And a prolonged state of fear can be extremely damaging for one’s mental health.
After a whole lot of fear-mongering, the article ends with these words:
“Be afraid. Be very afraid.”
I’m sorry, but no. Now, more than ever, we need to remain calm, rational and level-headed. And limiting our daily intake of “panic news” is a great start. Trust me, I know that it is difficult to resist the urge to grab one’s phone and look-up news articles about the virus. I sometimes find myself doing it without even realizing it. But it is simply not healthy or even necessary to do so.
You don’t need to get a mild panic attack each time the number of confirmed cases goes up a notch. You don’t need to mildly despair each time an artist cancels a world tour. More importantly, if you have children, they don’t need to see you turn into a panicky shell of a person. Which leads me to my final point.
3- Life Goes On
If you look outside, the sun is still rising and birds are still chirping. You are still on this Earth and you still have one life to live. Even if you are in lockdown, quarantine or whatever else, you are still in control of yourself and your surroundings. You still need to sleep well, eat healthily and exercise regularly. If you’re stuck at home, put down your phone for a while and use this time to take care of your people, read a good book, work on creative projects and, if possible, go outside and seek the healing presence of nature. Coincidentally enough, in my annual end-of-year articles, I constantly suggest readers to do these exact things. That’s because, despite the constant noise of mass media, the most important things in life happen outside of it.
While this advice might sound extremely boring and generic, this is what needs to be done right now in order to remain vigilant citizens. We need to remain sharp and focused, not weak and fearful. Because, at this point, it doesn’t matter where this virus comes from, what (or who) is behind it and how dangerous it really is. It already managed to shut down the entire world.
Soon, we will need to ask some important questions: Who benefited from this situation? Who went for a power grab? What kind of companies weathered the storm? Where did the world economy shift to? What kind of local and global policies were introduced?
To properly answer these questions, we need to remain strong and watchful. Because, no matter what happens in the next months … this too shall pass.
A school in Ohio is doing away with detention punishment and giving students mindfulness and yoga classes instead.
We think that every parent can pretty much agree that there really isn’t anything beneficial to detention.
While the thought of being punished works well for some children, for others, it’s looked at as free time during the day or after school.
And we can’t forget to mention that it ends up disrupting their paren’s schedules whenever they need to pick them up after school instead of taking the bus.
And what do kids learn during after school detention? While they might walk away getting a head start on their homework, the lessons learned during after school detention is pretty much zip.
A school in Ohio is setting out to change that and we think that all schools should follow suit.
Good News Network reported that, high school principal, Jack Hatert, of Yellow Springs High, along with nearby Mckinney Middle school, are working on alternate detention classes.
Each Monday for 30 minutes before the end of their class, the students can sit down on a blanket in Donna Haller’s second-floor classroom and take time to focus on their emotions, be present, and have an allover quiet moment.
Basically, they will walk away from detention with some coping mechanisms for dealing with their big emotions that might have gotten them there in the first place. Talk about being proactive. Bravo!
This is part of a statewide education initiative that is working to encourage teachers to offer this mindfulness training more regularly to students.
The program is called “Each Child, Our Future,” and the goal of it is to address the mental health epidemic currently happening in the United States and raise capable, well rounded young people.
These mindfulness classes are also accompanied by a yoga option as well, which is held every Wednesday in their library.
Led by Donna Haller, a certified yoga and meditation instructor for both adults and youth of all ages, who has been at this specific high school for nine years.
She shared with the Yellow Springs News, “I love it. It does as much for me as them,” she said of the calming effects.
“Someone I know said that mindfulness and yoga have helped them with their ADHD and with processing an event where they had lost someone who was dear to them,” wrote freshman Isabella Beiring for a video project about the mindfulness and yoga program.
The World We Live In 