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Dispatches from Occupied Territory - Of Open Minds and Closed People
Dispatches from Occupied Territory - Of Open Minds and Closed People
By
Cognitive Dissonance
This is the second in a series of fictional explorations into an individual’s awakening to the suddenly unfamiliar world around her while still engulfed in the day to day insanity. These short stories in letter form are intended for the more sensitive and inquisitive reader who wants to look more deeply within and explore in depth their beliefs and perceptions and, most importantly, how they can cope in a world gone frighteningly mad. It is the author’s hope to accomplish this by way of an intimate and revealing first person correspondence between two long time friends as they discuss their ongoing trials, tribulations and revelations. Even though most of us come to Zero Hedge to learn, laugh, share and even rant, ultimately many of us are all alone as we cope with our awakening. While Tyler & Company do an excellent job deconstructing the insanity, rarely is our day to day emotional and psychological battering discussed. Most of us long for someone we can talk to and learn from without being judged or ridiculed. I offer the following occasional series as a small step in that direction. Chapter One can be found here.
Marie,
I was a bit surprised you wrote back so quickly. Then again, during the initial weeks and months of our awakening (‘first light’ is the term I use to describe this new experience) it’s a wonder we ever sleep at all let alone function. The sometimes disturbing, sometimes wonderful revelations come fast and furious and no sooner do we begin to grasp one, but another one rushes in demanding our attention. Just go with the flow for now and let it happen, because at this point more harm will come of you if you fight the process. There will be plenty of time later to analyze and assimilate everything you are learning. For now, just be a sponge and allow your mind to absorb it all while judging none.
With that said I promise you that I will get to all your questions, particularly the ones you asked about conspiracy and conspiracy theories, in the next few weeks. But for now I wish to pull back a bit to see the bigger picture and try to apply a broader point of view. So often when we are drowning in a sea of information we become so lost following the small darting fish that we never see the hungry shark until it is too late. This happens because we are mentally tied up in judgment of what is real and what is not, rather than simple observing. It doesn’t need to be this way, but it is because we have been trained to think in this manner.
If you are the powers that be and are promoting a narrow point of view, one that is deliberately manipulated and distorted, it is supremely important that you control the information flow during its transmission and upon its reception. You are beginning to understand that the mainstream media (MSM) is heavily influenced by multiple sources, and of course you are well aware of the official and unofficial government and corporate propaganda channels. Since you have near zero influence over them, for the sake of this discussion they are immaterial.
However, the way to control information at the receiving end is to condition the person receiving the information to apply mental and emotional filters that automatically screen out any information that does not ‘fit’ that person’s prevailing worldview. Since this is where you can affect change, this is where we will focus.
Understand as well that the beauty of this control system is that it allows for an endless but narrow variety of worldviews, literally as many as there are people. We are trained like rats in a maze to only see information as ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ just as the rat sees every (information) intersection as ‘left’ or ‘right’ based upon the learned and remembered map in its head. Our worldview is programmed in from birth beginning with our parents and peers, and this is the map we all have in our heads. Only in our case, as opposed to the rat, this map is constantly updated via the ongoing and continuous MSM, governmental, corporate and social re-conditioning.
We sit in judgment of everything we see and hear, though often it happens so subtly that we are rarely aware of the actual process. We can thank our egos for most of this, an ego whose primary job is to avoid cognitive dissonance at all costs, and thus filters or blocks most of the input long before it is ever consciously recognized. The problem is that even if we understand this is happening, awareness alone isn’t enough to counteract it. One doesn’t reverse decades of deep cultural conditioning only with awareness. We must be proactive and retrain ourselves, an exhausting and emotionally difficult task under the best of circumstances, but one that can be accomplished if we wish it to be so.
Sadly this task is nearly impossible if we are just to focus on each tidbit of information as it comes in. The problem is that oftentimes we really don’t know what is true and what is false, only what we have been conditioned to believe. I often use the following example to illustrate the problem. When we are born our minds are similar to a brand new blackboard. As we grow, enter school, make friends and deal with family and social issues etc, the blackboard is slowly filled with large and small calculations. And these calculations represent our life experience and so-called knowledge base from which we make our judgments of what is true and false.
The problem is that the blackboard isn’t filled with lots of small and independent sums and divisions that are individually verified before being imprinted upon our psyche’s blackboard. Rather it is one huge breathing mass of mathematical mayhem with one sum becoming part of the next calculation which leads into the next and so on. So once an error (or errors) is introduced, it rapidly multiplies and corrupts everything around it. These errors then go on to infect other people until they have compounded exponentially within the social structure. This is as intended and it is by design.
Because this corrupting influence is spreading in real time and is a part of the collective, which itself is a living breathing culture we are immersed within and seamlessly integrated into, this data and perception corruption is considered natural and normal. Always remember Marie that ‘normal’ is defined by the majority, not by independently verified facts, figures, logic or reason.
The more we surrender to the collective view of normal, the more we become dependent upon the collective to define for us what is normal, creating the near perfect positive feedback loop that can more easily be controlled or at least heavily influenced. The collective begins to self censor to remain within the narrow confines of the collective mind’s maze, removing the need for constant fine tuning by the hidden hand. An occasional poke or prod is all that is needed to keep the collective from wandering too far unless doing so suits the powers that be.
Obviously as we begin to awaken and see our (and thus the collective’s) blackboard for the first time with our first light eyes, we are astonished by the sheer number and depth of errors that we find. Because it is all interconnected we quickly realize that to pick a place to start unraveling is for all practical purposes impossible. How do you untangle a huge ball of yarn when you can’t even find a beginning or end point to work off of, where individual pieces are tied to themselves as well as to each other in random places using arbitrary rules and processes?
And with errors multiplied into more sums, which are then divided by the product of even more equations, to change one changes all, though it’s never completely obvious what you have accomplished because it is quickly swallowed by the huge mass. Either you must know the ultimate truth by which to measure everything else or it is hopeless that you will ever find your way out of the insanity, that you will ever know ‘truth’. Clearly we cannot find our way out of this mess without some external assistance. This is the one certain truth we all know.
Or maybe not! Maybe this assumption is itself flawed just like so much else we think we ‘know’ to be true and irrefutable. For this ‘either/or’ supposition is itself a duality, a right or wrong, a left or right outcome and a product of our own convoluted and corrupted thinking and training. As I have said before, one cannot see outside the box with the tools provided by the box. Our collective insanity will only provide us with answers that sustain and validate our insanity. To assume that we can apply the same thinking processes and so-called logical train of thought to unravel the insanity is to believe that the insanity itself has the capability to be sane, an obviously insane conclusion. So what do we do?
Our social, governmental, religious and cultural beliefs all point to one truth, that actual or real ‘truth’ can only be ascertained from an external source, usually only from the so called ‘authority’ informing us of this truth. In other words, we are told that we are an empty vessel with no capability of discerning true from false or any capacity to ‘know’ anything other than what we are originally told and anything we then derive from those original truths. Our capacity to ‘know’ is based upon smaller bits of knowledge or ‘truth’ given to us from outside our consciousness and not any truth or understanding already held or known within. This of course makes us all innocents and/or victims of our own inadequacy and/or inability to function without outside order and control imposed upon us……for our own good of course.
This is a fundamental lie, the fundamental lie, that has served to enslave and control, us and one we believe so thoroughly and completely, a ‘truth’ that is so engrained within us, that to seriously question ‘it’ and all that springs from this central lie is considered the act of a madman and sure to brand us as unstable or even dangerous.
This isn’t hyperbole, but rather simple fact. Over thousands of years every person who has attempted to show the general public that each of us carries within us the ability to know and understand is obviously dangerous to the powers that be and is quickly silenced or co-opted. Every effort is made to discredit, demean and marginalize anyone who speaks in this manner, including the use of brain freezing terms such as ‘religious zealot’, ‘anarchist’, ‘antisocial’, ‘mentally ill’, and even ‘conspiracy theorist’. The truth can always withstand penetrating questions whereas a lie must be upheld with force, group think and derision.
To break free requires us to take the first steps out of the box. Since we have already established that using old tools and methods will only lead us back into the insanity, breaking free requires an entirely different perspective. Many would say that it is impossible to remove ourselves from the programming while still functioning as a part of society. Here again we see the either/or false reality that is the basis for the insanity. We don’t need to ‘believe’ or ‘disbelieve’ anything in order to interact with it. At this point in our breakout the only thing we must believe in is our need to reject our judgmental attitude and black & white perception and instead adopt a truly open mind.
We don't need to agree or disagree with all, or even some, of the present reality in order to possess an open mind. It is the shutting off or blocking of information that is the sign of our conditioning. When information is treated as if it is a threat, it is a threat....to the closed mind. The key is to allow the aberrant or non conforming information to possess the right to exist, to be 'real', in much the same way as information we already believe is correct is considered ‘real’. This approach can be very frightening to people who have very rigid points of view.
Think about the words we use to describe ‘real’ and ‘correct’ and how they are often used interchangeably. I’ve seen and heard the following sentences used in casual conversations as well as in magazines and blogs. “Oh, those aren’t real economic statistics.” “That’s all a bunch of bull. Give me the real scoop.” “There are two sets of books. Where are the real numbers?” We do not consider information that we perceive as incorrect or wrong to be ‘real’ and thus it is not considered to be a ‘real’ part of our reality. On the other hand, something that we believe is correct is also believed to be ‘real’, almost as if it had a physical presence. It is no coincidence that ‘correct’ and ‘real’ have been merged to mean essentially the same thing. I’ve talked with you before about how our language is manipulated to control us at the subliminal level. This is a perfect example.
How many times have we discovered that we were entirely wrong about something? Did this suddenly make the formerly unbelievable information correct and thus ‘real’? No. It was always correct and thus always ‘real’. It was only our perception and treatment of that information that changed. If we are not compelled to shoehorn information into narrowly defined categories or constantly change the status of information from the ‘real’ category to the ‘not real’ category (and vice a versa) to conform to our (or societies) beliefs, we will be much more flexible and less rigid in our thinking in the first place. Life suddenly seems to flow a lot easier and there are less conflicts and surprises.
Once we open the door to other possibilities, then our mind is free to arrange information in ways previously considered impossible or nonsensical, something our mind naturally wants to do using a source of knowing that springs from within. To allow something to exist in our mind without insisting that it be considered ‘real’ or correct does no harm to us unless we know (either consciously or unconsciously) deep down inside of us that we are missing the boat or that we are conflicted and/or biased.
Most of our present day stress and anxiety comes from trying to make sense of a crazy world where we are constantly told that oranges are apples or chairs or bricks, anything other than oranges. Once again Marie, let me use a thought experiment to illustrate how we already sort through this confusion and doubt in other areas of our lives and we don’t even realize we are doing it.
Let’s say you stop by a yard sale next Saturday and they are selling a 500 piece jigsaw puzzle. Only the original box was destroyed and all that is left are a bunch of puzzle pieces in a big plastic bag (looks like a whole lot more than 500 pieces you say to yourself) and a vague recollection from the seller that the box displayed some kind of landscape with a lake, some hills and a farm. Not much to go on, but it’s a start. So you figure why not and you purchase it for a quarter. If nothing else it’s cheap fun for some rainy day. And sure enough, next weekend is a wash out so you pull out the bag and dig in. How are you going to solve the puzzle?
Perhaps it would be better to focus on what you will not do. While you may have a fuzzy ‘belief’ in the view or scene the assembled pieces will represent, you have no idea where each piece fits into the overall worldview. So you most certainly would not discard anything just because it doesn’t fit at that precise moment. Nor would you diminish the validity of any one piece simply because you have no place to put in. From the moment you begin the assembly process each piece is as valid and important as every other piece simply because you are not being judgmental in the most basic sense. There is no right or wrong, correct or incorrect with regard to the puzzle pieces. There just is.
While you might look for trends of color (blue for the sky, darker blue for the water) or shape (pieces with a straight edge probably fit along the perimeter while others fit within these boundaries) experience tells you that even this might be misleading and to assume anything other than that they all somehow fit together would be foolish and self defeating. No one piece will be seen or perceived as any less or more ‘real’ (correct) than any other piece and all have an inherent right to exist, to be real.
However, a quick count confirms your initial judgment that there were more than 500 pieces. In fact you find well over 2,000 and after some quick sorting you discover parts to three, four and possibly even more puzzles. What do you do now? This most certainly calls into question the assumed vague recollection of a landscape with water and a farm. Hell, since we are now talking about multiple puzzles of unknown composition, number of pieces per puzzle and even if there is enough to complete each puzzle, any assumption can be seen as dangerous and misleading. This is essentially where you and I stand today Marie, where the only thing we know for certain is that we know nothing with any degree of certainty. But this seemingly unsolvable situation is not seen that way to the determined puzzle solver. While the degree of difficulty just escalated, by no means is it impossible unless the mind is cluttered with preconceived limits, rules and ‘truths’. It is the person’s mind and her limits of perception that defines the boundaries of what is and is not possible, of what can and cannot be done. This in turn is influenced by what is believed to be true or real and thus, before anything has begun, entire areas of thought, process and imagination are walled off as nonsensical and impossible. These are the thought filters I spoke of earlier Marie, where we were the problem, we are the problem and we always will be the problem when it comes to interpreting the world, not they or them or those people over there. Let’s discuss how you might piece these jigsaw puzzles together and the process that is going on in the background. First off, unless you are an egomaniac and completely dominated by your ego, putting together this puzzle pushes the ego into the background and brings to the forefront a mix of analytical thought, feel or intuition and a deep ‘knowing’ that we tap into with little to no conscious awareness. It is this ‘knowing’ connection that frightens the powers that be to their very core for it is the source of our ultimate power and sovereignty. At this point, for simplicity of explanation let us assume we are working on one puzzle of 500 pieces. Most people will quickly gather the edge pieces in a separate pile and then begin to assemble the outer perimeter. This provides an orientation of sorts because it defines the edges of our worldview and is comparable to our most basic indoctrination as a young child. Our very first blackboard marks consist of us ‘knowing’ hunger, pain, light and dark, mother and nipple and so on. While everyone has a slightly different approach to solving a jigsaw puzzle, I have found over the years that there are striking similarities between people even of diverse economic background and cultural upbringing. Initially the going is slow as we take in the scope and magnitude of the task ahead. Seen from a strictly binary on/off computing point of view, solving this puzzle would require massive data crunching as we tried to fit each piece with every other piece until we found a match, then repeated the process again and again until the puzzle was solved. While we may pick up pieces and test fit them with others, our mind’s eye is taking in the bigger picture and absorbing the entire scene. Without really thinking about it we are sorting pieces by color, current location and shape, looking (more accurately ‘feeling’) for tiny clues of consistency and similarity. Rather than examine each piece very closely, then moving on to the next, we adopt a more distant stare as our eyes sweep up and down, back and forth, occasionally stopping to try one piece or another. Suddenly we find a match, then another and another and quickly we have 6 or 7 pieces joined together, though we still don’t know where they fit within the bigger picture. Then one or two more pieces are found to fit along one of the edges and there is a rapid fire assembly of 5 or 6 more pieces before the fire goes out and we move on. If you ask a person what is going on here and push for detailed answers you will find that they really don’t know what’s happening. They assume they are ‘finding’ matches, but really can’t tell you how or why. They are at a particular loss for words to explain why these matches often come in bunches, then peter off until they drift away from that section and move on to something else. I contend that because we see each piece as consisting of equal weight and value, thus ‘real’ and not to be discarded, that we engage our entire capacity to be aware and to know. Rather than creating new capacity to ‘see’, we are lifting the artificial restraints (aka filters and beliefs) we have been conditioned to use at all times when in the ‘real’ world. As we scan the pieces we are allowing our conscious and unconscious mind, along with our inner knowing, to make connections that might not be readily apparent on the surface. Often when I talk to people about this in depth they will use phrases such as ‘it seemed like it would fit’ or ‘I just felt this piece was the one I needed’ or even ‘something told me to grab that one’. Bear in mind that one must probe to get these answers because they won’t initially be offered. Instead they will try to rationalize what is happening and use more specific (scientific) terms in an effort to explain what is happening to them self at the same time they are explaining it to the questioner.
The more we let go of our learned bias and conditioned beliefs, the more efficient we are at solving the (worldview) puzzle. This is really about our desire, even desperation, to control information to fit our point of view. The world no longer appears to be orderly to us, regardless of whether it really was to begin with, so now we struggle with the impulse to exert control to bring back order.
This is our ego taking charge as it tries to paper over our cognitive dissonance(s) by ratcheting up our fear level and engaging our fight or flight reflexes. Since we have been trained to see only duality, everything appears to be about choice, of right or wrong, of correct or incorrect. The solution is not to once again begin to chase our tails but rather to settle back, do little to nothing and trust in our innate inner ability to make the connections we need to begin to solve the puzzle. Worldview puzzle solving is not about control, but about natural processes.
On a personal note Marie, I now regularly tackle jigsaw puzzles without using the cover art as a guide in an effort to retrain my mind to see beyond the conditioned barriers I have learned to erect during my normal daily routine. In effect I am trying to strengthen the connections to my knowing center. Interestingly modern scientific thinking is beginning to acknowledge the existence of a ‘knowing’, though it is usually marginalized and discredited precisely because it can’t be measured using instruments designed solely to measure what is believed to exist and is real.
If we move back to the multiple puzzles thought experiment we can see that the same methods can be used regardless of the complexity. In essence we abandon rigid thinking and rote recital of facts and knowledge in order to engage and capture that intangible knowing that guides our hand in solving complex problems. We release our need for control and allow our intuition and gut to take over, a process that takes practice, particularly if we are trying to counteract decades of conditioning.
These are subtle powers and they are easily overwhelmed by strong emotion and focused determination. We are trying to soften our focus, not sharpen it. Often when we become stuck while working on difficult or complex problems, we will ‘sleep on it’ only to wake the next morning with answer in hand. No one can tell me it was their sharply focused analytical mind that was the only entity working on the solution, at least not with any believability.
Back in the ‘real’ world, consider that even though we are not building a worldview from scratch, but in essence are starting from an already constructed reality which we call our belief system, the same process can be used. Only instead of disassembling the already completed worldview puzzle, then trying to put it all back together again into a new worldview, a process that would quickly destabilize us and probably cause a nervous breakdown, all we need to do is take each additional piece of information or perception we encounter today, this minute, and treat it as if it is of equal value to any other piece we currently hold, the direct opposite of how we would approach life today.
At first it may feel like a mindless mish mash of useless facts and tidbits of information is clogging our brain and it will most certainly be uncomfortable because some of those bits will directly contradict our existing belief system. To accomplish this we must begin to suspend belief, which is fundamentally different from suspending disbelief, something we do in order to enjoy a movie or TV program. We must begin to move to the side our already conditioned belief that we are correct in our thinking.
This requires that we displace our super sized ego and accept the nearly impossible idea that we might be wrong in our thinking and understanding of how the world works. Difficulty in learning new things is rarely about accepting the new; it almost always is about the pain of rejecting the old, and here is where the ego steps in to protect us from ourselves. If we are sincere in our desire to open our eyes and find peace within, then there is no choice but to accept that everything must change one puzzle piece at a time.
The longer we withhold our artificial judgment as to the validity or truthfulness of every information piece, including our existing programming, and simply allow it all to be ‘real’, if only for now, the sooner new connections begin to form. And gradually some of these new connections will displace old conditioned connections and beliefs. We will in essence begin to rebuild while still operating at full speed. This, incidentally, is exactly how the body heals and regenerates while we go about our daily activities, and for me this confirms that the process I am describing is natural and normal and that our present state of confusion and disorder is an affront to our natural state of being.
In a crushing blow to our egos, this process will be as easy or as hard as we wish to make it. If we love the comfort and warmth our beliefs provide for us, the natural high we get when we stroke our confirmation bias and surrender to our ego, it will be nearly impossible to move to the next level. Then again Marie, you have already signaled your desire to move ahead, so most of the pain you feel will be from the disorientation that comes from reconstruction. This is understandable and normal and it will pass quickly as long as you begin to release your long held and cherished comforting lies and self deceptions.
Let me try to pull it all together with some final thoughts. I used the bag of puzzle pieces that belong to several different puzzles to begin this thought experiment. In real life there are hundreds if not thousands of puzzles, not just 3 or 4. While the thought of this level of complexity might drive most people screaming in terror from the room, I see it from a different perspective. Even though each puzzle might show a different scene, they are all just snap shots of the same reality.
Even if the puzzle depicts children playing in a school yard or a lake at the foot of a mountain or even a busy city street corner, they all show people, places or things in our world, in our universe or from our mind’s imagination. Thus every single puzzle piece has a place and a purpose and it is only we who are ignorant to its placement. This means that every piece should and must command in us equal respect and be considered real and valid and thus not something to be denied or disposed of.
To grasp this concept I try to think about those neat videos we have all seen of hundreds of CAT scans all assembled in order, which when viewed in rapid sequence take us on a trip through the human body starting from the very top of the head and progressing all the way down until we reach the bottom of the feet. If we were to take those hundreds of snap shots and scatter them on the floor and not realize that they are just sectional views of the same three dimensional entity we might see the task of assembly as impossible.
But just knowing that they all belong together is a tactical advantage because now each snap shot, and each piece of each snap shot, is equally important and must be used somewhere in order to create the whole. Our limited and biased perception is the roadblock here, not the hundreds of slices on the floor. It is only our present ignorance that prevents us from seeing that everything we see, hear, touch and perceive minute to minute is connected somehow, somewhere.
This little tidbit of deliberate disinformation, which we believe to be true, is actually connected to that true fact over there that we have discarded because it didn’t fit our worldview. That political party is saying this which doesn’t fit there because my uncle told me when I was young that they are just a bunch of control freaks and commies. As we begin to break these artificial and false connections and slowly allow things to float free of constraint, a clearer more cohesive picture slowly begins to emerge. This in turn builds momentum and confidence and quickly 6 or 7 pieces come together in rapid building. Then we pause and wait for more old connections to dissolve so that new ones may re-form.
This is the only way I know of to rebuild while still operating in real time. And this all presupposes that we have the desire, will and courage to challenge everything we think we know and that we are tolerant of being in a near constant state of growth and metamorphosis. That doesn’t mean pain, but it does mean living a more engaged life. We have been conditioned to be mindless zombies, beginning in school where we are force fed historical propaganda and a filtered point of view, right through to present day where we spend most of our leisure time propped up in front of the boob tube downloading an endless stream of mindless junk thought and manufactured experience as part of our endless re-programming process.
Finally (yes Marie, I really mean it this time) I suggest that the best way to start this process is to banish the words ‘believe’ and ‘belief’ along with the phrase ‘I believe’ (and all its derivations) from your mental and verbal vocabulary. The words and phrase imply ownership and reflect our conditioning even when they are being used honestly and without conditions. Contrary to popular ‘belief’, when we believe something it now controls us and not the other way around. Using these words contradicts our desire to embody every single tidbit of information with equal weighting simply because to believe one thing is to disbelieve another. We are suspending judgment, which means we are suspending belief.
Over time our beliefs become heavy sacks of concrete which we must struggle to carry around wherever we go and which become white elephants that chain us to the belief stake we have driven into the ground. They morph into a terrible burden that controls our every act, though we desperately tell ourselves the opposite in order to deny the suffering they cause us. Our beliefs are our emotional and spiritual straightjackets and they become the very source of our own psychosis.
Instead, if we are to truly begin the process of breaking free from our chains, we must begin to treat all those so-called ‘beliefs’ as if they were tiny, delicate butterflies. One does not ‘hold’ a belief butterfly as much as one is visited by it. We observe it as it flutters from one thought branch to another. If we were to extend our hands to make contact we would exert the lightest touch, that of a gentle breeze that momentarily freshens before moving on. If the butterfly graces us with its presence and alights upon our cupped hands, it remains only as long as both are enriched by the encounter before it moves on, hopefully to be replaced for a moment by another.
This is true freedom and contrary to the fear mongers and oppressors, it is not our beliefs that threaten them, but rather our lack of chains and our freedom of thought that frightens them into their repressive policies. Someone who is truly free is never subservient to any ideology or thought master. Cast off that ultimate self inflicted thought chain and believe in only one thing, your ability to be free of beliefs.
Beside you always,
Jonathan
___________
Cognitive Dissonance
07-11-2011
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Dearest CD! I've been a admirerer since the original blog. This is one of the most important and meaningful pieces I have read in a lifetime of searching, and describes so richly the ideas I am consciously exploring daily. I would very much like to be able to speak with you more directly if you were amenable. ryanstones02 atch yahoo
I do hope you will be publishing this series. Thank you with all I have.
Thanks for the missive CD. I have been training myself to look at things without labels. My better half was listening to a meditation one night and I caught a bit of it. The guy (Tolle I think) was talking about the difference between what something is, and what we call it. Because just using just a name really minimizes what it is. Sure it helps for discussion, but many see a name and leave it at that. Categorize and move on.
I really liked the suggestion to stop using the term believe. I have acutally been doing this for about a year now. Well I still use it, but do not use it as a synonym for "know". belief is accepting something as valid when it is unprovable.
I actually correct people in conversation when they use the term belief instead of think. I also stop them when they say "feel" instead of think, but that is just my thoughts that we are in alot of the situations that we are today because we felt instead of thought.
Again, thanks for the article. Teaching us to see in a different way. Looking inside has helped me solve many of the problems that I have encountered. I have begun to see "problems" as merely stimuli. My reaction causes them to be defined as problems or not.
Also giving up the false idol of control (Pastor made me think about that one) has helped enormously.
pods
pods, maybe the issue is not whether to "believe or not believe" (for to "not believe" is actually a belief), but rather, as you alluded to in the first paragraph, to confuse one's belief with the underlying Reality.
"the menu is not the meal" - Alan Watts
then again, Watts also said "the universe is one giant Rorschach inkblot". that is to say, belief has the power to create "reality", especially when there are a critical mass of human beings that share the same belief. don't think that it would be stretch to say that many of us here agree that it is indeed only this shared belief (e.g. the "full faith & credit" of USAInc.) that is keeping the entire planet levitating above the Abyss (which is also in and of itself only a belief that has become reality). of course, many of us here then believe that by simply substituting one instrument of belief (e.g. Glod) for another (paper) will make everything mo' better...but i digress...
ok, so, if you're willing to consider that Belief has tremendous Power to create reality (see Global Consciousness Project or clif high's work as experiments attempting to test that hypothesis) you could make the argument that whereas in the Industrial Age, resources (forged into weapons) were the primary instruments of Power to control information, in the Information Age, pure information (dissected into patterns of 1's & 0's for transmission and then reassembled, managed & manipulated into beliefs) are the primary instrument (i would choose to include $ in that category) in order to control resources. (of course, this has happened before in our supposed "history", the one coming to my mind is the rise of the Catholic Church as the Roman Empire began to crumble). this is the level of the chessboard in which we are pawns at the moment, whether here with the tylers on ZH, on twitter, Slavebook, the yahoo message boards, etc. etc. etc.
but herein lies the Rub: "reality" (i.e. that which is under the sole control of Humanity) is not the same as Reality (i.e. belief in chemtrails, HAARP & Hopi rain dances notwithstanding, that which is not under the control of humanity). again, the menu is not the meal, even if those who run the greasy spoon are successful in convincing many of us that is so. it is this "abyss of the Real" in which we are approaching, the "edge of the petri dish" as our long-lost misanthropic friend Mako would say. and every moment we spend here online attempting to shape reality through our beliefs is pushing us ever so closer to the cliff of Reality.
so back to the beginning, is it an choice of belief/no belief which then in turn implies an eternal struggle until the End of the Line (and then begin again to struggle some more) OR is there another way, not a way OUT as far as escaping belief, but a way OUTSIDE to view one's & other's beliefs from another perspective, like a fly on the wall? and thus realizing that not only that Belief has Power, but that belief is a CHOICE and that all choices, like causes, have effects that can not only manipulate "reality", but also either hasten or slow our eventual collective confrontation with Reality.
personally, i choose to believe that it is not altogether necessary to confront Reality in the negative sense and fall into the abyss, but rather Reality wants us to dance, not in defiance or fear of IT, but rather in celebration and respect of it, with the awareness that we are making a conscious choice to do so for our own survival and for those of us who may come "after" us. and that once enough of us begin dancing, Reality will reveal the secret that allows each of us to levitate for Real if we wish. of course, this is just my attempt to influence "reality" through my beliefs...
p.s. sorry if the menu is so convoluted, but your comment sent me off on a tangent that led me here:
http://www.rawilson.com/trigger1.html
and then the synapses started triggering in chaotic fashion. then again, when investigating matters of epistemology, like in Rome, all roads are circuitous.
"This book does not claim that you "create your own reality" in the sense of total (but mysteriously unconscious) psychokinesis. If a car hits you and puts you in the hospital, I do not believe this is because you "really wanted" to be hit by a car, or that you "needed" to be hit by a car, as two popular New Age bromides have it. The theory of transactional psychology, which is the source of my favorite models and metaphors, merely says that, once you have been hit by a car, the meaning of the experience depends entirely on you and the results depend partly on you (and partly on your doctors). If it is medically possible for you to live -- and sometimes even if the doctors think it is medically impossible -- you ultimately decide whether to get out of the hospital in a hurry or to lie around suffering and complaining.
Most of the time, this kind of "decision" is unconscious and mechanical, but with the techniques described in this book, such decisions can become conscious and intelligent." = RAW
"The longer we withhold our artificial judgment as to the validity or truthfulness of every information piece, including our existing programming, and simply allow it all to be ‘real’, if only for now, the sooner new connections begin to form. And gradually some of these new connections will displace old conditioned connections and beliefs. We will in essence begin to rebuild while still operating at full speed."
Jonathon, a delightful piece and you raise an interesting point. We suspend belief and rely on intuition to sort the jumble. Yet intuition is a talent that society has effectively suppressed in its desire for systemic compliance. At what point do we trust ourselves regarding what is revealed and act? Our “reality” is a quantum entanglement of events, information time and our physical chemistry in the moment, ever changing. When do we stop the clock?
It is the paradox of nature that there is never a balance, only a fractal dance around the centre. Nature acts and then rebalances, endlessly. An adaptation of a theme, pre-programmed to adopt new information.
I too have worked hard to free my mind from the noise machine and daily encourage others to do likewise. I daresay not as gently as you expound, my approach more shock and awe to your velvet glove. Either way, it appears the bombardment of brainwashing has cut too deep a hole in the firmament of the sheeple minds for anything short of the utter and total displacement of their “normality” to have any behavioural effect. They are inured. They do not want to think. It hurts too much to contemplate a life beyond what is fed to them. They neither wish to learn or unlearn, just to be left alone to their mental poisons and delusions. They are quasi machines, no longer natural, and will struggle to adapt. Worse still are the authoritarians, the venal and corrupt owners of this ship of fools who brook no off-piste thinking. It portends a regression to the mean, and the nasty….
Which is why I don't try to wake the sleeping any longer. They will wake when they are ready. Or they will not.
There are too many people already beginning to open their eyes who need encouragement to go further. The world is a scary place when we first leave the conditioned womb. Plenty of work ahead healing ourselves and each other.
Thank you for commenting.
Indeed. We all move to the beat of a different drummer. And, like leading horses to water they have to want to drink...I thank you for that sage advice to let sleeping dogs lie and focus on the ones already on the path, it might possibly reduce my own stress exponentially, but then I wonder about the value of only "preaching to the converted" if the tipping point comes too late because we aimed too low...Or maybe the great reset just has to happen in the grand cycle of things and nature takes its course. After all, we choose our own path to walk beside that river of change or it washes us away. Thanks for the thinking CD.
Suddenly my eyes are focusing and unfocusing while rapidly flicking back and forth. I'm either experiencing an acid flashback or I'm looking at another Banzai7 visual maze.
Let's hope it's the latter.
u're missing Jimmy Stewart falling into the abyss, vertigo-style ;~)
oops
What does your gut tell you?
Your gut always knows; your mind and emotions are the confused parties.
What does your gut tell you?
Yes, your visceral, animal, gut.
Does it say that things will be o.k., or that this time is different?
Does it say that we have been here before, or that we have never?
Does it say that something is terribly wrong, or that this is a passing shadow?
Your gut knows, follow it.
Very nice.
You call it your gut, I call it your inner knowing. We use different words, but we say the same thing. We have become so distanced from these subtle forces that we now give them little to no consideration. But actually we are listening to them all day and night. We just don't realize we are because our ego and intellect are taking credit for something they are not doing. So much nicer to believe we came up with the answer than an inner knowing.
My gut tells me fade the good guys. I want Cog to answer.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5e1_K-JDfOk
Great. What is the question?
"My gut tells me fade the good guys. I want Cog to answer."
So, you want to believe in Cog.
I love what you are trying to do Cog. From one spacemonkey to another I have great respect for you.
But keep in mind that some of us need this system.
Personally, my net worth may sit about near zero but I feed 10 people with these Bennie Bux. I have taken it to the limit more than once in trying to figure out how the good guys win. They cannot as long as corporations exist, no?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qv8AVi44NIc
Who says I am trying to tear it down. I am discussing changing our perception of reality, not of changing reality. Once we percieve things differently everything will change naturally.
And you might consider the idea that it may be coming apart by itself because deep down people wish it to be destroyed. It is our will and belief that sustains the system. Remove that will and belief and instead introduce serious doubt and the walls will come tumbling down..........just like they are today.
Just because I am a very agressive person yet I see the goodness in you, Cog Diss.
What do you think about these song lyrics? I think they sum up your time here, no?
Long ago in a dusty village
full of hunger, pain and strife
a man came forth with a vision of truth
and the way to a better life
he was convinced he had the answer
and he compelled people to follow along
but the hunger never vanished
and the man was banished
and the village dried up and died
Sounds a bit like your tour of duty on Zero Hedge.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2a3q0nIsoM
Sleep on it dude. We are way late in the game as you well know. I want your genuine thoughts. You are a good man.
Thanks for the excellent associations with jigsaw puzzle solving.
You describe the greatest strength of our brains, IMO: Pattern recognition, in a massively parallel way. But this can only bear fruit after taking in lots of information bits, just as you write.
To 'sleep on it' definitely works, because you can forget light conditioning and start with a fresh mind and/or from a different angle.
"One might be wrong", or in other words -a bit exaggerating- "I know that I know nothing."
"To 'sleep on it' definitely works, because you can forget light conditioning and start with a fresh mind and/or from a different angle."
I've always thought it was my subconscious working on it when I was asleep, much like what goes on when you are trying to think of a word or a name, and then it pops into your head awhile later.
I never came up with outstanding insights during my sleep, but if something bothers you, one usually has dreams which throw totally (seemingly) unrelated things into a blender... and that might help decondition you.
The realization only happens when you are awake again, with the before mentioned fresh mind. That's my perception of inner workings.
CD described exactly how I felt when waking up to the financial mess, starting February 2008. Even though all my life I kept calling things into question, it took me 2 months to grasp the enormity. And then on April 14th, 2008 I bought my first physical gold :-)
Yes, your subscious does work on it. But where does your conscious and subconscious mind get it vast store of information and knowledge to work through the issue and solve these vexing problems you are sleeping on?
I contend that it is an inner knowing that we tap into. Some call it gut, some intuition. Regardless, I have found that all the answers can be found within after we have exhausted confusing external sources.
Grant us the serenity to accept the manipulation we cannot change, and divest what fiat we can.
And therein lies the rub.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJR2kz573cc
Forgive my spite, but the unifying frame connecting this vacuous hypotheticality and the whimpering thanksters is the pathetic bourgeois satisfaction of using your mind to get money.
Only nobility can despise money and disdain the thought towards its increase. Ain't a single fella on here holds truth more important than money -- such are the sheep, feeding on the green, cooperating with the sheperd.
Ultra leftist ridicule for psycho-monetary punification. That's the big feared truth -- that all of you justify your own helpless serfdom to money grubbing, which has impotized your fathers' fathers', and most recently, your meaningless lives.
Cling away to your impotent and deceitfully clean logic ploys!
Wow, you really like to sound smart, don't you?
Sure this place is about money. Not just about making it though.
About making it just or above the reaches of politics or organized groups. Because money is what we trade for our labor.
And our labor is our own.
So, in many ways this site is about freedom, because that is what honest money represents.
pods
Sorry, but your post gives the impression you are broke, which I find faintly amusing, since this is a financial site. Not to say you are a commie, but the post brings to mind the waggish definition of a communist: a capitalist with no money. When you have earned your avatar image, grasshopper, your tone will be drained of vitriol and condemnation. In the words of Gautama, "We are all bozos on this bus".
I have it easier; my avatar is a heedless fool.
It's true -- awaiting unemployment with no savings, born rich. And I'm proud to have converted my limited this-body leisure into ferocious eloquence.
Been a stupidizing poison forever, this money loving -- all the fiat knockin'and still everybody's invested their whole dignity in making money. Sure, I drool at power with money -- yet I hate it sincerely as the ruse of weaklings, an arrangement so accurately here described.
It's just the deformation and limitation of all these intellect down to more or less valuable commodity-lives: I contend you can't even think that thought if yoú've prided yourself foremost ever on wealth.
If happen to inherit much -- I'm getting meaner, not all maudlin like this thread's slime. The dysfunction is the commitment to making profit, a mental deformation. Buy at best price, yes -- but cognition planning to maximize money, I've yet to see a noble being so created.
"Furthermore, Subhuti, in the practice of compassion and charity a disciple should be detached. That is to say, he should practice compassion and charity without regard to appearances, without regard to form, without regard to sound, smell, taste, touch, or any quality of any kind. Subhuti, this is how the disciple should practice compassion and charity. Why? Because practicing compassion and charity without attachment is the way to reaching the Highest Perfect Wisdom, it is the way to becoming a living Buddha."
http://www.diamond-sutra.com/diamond_sutra_translation.html
Nice work CD.
III
How to maintain sane in a world gone mad? For CogDis, writing seems to do the trick. For me, withdrawing to the man cave doesn't work, I'd go nuts if I couldn't express ideas and feelings... I have discussions with parents and friends, respond to posts here, do a little Facebooking with relevant links. I try to wake others, who are mostly in willful denial... they want to hold onto their Normalcy Bias as long as possible. Emotional whiplash is the problem. People's eyes can be opened to brutal and ugly truths, but they've been travelling at 75 mph in one direction their entire lives... suddenly having to reverse course causes them too much trauma. The first stages of waking are very uncomfortable for many people. Humans frighten easily, and no one wants to admit to themselves they are scared. Normalcy Bias is a convenient coping mechanism.
At the first signs that the world was not as I had thought, I just got very driven to study, and study and study some more to try to figure out what was going on, and to try to be prepared. I was scared, but scared meant action for me. I am one of the people that fear always stimulates to action.
I found interacting in the day to day world difficult as I could tell all the people around me were unawakened. I really only told my husband about my new truths at first. I wanted to keep researching and really be sure of what I thought before I told others. Thankfully, my husband easily believed and joined me in research. He, to this day, still talks more to other people about all this than I do. I have warned my family and close friends, but I don't dwell on it at all with them.
We each have our own ways of dealing with our preconceived notions being shattered.
You are very lucky DM. Many people do not find their spouse to be as accepting of the knowledge as you found yours. This greatly increases the sense of loneliness and isolation they feel while traveling the awakening path. As well, you are one of those few who are activated by their fear into moving. Many are so conditioned that this is not a response they would consider reasonable in light of the terror they feel deep down inside.
The biggest mistake I still make today is assuming that others see, feel and respond to the world as I do. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is a lesson I relearn too often because I fail to embody it completely. I have a natural bias.......me. This is why empathy may be the most important tool to keep in our bags, the ability and desire to walk in others shoes. We would never harm another if we truly felt their pain.
Nice to see you back here. Your ID and avatar rule and I agree with what you said.
Life's a bitch but I deal with it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uoen6atxGUw
Last month, my youngest daughter, who is a VP at BofA, was visiting us
from California. When I showed her an article on ZH, she saw the name
Tyler Durden and told me about the movie Fight Club. She was working
in Delaware for MBNA at the time the movie came out said that Tyler Durden
character in the movie blew up the MBNA credit card center. After the movie
came out, there were regular bomb scares there for years causing many
evacuations. She was worried that I would be brain-washed by the website.
I was disappointed that she believed I was so weakminded and gullible.
I told her that I read many web sites and exposed myself to a wide range of
ideas and beliefs and even conspiracy theories(which have been a favorite of
mine for decades; the wilder the better) and that I kept an open mind.
In explaining it to her, I used the jigsaw puzzle analogy, explaining that I
kept all the pieces in my head and that pieces would come together in my
mind and give me insights into reality. Sometimes enough pieces came
together to form what I call an epiphany. I told her not to worry because
the process does not allow for the total conviction to one belief that would be
required for a rational man to take extreme measures.
CD Your piece has captured the essence of something I've been aware
of for a long time but unable to fully describe. There are many
abilities of the human brain that we fail to harvest because of our
ego and closed minds.
Thank you for your work. I've thoroughly enjoyed it and your comments.
++
+1
Nothing bad about having beliefs, but one needs to recognize the assumptions that are behind the beliefs, and that changing the assumptions could result in different beliefs or their outcomes. To understand someone else, it is better to suspend your own beliefs and try to understand the assumptions that someone else is using in their beliefs. In other words, just try to figure out how they may be right.
You play the gadfly well CD - - I know that personally my focus while reading so many articles and opinions and trying to "learn" is to piece together the puzzle (you choose your analogies well, too); this entry is a great reminder that much of what we are all seeking (and hoping to preserve/create) via ZH and PMs is simply about "being", and not at all to do with "doing".
Again, thanks so much for your contributions CD. You enrich this site in a big way. I will of course need to re-read, but I "suspect" (vs. "believe"?) that it will be as fruitful the second time.
Be Well,
~Magis
Thank you.
I found that by removing believe and belief from my written, verbal and mental vocabulary I was forced to rethink my thought process. I had to look closely at what I thought I believed at the precise moment I tried to use those words, when they were still forming in my mind and there was no avoiding what I was really trying to say. It was like suddenly finding a stop sign when you come around a sharp corner.
Many of us use the word 'believe' to mean I 'know' something to be true.............but I can't really prove it with facts and figures. It's also a mental shorthand that let's me be lazy in my thinking. By throwing out the anchor and stopping ourselves from using the word, we suddenly realize how often we use these words in a day as well as how fuzzy our thinking is when we use them.
I consider banning those words to be my mental smelling salts. It wakes me up quick right when I need to be woken.
Thank you for reminding us who we are and what we can be.
Great post, really great read.
Of course, it's a big jump to suddenly see things through your own brain instead of what you are fed through TV. The Fuku mess is but a small example of what people are trained not to see.
At first it may feel like a mindless mish mash of useless facts and tidbits of information is clogging our brain and it will most certainly be uncomfortable because some of those bits will directly contradict our existing belief system.
Many look out the window to see, but only those with sight can truly see..............................whats on the other side.
Thanks a bunch CD
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
God Bless You Bro!
Stop smoking dope! Your going to need your wits about you when the balloon goes up on fiat currencies.
Genius.
This is beautiful.
Merci.
WW: You are a good man who has been dropping dimes on Zero Hedge for a long time. Not unlike Mr. Dissonance.
I hope some of you space monkeys see that if you appreciate Cog's message, then you should be spending more of your time offline, in your community, tyring to prepare for what is to come.
Cog - you are a great man. Perhaps the digital equivalent of Jesus of Nazareth. But in the end, they denied Jesus. Just sayin'.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZdiXvDU4P0
Thank you for your thoughts.
I write these pieces for myself and no one else. After achieving some level of healing from writing my thoughts down, I then share them with others. While I certainly wish for others to gain from these, and I am pleased when others find value in my thoughts, I am no messiah and do not claim to be. I am writing these letters to me. In effect I am both giving myself permission to heal and teaching myself how to heal.
For years people spoke to me and I did not see. Then one day it clicked and I began to open my eyes, a life long process that continues today. I do not expect anyone to awaken because of what I wrote. The sleepers sleep and will only wake when they are ready just as I did. Those who are waking will always find there own path, the only path they can follow.
There is no manual, no instructions on how to proceed. Each must find their way through the mine field. But there are directions to move in and I highlight one direction that seems to work for me.
Commenting on the internet is a weird thing, no? Should we get nasty with thoughts that are beneath us or respect that there is a person behind the typing of all these words? Personally, I appreciate both points of view.
You are a good man, Mr. D and you changed my life for the better.
Yet I'm back in the camp of statism, which is diametrically opposed to chumba's P.O.V.
Chumba is a good man, also. So it goes.