Skip to content
TheTranscendenceDiaries

TheTranscendenceDiaries

Thoughtful musings for the unabashedly aware and ravenously curious intellectual and intelligentsia

  • About the Transcendence Diaries
  • About the Author
  • Subscribe or Donate
  • The Transcendence Manifesto
  • Ed Hale News
  • Videos
TheTranscendenceDiaries

Month: February 2014

Bouncing Back When Flat — Ed Hale Opens Up in New Book and Interview

February 25, 2014

Ed Hale star guitar promo photo by Fiona Pepe, styling by Jenascia Chakos copyright 2013.Earlier this year Ed Hale gave an in-depth interview with the website FlyFreeAvatar.com, where he opens up more about his music, business, spiritual and personal life than ever before. The interview also makes mention of the potential release of a new book entitled Bouncing Back When Flat. The interview is being reprinted here for Transcendence Diaries readers in its entirety with permission from the owners. Original interview published on February 1st, 2014 here: Bouncing Back When Flat — An Interview with Recording Artist Ed Hale

FlyFreeAvatar.com recently had the opportunity to get recording artist Ed Hale to sit down for an in-depth interview. This is a project we have spoken about doing for several years, and the New Year seemed like the perfect time to finally complete it. Hale has been in the public eye for most of his life, having released his first album at the age of 17. He is best known as a singer-songwriter and recording artist — as the lead singer of the musical group Ed Hale and the Transcendence, scoring numerous Top 40 hits over the last fifteen years — including classics like “Superhero Girl”, “Scene in San Francisco” and “New Orleans Dreams”. He is also well-known as a successful entrepreneur and businessman, a prolific writer, and an outspoken social and political activist and human rights advocate. He has a reputation for being open and outspoken about his personal life, especially in his popular long-running blog The Transcendence Diaries, which is celebrating its twelfth year online this year. He is refreshingly candid about sharing his spiritual views as well – a rare quality in the entertainment world. Being actively involved in community building and Civilian Diplomacy work with organizations like Habitat for Humanity and Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), Hale has traveled the world extensively for diplomatic, peace and work trips and speaks six languages. Most applicable to this site, Hale has taken all of the Avatar Courses numerous times over the last 15 years and continues to do so on a regular basis.

I

FlyFreeAvatar (FFA): When I first thought about talking to you for this interview, there were two questions that came to mind immediately. The first was about how your music has been affected by taking the Avatar courses. And the second was about all the success you’ve had over the years and how much of a role you think Avatar has played in it.

Ed Hale (EH): Yep. I can see that. Those are the two questions I get asked the most when it comes to Avatar. But that’s TWO questions you know. [laughs]

FFA: Okay so let’s start with your career success. With the band’s last album’s success and the hit singles you had from your solo album, “Scene in San Francisco” and “New Orleans Dreams” climbing the Billboard Top40 Charts, why don’t we start there? With your career success. How much of a role do you think Avatar has played in that?

EH: Well I had achieved success in music at an early age. Long before I took the Avatar Course for the first time. So I don’t want to mislead anyone on that count. But it was short lived. I mean, I was signed, released an album, had a few hits and was touring before I finished high school. And then it was all over before I graduated college! [laughs] But this latest success? I think we could safely say that I wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for everything I learned in Avatar; let alone be in Billboard magazine.

FFA: Your early career, that was when you were known as Eddie Darling…

EH: Yes. That’s the embarrassing truth. But you know, when we’re young… we don’t know. We think we know… but we don’t. At the time I guess I thought that was a cool sounding name. But that was such a crazy experience to go through at such a young age. None of it was on my terms. It was all up to other people. Just a very large greedy money-making machine. If they like what you’re doing, you’re in. If they don’t like what you’re doing, you’re out. No compassion, no sense of artistic integrity or guidance. It was really disheartening for me as a young artist. I thought that was going to be the start of this amazing career, but it didn’t last very long. A few years in the big leagues and it was over and I was back in the local club scene.

FFA: But you obviously didn’t give up on music, which has been a hallmark of your career, this persistence. What led you to keep going?

EH: Well I did give up for a while there. I went back to college and got really into that. But it didn’t last long. I just couldn’t stay away from making music. I don’t know if I’ll ever feel comfortable NOT making music. It’s just the one thing in life I enjoy doing more than anything else. Except being married of course! [laughs] The difference was, when I went back into music then, that it was going to be on MY terms. I didn’t feel like I had any control in it my first run-through. So that was one of the many reasons why I took the Avatar Course. I wanted to harness more deliberateness in my life. Not sure if that’s a word… But I really liked the idea of “living deliberately”. [Living Deliberately is the name of the first book by Harry Palmer. Palmer is the author and creator of the Avatar Course and has published many books on the subject.]

FFA: You were young when you took Avatar for the first time.

EH: Yes, I was 21 or 22 years old. Back then that was considered “young”. Now there are kids eight and nine years old taking the courses. It’s incredible. I used to feel like “the kid” around those courses. Now I feel old compared to these kids. [laughs]

FFA: Yes. It’s amazing. But still, 22 is still pretty young to take Avatar. Especially back then when the course was fairly new and unknown. What prompted you to take it?

EH: Well it’s like what I was saying, about the last album, and really all of them over the last ten years… I took Avatar initially because I wanted to feel more in control of my life. I wanted to feel like I was creating my experiences. I could FEEL that what it was about totally vibrated with what I believed personally. I mean, the whole “we create our experiences based on our beliefs” premise… I believed that already. Or at least wanted to. But how do we control our beliefs? That’s what puzzled me and interested me the most. And I learned how to do that on that first Avatar Course; and in the future ones that I took like Masters and Wizards. It gave me the ability to create my beliefs deliberately. So instead of feeling caught up in a large out of control system like the music business, I created feeling in control and confident. And every album since has done better than the last. It’s really been a very positive force in my career. For sure. There’s no arguing about that.

FFA: So do you use the tools regularly?

EH: Yes. Absolutely. I try to live through them… By using them all the time… Like in every moment. After a while, it transcends “using the tools” and just becomes… a way of life, a habit, how you live.

FFA: Have you used the tools specifically about your career? In other words is there a direct correlation between the success you’ve had and using the Avatar tools?

EH: Yes. Absolutely. In terms of using them specifically around my career, I learned from some of the more experienced Avatars out there – and I’m not sure if this is “a thing” or not… But I learned that they might go to a course and dedicate that whole course to just one aspect of their lives, like say their career, or money. Other things come up of course, because it’s all connected, all the different aspects of our lives… but I went to a Pro Course [The Avatar Professional Masters Course] and decided to dedicate the whole course to my career. And it was a truly amazing experience. Doing it that way.

FFA: In what way?

EH: Just the discipline you have to have in order to do that, to stay focused on one thing; controlling your will to be able to do it. And then the variety of tools available to you to explore that one aspect of your life. They offer you so many different perspectives you’ve never thought of before. And the course keeps you on track to really get to the bottom of things. In whatever you’re focusing on. In that case, tackling your beliefs about one specific subject, like your career, from the variety of different angles that are provided to you by using all those different tools. We released the Rise and Shine album a few months later and that album took off bigger and faster than we ever expected. It opened the door for us. Before that, we were a new and relatively unknown band. After that album, we became a national act. The songs were charting in cities all over the country. That was when I first started learning about where all these cities were that we hear about all the time around the country. From the radio station play charts. [laughs] I can’t help believe that part of what helped all that to happen was because I had dedicated that course a few months earlier to focusing just on my career. It was so effortless.

FFA: Have you done that with other areas of your life? Is it something you always do?

EH: No it is not something I always do. But I have done it with other things. But not usually. I did it regarding relationships one year and that was also very successful. I found my soul-mate because of doing that I believe. I cleaned up all the beliefs I had about love and romance and relationships… But usually I just take the courses and allow whatever comes up to come up. And you know, what I notice is that if your attention is on your career, then that’s what’s going to come up for you anyway. So it’s not really necessary. It all tends to work out perfectly if you don’t fight it and you just let it flow. Ultimately it’s your consciousness, no one else’s. You just have to decide if you want to be a victim of it or the master and leader of it.

FFA: That’s well put. So how do the courses affect your music? As an artist?

EH: Well I get that question a lot. And the answer is I honestly don’t know. I know that the answer is supposed to be really incredible and mystical or magical in some way… There’s this expectation there it seems… But honestly, in terms of music, I’ve been writing and playing music since I was a kid, since before I could walk. So if I were to be totally honest, I don’t know what affect it’s had. Freedom maybe?

FFA: That’s fair. Freedom in what way?

EH: Well… I can tell you this. When I first took the Avatar Course and then the Masters Courses, I felt OUT OF THIS WORLD. I had never felt so good in my life. Just like… I don’t know, flying is how I would put it. High as a kite, but without drugs. High on life. [Hale is very animated as he speaks. His eyes are wide and he uses a lot of hand gestures.] I felt SO confident and SO fresh and new and GOOD inside. I KNOW that came through in the music I was writing back then. It gave me a feeling of invincibility and that definitely translated to me having a new-found confidence as a musician and as a writer… to write whatever I wanted to and forget about any of the so-called “rules of the business”. You know? So in that sense, the courses did affect my music tremendously.

FFA: Some of your songs are very spiritual. You tend to write more specifically about spiritual matters than other mainstream rock or pop singers…

EH: So now I’m mainstream? That’s a first!

FFA: You know what I mean, singers in the public eye… most of them don’t write about spirituality as much as you do. Even the ideas of Avatar and Abraham Hicks are referenced. I also couldn’t help notice that you credit Harry Palmer on some of the songs.

EH: Well yeah, [laughs] you get so excited after you first learn all that knowledge. It’s a big WOW moment. Like discovering chocolate or sex for the first time or something. [laughs] But bigger. Just the knowledge is mind-blowing, right? So it’s a given that you’re going to want to share that with people. Just not go overboard with it… hopefully. But if you use the tools on a regular basis, if you practice BEING an Avatar… then you feel like you’re walking on clouds most of the time. Those ideals and principles are embedded in you. Simple things. But profound. So they tend to come out in the lyrics. If I write a lyric that sounds really close to something I’ve read then yeah I’ll give credit to wherever I think credit is due. When I was younger I was writing a lot of songs about spirituality and transcendence and stuff like that and it really did feel like I was channeling the ideas of Avatar through music at times. So I would credit whoever was the inspiration. That doesn’t make our publisher very happy [laughs] because it creates a lot more paper work. But it’s the right thing to do. Harry Palmer’s ideas have been a huge influence on me and how I think… ever since I was a kid.

FFA: Does he know that he’s written songs with you?

EH: I don’t know. [laughs] That’s a weird way to put it. But I’ve never kept it a secret. We’ve never talked about it. I always wonder if he gets these checks in the mail and then wonders where they’re coming from. [laughs]

II

FFA: You’ve also had tremendous success in business, as an entrepreneur.

EH: I’ve tried. [laughs]

FFA: Well you have. That’s an aspect of your career that isn’t talked about as much. You were a successful entrepreneur before you were 30, irrespective of your career in music. And that seems to be a running thread throughout your life, starting businesses and being in business, since you were very young. [Hale started his first company at the age of 20 when he opened up a rehearsal and recording studio. Since then he’s owned health food stores, juice bars, a vitamin manufacturing company, a business consulting company, a record label and a real estate investment company.]

EH: Yeah, for sure. That’s another one of those things that I just absolutely LOVE. Business. Being in business. LOVE it.

FFA: You say that about a lot of things!

EH: Maybe I do… [laughs] I don’t know. I guess I just love a lot of stuff. Hey that’s the Ambassador!

FFA: So what is it about business that you love?

EH: Well I was raised in that kind of an environment, number one. I grew up with my parents owning businesses. So I think that was instrumental in it. And I have just always enjoyed being in business for myself more than working for other people. Though I don’t necessarily believe that it’s easier. I actually think working for other people – especially for a large company – is the easier path to take, for sure. But for someone like me… I just could never imagine doing that full time and long term. Plus, there’s also a real rush you get out of the risky and adventurous aspect of being in business for yourself. Unlimited reward but unlimited risk as well. I get off on that.

FFA: But how do you keep up with it? And how does Avatar affect it?

EH: You know that’s two questions, right? [laughs] I’ve always been fascinated by being in business for yourself. Since I was a kid I always admired those kind of people. Tony Robbins has been as big an influence on me as say, someone like John Lennon. Almost equal. And I also found that I was good at it, or at least lucky in it. So I keep up with it as best as I can. Probably not as well as I could honestly. The Avatar thing, that’s a different story. It helps obviously. I know that. That’s the thing… Avatar helps you with everything. It’s not just one aspect of your life. It’s your whole life that is affected.

FFA: You’ve talked about Harry Palmer and Tony Robbins a lot throughout your career in interviews. They seem to come up quite a bit.

EH: [laughs] Yeah I guess I do. But hey if you’re going to have mentors, they might as well be great ones. And for my money those are two of the brightest minds in the world today when it comes to personal achievement. Even though they’re very different. Stephen Bauman too. He’s more of a spiritual intellectual who keeps your integrity on its toes. But really all of them do that. [Stephen Bauman is an author, speaker and Methodist Pastor in New York City]

FFA: I know your love for Tony Robbins and Stephen Bauman. But in relation to this website and its readers, how does Avatar help with your success in business?

EH: Well to me I think the answer to that question is obvious, but for someone who’s never taken any of the Avatar Courses before…. okay, we can go there… Say you’re experiencing the same challenge over and over again in your business. Everything seems to be going well except this one thing… Or perhaps LOTS of things… You can keep banging your head against the wall over it… Hire new people, recruit consultants, read more books, take more classes, etc. etc. OR you can take a look at the beliefs underneath this problem and once you discover them, you can then DIScreate them. That’s a term that Harry Palmer came up with in the Avatar Course. It’s brilliant. And voila! They’re gone. That challenge will no longer be there. THAT’S how it can help. It’s miraculous. If people have ever seen that movie The Secret… it’s like that. But it’s real.

FFA: You make it sound so easy.

EH: Well in a way, it is. Not all the time. But it isn’t rocket science. It’s a very natural thing. It’s an organic process, just like breathing oxygen. We just have to re-remember it… Discreating limiting beliefs helps us remove obstacles in our life that up to that point seem insurmountable to us. I can honestly say I would not have experienced the level of business success I have had in my life, especially as young as I was, without having that knowledge and those tools. To me it’s a no-brainer. The same with religious faith. Both help.

FFA: Speaking of obstacles, you’ve had your share and always seem to bounce back, which has been an inspiration to many people. What’s the secret? Or does that give away the plot to your new book? [Hale has a new business/inspirational book coming out this year entitled Bouncing Back When Flat]

EH: Besides what I just said? [laughs] I mean that kind of sums it up, right?

FAA: I was hoping we could go a little deeper.

EH: Okay well which ones? There’ve been a lot of them. [laughs] It hasn’t been as easy as people seem to think it has. It never is. Not for any of us.

FFA: A few years ago you experienced a major business setback that left you broke and even homeless for a while, which is what your new book is about. I’ve read some of the interviews about that experience and it’s shocking. But you turned it around. What I’m trying to come to is how you did it? [In 2006 Hale discovered that his business partner, Naomi Whittel (nee Balcombe) (now at Reserveage Organics), had sold one of the companies he had founded, Ageless Foundation Laboratories, without his knowledge to a publicly traded company. Hale found out through the SEC filing. Naturade Inc., the company who purchased Hale’s company, didn’t even know Hale was an owner of the company when they made the purchase, finding out months later. The story has been written about extensively, but Hale has been relatively quiet about it.]

EH: Yeah, that… [This is the first time in the interview Hale becomes quiet, anything but animated.] That’s still a tough thing for me to talk about. But I understand that it’s important and why you think it’s relevant. I’m still coming to terms with it all.

FFA: Well that’s why you wrote this book, right?

EH: Yes. Absolutely. It’s an important story. I know that.

FFA: Not many people can imagine living through that kind of a setback, let alone bouncing back from it. But you did. Rather quickly some would say. And you have had tremendous success since then.

EH: Yes, I know. And I’m very grateful for that. Hence the book. If I can do that, then anyone can do anything. That’s how I look at it.

FFA: I read an interview you gave last year where you did talk about it and it was inspiring. I only ask because the story does have a happy ending. You didn’t let it take you down, but instead you found a way to work your way back to the top. That’s an incredible achievement.

EH: Yes, it did take me down. I mean, how could it not have? One day I was going about my business and living my life, not a worry in the world, and then in one fell swoop everything I had in the world was gone. Bank accounts, credit cards, my company, retirement savings. Everything. Gone. It was the single most challenging thing I’ve ever lived through. For sure. But you’re right, I didn’t let it keep me down forever. I started from scratch and rebuilt. And slowly I was able to rise back up.

FFA: Without giving too much of the book away, how were you able to do that?

EH: Well for one thing, my faith is very strong. We’ve talked about that. I’ve never hidden that. I try not to be preachy, but I also think it’s bullshit, pardon my French, when entertainers keep their faith in the closet because they’re worried about how it’s going to affect their career.

FFA: You’ve certainly never done that.

EH: No, I haven’t. I talk about it when it’s appropriate. It’s important to me and I believe it’s important to a lot of my friends and fans.

FFA: You write a lot about religion and faith in your blog and sometimes sound almost anti-religious, almost like an atheist, which I know you’re not. And yet at the same time you write a lot about being a Christian and how challenging it is. Can you explain that a little?

EH: Well I’m definitely not one of those “100% sold” kind of people. I think anyone who’s really honest about their religious faith is going to be confused about it… and struggle occasionally. Because there are just so many contradictions in religion and spirituality… The difference with me I guess is that I haven’t necessarily chosen a side yet… I’m still open to all of them…. dissecting it all. And I explore all that a lot publicly in the Diaries. [Hale is referring to his long-running blog The Transcendence Diaries].

FFA: I know a lot of people find that inspiring. But you also anger certain groups of people with this “openness”.

EH: I know. And I don’t mean to. What I’m really doing is what I believe we should all be doing if we’re serious about spirituality and faith… questioning, studying, exploring. I’m not trying to make anybody mad or even question what they believe. To me it’s fun. It’s academic. But it also meaning beyond that.

FFA: I think most people recognize that. So your faith is one of the things that brought you through that business challenge?

EH: Without a doubt. A lot of reflection and prayer. And a lot of counseling with mentors. Seeking advice from older people that I looked up to. Also I had a really strong community around me. Family and friends who were there for me. That’s a tremendous asset. Something that you can’t buy. If it weren’t for that, I don’t know if I’d be here today. Because when that kind of thing happens to you, you really start questioning your life. All your effort and hard work and even your beliefs, things that you’ve taken for granted your whole life all of a sudden… you start questioning.

FFA: Like what?

EH: Well like… just everything. For example, you assume that if you work hard and you’re a good person that you’re going to succeed. That’s what I’d ALWAYS believed. My whole life. And I experienced that. Over and over again throughout my life that’s what I experienced. And then when this happened, it was so shocking, that it was hard to put those pieces back together, of that belief. It didn’t ring true to me anymore. Being a good person did NOT equal being successful. I started wondering if maybe that was just bs and perhaps we were supposed to be bad people and that was how to succeed. That was my first gut reaction of course. It took me some time to overcome that idea…. because bad people seem to succeed just as much as good people.

FFA: It’s easy to see how you could come to that.

EH: Right? But here’s the thing. I was wrong. We’re not “good” people because we want to succeed. We’re good people because we believe that’s the best way to live life. You know? My friends and family would call me every day, I mean every day, just to see how I was doing and check in on me. That was a big help. And we would talk about it and little by little they got through to me. I remember this one time I was driving around Manhattan with a friend, Big Mac, I LOVE this guy. He’s super funny, a southern guy. And he had just finished seminary at Princeton… So he is a spiritual guy too…

FFA: You write about him in your Diaries. I know the name.

EH: Yep. I write about EVERYBODY in the Diaries. Much to their displeasure! [laughs]

FFA: I definitely want to talk about that later, because I have a lot of questions about your blog and the reaction you’ve gotten through the years, but I don’t want to interrupt your train of thought. So go on with the story.

EH: Okay… So I was telling Big Mac how I was trying to make sense of God’s plan for my life with making this horrible thing happen to me. With Naomi and the business. That perhaps God was trying to show me a different path to take, rather than all this success and being a business tycoon that maybe God wanted me to be more focused on making the world a better place. And Big Mac, he just looked over at me and said “Bro I could never believe in a God like that.” I’ll never forget it. That was just one of those moments in life you never forget. I was like “What do you mean?” And he said “Ed, God doesn’t make bad things happen to people. God is grace. And love. Who did this to you? This Naomi chick did this to you.” The way he enunciated her name in his southern drawl… I can still remember it… He said “People did this to you man. God didn’t. God is the one helping you. Not hurting you.” I turned around in my seat and I began to cry. Right there in his truck. Because that was exactly what I needed to hear in that moment. I had been so puzzled by it. I couldn’t figure out WHY it happened… I was still trying to make sense of it. But he made me realize in that moment that it didn’t have anything to do with God or God’s plan… it was people. If anything, God is there to help us, not hurt us. At least in his view.

FFA: And is that your viewpoint now?

EH: Yes. Absolutely. That really resonated with me. When he said it. And looking back, still, it totally changed my whole point of view. That’s what I mean by my beliefs were being challenged. I was actually so fooled for a while there that I thought maybe that “God” wanted me to suffer in that way… It’s crazy. But luckily, if anything it made me stronger. And more importantly it offered me a reference point for how to view life when bad things happen to us. That it’s not about blaming God, every time something good or bad happens to us. People were the cause of it. And more importantly so was I.

FFA: How so? How were you the cause of it?

EH: Well that’s the part where I think I got the most out of the experience. Where if there is anything positive to take away from it, I got it. The first thing I did, because I had taken Avatar, was I started looking at my own past actions to see what was there, what had I done, in my life… I started reflecting on my own responsibility in the whole thing, instead of blaming anyone – and trust me it was easy to blame people… it was a horrible thing they did, they broke the law in a hundred different ways, and worse… broke my heart by taking advantage of our friendship… I HATE stuff like that… people like that. But I knew I needed to look for where and how I was responsible… So on the one hand, I saw how we have to be real when it comes to people doing harmful things to us; it happens. We can’t live in a bubble and pretend that there aren’t bad people out there. Because there are. But I also saw that I had some responsibility in it too.

FFA: That’s admirable, but in what ways were you responsible?

EH: Well I can’t act like I did anything overtly wrong to cause it… Sometimes people can make the mistake of over-owning things I think. It’s not like I was acting unethically or broke the law or something… I was a good guy. Same as I am now. But I had been warned that that kind of thing might happen before it did… at least a hundred times before to be honest. It wasn’t like it came out of the blue. I had been in business with Naomi for years. And that was the main thing we argued about, was her always wanting to break the law and me always saying that we most certainly should NOT. And our employees would always be stuck in the middle, between our two viewpoints. She constantly accused me of being “self-righteous” and I just wanted us to play it straight. So I had definitely been warned already. But what had I done about it? Nothing. Sure we had stacks of legal agreements between us that prohibited us from doing those kinds of things… But based on what I’d already experienced with her in the past, I should have known better. I should have taken more action BEFORE all that happened. And I didn’t. Why? Because I was being lazy, yes… or because I was resisting conflict. For sure. I didn’t like conflict of any kind. I love people and I love harmony and I’m all about love and peace, you know? So I just pretended like everything was fine when I knew it really wasn’t. I could feel it…

FFA: You were in denial… of your intuition?

EH: Yes, absolutely. Living in denial. Pretending. I helped to create the whole thing through knowing about the potential for something like that to happen and NOT doing anything about it. NOT acting when you know you should can be just as bad as TAKING an action that’s harmful.

FFA: So you took responsibility for the experience? Did that make it easier to deal with?

EH: Yes, absolutely. It gave me a sense of relief. It enabled me to feel the remorse for my non-actions that might have contributed to it, and other things, and then to move on. What it does is help you feel responsible for it rather than like a victim of it.

FFA: That’s a great example of using what you learn in Avatar in the real world.

EH: Yes. Totally. I think so. That one experience compelled me to fill three whole notebooks with actions from my past that I felt weren’t necessarily aligned with being a good person and to make amends for them. In order to get a fresh start. It led to a lot of self-reflection and taking responsibility for my past. I became a better person through doing all that.

FFA: When you’ve written about the experience that’s what you mean by it also being a positive experience…

EH: Yes. Let’s face it. No one wants to go through something like that. To have everything you own taken from you by other people. That’s a bad thing. The betrayal aspect of it alone is enough to make you feel so discouraged and ungrounded… so unsure of yourself and the world. When someone lies to you so overtly and is doing it from a place of friendship, it can really screw with your mind. But you have to find a way to turn it around and see the positive side of it. And for me the best way to do that was to start looking at me instead of at the others. And to start planning how I could improve who I was as a person… Once again I saw firsthand how our actions in the world can affect others, either in a positive or in a negative way. That’s the least we can do. Take stock of our actions and make sure we are having a positive impact. So that’s what I did.

FFA: That is inspiring. And within a few years you had overcome it and were back on top again with three hit albums, songs on the Billboard charts, and your now infamous trip to Iran… Do you think there’s any correlation between what you went through and the success you’ve had?

EH: No. I don’t. Maybe, I don’t know. I know it inspired me. But only through necessity. Before that happened I was really enjoying life. Taking advantage of how hard I had worked and how successful I had become. After that, I was forced to go back to square one and start over again and rebuild my entire life and career from scratch. It really inspired me to become successful again. I was determined to. So in that respect yes there was a correlation. But I’ll tell you this: no one should ever believe for a minute that they need to endure some kind of tragedy or suffering in order to succeed. That would be a very impeding and unnecessary belief to cultivate.

FFA: That’s a good point to make.

EH: Well if you go and read a lot of the articles that were written when our first album after that experience came out and became successful there is a lot of attention paid to the whole rags to riches aspect of it, “from homeless to Billboard!” became a headline. As if there was a romantic aspect to it. And I can promise you that there is nothing romantic about going through something like that. If you can avoid it, do so.

FFA: Well the story is an appealing and inspiring one, from an entertainment or person of interest point of view. You can see that…

EH: Yeah, I can. Totally. Which is one of the reasons why I wrote a book about it. I mean, I get it. How often does something like that happen to a person? Not very often. It’s more like a movie than real life.

III

FFA: There is another aspect about that experience that I wanted to have you talk about if you don’t mind, because I think it’s important. Ultimately you decided to settle the whole thing with your partner out of court. Yet the case still remains unresolved years later. Why did you decide to do that? And do you regret it now? [Naomi Whittel signed a settlement agreement to pay Hale for the sale of the company in order to render it a legal transaction months after the sale and prevent the case from going to court, but the agreement has never been fulfilled.]

EH: Well that’s more than just one question….

FFA: Okay. Why did you agree to settle out of court? Why didn’t you just go about it in a more traditional business manner?

EH: You mean by taking legal action?

FFA: Yes. Laws were clearly broken. Contracts were breached. It seems like an open and shut case.

EH: Right, I know. And it was. I get this question a lot, especially from other business people. There was a ton of criminal activity revealed. Fraud, forgery, tax fraud, embezzlement, a lot of lying and stealing… You know. Crazy stuff. It was something right out of a movie. Totally unreal and way outside anything I’d ever dealt with before. It’s insane when you think about it. This was a situation where yes, I probably could have played tougher… But for one thing, there’s a good chance that Naomi would have gone to jail if I would have gone public with it by taking it to court. And I was still operating under the misconception that Naomi and I were friends. We had been engaged to be married after all for years. So I still cared about her as a person. Secondly, she literally called me every day for years from the moment I found out what she had done…. Begging me to settle. Even though it may seem in retrospect like such an open and shut case now, at the time, I was still receiving these calls from her every day begging me to settle and not go to court. I felt very pulled. Between my loyalty to her as a person, and to her family… And to doing the right thing perhaps…

FFA: So now you think that taking it to court would have been the right thing?

EH: Well it would have been the more normal action to take under those circumstances…. But also I felt that there had already been enough legal action in our lives. I mean, she had created such a huge mess of legal actions for us already. It was all lawyers and law firms galore… for years. No one was winning except the law firms as they say. But because I had made peace within myself about it, and she was pushing hard for an out of court settlement, I looked at both outcomes… Part of me really wanted to “get justice”. Because in business that’s what you do. If someone commits a criminal act, they deserve to get what they get, right? Justice, to the full extent of the law. I got that. But at what cost to me and my own sanity? And at what cost to my family and friends? They’d already been through the ringer because of what happened. I reflected on it and prayed about it a lot… And it just seemed like settling it was the right thing to do. To put it behind us as quickly and smoothly as possible.

FFA: Plus you assumed that once you settled that it would really be over and behind you as you say.

EH: Yes, I did. Totally. I thought that would be the end of it. The end of “the Naomi saga” once and for all. It happened. It was bad. But the ball was in my court. I could sue and drag it out in court for years, or I could forgive and settle and move on with my life.

FFA: But it didn’t end there. After all that, the settlement agreement remains unfulfilled. Which is what led to the major setback you experienced. So do you regret that decision now?

EH: Yes and no. Yes, because I wish it were over. I regret what I had to go through. And I am sublimely shocked that we’re still talking about it years later. I don’t honestly know how she can deal with it still being out there open and unresolved. But no, because in that moment I feel like I made the most responsible and mature decision that could have been made at that time. Trust me, forgiveness in those kinds of situations is difficult… but it’s the HIGH road. Being vindictive or seeking vengeance, that may be the more common road, but it’s not the high road.

FFA: Yes, as an Avatar I completely understand you choosing forgiveness over revenge. Even though in the end it was a costly decision…

EH: Yes, it was. So far at least. But I’m still giving her the benefit of the doubt. That’s the part that a lot of people don’t understand. At first she swore up and down that she had nothing to do with it, that she was “forced into it by her husband and this pack of evil attorneys” they had hired. I didn’t necessarily believe her… But you know, when you’re close to someone like that… It’s hard to cut the line completely that connects you. There is still love there. And compassion. You want to give them the benefit of the doubt.

FFA: But it sounds like a very one-sided kind of compassion.

EH: Maybe it is… That’s something I wonder about sometimes. Long story short, she swore up and down that she had every intention of fulfilling the agreement, and more than anything she was just afraid. At the time I felt like I was doing the right thing, by being compassionate and forgiving, because that’s what WE do, right? And protecting her…

FFA: Yes, I agree. That’s what we do. But this brings up the question of when is it better to look out for yourself by taking a more Guardian Heart approach? [Guardian Heart is a concept explored in the book Resurfacing by Harry Palmer.]

EH: I know… There’s a fine line between being a nice person or a good person and letting someone take advantage of you… They are two different things. And sometimes we confuse them. Maybe I’ve crossed that line now… I hope not. But I can tell you now, after going through all of that, I understand the importance of the Guardian Heart a lot more now, of not confusing being a nice person with being someone who allows others to take advantage of them. That IS something that we tend to get confused sometimes as humans. I also see the importance of standing up for what we believe in or just being committed to protecting ourselves and our loved ones. I know what you’re getting at. And I am in no way attempting to promote forgiveness as being equal to letting people take advantage of us.

FFA: There is a certain responsibility we have to ourselves and to others in defending integrity and justice for the good of everyone…

EH: Yeah, absolutely. And that’s one of the reasons why I decided to write the book about what happened. It’s not just about the inspiration factor. But more about the responsibility to others. Not just to inspire other people who might be going through a similar challenge, but also to warn people that this kind of thing can happen to the best of us. No matter how nice we are or how good of people we are. No one is immune to it. You have to look out for yourself, no matter how nice of a person you are. But it is how we deal with it that is the true measure of a person.

I remember Tony Robbins telling a story once about how he went through a similar experience in his business life. His CFO was also his best friend and he discovered that this guy had been embezzling a ton of money from their company and it just shattered him; challenged his optimistic outlook for a while. When he told that story, I couldn’t relate to it at all. I was too young. I had never gone through anything like that. But when almost the same exact thing happened to ME… THEN I could relate to it. And knowing ahead of time that he lived through it really helped me. His story and his struggle with that inspired me. And I’m sure there are a lot of people who would be surprised that something like this even happened to me, because I’ve never really talked about it openly before. But I get it now. That responsibility to share it so other people can learn from it. That’s important.

FFA: I believe it is too. Not to spoil the finale of your book, but can you share at least a little about how you were able to rebuild from something like that? Tangible things, actions that you took.

EH: Yes, absolutely. If you can imagine waking up one day and being absolutely flat broke after years of working and having made a ton of money… Going from wealthy to broke overnight. That money still exists, but you just can’t get to it. Someone else now has control of it. You can’t even afford your next meal because your bank accounts have been taken over. Horrible right?

FFA: I find it hard to imagine. I think most people would.

EH: Well me too… Until it happened. After it happened, I wasn’t just broke; I was also extremely disheartened. It was hard to believe in humanity at all. But I didn’t want to become a jaded person. Or cynical. Or believe the worst in people. So I used the Avatar tools to let all those potentially negative beliefs go. I discreated them. And I deliberately created being who I really believed I was: a generally positive and optimistic person who believed in myself and others. I took every guitar I had and walked each one to a different friend’s house and left it there and said “I’ve been hit in a bad way. You know this. I need money for an attorney and money to eat. Here’s a guitar. This is what it’s worth. If you’re willing to help, I’ll leave it here till I can pay you back.” And you know, every friend I had was more than willing to help me out. It makes me emotional still. Because it really showed me how powerful friendships are. I had guitars all over the city in different people’s homes as collateral. And honestly half of my friends didn’t even care about collateral. That was just for me. To make me feel more comfortable in receiving help…

FFA: That’s exactly the kind of thing I was hoping you would share. These tangible actions that you took. I think people will find them very inspiring and informative.

EH: Well yeah, obviously in that kind of situation you have to find a way to get on your feet. Just to be able to eat. The part that hurt the worst is that Naomi and I were connected at the hip for ten years before that. We were engaged to be married for God’s sake. AND business partners for years after that. So she knew that once she did that that I would literally not have a cent to my name, nor even a way to eat. It was astounding to me that someone could do that. But once it happens you have to move on and find a way out of it. So that’s the first thing I did. Then I hired an attorney to help me sort out just what the hell happened. And then I started doing consulting work to bring in money. Business and health consulting. And of course liquidating assets. Physical things… And then I started hardcore trading again.

FFA: You mean trading in the stock market?

EH: Yes. Something I already had a lot of experience with. But besides real estate there’s no faster way to make money fast when your funds are limited. Of course it works in the reverse as well. So you really have to have a strong stomach and nerves of steel. But it was all about taking very real and tangible actions to move forward and start to rebuild. All of this AND still trying to finish recording the new albums with the band at that time and play shows in different cities.

FFA: I remember that. I bet a lot of people wondered why you changed so many things in your life at the time.

EH: Yes I’m sure they did. Because I also leased out my apartment in Manhattan for a while to make money. Whatever it took. Living with family and friends. It was a freaking nightmare honestly. But it was also a tremendous challenge and so kind of fun… When people asked me what was up, I didn’t hide the truth. But I also didn’t advertise it. I just kept moving forward. It was an insane position to be in. But you start from where you are. You start with the basics. You create being happy to be you, and simple things like “I can do this”. “I can make it happen”. “I believe in me”. Things like that. Using the Avatar tools to create those realities. Or whatever “tools” you have available to you. In spite of how challenging things may appear. You do it anyway. And at the same time you announce it to the world. Tell everyone what you’re doing. For me that meant telling everyone “The Ambassador is down but he’s not out! I’m rebuilding the empire!” Perceive it as a challenge, a doable challenge. And set about every day to being real with where you are… but also striving toward bigger things. I truly believed that I had learned a valuable lesson, but that I was not meant to stay down for long. That was not my destiny. I didn’t take all these courses and read all these books to let one major setback ruin my life forever. I was totally committed to rebuilding in spite of that setback.

FFA: When the first song from your new solo album made it onto the Billboard Charts, after going through all that, did it feel like your hard work had finally paid off?

EH: Are you kidding? Yeah. It was amazing! We laughed, we cried. And then laughed some more. A lot of jumping up and down screaming. One of the greatest days of my life. Friends calling from all over the country because they just heard the song on the radio or in their car… Things like that. I think because of the immense disadvantage I had been placed in – and everyone knowing about it…. That’s what made it so much more enjoyable for everyone. To be down like that and to rebuild it all from scratch and then top it off by hitting the Top 40 a few times. That was an amazing moment for sure.

FFA: You really did “bounce back when flat” as you say.

EH: Yeah, it’s hard to believe. But we did it!

IV

FFA: And it didn’t end there. Around the same time, you were invited to be one of only a handful of Americans to visit Iran post-revolution on a peace mission. How did that come about? [Hale visited Iran in 2009 on a well-publicized Civilian Diplomacy mission along with eleven other Americans in leadership positions from a wide cross section of different industries. He represented the arts. He just returned from a similar trip to Israel-Palestine recently. In between he’s also visited countries in Africa, Europe and Central and South America to build homes and community centers.]

EH: I’m glad you asked. Because it’s actually a really magical story in a way. I was at this silent retreat at a convent of nuns…

FFA: You always say these things that sound so outrageous… Like you’re narrating a movie.

EH: Hah! Well I’m telling you, this is what happened. It sounds crazy. But that’s how it went down. I was at a silent retreat at a convent of all these sisters in the middle of nowhere in upstate New York. Episcopalian I think. And you couldn’t talk for like a week. So I used that time to just unwind and decompress. But they had this policy where during meals you could do some light talking… something like that. I met this one sister who was really cool, very hip. And we shared this passion for global human rights activism. We couldn’t really talk that much. But we got to know each other. And at the very end of the retreat she told me about this historic upcoming delegation of Americans who were headed to the country of Iran for a two week peace mission. She said that the application process had expired, but that if I got mine in really quickly that she’d put in a good word for me with the international organization that was putting the thing together. I had been trying to get into Iran for five years. I must have applied ten times and was denied every time. I had already been studying the language, Farsi, so I could speak the language a little bit… That helped. And you know, there’s more, but basically it all came down to me being at this silent retreat in the middle of nowhere that got me into Iran. Sort of. I suppose it was more than that. But that was the original impetus.

FFA: Being in the right place at the right time. It’s fascinating how these little miracles happen in our lives when we’ve put our attention and intention on them.

EH: Exactly! First our attention, then our intention, get rid of beliefs or ideas that are in the way and BAM! Things manifest!

FFA: Can you talk a little bit about your activism?

EH: Well it is something that I am passionate about. I think it’s an easy way to feel good. Because you’re giving back. It’s not all about you. It’s nice to step outside of it being all about us sometimes. A lot of times actually. [laughs. Hale has become reanimated. His eyes have that light back in them.] Every one of those trips will stay with me forever. I hope this is only the beginning.

FFA: And again you started a business around it. But this one was a non-profit. What is the goal of your PeaceWithIran.com organization?

EH: Just that. Peace with Iran. Exactly what it says. I honestly see it as a reality. I see it happening. Maybe not this year. But soon. The alternatives are far worse than the simple act of a peaceful reconciliation between the two countries.

FFA: From your mouth to God’s ears. What was the most important thing you learned from your trip to Iran?

EH: Great question. I’ve written a lot about this already, but I’d say that the first thing that struck me was how genuinely nice they are there and how much they love Americans. That was very much a surprise for me, for all of us on that trip. We never hear about what nice people the Iranians are here in the States. And we also don’t hear about how much they love and admire us here. That’s an important thing to share I think.

FFA: What other areas of activism are you interested in moving forward?

EH: Well now a lot of my focus lately has been on Israel and Palestine… That’s the real hotbed I believe… Even in regards to Iran, it seems to all come down to Israel and Palestine at the foundation.

V

FFA: Before we go too far off into world politics, can you talk a little bit about your new albums? What keeps you motivated to keep making music at such a rapid pace?

EH: Well I tend to write a lot of songs. AND at the same time I tend to have a lot of ambition when it comes to always wanting to out-do what we did last time, artistically. Every time we get an opportunity to make a new album it feels like such a privilege. So at first we just head into the studio to record our quote-unquote next album. It always starts out as a simple process and then it just starts to slowly get more and more complicated. So it’s just me wanting to challenge myself, see how far I can take it I guess. And the fans, their reaction to it…

FFA: So are the album titles official now? The ones that were just released to the public?

EH: Almost positively yes. Welcome to the Rest of the World for one, and Another Day in the Apocalypse for the other. They’re starting to sound really different from each other now. And the songs have been chosen for each. So we can see the finish line… finally.

FFA: So when can people expect to hear the first single or finished product?

EH: We’re not 100% sure, but my guess would be sometime this spring or summer…

FFA: Well I know a lot of people are excited to hear the albums. The last thing I want to ask you is if there was one thing that you could share with people about any of the Avatar Courses, what would it be? As someone who has taken all the courses and continues to do so.

EH: Well that’s easy. And hard, because there’s so much you could say about it. I mean, it’s a HUGE thing, right? I write about it a lot actually. On the one hand, it’s a way of life. It’s a way of being… You learn a whole new way of being, through becoming more adept at feeling and using your intuition… You become more honest and real. More in line with the truth. But on the other hand, it’s also just a series of courses. You know, it is what it is, whatever each person makes it out to be. I guess that’s what I would say about it. That in essence, the Avatar Course is essentially just a series of courses that contain all this confidential knowledge that you sort of already know, way down deep inside, like it resonates strongly when you read it, as if you’ve known it all your life, right? [Hale is once again excited and animated] And yet now it’s been broken down into very easy to understand and doable steps. That’s amazing! No one had ever done that before. I could go on and on… but put it like this: Take all the cool stuff that we’ve read about in metaphysical and new age books, AND all those documentaries about quantum physics and the so-called paranormal, and then turn all that into a nine day course filled with exercises and processes that teach you how to actually do THOSE things. Tools to help you gain more control over your life and the world around you… more personal power. Now do that with hundreds of thousands of other people from all over the world speaking seventy-something different languages! THAT’S what Avatar has turned into now after almost 30 years. A giant collection of the most enlightened or maybe better put the most enlightenment-seeking people on planet earth. It’s the coolest thing happening in the world right now hands down. Hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world working on being the best they can be AND trying to make the world a better place! Incredible stuff. People always ask me, “Is it worth the money?” And I’m like “Oh my God, no… it’s worth ten times as much.” Talk about a paradigm shift. If someone is looking for a real paradigm shift –something really transformative in their lives – I can’t think of anything else as powerful or noteworthy. At least not yet anyway. Out of everything out there. And I’ve tried it all and then some.

 

To find out more about an upcoming Avatar Course, visit www.Avatarepc.com

To find out more about Ed Hale, visit iTunes or www.edhale.com

 



Like this:

Like Loading...
Uncategorized "New Orleans Dreams", Eddie Darling, Ageless Foundation Laborartories, avatar course, ed hale, Ed Hale blog, fellowship of reconciliation, harry palmer, instant manifestation, Naomi Whittel, reality creation, Reserveage Organics, Scene in San Francisco, singer, songwriter, Stephen Bauman, tony robbins, Transcendence, transcendence diaries, Ultramax-HGH

Expanding the Definition of Consciousness and its Various Components

February 18, 2014

It’s 3:30 am. I have awoken so many times in the last two hours since falling asleep at around 1:00 that I finally decided to just lean up, grab my phone and take down some notes about what kept waking me up. As with most things we deem totally inspiring and amazing when we are half asleep and dreaming, I am sure this too will seem just as pedestrian and unimportant once it’s written down here; or worse, pure gibberish. One day, as technology continues to advance, we WILL be able to translate the magnitude of our dream-states into real world semantics in a way that truly gets across just how incredible those sights sounds feelings and visions are to us when dreaming… I see it… But for now we accept that we often miss the mark. Nine times out of ten that’s what we end up with when we attempt to pull to the earthly plane the mindblowing cosmic dances and brilliant ideas that enthrall and entertain us when we are dreaming, mundane blah or irrelevant gibberish. But in line with sticking to the promise I made to myself and my creator years ago, I do my best to never let one idea slip away into the recesses of that dark cavern we call “I can’t remember” — seeing each and every creative thought and idea as a precious gift. No matter what it is or what it’s for or about. Of course the primary effect this has had on my life is assuring that in another ten years or so my infinitely tolerant wife and I will be found dead in one of our large homes, asphyxiated to death and buried by hundreds of thousands of pounds of little pieces of paper, notebooks, journals, file folders and post it notes.

If only there were two of me — a technological inevitability I am thirsting for far more than most; I could continue to be me and do my thing, which is get the ideas and make note of them, do my damnedest to flesh them out and release them in some form or another — my career, AND at the same time still try to maintain some semblance of a home and family life, but the other me, my clone let’s call him, could work uninterrupted 24 hours a day just on finishing and fleshing out the ideas and projects I don’t have the time to get to. With me it’s never been about lack of ideas or writers block or laziness or lack of ambition, but rather always simply a matter of not enough time in the day. Made exponentially worse once I got married, as much as I hate to admit it. Little did I know. But marriage, cultivating a loving caring safe and secure home and family takes an enormous amount of time away from your work — no matter how many times in the dead of night with your wife sleeping there beside you you pray silently to yourself and your idea of God promising to DO more. I had no idea how much free time for work one is compelled to give up in the name of having a good marriage. So I do the best I can with what I have. Nights like tonight where “we” went to bed at a decent hour but I stayed up well past 1am writing and now sit here in the pitch black of early morning doing the same while everyone else in the house is asleep.

You probably didn’t notice it, but I just had to take a few seconds off here to wake our Cavalier, Alistair, because he was asleep so soundly that he was snoring. The whole house is fast asleep as I sit here in the dark. If he wakes Princess Little Tree up she will not be pleased with seeing me hunched over the glowing light of a phone in the dead of night madly typing away–knowing full well that my mental and physical health is just as sensitive and prone to weakness from abuse as the next person’s and it needs sleep to function optimally. She worries. And I love her for it.

I fell asleep listening to Joel Osteen last night. Call it a guilty pleasure.

[Joel is funny that way. He’s one person you won’t gain much street cred from name dropping. My friends in the art and entertainment world who are nearly all secular AND my more intellectual and scientifically minded friends both find it fascinating and curious that I of all people would ever entertain the “inane ramblings” (their words not mine) of a modern christian evangelical preacher. It seems anathema to everything I seem to stand for according to their point of view. I get that. They just haven’t heard that call. Perhaps they never will. Or perhaps they’ve heard another call, equally divine and important to them. My friends who share in my Christian Jewish Buddhist Taoist Hindu faith (or at least the Christian portion of it) don’t do well with Joel Osteen either. They, being more liberal or progressive minded, find any type of evangelical or fundamentalist form of Christianity to be close minded, suspect, a step backwards. And ironically, even my hardcore born-again fundamentalist christian friends don’t seem to like Joel. They find his brand of Christianity to be too liberal and “new agey” and feel-good oriented, a far cry from the old fashioned fire and brimstone kind of fundamentalist Christianity that they’re accustomed to. He just doesn’t fit into anyone’s mold and for all the love and praise the man receives from so many millions of people the world over, he seems to elicit an equal amount of haters. Perhaps this is one of the things that has contributed to his being the head pastor at the largest Christian mega-church in America today. This fact that, try as one might, one can’t stick him into any one box very easily. He fits no mold. Always suspect. Suspect for his happiness. Suspect for his popularity. Suspect for his wealth. Suspect for his unique theology. But regardless of all that I like the man. I dig his sermons and I like him as a person. I’ve only met him a few times, but each time I FELT him, fully, inside and out, and there is nothing to fear there. He’s as real as real can be. He fully believes in what he’s doing, in his faith and in his mission. More power to him for that.]

One of the last things I remember Joel speaking about tonight was the importance in his view of praying boldly. Not weakly or timidly or shyly — but boldly. It struck a chord in me. I see prayer being not very dissimilar from using any other consciousness tool for reality creation. They are nearly one and the same as I have pointed out in earlier posts. To pray boldly to a Christian might mean visualize and affirm more boldly to someone more metaphysically minded or create your primary (your desired outcome in avatar speak) more boldly to an Avatar. To not hold anything back. To not only give it your all in the doing, but also to remember to ask for it all. Create it all. Everything you want. Not just a piece of it, but all of it. Let go of your broken heart…. that brokenness that tells you to hold back when asking for what you want, that sense of guilt or not-deserving… To me this is one of the keys to praying for or creating everything we want fully and boldly.

I was so inspired by Joel as he spoke that I made a few notes in my master list of new primaries that I wanted to create — big ones. Ones that really juiced me. (Primaries being avatar speak (broadly and generally paraphrasing here) for “anything that is created”, but more specific to our purposes here: “something that you want to create” i.e. a desired outcome (in Tony Robins speak). To a Christian or another kind of religious person this could simply mean “something I pray to God about everyday because I desire it to happen”. As I drifted off to sleep tonight I began to pray as I always do before falling asleep, as I’ve done since I can remember, since I was old enough to speak. But this time I did it from the perspective that “God truly takes great pleasure in favoring us and helping us to be happy and live joyful lives, that He/She/It loves to help and guide us to create the life of our dreams, our greatest desires.”

I have a lot of friends. It comes with the territory of being The Ambassador I suppose. Plenty of them absolutely despise that kind of thinking and speaking. It makes them gag for some reason. They consider themselves realists. I would call them fatalists or nihilists more appropriately. The labels are unimportant. The point is that there are many among us who gag at the mere mention of God or the universe having any ability whatsoever to intercede in our lives, let alone the idea that these “concepts” of “God” or “an alive universe” even exist in reality. I love and respect them just the same.

Out of all the ones that I wrote done, the primary that juiced me the most in that moment was something to the effect of “I have found my true calling and I am thriving in it!” So I began to pray to God about this desire, once we were done with the greetings, small talk, formalities and pleasantries, I just continued to focus in on it and hammer it into my consciousness, continuing to ask for God’s assistance in guiding me down the right path towards this goal. I must admit it felt great. Especially after I began letting go of all the Secondaries (avatar speak for “anything that is other than the primary”, in other words anything that may get in the way of or distract you from or diminish your ability to create the primary or desired outcome.) A primary is easiest to create when there are NO secondaries. One easy example to understand the concept would be to ask yourself out loud what is your name. The answer… that’s a primary. And trust me, your very primary about this. You probably had no problem answering the question “What’s my name?” Now ask yourself out loud if you have any secondaries to that primary. Any doubts suspicions or any skepticism? Or perhaps hearing your name out loud makes you laugh or perhaps even wince. Who knows? It’s your consciousness. Any reaction you have at all to uttering those words, to stating your name, is a secondary. Why? Because it’s not the primary. See? It’s easy. You probably found it easy to do this. Meaning you are pretty primary about your name? Why? Because you had no secondaries about what your name is.

Avatars learn a variety of different techniques like this for creating primaries AND for discreating any secondaries that might come up. The power to discreate — thoughts feelings emotions ideas beliefs realities — is one of the greatest gifts ever given to humankind in my humble opinion… second only to the gift of life and our connection to the Divine Force in the universe. (For the record, a man by the name of Harry Palmer was the person who both re-discovered this innate ability we all possess — to create and discreate reality, AND the person who invented the numerous tools and processes we can use to do so.) (It is best to learn this knowledge and these tools from a professionally licensed avatar master or trainer on an avatar course. There’re always courses being given all over the world at any given time so it isn’t difficult to find one and jump into one. I highly recommend doing it. It’s the coolest game on earth at the moment. Like super-hero / Jedi Knight training cool. Seriously badass stuff. )

The last thing I remember before falling asleep was repeating this prayer/primary over and over again until I started mumbling and drifting off into a deep and restful sleep. As soon as I started to dream I got caught up in this mind boggling concept about how we create reality. We know that there is always a touch of randomness and chaos to what we call reality. Quantum mechanics teaches us that. It isn’t perfect, perhaps it’s not meant to be, but it’s perfectly imperfect. Or vice versa. In a way that we can semi-understand it at least. Other than the pure randomness and chaos of quantum mechanics at play, the rest of reality is being created by consciousness; and to a certain degree by non-conscious life. Life, meaning trees or starfish or chimpanzees or even algae. They’re all living and organic and indeed they do create reality. Just step outside and see for yourself. Reality is being created all around us by what we normally label “non conscious organic life”.

Most human beings do not usually believe these living things mentioned above have “consciousness”; nor that many living organisms on earth besides humans possess a “conscience”. I’d go so far as to say that many people don’t even believe that other living organisms in the world besides humans possess “consciousness”. Unless of course you’re the exception and you do. Which is great. After all, we don’t yet know everything there is to know. Some life forms like humans or dogs or apes or chimps or yes maybe even horses do seem to possess consciousness. If you’ve ever studied the work of Dr. Hagimura and his work on sound vibrations and their effect on plants and water then you’re familiar with the fact that even plant life and water – in all three of its various forms, ice, liquid, and vapor — seem to possess consciousness, albeit a slightly different variation than what we are used to as human beings — because they react to sound and vibration — as if consciously. It’s astoundingly ground-breaking work. Personally, I’d submit that there’s some kind of consciousness at play there. It’s “some kind” of consciousness that is reacting to the music and sound waves.

[As a side-note, most recently, today in fact, I discovered a group of Russian scientists who claim to have proven that they can alter and program DNA with sound and vibration… more on that later, perhaps in another post. Look for it. It’s a fascinating read and quite pertinent to what we’re discussing here.]

But what kept me awake this evening was this idea that here I was praying for and focusing on something I wanted to create… But HOW was it going to happen…? HOW does it work? “What” it was (that I wished to create) isn’t of import. What’s important is that after nearly twenty years studying this field of research and practicing using this knowledge and these materials, I am very sure of our ability to create reality with our beliefs/thoughts/feelings and/or vibrations.

It appears there are three ways to create reality: 1. Using physical action. I want to get up and walk from here to there. So I get up and walk from here to there. Physical action. 2. Not doing anything at all leads a reality to be created FOR us by someone or something else. I want to get up and walk from here to there. But I don’t. Eventually someone is going to come in the room, notice I haven’t moved from this spot in a few days/weeks/months and move me — whether I want them to or not. Not doing anything is another way to create reality; simply by allowing others to create for you. 3. Using consciousness. Our thoughts, ideas, beliefs, feelings, vibrations have an ability to set reality in motion. BEFORE we take physical action. [There may be additional ways to create reality than the methods described above.]

What was fascinating me this evening is: So what about thoughts? Feelings? Emotions? Ideas? We know they are OF consciousness… Creations of consciousness… But are they ONLY effects of consciousness? Or could it be possible that they too can be conscious or become consciousness? This is what kept gnawing at me. Try as I might to get it out of my head, or at least come to some sort of resolution with it, I just couldn’t let it go; I kept getting more and more excited thinking about it.

from Dr. Wayne Dyer to Deepak Chopra to Avatar to Sedona Method to Abraham Hicks (or that movie created about their teachings called The Secret) to the work of Amit Gowswami or Hassim Haramein, all have the same general message: Think it, feel it, envision it, focus on it, affirm it, imagine it over and over and eventually you stand a much better chance of being able to create it than if you only took physical action.

(In previous posts we’ve already discussed the idea that prayer is just another form of the above methods. Prayer seems to work in a limited number of cases because it forces the person to focus on what they desire to create, to affirm it, to envision it, etc. I would assert that the only reason that prayer doesn’t work more often is because the person doesn’t commit enough time or effort to prayer; and thus they aren’t committing enough time and effort to focusing on, affirming and envisioning whatever it is they wish to create. If they did, i.e. prayed for something more often, they would probably be able to increase their quantitative effectiveness of prayer as a method of reality creation. (When people pray for something and it does NOT transpire, they usually resort to the old adage that “God knows best. I guess God has something else in mind that I just can’t see yet”. In reality, they should instead dedicate more time and effort to praying — which would in turn increase the amount of time and effort they are focusing on and envisioning that which they desire: this would increase their chances of creating what they desire immensely more than giving up and assuming “God has a plan I just can’t see yet.” In fact, succumbing to that age-old concept is more akin to reality creation method #2 — not doing anything and letting other people or things create reality for us; it seems to be a form of giving up. But let’s not get hung up here.)

We’ve all experienced thinking about something and then seeing it transpire out of the blue without us having to do anything. Perhaps a person calls that we were just thinking about, or we see a word we just learned the definition of. These are the simple and easy ones. (ones that actually have other explanations for their occurrence than just reality creation). But I’m trying to use examples that everyone can relate to. Let’s for a moment assume that YOU are way beyond this kind of reality creation. That you’ve used some of the techniques described above and really experienced creating some incredible realities using nothing but thought, belief, feeling, vibration. Thousands of studies are taking place all over planet earth at this time by renowned scientists who are now starting to prove scientifically that this is possible. So the concept itself is starting to leave the realm of the paranormal /supernatural/ metaphysical and entering the world of science. Finally. It’s definitely about time.

But HOW does it happen? THAT’s the question… I spent a good fifteen minutes this evening in deep meditative prayer — i.e. focusing on, affirming, and envisioning that which I desired to create. It has now started to create. Within the next couple of days I will begin to see tangible proof that I created this reality. But how? Obviously it’s an energy thing. Yes? And that’s my point. We know it works. But as of yet we haven’t broken down HOW it works. This is where scientists will come in handy — as they begin to first prove it to be true (as a side effect they will also prove the effectiveness of prayer along the way — for the reasons I lay out above), and then begin to analyze and break down the mechanical aspects of HOW it works.

My presumption is that once released from consciousness, thoughts, ideas, beliefs and feelings become conscious. They may not necessarily become “consciousness” themselves. Though I haven’t ruled this idea out. But my guess is that they take on an energy of their own — as if they are conscious. At it’s most pure, we see that “vibration” — i.e. what someone vibrates — creates reality. But we aren’t just idly “vibrating”. Almost never… Unless in deep meditation…. And even then there are hundreds if not thousands of extraneous other aspects to our vibrations than pure awareness… So… our vibrations, whatever they may be in each moment, i.e. the energy that we are sending out — comes FROM our thoughts, beliefs, ideas and feelings. Thus, as we use consciousness to focus in on something that we desire (or resist), as we affirm it repeatedly, envision it, send thought energy to it, and we do that until we literally FEEL it… all those thoughts feelings and visions turn into an energy… it’s the energy that creates what we are vibrating. What we vibrate determines the realities that we create. My feeling is that these thoughts, ideas, feelings and visions turn “conscious” in effect. They leave our consciousness, but continue to exist. Sure they started out emanating FROM us, out of us. But then they leave our space and continue on out into the world… vibrating… existing as energy on their own. They then come into contact with other vibrations that are out there and together create realities.

The basic premise here is that in time scientists will not just prove that thoughts, ideas, feelings and beliefs create reality, but that they will soon discover that they are composed of matter. They are material in nature. Not just mental constructs. Eventually they will be able to determine what molecular material thoughts, ideas, beliefs, and visions are composed of. All of which lead to what we now label “vibrations”. Even these vibrations as we call them are still nothing more than mental constructs at this time in history. But not for long. We haven’t been able to see or measure them yet. But in time we will be able to. No different than how we are able to see and measure light and sound waves as vibrations. Soon we will be able to see and measure these other kinds of vibrations that we as conscious beings emanate from our thoughts, ideas, feelings and beliefs. Furthermore we will even be able to see and measure the different material that composes each of these different as-of-now mental-constructs: ideas, beliefs, thoughts, feelings. Maybe even desires and resistances. I can foresee a time when we will be able to hook someone up to electrodes and without them telling us WHAT they are feeling/thinking/doing/seeing, we will be able to tell THEM what it is. As in we will be able to SEE it on a screen: okay that’s a thought, that’s a feeling, that’s an idea, that’s a belief. Perhaps even further: that’s a desire, that’s a resistance, that’s rather neutral… Probably all just slightly different forms of the same basic materials, different atomic combinations and subsets…

That’s enough for now. The sun is rising. I must get some sleep.

— Posted by The Ambassador using BlogPress on an iPhone 8s Custom.

 



Like this:

Like Loading...
Uncategorized Abraham Hicks, Amit Gowswami, Avatar, Deepak Chopra, Dr. Hagimura, Hassim Haramein, how prayer works, reality creation, Sedona Method, the Secret movie, vibrations create reality, Wayne dyer, what are beliefs composed of

America Plays Hero and Villain by Way of Iran

February 16, 2014

French president Francois Hollande visited the United States this week. Some claim that U.S. president Barack Obama is more actively courting Hollande at present simply because he “can” — implying that his approval ratings are so low abroad that France is the best that he can get; citing allegations that relations with Germany are strained and have swung to all time lows due to recent revelations about the NSA’s wiretapping of German communications. This is politics as usual in our current state of the Union. Speaking of which, for whatever reason, president Obama didn’t get the usual “bump” in approval that most U.S. presidents get in the weeks following a State of the Union Address. But then again, we are in year two of the wounded warrior’s second term.

Historically, U.S. presidents never seem to do fare well in second terms. It will take a few years post-presidency for the general malaise and blame-gaming to stop for Obama, just as it does for all U.S. presidents, and soon the mainstream media will be touting his “countless achievements and unyielding perseverance over numerous adversities” as they prop him up heroically upon the mantle of “the Great Ones” just as they do for every FORMER U.S. president. It’s a taken for granted tradition, a predictable practice — the media seem to believe that the American public NEEDS its former presidents to be heroes.(Though one might make note that such blustery hyperbolic accolades have yet to transpire for former presidents G.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter, both of whom remain semi-respected in their own parties, but rather ignored by the country’s general populace and mainstream media). Only time will tell if president Obama will go the way of Bush the younger or Clinton the mythic demi-god who can do no wrong even when he’s doing wrong. Regardless, it is a fascinating spectacle, watching the American public slowly turn on the man that at one time in the not too distant past seemed so beloved that he graced the cover of every magazine on the newsstand — even Gold Digest and various different pet magazines. America hadn’t seen this kind of hero worship since the final days of the Ronald Reagan presidency. But those days are long gone now as more and more grey hairs take over this young president’s once youthful head of hair.

One of the reasons that the White House cited for the French president’s visit to the U.S. was for the two countries to cement their agreement that the country of Iran needed to assure the world that its nuclear program was purely for the purposes of energy and that it would not attempt to create any nuclear weapons. Iran, under the leadership of newly elected president Hassan Rouhani, has for all intents and purposes appeared to cave lately to these demands by the planet’s so-called “super powers” in exchange for their incessant bullying and torment to end. Iran and its people have been under an enormous amount of pressure for over a decade now by a very small select group of albeit very powerful nations, mainly the United States, Great Britain, France and Israel.

They call themselves “the United Nations Security Council” (along with China and Russia — though these countries are much more friendly with Iran). To be clear and fair, the United Nations Security Council is a complete farce. A legal crime syndicate that bosses around and bullies the rest of the countries on earth. If you remember that group of wealthy, good looking bitches in high school who walked around with their noses in the air making fun of everyone else and had a little name for themselves ala the movies Mean Girls or Clueless, that’s essentially what the UN Security Council is. They weren’t elected by anyone. They simply decided that they would form themselves into a little group outside of the confines of the United Nations proper so they could hold the power to veto anything the rest of the countries on earth came to agreement on. And that’s precisely what they do.

How the tiny and entirely new country of “Israel” became a part of this cabal, the most powerful political and military group in the world today, should say more to any intelligent mind about the true nature of Israel than any words can. The fact speaks for itself and does so quite loudly. Over the last ten years, under intense pressure from Israel and the United States, the so-called Security Council has made Iran and its people to suffer enormously. Most people have heard of “the sanctions”, though most don’t actually know what they are or what it implies. The proper term for it in political science speak is “economic terrorism”. A large and powerful country blackmails and bribes as many countries on earth as it can into not doing any business with another country that it is trying to force into doing something. In this case, Israel and the United States have been trying to get Iran to stop their nuclear program (and to be fair, to stop back-door funding terrorist groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas.

The problem that any rational mind would have with this second bit is that the United States and Israel commit much more blatant and atrocious terrorist acts, killing and injuring many more people, on a regular basis than Hezbolla of Hamas ever have or ever will. The difference is that when the U.S. or Israel (or France, Germany, China, or Great Britain for that matter) commit said terrorist acts, they do so openly and overtly and claim that it’s a “justified military act of war in order to defend freedom and liberty”. Small groups like Hezbollah and Hamas claim the same things, but the world isn’t run by people friendly to the populations that these groups serve and protect. So the story gets twisted and manipulated by the powers that be in government and media and voila! “terrorism” turns into “any act of violence committed against the powers that are currently in control of the world at present”.

For the last sixty years, “the power that’s in control at present” has been the United States of America. So it is they who get to write the rules, spin the story, and revise the history that we all pretend to live by. [It would be important to note somewhere, so it might as well be here, that this is the way it’s always been on planet earth as far as we can tell since we can remember. There has always been a dominating power or ruling empire that has controlled the plot and created the rules that the rest of the world pretends to live by. Going all the way back to the early days of recorded human history, one could plot it out: from Sumer to Egypt to Babylon to Persia to Greece to Rome to the Goths and Mongols and Turks and Ottomans, eventually Great Britain, Spain, France… all have had their time in the sun for brief periods as the ruling empire of the day. And eventually they have all failed, faltered and fallen. It’s difficult to imagine for instance Egypt or Rome or the UK or especially France as “the ruling empire of the world”. But at one point they were. The fact that one day the United States will fall and lose its power as the current empire of the day is an inevitability. It is only a matter of time.]

But at present, the United States IS that country. Countries like Iran don’t stand a chance at self governance as long as countries like the U.S. remain in control; UNLESS they find a way to gain access to nuclear weapons. The ONLY determining factor in how much a country on earth can be controlled and bullied by the Unites States is IF they have nuclear weapons and how many they have. It may seem a ridiculously inane and irrational notion — since an all-out nuclear war between two nations would devastate the entire planet and render it inhabitable by just about anything except cockroaches — but the powers that be have this contingency under control, or so they believe they do.

The United States, and supposedly Switzerland and a few other major nation-states as well, have built a very large and elaborate underground bunker-style living quarters, deep underground, that can house and feed up to one-hundred thousand of the country’s “most important citizens” should a nuclear war ever transpire. They would have access to everything from electricity and the internet to plumbing and plenty of food. So the threat of a nuclear attack by the United States if you should piss them off, as horrible and deplorable as it may seem, is a real one. After all, as the former president of Iran, Khatami, once reminded me when I was there last, “the United States does itself a great disservice being the only country in the world who has bombed another country with nuclear weapons. So it’s ironic that they should be the one telling others that they shouldn’t be allowed to have nuclear weapons out of fear that they might use them.”

Unfortunately that’s where we are in our current state of evolution. Control and power — even when it comes to self governance of your own land, your own laws, and your own people — is dictated by the country with the largest stockpile of nuclear weapons and the largest fiercest military to use them. That is the ONLY thing that determines who is in control at present. That and money. Which explains how and why countries like Great Britain, France, Germany and Israel are able to ride along side the United States beating their chests and brandishing their own nuclear weapons. Without nuclear weapons, any country on earth is literally helpless to the whims and dictates of the more powerful countries that DO possess them. This is how the United States has been able to commit so many terrorist activities around the world and not be held accountable for them by the global community. This is also how they’ve been able to use economic terrorism (sanctions) to achieve their goals — no matter how unfair, unjust or inhumane — against a variety of countries such as Colombia, Guatemala, Bolivia, Iraq (where this act killed nearly one-million people, half of them being children), and lately in Iran. They slowly strangle the entire population of the country to death economically till the leaders of that country cry “mercy!” and crawl to the negotiating table to ask what the United States wants from them.

I am often asked by people what exactly “economic sanctions” are and how they work. It seems that just saying “economic terrorism” doesn’t suffice to explain it adequately enough. So I am going to give you an example here of what it looks like, just so this post makes more sense. First you announce it to the world. For instance, this small group of bullies that call themselves the “UN Security Council” will decide to enact “stronger sanctions” against the country of Iran. Not all of the countries who are members of the Security Council will necessarily agree to it — in this instance both China and Russia do not agree with sanctions against Iran, both being friends and partners in trade with Iran, so they will vote no. But that doesn’t stop it from happening. Again the United States writes nearly all the rules for the rest of the world, nuclear weapons being the only thing that protects other countries such as China or Russia, from full on control by the United States.

The United States will then order every bank, financial institution, credit card company, commodity manufacturer (the very basic stuff that keep a people alive, think grains, cereals, milk, soy, cotton, corn, wheat, sugar, oil, natural gas, etc.) and any other company that exists to “not do business with the country of Iran or we will not do business with you and we will convince our allies all over the world to also not do business with you.” Think of very large organizations like the World Bank or the World Trade Organization or Monsanto or Dow Chemical or Kellogg or Conoco Philips or BP (that one especially ironic for those in the know…) or Visa, MasterCard, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, etc. Pretty soon you have just about every company in the entire world refusing to supply you with goods, refusing to trade with you, refusing to sell you things, no matter how much you or your people need it. Food, oil, water purification supplies, sanitation needs, banking, credit card processing, financing for new ventures or even basic needs materials, even things like oil and gas, car companies, airlines, transportation needs such as the trains and trucks to get food and medicine into and around your country… All off limits to you and your people.

What you have then is a people entirely cut off from the world and from the very basics that sustain life. Grocery store shelves go bare. Hospitals begin losing access to medicine and supplies. Banks close because lending stops. ATMS stop working. Credit cards don’t work and don’t exist anymore. When I was in Iran they were not yet quite at the peak of the U.S. sanctions against them, but they were already a few years into them. Store shelves are half full. People are forced to carry around large suitcases of cash in order to pay for everything and anything because they can’t get any credit card companies to work with them. In order to pay an additional fee for one of my flights while I was there, I was not allowed to use my credit cards to do so. Nor was I able to find any ATM machines to get cash. Because of the sanctions. There I was in the airport unable to get on the plane to fly home because I could not come up with the suitcase of cash needed to pay this additional fee being requested. I looked around me and all over the airport were men carrying large suitcases filled with hundreds of thousands of Tumans (their currency). They lift them up onto the counter and begin counting them out. Thousands of them. Just to pay for a flight. And so it is with everything in their country. I was able to pay for my flight eventually because I borrowed the cash from a fellow traveler that I was with who knew better than I how bad things were going to be, so he brought a TON of cash with him. IF it weren’t for him, I would have been stranded there.

So, you might be asking by now, surely the rest of the world wouldn’t do this, not ALL of the companies in the world would take part in such a brutal atrocity?! Well, you’re right. Some don’t. China and Russia and many Middle Eastern countries don’t. But these countries don’t have access to “everything”. Only to limited supplies of a limited amount of things needed to sustain life. Many companies don’t WANT to participate in this economic strangling of an entire people. But if they don’t participate then they are blackmailed by the United States: “if we catch you doing business with Iran, we can assure you that we will get every other major country in the world to immediately refrain from buying your goods or using your services”. This could easily bankrupt a company in a few short weeks. So even companies that do not wish to participate in these Draconian tactics are forced to — simply because of the power that the United States currently wields in the world.

To understand the power and the full implications of these economic sanctions, when the United States did this same thing to Iraq during the Clinton years, it is estimated that over one-million Iraqi civilians died, half of them being children, mostly from starvation or thirst or preventable disease. The rest of the world stood on the sidelines and watched this take place. Some spoke up and tried to stop it; but most are just as afraid of the United States and its power and influence as Iraq was. After all, they could be next. THIS is how the United States is able to control the actions of a country without necessarily attacking it militarily. The only thing that prevents the United States from doing this to larger countries like China or Russia, again, is the fact that THEY have nuclear weapons and a strong army. So the U.S. is smart in who it targets with this kind of terrorism. It knows who to fuck with and who to stay away from. (Besides the fact that China is currently propping up the American economy more than any other country on earth. (In case you were wondering why the U.S. claims to stand for freedom democracy and liberty but at the same time supports the overtly corrupt communist China regime…))

Hopefully this helps explain exactly what “economic sanctions” are. Let us return to our story shall we?

Seeing that Iran does not yet have any nuclear weapons, so it’s prone to just about any bullying by the U.S. that the U.S. cares to dish out, it could only hold out during the U.S. led sanctions against it for so long. The economy in Iran was thoroughly ravaged. And why? Because countries like the U.S. and France and Great Britain and especially Israel do not want Iran to have access to nuclear weapons. Plain and simple. But Iran has moved forward steadfastly with its nuclear energy program. It claims that it will be out of oil by the year 2020 and it needs to create a viable nuclear energy program. It also claims that it has no intention of ever using a nuclear weapon against another country, that it violates it’s basic core values as a nation and of its religion. Of this we cannot be sure. EVERY country on earth “claims” to be good nice and well-meaning. And nearly all of them commit horribly selfish acts of violence against others when it suits their needs. Just as the United States does and has, to be fair, Iran has too. At least according to reports we receive from mainstream media.

One thing is at least certain about Iran. They do not have the greatest justice system in the world when it comes to human rights. They’ll put to death some six-hundred people in a year and imprison thousands more for various different “capital offenses” such as speaking out against the government or being gay or peacefully protesting. So as defenders of civil liberties and human rights and equality, we can’t turn a blind eye to these harsh realities about Iran no matter how much we want the United States to be more fair-minded and even handed with them. It’s not an issue of black or white. It’s all very grey and shady.

But with that said, it still does not justify the treatment the country of Iran has received from the United States and other major nations around the world. The only way that Iran is ever going to rise up to a state of equality in the world is to eventually acquire its own nuclear weapons arsenal. This is just a fact of the current state of the world we live in. Might truly makes right. And everything else too. Right now Iran has no choice but to play the apologetic but proud and noble victim to the brutal dictatorship of the United States and its smaller cronies. Unlike the insane Saddam Hussein regime of Iraq, Iran cares about its people and their welfare. It had to eventually cave in to the demands of the United States led UN Security Council, which in this case means allowing inspectors into its country to verify whether or not it’s building nuclear weapons and also lower the level of plutonium it’s enriching to levels not high enough to build nuclear weapons. It’s a very tricky business. On the one hand, possessing nuclear weapons is the only way Iran (and any other country in the world) will ever reach a state of equality with other countries in the world and be treated with the same level of respect that it deserves. On the other hand, it needs for the time being to reduce the amount of sanctions being levied against it for the health and welfare of its people.

There should be no question and no debate about the state of this quandary that we are in regarding Iran and the issues outlines above. The United States is no more a “friendly country with good intentions that stands for freedom liberty and democracy” than Russia, China or any other major world super power. It commits violent acts of terror all over the world on a regular basis and justifies it’s doing so simply because it’s the most powerful country in the world. We cannot claim on the one hand to be intelligent rational adults and continue to pretend that the United States are “the good guys” and everyone they decide to go to war or fight with are “the bad guys” simply because they say so or because we happen to live here. Just as we cannot pretend to believe that Iran should not be allowed to have nuclear weapons because “they are evil compared to the rest of the world”. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander as they say. If the United States is so adamant about world peace and protecting the world and its people from the threat of nuclear war, then it should give up its own nuclear weapons.

But it won’t. Because then it would have to operate fairly in the world, on equal grounds on a level playing field. So the games and charade continues. But that doesn’t mean that any of us has to play along. One of the greatest gifts the United States ever gave to the world is freedom of thought and freedom of speech. It is one of our most sacred freedoms and probably one that we take for granted a little bit too much since we’re so accustomed to it. Despite what many of our conspiracy theorist friends claim, that freedom is still very much alive and well in America. Especially compared to other countries like China, Russia, Cuba, aforementioned Iran or pick one in the Middle East. As long as that freedom still exists, so too does our ability to speak up about issues like this one regarding Iran and other countries like it.

In fact, I would contend that it’s more than just an ability that we possess, but an obligation that we have. There are people who don’t understand why some of us come off so “anti-American”. They scream and shout and yell at us to “leave if you don’t like it here!” What they don’t realize is that, number one, we are doing nothing but speaking the truth, just not a very common or oft-heard truth, and two, we aren’t “anti-American” at all. On the contrary. We love the United States of America more than most and would like to one day see it rise up to being equal in practice with what it preaches and claims about itself. THAT would give cause for real celebration. I’d love to see it one day in my life before I pass on from here. For that to happen it will take a good majority of us to cry foul when we see one. In regards to our current dealings with Iran, there are plenty of fouls being committed in plain sight. We need to continue to remind each other of this fact and speak up about it. For if we don’t, who will?

To be clear, I’m not saying I desire Iran to have nuclear weapons. If it were up to me, NO country on earth would posses them. We’ve seen what they can do. We know why every country on earth has them and wants them. No good can come from it. What I am saying is that the current state of affairs between the nations of the world and rules by which they all play is dishonest, unjust and unfair. I don’t believe that it’s fair for the one country who possesses the largest stockpile of nuclear weapons in the world to demand that another country not have any, and furthermore especially not if they’re going to do so attempting to act noble and valiant. There is nothing noble or valiant about being the world’s bully and dictator, which is exactly what the United States has turned into. This most recent ruckus with Iran is yet another glaring example of this.

If you’re going to go full-on, all-out deceptive, manipulative and evil, do so proudly ala Nazi Germany or Stalin-era Russia. Don’t hide behind pretense and bullshit like “American exceptionalism” and a bunch of empty clichés like “freedom liberty and democracy”. Don’t lie  in everyone’s face, pretending to be the hero when you’re overtly playing the villain. Just boldly pronounce that you want to rule the world for selfish gain and you don’t care how you do it. I and many others would have a lot more respect for the powers that be in Washington if they did that compared to what they’re doing now. At least they’d be an honest villain, one that we could respect. There’s nothing more loathsome and disreputable than a dishonest villain attempting to fool the world into believing they’re the hero when everyone can plainly see they’re not but is just too afraid to say anything. There’s no respect in that. It reeks of the inevitable coming downfall of an empire. And no one wants to be around when an empire crumbles. Only when it’s rising.

So are we going to support the United States in it’s ascent towards true greatness? Or continue to enable it to play the hated fool on the world stage? That’s a question that as citizens we are all obligated to ask ourselves, and once answered, have further an obligation to act. President Obama has come a long way in acting more evolved towards his treatment of Iran than any U.S. president in a long time. And he should be commended for that. But we’ve got a long way to go if we are truly going to deserve the glorifying accolades that we so readily bestow upon ourselves on a constant basis.

 



Like this:

Like Loading...
Uncategorized economic terrorism, Iran, nuclear weapons, relations, sanctions, United States, United States terrorism

Television an Impetus and Sign of the Decay of Society’s Morals & Values

February 14, 2014

Prologue: The start of the new year marks the beginning of year three of my exploration of American television. As many long time readers have noted lately, The Transcendence Diaries never talked about television in all the years it’s been running. Thousands of pages and a full decade into this experiment, not one television show was ever mentioned until recently. That’s because for the longest time I didn’t subscribe to nor watch television. I spent most of my life that way. As a child we were completely cut off from that aspect of popular culture simply because our parents didn’t allow us to watch TV. They deemed it mentally and emotionally harmful. We of course being children disagreed with them vehemently. We just wanted to belong.

As I transitioned to adulthood I watched the occasional TV show when visiting friends houses, but in the music business, you really never have the kind of lifestyle where you can afford the time it takes to watch TV. You’re always traveling, and on those rare occasions when you’re not on the road, you live more of a vampire existence — out all night and asleep most of the day, one that does not lend itself to keeping up with the latest hit TV show. Besides all that, truth be told, I always found television to be the last thing in the world that interested me. I was a snob, I humbly admit it, and found television of almost any kind to be predictable, inane, boring and pedestrian. To be brutally honest, I found it insulting that people took the time or money to create such putrid dreck and expected other people to consume it. So no, TV was just not my thing.

Movies on the other hand were. An avid film buff, I gained access to movies through a seriously expensive Netflix and Amazon.com habit. Eventually two things transpired though that led to this more recent foray into the sodden world of American television, and since I’ve received more than a fair share of communications from readers about this strange twist lately, I thought I’d take a moment to address the reasons for this switch so people don’t think I’ve lost my edge or gone off the deep end.

Number one, it is possible — if one is determined and persistent enough in the pursuit — to watch literally every good to great film ever released in a variety of different languages; it just takes time and discipline. You reach a point where there is simply nothing left to buy or rent that you haven’t already seen a few times. I reached that point several years ago. Not only had I purchased all the great films worth owning — both fictional movies and documentaries, concerts and bios, old and new, color and black and white — in order to build a most enviable library to share with my children as they grow if I should be so lucky as to have some one day, but I discovered that eventually you can also reach a point where every film you ever clicked to place in your Netflix queue has been shipped to you and returned already. Granted we are speaking strictly of only movies that interested “me”. I am sure there are plenty of horror movies, vampire thrillers, zombie apocalypse tales and buddy-cop flicks that never made their way into my viewing room and hopefully never will.

Number two, as many know, I began working on a rather large project to write a non-fiction sociology book entitled We Are the Revolution — Life in the Personal Expression Age a few years back and felt that I needed to explore TV to it’s fullest in order to fairly and fully explore this new age we’ve found ourselves in. After all, one of the Signatures of the age that I predicted was on its way was “The Great American Television Renaissance”. I foresaw that with the Indie Revolution and technology boom colliding and working together, American television was about to begin a new golden age where it would become so good that it would be nearly indistinguishable from Hollywood movies, even good ones. I was right. To a degree at least. Mainstream media is now calling it “the new or third golden age of TV”… something to that effect.

More importantly I have been able to witness it firsthand, taking notes and cataloguing it along the way. At first I tried to accomplish this feat by simply renting DVDs of all the television shows that I thought were important through Netflix. True story. I must have watched hundreds of hours of television that way. Eventually I caved in and realized that if I was really going to take the leap and explore this aspect of our society completely that I would need to subscribe to TV full on, as in get cable. And so I did. We’ve now got the full gamut. All 1000 channels or more. It’s entirely overwhelming. And yet frustratingly underwhelming as well. All depending on the filter you have on when watching.

I must say that it hasn’t been easy. Television is both a gift and a curse, wicked and wonderful all at the same time. On the one hand I heartily appreciate the comfort and companionship it provides to those who aren’t as fortunate as some of us are financially or socially or even in regards to having good health. Many a good person falls asleep every night with the TV on for no other reason than they are ill and bed-ridden or simply lonely. I get that. I respect it. I also understand that in a country as large as the United States is, television has a tremendous bonding capacity. It makes it possible for just about anyone, no matter how isolated or remote they may live from a metropolitan area to feel connected with and stay in touch with the rest of the country; with the rest of the world really. This is an important contribution to be sure. Though one might add that the internet can now just as readily fulfill that purpose, and do so without an endless stream of advertisements or that most unfortunate circumstance where one is trapped in front of the box filled with hundreds of channels and still find absolutely nothing to watch that interests them.

(I myself have a tough time with advertisements on television and so I almost exclusively only watch shows that have been DVR’d. I don’t think this project would have been possible had the DVR not yet been invented.) Because my venturing into the world of television was not for entertainment but for research I never found myself in the aforementioned predicament of “not being able to find anything to watch”. I’ve felt it countless times of course, but every time I find myself thinking that, I remind myself that this is research after all. If it’s occasionally enjoyable, all the better. But if it’s not, so what: the important thing is to soak it all in and to learn. So that’s what I’ve been doing.

I started this exploration approximately two years ago. So no, I do not remember the shows Desperate Housewives or Friends or 24, nor am I am able to recall the early formative years of American Idol that everyone refers to so lovingly. These were all before my time. But I have been able to catch up on certain things deemed important enough through Netflix such as Lost for instance. And as I’ve already mentioned in prior posts I enjoyed that show in particular immensely. Now I find myself in a rather strange place. Half in, half out. Television as it turns out can be extremely addictive. One can find oneself watching when one doesn’t even necessarily want to. It is easy to become quasi-addicted to TV. To keeping up with things. To having that extra energy in the room. It’s an illusion of course. Those people are real, but they aren’t there in the room with you. They aren’t even doing what they’re doing live, there in the moment, as you’re watching. They only pretend they are. And we in turn pretend along with them. It’s a drug like any other that as a society en masse we’ve allowed ourselves to become slowly but entirely addicted to and dependent on.

I would be lying if I claimed that I haven’t enjoyed this part of the book writing process. Because I have. Almost too much I believe. Much of it has been very enjoyable. On the other hand much of it has been thoroughly dreadful and painful, as many would guess. Most television, as I remembered from the few times I attempted to watch it in the past, is indeed inane, pedestrian, boring, predictable and insulting to anyone with half a brain. Though on occasion you can find some things that transcend the format and are just flat out better than good. Downton Abbey comes to mind; as do many shows that PBS tends to air. So too does Homeland. Though the latter’s third season suffered so badly from poor writing that it became unbearable to get through for me personally. And that, in a nutshell, is the problem with television. Unlike good film, where they limit the length of the work to the exact time needed to tell the story and no more or less, television works in the exact opposite way: the story is dictated by how long the series stays on the air — as in how many dollars can they squeeze out of it as a commodity. This invariably always suffers the quality of the work itself. After a season or two, when the story is long overdue for a proper ending, the writers are still desperately trying to suck more blood out of the lifeless carcass that’s still left behind. The audience hangs on because they’ve become accustomed to it, fond of it, seduced by the original thrill once had but long forgotten, much like other drugs, and slowly — like a marriage gone sour — both writer and audience writhe in agony as each new season drags on until eventually both show and audience whither away and shrivel up and die.

tv-money

Think Pretty Little Liars. Those supposed high school girls are old enough to be grandmothers at this point and no one in their right mind gives two shits who “A” is anymore. The same can be said for Revolution — they’re going to drag that poor wretched beast out so long that most viewers will be dead by the time the producers of the show suck all the cash out of it that they can and end the story; which is too bad, because that show had at one point at least a degree of merit and potential. But again, money is taking precedence over quality still in this medium, so the storyline just drags on indefinitely rather than ending when it naturally should. The same goes for the aforementioned Homeland starting with season 3. It’s alarming, and I’d say disturbing even, to ponder that the creators and writers of this show are contemplating bringing “Brody” back from the dead in season 4. And yet everyone knows that’s precisely what they intend to do. It’s a truly shameless craft, to work for American television. All because of this wretched time-dictate phenomenon.

Of course, there is an easy fix. Just as filmmakers do, the creators and writers of TV could, if they really wanted to go the way of art rather than commerce, just change the storyline as often as needed — adding and/or deleting characters as needed — and frame the whole television show around a good story, RATHER than around how much time they need to fill up with a full season, and then another, and then another, and another, etc. In other words, once the story has run its course, they could END it, regardless of how many more episodes they have left. They could always keep the same cast of characters but just create a different story for them to be involved in. This would make television much more intelligent and much less inane and insulting.

Now that I’ve made mention of this fix, we can only hope that it turns into the new trend at some point in the near future. That’s how it usually works. I’ll mention it here; a few weeks to months later we see it transpire. [Remember, it was less than a year ago that I suggested creators and networks shoot and air whole seasons of shows at once so audiences could watch them all in one or two sittings IF they so choose to. See the post entitled Observations Re Modern Television – Fixes (1) from March 13, 2013. Within a few months, Netflix did just that with Arrested Development and then House of Cards and “binge watching” became the new buzz word of the season. So before we go writing in that yours truly is pipe-dreaming, let’s give this new idea some time, eh? I bet it’s only a matter of time now that it’s been mentioned here.

[This brings up an interesting side-thought — a truly fascinating paradigm that’s a bit off-topic but one that I’d say is very intriguing, if not way more intriguing than what this post was originally about. Check it. What exactly happened there? In the above scenario? I suggested something new, never been done before; and a few months later we see it transpire. Deductively, from what I can tell after thinking about this strange phenomenon for decades now, we’ve got three or four primary choices from which to conclude. #1, I created the idea and someone read about it, liked the idea and put it into action. i.e. I was the inventor of said event. #2, I predicted the advent of the idea before it transpired. i.e. I am psychic, or more accurately put, am more tuned into my “Intuitive Mode of Consciousness” than the average person. (more on that later). #3, I am simply highly tuned in to the subject and/or the culture it exists in and could feel or induce the coming of said event through either logical induction or intuition or a combination of both. This falls into the “hundredth monkey” paradigm to a certain degree. A little something I call “If you’re thinking it, so too are a thousand other people”. i.e. knowing a subject very well and all of the data associated with a subject allows us to be able to accurately predict coming events and trends more readily than the average person simply because we are so tuned into that particular data collection. We aren’t necessarily “predicting” something psychicly (though this could just be semantics) as much as being able to induce coming trends…. #4, none of the above. It was pure coincidence. #5, a combination of all of the above.

Without making too much of this post about this phenomenon — I believe it deserves one for sure — what I personally believe is that each time this phenomenon occurs, one has to analyze the events surrounding it in order to be able to ascertain which one of the five conclusions above were at play. There’s not just ONE singular reason for this seemingly miraculous turn of events. #1, Are television executives frantically scouring the Transcendence Diaries to look for ideas from yours truly and as soon as I suggested they air full seasons of shows so viewers could watch them all at once, they decided to do just that because I have just that much influence? I doubt it. In fact I doubt that they or anyone else except for loyal readers for that matter even knew I had suggested this new format for airing television shows. So no, I don’t believe I invented the idea and someone stole it.

#2, While it is true that for the last twenty or so years those closest to me have noticed an uncanny ability to be able to see things that are going to happen in the future — so much so that friends and family call me to ask “Hey, what are you seeing happen if I should do this_____?” — 99% of the time I am NOT in control of this ability. I “feel” and “see” the visions of said coming events randomly. Or I might just be writing or thinking about a subject or person and make note of something that IS going to happen or SHOULD happen, and then it does. This is certainly not psychicism in the classic scientific sense. Because I can’t turn it on or off at will. It’s completely random. Most of the time, when I do try to do it deliberately I do so with devastatingly erroneous results. So I tend to dismiss the “psychic” conclusion.

To me the most logical conclusion is #3. When we tap into a subject deeply and study it, all the data in and around it, we are more capable of being able to induce various different events that may potentially transpire in what we label “the future” in this particular field — simply because we are so tuned into this topic of study, or field of thought. It’s really just a matter of inductive reasoning. And feel. And intuition. The hundredth monkey effect at play. Chances are there were probably a thousand other people around the same time thinking and proposing the same thing. Why? Because it was the next logical step or transition in the field of television broadcasting. I just happened to make note of it before it happened because I was so deeply entrenched in studying it.

To be clear, I do not believe that this negates the potential for “psychic” or telekinetic abilities in others, nor even in myself. I’m only speaking about this one particular event, and a few others like it. I believe that the more we study and dig into something, the more “tuned into it” we become, i.e. the more tapped in our Intuitive Mode of Consciousness gets into this subject and the easier it is for us to access it with our regular day to day consciousness. *[The idea of the Intuitive Mode of Consciousness, at least the label itself as I am using it here, comes from the work of Harry Palmer and his work in the Avatar materials.]  This to me does not preclude our ability to be psychic or telekinetic. Some people are highly gifted in this capacity. But there is I believe a more logical conclusion to this phenomenon and a lot of it has to do with how much we know about a subject. The more we learn about a subject, the more we soak into it, the easier it becomes to see what’s coming next.

We can become quite good at this ability by simply knowing this fact. If we want to know what happens next, simply study the subject at hand as much as possible. A combination of logic and intuition will increase our ability to see what happens next immensely. There is more to this, a lot more. This is definitely a subject we should explore more in future posts.]

The full exploration and conclusions of our little experiment in the world of television are in the book mentioned above. That wasn’t the original intent of this post. I apologize. I got carried away. Evidently even I am not immune to getting sucked into the crazy seductive world of television. So be it. It’s a good point made though.

Last week I decided to tune into a fairly new show called The Following to see what all the fuss was about. One of the aspects of the Signature of “The Great American Television Renaissance” is that better than good film actors, writers and producers would eventually succumb to working for television — unlike even five to ten years ago where television was considered the land where talentless hacks go to die. But this trend was easy to see coming due to a variety of factors. The full reasons and ramifications are discussed in the book. It’s easy work, TV, compared to movie making. Nearly a nine to five job if you force their hand. And one that you can do from the comfort of your own hometown so you can stay close to family — without the itinerate traveling and being on location as is often required when making a movie. And if they only made the money being offered tantalizing enough, so the theory went, they could easily start seducing B movie stars into doing it first, and eventually A-listers would soon follow. We’ve seen this start to play out over the last few years. I first intuitively perceived this coming trend, began taking notes on it and named it in 2005. It took a while to transpire. But in full swing now.

The ubiquitous Kevin Bacon, who’s been in literally every movie that’s ever come out of Hollywood since the early nineteen-eighties eventually succumbed in The Following. So I decided to check it out, see what the big pull was. FOX is known for pulling many a rabbit out of its hat. Most extremely lame, deformed, mutated beyond recognition. Some nearly decent, edible, if rabbit’s your thing. And a select few occasionally quite tasty.

Uh… Okay… Wow… Not sure WHAT kind of response the creators of this show were looking for, but that about sums it up. If there ever was just one, The Following could potentially hold the honor of being the perfect illustration of just how numb depraved and insane modern American society has become through the years. It’s plot and storyline are completely over the top, repetitive, irrelevant and unbelievable of course; that was expected; but gratuitous violence and gore and shock scenes abound, a technique usually reserved for cheap Hollywood D grade horror movies. It’s a twisted little world that’s created in this shock and schlock fest, filled with blood, gore, stabbing scenes, dismembered body parts… all the while the characters act as if it’s just another day in paradise. There are absolutely no redeeming qualities to this show except perhaps as a study of how depraved a society can become: on the one hand the society publicly questions why mass murders and killing sprees transpire on a regular basis in real life and on the other hand it simultaneously creates these kinds of television shows as entertainment. What the society claims to dread, resist and fear the most, it simultaneously gorges on as entertainment. It’s a fascinating dichotomy. But also a bit sickening and frightening.

For the last ten to fifteen years American television broadcasters have been in a competition with one another to see who can create and air the most shocking, taboo and controversial material and get away with it. It wasn’t always this way. A thorough study of the history of American television since the 1950s will reveal that there has always been a healthy competition between networks. Which is a good thing for everyone to be sure. But somewhere down the road an invisible line was crossed. In the 1970s there began a now-seemingly tame competition between the big three American television networks fighting for the top spot in shocking the American public with controversial subjects that were considered too taboo for such a public medium like television. Single motherhood, divorce, black and Hispanic comedies, racism and racial slurs, mixed marriages, all were on the table to be offered up for free to see just how much reality the viewing public was willing to digest.

For the most part the intentions seemed noble. Television producers were trying to push the envelope of how much reality could be accepted in society’s entertainment. All they were attempting to do was replicate current events on TV — to more honestly mirror real life in order to more honestly explore it. Before that era, American television was pure fantasy. A utopian dream of what life “could be like if everything were perfect”. To many, this may have been a pleasurable panacea in the moment, but it also served as a constant reminder of just how imperfect our real lives were. In the nineteen-seventies all that changed. Throughout the next twenty years, television continued to push these boundaries, attempting to reveal more and more reality on TV. Many credit the popular comedy Will and Grace with helping to make being “gay” more acceptable in real life society. It would be more difficult to thoroughly “hate” gay people if you were tuning in to laugh at and with a gay person once a week. Perhaps they weren’t as scary as people made them out to be. Or so the argument goes. For all intents and purposes it seemed to work.

Needless to say the advent of what we call cable television — or anything other than the Big Four networks, CBS, NBC, ABC and FOX — was and still is the main impetus for the ongoing trend towards a new style of television: starting with real life, then leaving it behind and stretching it out beyond peoples’ wildest fantasies. The show that comes to mind more than any other is The Sopranos, though which show started it all is not the point here. Let TV executives and savants argue that one out. But HBO’s The Sopranos took violence and vulgarity on television to a whole new level never seen before. Sex too. Pretty soon people were tuning in to watch the show not because it was “good” but more to see just “how far out” the writers would go in their quest to push past society’s boundaries of acceptability. By the time the show had reached it’s final season, tens of other shows started cropping up on HBO and other networks to compete with it in this category of pure shock value. Drug addicted doctors, mobsters, serial killers, murdering vampires and zombies, weed selling single moms, meth peddling dads just trying to earn a living to support their family, pregnant teens, womanizing drunkards… this is what the new American television protagonist started looking like.

And thus began the new phase of American television: not to mirror real life, but to stretch it beyond recognition as fantasy.

In my quest to fully absorb and explore modern American television, I succumbed to just about every show that any half-assed idiot raised enough money to get on the air just to be able to get the whole picture. I attempted to watch the show Girls once two years back, and found myself so disgusted and disturbed by the thought that this could potentially represent what modern American girls in their early twenties are like that I actually found myself crying. Just sitting there on the couch tearing up and sobbing. It’s one thing to push the envelope. It’s another thing to indoctrinate young people into believing that drug and booze binging, casual sex, loose or no morals, and trailer-park vulgarity were all perfectly acceptable as long as you could afford the latest fashion trends and you got on TV. Which is exactly what this and countless other shows seemed to be doing. My reaction was beyond shock. It was downright disgust and then sadness.

The word “fuck” — not only as an expletive but also as a verb, as in “to copulate or to have sex” — is used so regularly and casually by characters (who we are supposed to identify with in some way) that an outsider would justifiably assume that that’s how regular everyday people in our society speak. “Oh first you fuck me and then you go and fuck her Tony?!?!” As if that’s how the average American female speaks on a regular basis, which for the most part, thank God, they don’t. We don’t. When’s the last time you heard someone use the word “fuck” when speaking about making love or having sex in real life? Certainly more common now than ever before; but certainly not something that has been considered the norm in our day to day lives.

There was a time, in the not too distant past, when that kind of language would be found utterly shocking in the real world except perhaps for the most lowly types of individuals. And to be sure that still applies to most of us. But for how long? Television has always served as both a reflection of our reality and an influencer and harbinger of it, of things to come. “Fuck” has always been a fun word to use on occasion. A colorful way to decorate an otherwise lackluster sentence or sentiment. But we’ve always known — we’re even taught this in writing courses at university — that it’s the easy way out, a device of the amateur.breaking enough, the characters not badass or tough enough. Now it’s every other word, de rigeur for every character on TV. No longer shocking, but boring and predictable. Have a seat and try to watch a whole episode of Veep or House of Lies. You’ll hear more “fucks” in 30 minutes than you’d hear in a year of Tourette’s Syndrome Anonymous meetings.

But all the while, people are watching… How much are they being influenced? That’s the question that arises again and again.

But it doesn’t stop there. The word “fuck” is the least of our problems at this point. Sex blood guts gore vulgarity abortion adultery murder stabbings gunshots to the heads eye-gouging rape the mafia and criminals as heroes… you name it and you can find it on a television near you. A friend on Facebook once commented a year or so back, “I don’t mind being forced to watch Girls if it makes my wife happy for an hour. But I refuse to stare at Lena Dunham’s fat naked ass while she’s being banged from behind for ten minutes.” And that pretty much sums it up. Who in their not-right mind decided it was a good idea to start showing doggy-style sex on TV? And worse, who in their right mind watches it or enjoys watching it? But let’s not blame it on poor Lena Dunham. Innovative she’s not. She’s just a child of the generation that came before. I can distinctly remember being equally horrified when binge-studying the just as vile Sex and the City I had to sit through a ten minute conversation where all four actresses pretended that talking about “anal sex and giving blowjobs” over lunch was the normal conversation of choice for middle class Manhattan females. When we all know it’s NOT. But again, the show’s creators are just trying to bang extra dollars out of the piggy banks of hapless American consumers through shocking them. What is it about being shocked that makes American consumers feel special? That’s another valid question.

What many don’t seem to understand is that a good story doesn’t need to be shocking, nor controversial. Nor does shock or controversy equal a good story. What’s to explain the popularity of and adulation around Downton Abbey over the last three years? But this point seems lost on most television executives.

In a few decades we have created a world where absolutely nothing is off limits or taboo for television. The Real Housewives, Honey Boo Boo or any other number of shows proves this. Rape murder animal cruelty take your pick. Sure the clean-cut, smiling faces will be on the TV first thing in the morning on their best behavior, dyed-white teeth sparkling into the camera, acting as if everything is just fine and dandy in Pleasantville. But tune into the same channel 12 hours later and you can gleefully watch a man poke a woman’s eyes out while she screams bloody murder or a group of young teens having a threesome. And if you want to they’ll even look directly into the camera and talk to you while doing it, which is the current “cool technique” of today’s television factory.

If we are to believe that television is the least bit reflective of real life, some of the most cherished and sought after ideals of our society have been slowly shoved under the bed over time and replaced with a new kind of identity. Nobility, once highly sought after and admired, is now clouded by darker themes such as vengeance ruthlessness power for power’s sake and greed. “The end never justify the means” is an archaic novelty, cute and nostalgic, reserved for coffee mugs and keychains; now replaced by older more primitive notions such as “do whatever it takes to succeed” or “only the strong survive”. It is becoming increasingly more difficult to ascertain precisely what nobility or respectability mean in today’s “modern” times as represented by television. Our hard fought evolution to a more graceful and elegant, kinder and gentler people appears to be eroding if we are to believe that our favorite television shows reflect who we are as a society.

To say we’ve lost touch with our core values would be understating the obvious. Fundamental deception and blatant manipulation is an accepted norm. So too are hidden agendas. So too has rampant vacuous sexuality, gratuitous violence and gore, using sex as a tool or a weapon either to garner attention (in the absence of something valuable) or to bribe manipulate or blackmail. Our very basic nobility has been eviscerated; in its place has arisen new ideals: ambition fame attention power greed winning. Remember the Charlie Sheen fiasco? Talk about an ironic dichotomy. Thousands of hapless masses cheering on a jacked up drug addict and womanizer as he incoherently rambles on and on about “winning” some irrelevant battle he’s having with his “greedy Jew bosses at the network” over how much money he makes for a TV show that no one actually watched anymore. What exactly is “winning” now in American society? How can we even organize the data to craft a definition given the blatant contradictions between what we see pretended as winning versus what we know it really to be, at least in a traditional sense? If one were young enough to NOT remember the traditional definitions of concepts such as winning, nobility, respectability, decency, it would be easy to see how they could be completely confused as to what these ideals really mean if all they see representing them are people like The Kardashians, Paris Hiton, Kanye West, Miley Cirus or Ray Donovan. I don’t envy the younger generation coming of age in today’s world.

On the one hand we have shows like 60 Minutes and Frontline or even Anderson Cooper revealing the latest scandals and corruptions of the day by the lowliest criminals in society who then get in trouble for their actions, and an hour later we have shows like Scandal, The Good Wives, and Ray Donovan glorifying these same types of individuals and their corruptions as if it’s an honorable thing to be a part of. That’s one confusing bag of mixed messages. The fear is that we are on the brink of becoming immune to what we euphemistically label “white collar crime”: lying, cheating, embezzlement, blackmail, bribery, grand larceny…  and a political system that is run and controlled by these very things. We deceptively refer to it as “lobbying” or “political campaign financing”. Since we are old enough to speak we are taught that our elected officials make laws based on trading votes for favors and vice versa, again cleverly disguised by the moniker “pork barrel spending” so no one really understands what’s being discussed. We see it parodied or theatrically played out on television in shows like Veep or House of Cards or House of Lies. And we don’t even blink at the thought that this may in fact be our reality.

Nope. In fact we choose instead to allow others among us to use these shameful weaknesses in our character as entertainment, akin to allowing someone to murder your family right before your eyes and then broadcast it as a reality TV show. (We can be sure that’s not too far away at this point. I’d say give it a year…) Unfortunately we see far too similar events as those in fictional TV dramas play out in real life on CNN and CSPAN on a near daily basis, which only further blurs the line between what is real and what is creative writing. So it could all be satire, or dramatization, or not. At this point we don’t know. Turning our considerable problems with our government in what is known as the greatest democratic republic on earth into entertainment not only minimizes the importance of the real problems that we face as a society, but it satirizes us, as a people, and our very core values, as we ignore the problems and continue to pretend that everything is fine; the irony of it screams in our faces “DO SOMETHING YOU IDIOTS” while we sit back and binge-watch it play out right before our eyes pretending it means nothing, that in the end it’s only a story…

Last night while taking notes for this post, the thought occurred to me that it’s time to not only stop with this experiment of exploring American television but that I should even go one step further and unsubscribe from all television in both our homes and start a movement to encourage others to do the same thing, just get rid of all TV completely except as a vehicle to watch movies on. Precisely because I wholeheartedly believe in the main message of this post, television IS in my opinion a major reason for the decay of the moral fabric of our society and the only way it’ll ever stop is if people en masse start boycotting it to send a message to executives and broadcasters.

The next two thoughts that occurred to me were this: one, there are certain aspects of television that I really get a lot out of. News and especially financial news networks, CNBC, CSPAN, PBS and certain guilty pleasures on the so-called premium channels. Two, there’s no way that anyone will be able to talk even a small minority of Americans into doing away with their TV, so it’s an effort that would prove fruitless; not worth the time or energy I would expend. I’d basically being chasing rainbows. No one’s going to do it.

This morning upon awakening, I was surfing Facebook over my first macchiato and lo and behold what do I see? A post by a colleague in the music business who lives in Utah — she works in radio promotion — saying that she just got rid of their whole house’s cable subscription entirely because she “doesn’t approve of the content of TV today, it’s too vulgar and violent, and she doesn’t want her or her spouse or her children digesting that kind of garbage on a regular basis.” I must admit I was quite surprised. Talk about synchronicity or being psychic or tapping into intuition… I hadn’t even posted this yet. So it wasn’t about me. More a sign that I was onto something. She’s onto something. Perhaps I’m not the only person thinking about doing this. Not just doing it ourselves for the betterment of our mental and emotional health, but taking it on as a cause. After all, this may have been a random coincidence, but I just bet that if we two are thinking about it, so are plenty of others.

Sure enough, our good friend Zeke Zaskin — yes the audio engineer who’s mixed and mastered the last nine Transcendence albums, said that they just did the SAME thing in their home, for the same reasons, and that there’s a simple solution to being able to access only the content that one desires and still not have to subscribe to cable: He states the solution is getting a digital antenna, a Roku box and the PlayOn app. In fact he even posted a link that explains how to do it. You can get rid of cable completely AND still access the big four networks and any other networks you want to IF you want to. Here’s the link: http://removeandreplace.com/…/cancel-your-cable-and…/

So it turns out it IS possible to get rid of cable completely and still have access to only the shows and networks that we desire. This would afford us all a good opportunity to be able to send a message to the television networks and the executives that control them. One giant boycott is all we’d need by even a small minority would gather a lot of attention. I for one am ready to do something.

 



Like this:

Like Loading...
Uncategorized Arrested Development, binge watching, decays morals society, fuck, girls, Homeland, House of Cards, House of Lies, Kanye West, Lena Dunham, Miley Cirus, netflix, Paris Hiton, psychic ability, Ray Donovan, Revolution, The Kardashians, The Sopranos, TV, vulgarity on TV

Joel Osteen Teaches Avatar and Abraham Hicks

February 9, 2014

Over the weekend I was watching the excellent “Ascent of Money” documentary, when in the corner of my eye I spotted another video that also looked interesting; several in fact. Even though I was completely entrenched in The Ascent of Money movie, I didn’t want to forget about this other one that caught my eye. So as not to miss it, I clicked on it in order to share it publicly, to FB or Twitter or even Instagram, and ask people to let me know if it was any good or not. That video was entitled “Our History is Not What We Think“. As soon as I clicked on it to save to a playlist and share it I found myself completely captivated by its content. It’s one hell of a ride. So I began watching IT instead. (Don’t you hate when that happens?)

Most of it is stuff that we’ve already seen or heard before. It’s more than a tad challenging for yours truly at this point to find anything I haven’t already seen or heard of or studied– outside of the ever expanding “tech” underworld that is. Much of the material in this one hour animated presentation seems to be based on the work of Drunvalo Melchizedek. This guy is WAY out there, mind you. By most people’s account he’d be considered a total crackpot, IF they’d heard of him or his work, which they haven’t. His focus is on something he terms The Flower of Life, a pseudo-science theory roughly arranged around sacred geometry, tantric sex and ancient alien theories. I had first started studying him back in the mid-nineties, long before there was a thriving internet or animated YouTube presentations to lend credibility to outlandish claims. Back then we would trade paperback books and pamphlets, rough-copied VHS tapes or snail-mailed cheaply printed newsprint quarterly newsletters in this very hush-hush underground world of alternate history and conspiracy theories. Now there are whole TV shows and networks dedicated to this kind of thinking. Like all things once “niche” it too has become rather mainstream.

In a nutshell the basic idea of this particular “alternate history” movie is that humankind has forgotten it’s real history and has instead embraced the much newer history that the major religions and empires of the world have put forth more recently in our history — think Roman Empire, Christendom, Islam or the British Empire. Nothing too outlandish about that. Perfectly believable premise frankly. Anyone who has really studied the underbelly of human history understands that our true history has been lost for ages and replaced by a revisionist history that is always being written and rewritten by whichever group happens to be in control at the time; in other words — the meanest strongest toughest or cruelest people at any given time in our slow evolution as a species rewrites our shared history in their own image and demands that everyone believe. And for the most part, most people do.

But from that first point of feasibility, the documentary leaps out onto a slippery slope so outlandish that it’s more entertainment than believable academic study. It questions how the ancient Sumerian and Egyptian cultures were so advanced, how the Mayans were able to create the world’s most accurate calendar or have an understanding of the precession of the equinox; brings into light ideas about alternate universes, higher dimensions, the Tree of Life, the Flower of Life, the Merkaba, the Talmud, the Kabala, Ascended Masters, Spirit Guides, you name it. It even asserts that the Hebrews are a non-earthly lifeform that emigrated to earth tens of thousands of years ago, along with the Martians and the Greys. Nothing new in here. Heard it all before. Just all put together quite neatly and succinctly. For the pure pleasure of taking the trip, it’s more than enjoyable, and if this kind of knowledge does interest you, there are tidbits here and there that are interesting.

I was fascinated by the onslaught of comments in the right-hand column by people infuriated that anyone would or could possibly believe such “nonsense” — especially the religious lot of them. They spoke as if the video’s very existence was an insult to their life. Many engaged in endless debates with others filled with angry tirades, misspelled words, red herrings, non-sequitors, slippery slope assertions, ad hominem attacks and insults and the worst grammar this side of kindergarten. I’ve never understood the merit of arguing with someone who you don’t know personally, will never meet and whom you have nothing in common with. Especially when you’re in a public place and on their turf. It’s one thing, if that’s your schtick and you wholeheartedly disagree with what you consider blatant misinformation. But if you’re a practicing theist, you’ve already stepped out onto the ledge and into the land Oz. So why bother starting a fight with people who have absolutely no conception of your view of the world and no intention of changing theirs? More than anything, the video — though it claims to offer a realistic alternative take on human history if one just opens their mind — is so far fetched that I can’t believe anyone would take it any more seriously than the latest sci-fi flick. I certainly don’t get why anyone would bother arguing the merits of such outlandish claims. Especially when they themselves are already professing to believe equally outlandish belief systems such as any of the Big Four religions that have so preoccupied humankind over the last two-thousand years.

It did get me thinking though. About a subject that I have been meaning to write about for some time. What we find on planet earth presently is a variety of different groups of people who each believe a different set of religious or spiritual beliefs or principles that all seem opposed to one another — which has been one of the major causes of war and bloodshed in our short recorded history on earth. Christians will tell you that new agers are all wrong; as will Muslims or other theist types. New Agers will claim that those who practice any of the Big Four religions are brainwashed and closed-minded. Atheists consider the whole lot of them crackpots. Which I think is hilarious since atheism itself is just as whacky and far fetched a religion as any of the Big Three or Four (depending on if you include Hinduism in the group). It’s just the opposite side of the same coin, Atheism that is. There is a God. There isn’t a God. Okay…. prove it. Right? Impossible on either side. So I tend to be more open minded, choosing instead to take the “honestly I have no idea” view. You can’t prove there is no “god” any more than you can prove that there is a “god”. Taking either side is pointless and reeks of ignorance, or at least a mind that is not very well thought out.

For example we know that Christianity is not an original idea, but a ragtag amalgam of different belief systems that stem from primarily paganism, Egyptian, Persian, Greek and Roman mythology. Islam is pretty much the same thing but just the 7th century Arabian’s version of it. Judaism stems from Persia’s Zoroastrianism along with a variety of ancient Egyptian, Babylonian, Sumerian, and Pagan beliefs with a good lot of ancient Greek mathematics thrown into it, which lends a more mystical feel to the more esoteric aspects of it, and a hell of a lot of “our God is the best and strongest and he likes us the best” type of survivalist rhetoric. Judaism is very Darwinian in that respect: cultural survival of the fittest speak disguised as religion.

All the major Big Four religions currently being obsessed over by human beings have much in common and tend to agree more than disagree when you break them all down. The primary difference between them all is that THEIR GOD just happens to be “the best” and prefer THEM as “his chosen people” more than any other people. There’s an anthropological irony to it all that is so obvious that it makes it hard not to laugh when pondering or writing about it. If there had not been so much human life lost and so much misery caused by all of them through the centuries, this laughter would be a bit easier and not always feel so distasteful. But one just cannot get beyond the fact that as hysterically irrational and laughable modern religious systems are, they’re also extremely dangerous to the general survival of the human species in general; especially if you don’t happen to subscribe to one of them at any given moment in history — depending on who is in control at the time. Presently it’s the Christians and Jews running things with the Muslims in a close second. The Hindus have given up being in control in modern times, so they’re perfectly content letting their religious beliefs play second fiddle to the rest of them and being a punch-line to numerous jokes about “how many Gods they have” etc. In this respect, Hinduism has more a chance of serving the sincere seeker more simply because the religion itself has less need to prove it’s rightness or political import and believers can focus more on just using the beneficial aspects of the belief system to their own personal advantage rather than worry about how strong of a grip the religion itself has on the mechanisms of modern society or its politics.

To get back to this documentary, if we forget the more primitive legends and myths associated with the religions explored in it, it’s mind boggling how mathematically advanced early humans were when you begin to study the more esoteric Judaic writings. PI, The Golden Mean and the Fibonacci Sequence all come into play in early Judaism, which is more than impressive and suspicious. Advanced stuff for a people supposedly extremely “primitive” and still given to animal sacrificing and blanket misogyny. But again, the perception we have today of Judaism or Christianity is the “modern accepted view” of Judeo-Christian beliefs, AFTER both the rabbis of that day AND the Roman Empire stripped anything remotely intelligent from the writings or teachings offered to the masses. [This in and of itself is one of the greatest cons and conspiracies perpetrated on humans by humans in the history of humankind.] The real meat of both these religions is available to anyone interested in digging a bit deeper. Some of it can be quite advanced. It’s just not knowledge you’ll find being preached about or taught in modern churches or synagogues. Instead you get Noah and the Ark, Adam and Eve, Joseph’s magic coat and Jesus being born in a manger on December 25th when just about everyone knows that Jesus wasn’t even born in the winter, let alone December. But for now these principles seem to work for most people. If they only knew…

Speaking personally, it’s no big secret that I personally practice a loose version of Christianity, belong to the Methodist denomination and even attend and volunteer at a real church on a regular basis. It’s also no great mystery that I’m also an avid student of Avatar, Abraham Hicks, Sedona Method, quantum mechanics, witchcraft and high magic, ancient alien theory and just about anything “new age”, supernatural or paranormal if it interests me. I justify such apparent contradictions in my own belief system by stating that “it works for me”. And in the end, whatever works for you and doesn’t hurt anyone else, should be tolerated by others no matter how different it may be from what works for them. That’s the truly libertarian way to view the world and our fellow man. Frankly I don’t really see that much contradiction between Christian theology and New Age thinking, IF you understand the basics underneath them all.

You just have to, one, go to the roots — learn the history — the real history, and two, learn how to read between the lines. Let’s take two rather popular –though seemingly opposite and contradictory — viewpoints and break them down to show just how similar they really are. On the one hand we have the Theist viewpoint: this would include any of the Big Four religions of modern humankind, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism and Islam. All contend that a great and powerful all-knowing/seeing God exists who can hear our inner-most thoughts, hopes, dreams, fears and desires and does his or her best to intercede in our lives when we need it. If we pray to him or her, we have a better chance of experiencing the life of our dreams; because “God answers our prayers”. Take Joel Osteen as an example of your average Christian leader. Osteen is a friend. He’s someone I admire. [Though I must admit he sadly disappointed me a few years ago when he publicly flip-flopped on his views of homosexuals and “God’s view of them”, stating “I have plenty of homosexuals in my congregation and God loves all of his flock equally, I’m sure. But I couldn’t in good conscience attend a wedding or officiate at a wedding between two same-sex couples, because I believe that homosexuality is a sin.” This was a very different viewpoint than what Joel had previously professed just a few short months before. He was obviously feeling the heat from the bigger community of Christian pastors around the country — the so-called Moral Majority or Christian Right. Too bad. Because up until that point, Joel really held a great advantage over the rest of this group, even gaining access to people like me, those in the world of the intelligencia who would normally never even give someone like him the time of day. But I’m still holding out hope for Joel. One day he’s going to regret ever saying something so silly and small-minded. I trust in his connection with the Divine. He’s going to come around…]

So… Joel Osteen. He leads the largest congregation of Christians in the United States. He’s adored by millions and apparently hated by an equal number of people who find his brand of Christianity too wish-washy and easy. These types prefer a more stern and conservative “God” construct. They think that Joel is “perverting God’s word”. Little do they know that we’ve been doing that since the moment that we decided to attempt to write down “god’s thoughts” in the first place. As if. Joel preaches a very New Age version of Christianity. Yet he still calls it Christianity. His style has caught on with millions of people all over the world. He focuses less on God’s wrath and more on God’s love. The reason why this has caught such fire with so many people all over the world is because this idea resonates with something that we as human beings have been feeling in our hearts about our own view of “god” for hundreds of years. We just couldn’t shout it out loud because up until Joel (and plenty of others before him to be fair) came along, it just didn’t seem to vibe with what the general consensus of “god” was in mass consciousness. The Unity Church had been preaching this same thing for a hundred years at least. So too had Marianne Williamson and plenty of others. Joel just took it mainstream by cloaking it in traditional Christianity.

Personally, I’ve always found Joel to be an admirable person and an inspiring speaker. His sermons, though never as intelligent or thought provoking as say Stephen Bauman’s — perhaps the most intellectual Christian speaker of our time, are always moving and inspiring. One thing is certain about him: he wholeheartedly believes in a Divine Power in the universe that knows us, loves us and we can access from this dimension (call it the earthly dimension) through prayer. If one prays enough, they can create the life that they desire because God answers our prayers. He claims that his mother cured herself of cancer through prayer — that God cured her of cancer — and that the doctors and hospitals have confirmed this fact and consider it “a miracle”. I have no problem believing this. But perhaps not for the same reasons that Joel and his mother do.

Let’s take the other side of the coin: the so-called New Age theories about the mechanics of the universe. We can use Avatar as an example of it, or the Sedona Method, or Abraham Hicks or even the recent New Age phenomenon of the century — that movie The Secret. The basic theory of all these systems is that “we ourselves are creating our own reality based on our beliefs or vibrations”. If we change our beliefs, if we change our vibrations, we can change our experiences. That’s it in a nutshell. Some belief systems subscribe to a Divine Power at play. And some don’t, instead choosing to skip over that whole paradigm. Some call this divine power “The Universe” or “The Great Spirit” or “The Force” or “Source”…. None of that really matters. What matters is that these systems promote a more pro-active technique for reality creation, i.e. rather than praying to a God to create our lives for us, we create our own lives based on our beliefs and our general vibration. To me this ideology has always felt much less like a victim mentality than pure religiosity, which tends to promote a more sublimated approach to beingness; one must sublimate themselves to this divine all powerful force in the universe to be in “good favor” with it.

We can dissect the pros and cons of both systems ad infinitum, going as deep as humankind ever has, quote the greats and the not so greats till we’re blue in the face and our ego is as big as a hot air balloon, and still not actually get anywhere. This is called “going to seminary” or “becoming a rabbi or an Imam or a priest” in the religious world or “becoming ordained” in the New Age world. A lot of studying and memorizing things that other men made up. But we’re going to skip over all that and head right to the main thesis.

These two systems, the Theist view versus the New Age view, seem diametrically opposed to one another. One preaches a higher power is in control of everything — in an almost fatalistic sense, and one preaches that WE are actually in control of everything that happens to us. I tend to fall right smack dab in the middle of these two groups. Or completely outside of them. Depending on how one looks at it. Being an avid student of science, especially more advanced and esoteric quantum physics, I believe it is only a matter of time before science discovers that there really is a “Divine Force” in the universe. Einstein called it the Unified Field Theory — he was looking for the “fifth force” in the universe that controls the other four forces (those being gravity, electro-magnetism, and the weak and strong nuclear forces) and helps them to all work together. At present science is having a tough time figuring out how the current four forces in the universe all work together so seamlessly when they appear to be so opposed to each other. Especially gravity. He believed that there was a fifth force at play that we just hadn’t discovered yet. Science has come very close as of late to discovering this fifth force. Some assert that Dark Matter and Dark Forces are that fifth force. Some say that we’re still hypothesizing and haven’t proven the existence of Dark Matter or the Dark Forces. Some say that we have yet to discover this fifth force. Some claim that it may lie in the boson, the so-called “god particle”. Personally I don’t think that possessing a knowledge of the names of things is half as important as having an understanding of how it all works. An innate tangible or palpable understanding, as in knowing how to harness the power of these systems, regardless of whether one knows the names that man has arbitrarily attached to them or not.

Either way, I believe there is a good chance that in our lifetimes we will discover this fifth force, and that yes indeed it will tie all the other ones together quite neatly and explain a lot of what we have heretofore considered mysteries of the cosmos. Will it be “God”? Well that all depends on how attached one is to needing to believe that “God” resembles human beings. See, that’s the problem with modern theists’ view of “god”. They seem to have an uncontrollable and inexplicable need for “god” to resemble humankind. They’re all caught up in that whole “God created Man in his image” nonsense. So they’re expecting “god” to be a living breathing intelligent life-like organism. Fat chance. As I have explored numerous times here already, God is most likely a force alright, a mighty big and powerful one; but he/she/it is probably much less life-like and much more like “consciousness” itself. Without the need for an external body or vehicle to get around in. In fact, if I had to guess, I would say that “God” is probably just a giant ball or cluster of all consciousness that’s ever existed since the existence of the universe itself. And in that respect, “god” would not be physical at all. Though that shouldn’t stop scientists from searching for it. They’re definitely onto something in their exploration of Dark Matter or anti-matter and these mysterious bosons. The invisible equal to all things that are visible in the known universe.

So let us say that there is this pulsating Divine Power or Force in the universe that just IS…. It’s an “isness” more than a physical being. It’s most likely “being-less” that still “is”. But that doesn’t preclude it from being “something”. It could still be a very powerful force, perhaps the all-powerful force that theists have postulated for millennia. It just might not be a living breathing organic being in the human being/animal sense of the word. This is why some New Age thinkers tend to just refer to it as “the universe”. I personally don’t prefer this label, “the universe”, because as we already know that the universe as we currently label it is nothing but a giant vacuum that holds all that is. This force either exists inside of “the universe” — is a part of it, OR exists OUTside of it and holds all that is, including the universe, inside of IT. Either way, we fit in somewhere in this equation, albeit quite possibly in a very small near miniscule way. And there’s a good chance that WE as living breathing organic life-streams with access to consciousness can access this powerful force.

THIS is why prayer works. AND this is also why creating and discreating and changing our beliefs and vibration works. Either technique is going to achieve some kind of result, because both techniques summon this force. Some might say that through prayer they are accessing “God” and that “God is granting their wish to come true” because they’ve been good pray-ers. Others might say that because they’ve changed their beliefs and are thus vibrating more closely to that which they wish to experience that THEY are then more easily able to create the outcomes they desire. Both techniques seem to “work”.

In my humble opinion, both parties are doing pretty much the same thing. They’re just calling it different things. If a person walks around all day asserting that “God is my protector. God wants me to be healthy and happy and prosperous. God loves me and takes care of me”, and they experience this, are they not just talking themselves into believing this? And through believing this, are they not then vibrating this? In turn creating it as a reality? No different really than someone else who skips the “god” part of the equation entirely and simply asserts “I deserve to be happy and healthy and prosperous. I am filled with love. My life is wonderful”. They too experience the same outcome. Why? Because through constant affirmation of said statements they are slowly shifting their beliefs toward these vibrations and hence creating these experiences for themselves.

Both are really doing the same thing. Whether they include a “god” in it or not. Perhaps there is a great and all powerful force at play. This force is indeed helping to control and sustain the other four forces in the universe AND consciousness itself. Through connecting with and aligning with this force, any conscious being can create reality. Through affirming good things, we are attaching ourselves in consciousness to the more positive aspect of this force and using it to help create the outcomes that we desire in our lives that we consider to be “good”. And vice versa. Plenty of very bad things have been created in the world in the “name of God” and have manifested. Slavery, the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Holocaust, the Genocide of the Native Americans… How do we explain “God” being all-good when humans have consistently used this force called “god” to do some very bad things throughout history? Unless this force doesn’t actually judge whether things are “good” or “bad”. Perhaps as some people claim, “god” is just a force that doesn’t recognize the duality of good and bad. I sincerely doubt it. But that’s just me wishful-thinking — attaching my own human views of good and bad onto my desired view of what “god” might be like. Not very fair to “god”. But how can I help it? I want there to be a “god” and I want him/her/it to be “good”. The problem of course is that one person’s “good” is another person’s “bad” is another person’s “who cares”.

If we choose instead to view “god” as a pure force… a pure energy… one that can be harnessed for both good or bad… by any organic organism — and I hesitate to limit consciousness to being solely organic in nature only — so instead let’s change that to “any state of consciousness”… — then what that means is that anyone or anything that extends enough will and effort to access this “god force” can do so and can use it to create whatever they so choose. Think Star Wars and the idea of “the Force”. When Joel Osteen advises us to walk around all day affirming how much god loves us and how much god wants us to succeed and be happy, in essence he’s really just advising us to do whatever it takes to change our “state” (Tony Robbins and NLP) or change our vibration (The Secret and Abraham Hicks) or change our beliefs (Avatar and Sedona Method) in order to create the reality that we prefer. He’s just using the “god” idea because it’s been so pre-programmed and indoctrinated into human consciousness for so many thousands of years. So for many people, it really helps them to think that “god” is at play in their lives. What they’re really doing of course is changing their state or beliefs or vibrations. And in exchange for them doing this, they can sometimes experience that their greatest wishes and desires come true in their lives. Why? They claim it’s because God answers prayers. But it might just be that they’ve begun to align themselves or their vibration with that which they prefer to experience through incessant affirmation and thought THROUGH praying. [Ultimately does it really make a difference?]

Or perhaps there really IS a “god” in the universe and that’s why prayer works AND that’s why affirmations and changing our state or beliefs or vibration helps — because through doing so we are more readily attaching our own consciousness to “god’s” and he in turn is picking up on what we’re sending out and rewarding us by granting us our deepest desires and wishes. Who knows?

The simple truth is that NO ONE really knows. Anyone who claims to know — be that person a rabbi or pastor or priest or pope or Imam or spiritual leader — is not being honest. They’re lying. At best they’re fooling themselves, through latching on to a quasi-state of a mass-consciousness belief system, participating in a state of mass hypnosis, no different than they did when they claimed “god supported and condoned slavery”. At worst, they know they’re not being honest, but benefitting too greatly from it to admit it. But in reality, most any intelligent or rational person we’d ever sit down in a quiet place with and talk one to one with would admit that they have no more a clue as to if a “god” exists in the world than the next person. And that’s perfectly fine. In fact, it’s preferable to someone who would swear up and down that they really believe that they KNOW that a “god” exists. After all, one day we’re going to be called out on this belief. And “god” help the man whose bluff is called and they can’t summon the power of this great and all powerful “god” when they need to. Best to keep the jury out on this one I say.

But absolutely nothing wrong with admitting that we’d LOVE for there to be a “god” in the universe, regardless of what form it decides to take or not take, visible or invisible. The real meat of the issue is that it does appear that we ARE capable of creating our experiences, our lives, our day to day experiences and circumstances… and the “how” is in our beliefs and vibrations. The true scientific mechanisms of how all this works we will leave to the scientists as we always have. One day I am sure they will figure it all out and let us know what’s really going on. In the meantime, we at least have a clue as to how to make things work out better for ourselves or at least more in our favor. And that’s a very good thing.

 

 



Like this:

Like Loading...
Uncategorized Abraham Hicks, Avatar, christianity, dark matter, Drunvalo Melchizedek, Eintein, flower of life, harry palmer, Hinduism, instant manifestation, islam, Joel Osteen, Judaism, physics, quantum mechanics, reality creation, sacred geometry, Sedona Method, Stephen Bauman, The Secret, tony robbins, tree of life

A private little world for me… a private little world for you. The online journals and musings of singer-songwriter author and activist Ed Hale. The Transcendence Diaries have been posting regularly online since 2001. Comments are always welcomed. And so are YOU.

Recent Posts

  • Understanding Black America, Or Not
  • Two More Executed In Iran This Morning For Protesting For Freedom & Equality — What We Can Do To Help
  • Realism Is False — by Donald D. Hoffman
  • Transcending Genetics Through Consciousness and Particle Physics
  • Making the World a Better Place Starts With Committing and Consistently Showing Up
  • Masculina Stigmata — The Curse & Crisis Of the White Straight Man In the Modern World
  • Islamic Republic Of Iran Holds First Public Execution In Ongoing Revolution — It Is Now Time To Strike More and Fight
  • David O. Russell’s New Film Amsterdam is Flawed Sure, But It’s also An Incredible Work Of Art
  • The Mask Is Off — Pro-Palestinian/Anti-Zionism Is Not Anti-Semitism
  • A Small Concession Has been Won In Iran — But the Bigger War Will Continue Until A Full On Democratic Revolution Transpires and the People Are Free Once and For All From Tyranny

Receive Transcendence Diaries Updates

   
 

Subscribe

* indicates required
  
  
  
    Email Format    
 
  
  
 
       
   
   

Join the Ed Hale Mailing List

Ask Ed Hale a Question

Follow Ed Hale Online

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • Spotify
  • YouTube
  • Apple

To Follow & Like us

RSS
Follow by Email
Facebook
Facebook
fb-share-icon
Twitter
Visit Us
Follow Me
Tweet
LinkedIn
LinkedIn
Share

Follow Ed Hale on Twitter

My Tweets

Ed Hale on Facebook

Ed Hale on Facebook

Listen to Ed Hale on Spotify

Tags

Abraham Hicks ed hale and the transcendence activism America American imperialism Avatar avatar course CNN Consciousness ed hale facebook finding God gaza god intuition investing iPhone Iran Iraq islam Israel itunes living in new york making music Music music video music videos new album new york palestine peace politics reality creation Rehearsal Relationships Religion Russia Scene in San Francisco social media songs songwriting the adventures of Fishy Transcendence transcendence diaries United States

Categories

  • Activism
  • Alternative History
  • America at War
  • American Terrorism
  • Ancient History
  • Art and Entertainment
  • Black Lives Matter
  • black people
  • Business and Entrepreneurship
  • Civil Rights
  • Consciousness Exploration and Expansion
  • Cosmology
  • Current Events
  • Economics
  • Environment
  • Evolution
  • Film and Movies
  • Friends and Family
  • Gender Issues
  • Gun violence Gun Laws
  • Health and Wellness
  • Human Rights
  • Iran
  • Israel/Palestine
  • Just Published
  • Life Hacks
  • Literature
  • Love Sex Romance
  • Metaphysics
  • Music
  • Music Videos
  • Musical Instruments & Gear
  • Nature
  • New World Order
  • Paranormal and Supernatural
  • Personal Expression Age
  • Personal Life
  • Physics
  • Politics and Government
  • Psychology and Human Behavior
  • Race Racial and Racism
  • Religion and Spirituality
  • Science
  • Social Media
  • Struggling artist lifestyle working for the man
  • Technology
  • Television
  • Terrorism
  • Uncategorized
  • Wealth Finance and Investing

Recent Comments

  • Ed Hale on Two More Executed In Iran This Morning For Protesting For Freedom & Equality — What We Can Do To Help
  • Ziba on Two More Executed In Iran This Morning For Protesting For Freedom & Equality — What We Can Do To Help
February 2014
M T W T F S S
 12
3456789
10111213141516
17181920212223
2425262728  
« Jan   Mar »

Archives

  • January 2023
  • December 2022
  • November 2022
  • October 2022
  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • February 2022
  • September 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • February 2019
  • December 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • September 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • December 2010
  • October 2010
  • June 2010
  • December 2009
  • September 2009
  • April 2009
  • January 2009
  • September 2008
  • May 2008
  • December 2007
  • November 2007
  • May 2007
  • September 2006
  • October 2005
  • September 2005
  • August 2005
  • July 2005
  • June 2005
  • May 2005
  • April 2005
  • March 2005
  • February 2005
  • January 2005
  • November 2004
  • October 2004
  • September 2004
  • August 2004
  • July 2004
  • June 2004
  • April 2004
  • February 2004
  • January 2004
  • October 2003
  • September 2003
  • August 2003
  • May 2003
  • November 2002
  • October 2002
  • August 2002
  • July 2002
  • January 2002
  • December 2001
  • September 2001
  • April 218

Subscribe

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org

The Transcendence Diaries is a property of Transcendent Media Group LLC (c) (p) TM 2001

Idealist by NewMediaThemes

%d bloggers like this: