Watching the Signs Along the Way

I watched a video of Bernie Sanders this morning and he was talking about how so many people feel that we are doomed and we have no hope of coming out of the peril that we find ourselves in right now.  Fortunately, Bernie was kind in responding to the fear that people are experiencing but he explained that we must not give up the hope of coming out of this.  I left a comment on a Democracy At Work video a few weeks ago expressing the dire situation that we find ourselves in and I was treated to a snotty reply from a fellow who said that I was someone who would never stop feeling sorry for herself.  Counting up the ways in which we might need to have a look at things to assess where we really stand now will always be misunderstood by people who refuse to count them. And they must be counted or they continue to grow and expand.  Where we are in the US right now is not being seen by many people because in their mind we have come to the place where they hoped we would be. We are at each other’s throats and picking off the people trying to tell us that we have let this dissent go on too long.  There are so many people in this country now who cannot and will not pay attention to the “death bells” that are ringing to warn us of what we are facing. What are “death bells”? I will explain.

When I was about 11 years old, I had a friend named Donna, who told me that in her family when someone was about to die, one or more of the family members would hear “death bells” which was the person hearing bells ringing mentally.  Any time one of them heard these it was always proven to be an accurate prophecy. I had never heard of such a thing, but even as a child I always paid attention to things like this.  I wasn’t sure why back then, but by the time I hit my 20’s it became apparent to me. As it turned out, I actually heard the bells the night before my husband died, and his father, my father-in-law, heard them the next morning. It was the soft sound of bells ringing in a way that you knew was not a joyous sound but it wasn’t exactly frightening, It was more like a mental hand placed on your shoulder that was saying to you, the time has come to understand that something is passing away.  My father-in-law did not have a clue as to why he was hearing the bells but I knew for sure what it was and I remembered immediately what Donna had told me.

How do we know when the Universe is speaking to us? We can’t always.  It is a leap of faith that we take because something or someone has gotten our attention in a way that seems out of the ordinary. It is often very subtle what we sense but sometimes it hits us like a ton of bricks, like the intense dream that wakes us up in the night or a name we keep seeing or a song that we get stuck in our head. These clues have been around for awhile regarding what has been happening in the world but they are incredibly easy to ignore sometimes.  We are distracted by work or relationships or egotistical pursuits.  The egotistical ones are an enormous block to understanding the larger pictures in life and they are much too prevalent now because for every person who has the capability of hearing a Universal call there are millions who never can hear because they don’t have to when they are much too preoccupied with how wonderful they are.

I began seeing and hearing the calls to pay attention to what was about to hit our world decades ago. Many of them had to do with politics and world events, which was not something that I paid much attention to before because I was so distracted by my own personal mountains that I was climbing.  They began with information - that I had to interpret by the way - regarding presidential election candidates, Middle Eastern situations that were about to affect this country in very unexpected ways, European conflicts, women’s rights issues, and racism.  It was a lot to hit me with at a time when I really didn’t want to give a crap about anything except how to manage my own troubles, but nonetheless, I was being hit with them and I knew that I had to start paying more attention if I was going to handle even my own issues.  How did I know that they were critical things for me to know? I didn’t, except that I could perceive that I couldn’t ignore them in that they kept coming.  This is the one thing that you need to recognize above all else when you begin to notice differences in the kinds of things that begin to get your attention. They are never there for no reason.  Fear of something new tends to prevent us from taking a step forward to take a closer look at what we are seeing or feeling, but while you may be thinking that this new road will take you in a direction that you don’t feel like traveling on, it is nearly always a road that will benefit you or give you some knowledge that you are very unlikely to gain if you dismiss it. We are so tired of everything that has changed our lives or hurt us in the past few years that we just want to crawl in a corner and hope that the thing goes away so we don’t have to deal with anything else, but ignoring the downward spiral in the human experience has put us in more peril that we ever could have imagined before. Just as the “death bells” give us the warning that we are about to lose a loved one, the signs that we are being given from the Universe in regard to where we must go or who we must make contact with or what we must stop doing are coming in hard and heavy, and while they may not be a portent of death right now, they are a hand on the shoulder to tell us that the Universe is here and speaking to you with information that you need to pay attention to.  If you do not pay attention, you may lose the only opportunity that you will have to set yourself upon the path that will help you get through these troubling times and dangerous situations.  There are many who will not make it through all the challenges that we are facing but I can assure you that there are just as many who will get through it if we are fluid enough to allow the changes that we are being told are important for us.  The higher intelligence speaks to us as individuals not as groups.  This is why our leaders are so impotent at making things any better.  They operate as a collective, divided as they are, and they are covered in their own special interest issues which will almost always color their decisions which should be for the betterment of the citizens of the country but it cannot happen when those who are supposed to represent us care more about their own betterment when it comes down to it.  So change has to come from each individual person making the effort to acknowledge that they have an individual part to play in a much larger picture.  What we have now is a portrait being painted in black and white when it takes many colors to paint a landscape that is realistic and true to the overall picture of what we must paint in the world in order to survive. It is easy to think that you are not very important in the overall scheme of things but it is completely untrue.  You may need others to travel with you toward your goal that you don’t even know at this moment.  Paying attention to the signs that you are being given can ensure that you take the necessary steps to guide you and hold your hand through what may come and what will come if you can learn to let go and believe.

The Best of Both Worlds

No, this is not going to be a review of the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode of the same name. I have many things that I could say about that particular episode where Picard is assimilated into the Borg collective and how there is a correlation between the Borg race and how many people on this planet would like nothing better than to assimilate those whom they feel are inferior but still have some traits or intelligence which could be made use of by the collective. There is definitely a story there to be told but I will save it for another time. This time I want to focus on the American workplace and how it could and should be restructured to best accommodate the needs of the people. There is also a need to rethink our public school systems and how we might claim our rights as humans beings with needs that are not being recognized within those institutions. I will not venture into the realms of the economic systems that would need to change in order to sustain the new way of doing things.  I will leave that to the experts in that field.

What I wish to say has more to do with the self and what we might become if we had a better sense of self, self-direction, and personal needs. Sounds like something that we should already have if we are adults, but I can assure you that we don’t or we would not be so inclined to create golden idols for ourselves in the form of men of means with a faulty foundation that we are too insecure and ego driven to see past.  This too, would be an opportune time to insert some more Star Trek in the form of the Ferengi, but I will resist the temptation for now.

A person who has grown to be an adult isn’t really capable of seeing past ego and desire without a basis for realizing that these things are a problem.  No one really expects us to deal with selfishness and childishness when these are the very cornerstone of marketing practices.  What can you sell to people if they have a balanced ego?  Basic human needs would be about it. What can you sell to people who have struck a balance with their need for sex, and friendship, comfort and protection from the elements? Not much.  So where is the logic in promoting the idea that people should grow up emotionally? In Capitalism, there is none.

At the beginning of the fear brought on by the Coronavirus there was, in some situations, a panic that was felt in the workplace that those who were capable of doing their jobs remotely should do exactly that and make it easier to social distance ourselves to make the spread of the virus less likely.  I know that locally, many companies only allowed this practice grudgingly, but it did find its place within the population to the relief of many who had jobs that could be done this way. Public school attendance also had to be rethought by letting students attend remotely.  For some people this was a major problem as there are so many parents who depend on school for their child’s daycare while they are working.  I was fortunate enough to be able to home school my daughter when she was school age but that is not usually the case for most parents. Once the panic wore off, many people were sadly required to go back in to school and the office and just take their chances with the disease but the gate had already been opened as many people discovered that remote working was much better for them.  They were less stressed and had more incentive to do their job without the constant workplace fear that comes with being controlled and micromanaged.  This was a great revelation for many and as it turned out, many of them for the first time felt that they had options for themselves that never existed before.  There was, for a time, an opportunity to realize their individual strengths and weaknesses and how best to utilize their skills and abilities. This was a wonderful thing.  To finally see where they truly should be as far as their individual needs were concerned, they began to “wake up” and understand that the previous system of work had zero to do with their needs and plenty to do with management desiring to keep a tight rein on them at all times to ensure that the balance of power remained squarely in their corner.  And now, we are seeing a backlash on remote working except in certain sectors of the country because allowing the people to find their true self is much too dangerous to allow.  Who will kiss the boss’s ass if the threat of the virtual lash isn’t hanging over the employee’s head?  It must not be borne.  So here we are, seeing yet another balance for the people taken away to satisfy the company.  Too many of us do not have the skills or the personal tools to challenge these threats to our basic human dignity. And if you do not see that these are threats to our very existence you miss and may always miss the point of even being on this planet.  I can tell you that those people who did wake up temporarily have lost a valuable right that they didn’t even know that they were entitled to before 2020. Witness the recent shock of losing the right to make your own healthcare decisions by a section of the populace that has decided that too much freedom of choice has been allowed for too long.  As bad as it may sound, even in the worst of times there is opportunity to turn great disadvantage in to a strength and a positive if we allow ourselves to be still and listen. What can be seen from the bottom is barely recognized from the top.

It may appear to be too late in the game for people to stop in their tracks and take a good look at what massive ego and the desire to have all that we want whenever we want it with no regard for the ripple effect upon our very lives has brought us to, but what we are experiencing right now has the power to redirect us if we can recognize that we have allowed much of this to manifest by not knowing the processes that we gave little thought to were the catalysts.  Rewinding our life video back to a place where we can set aside the false idea that we are an entitled species is essential for our survival.  We now find ourselves at a stopping point where it is essential that we take stock of what is necessary to reclaim our birthright.  Knowing one’s birthright is a massive challenge to the ego’s control of our actions, but it can and must be done.  There are many who will not heed the call of a dying society because they are under the delusion that they are winning the ego battle that proves their supremacy. They are a tough adversary because they have disregarded the rules of engagement which they believe don’t really exist.  We have to show them that they are wrong by knowing ourselves, our strengths, and our weaknesses.  Too many of us have never learned what we are except for what media and other people have told us.  The sad truth is that we have been assimilated, but resistance is not futile. While we are at that low point where we now know that we have been had, it is the perfect time to find our individual center. When we have the clarity of a centered mind, we are capable of making miracles.

The best of both worlds; this world, and the world where our higher mind exists can and do coexist in harmony when we have learned to balance the two.  I urge you to explore your place in them. There is peace when you can imagine the possibility.

Vive la France

The 1978 film version of Les Miserables, starring Richard Jordan, is one of my favorite movies.  I have always loved movies that tell stories about life in dreadful times such as this and those set in Victorian England, like adaptations of Charles Dickens novels.  A pivotal point in Les Miserables, is when Jean Valjean is confronted by a poor French prostitute who has a small child that she cannot provide for because she was fired from her job for being an unwed mother and she blames him for those workplace policies being that he is Mayor of the town. The role is played by actress Angela Pleasence, and she looks rough, as she had to sell her hair and sell her body and take her chances with men who thought nothing of beating her for having no worth except to be abused in their view. I remember being so struck by the way that she looked when I first saw this film. It looked as real to me as you can get, especially later in the film when she is also ill, and I wondered how Angela Pleasence felt about how she looked when she got a load of herself in the mirror in full makeup and costume.  Remember this.  I will come back to it later.

This post is my second entry back in to writing after a period of about two and a half years of posting absolutely nothing.  I have had about seven years of very troubling times starting with the diagnosis of my mother having Dementia. It has been mostly downhill for me since then and learning to live in a very different world altogether once the pandemic hit in 2020 exacerbated everything. Though I have managed to keep myself sane during all of these troubles I have not come out completely unscathed in other ways.

I usually always have a pre-catastrophe dream before something in my life that is going to be a big issue for me hits.  I had a dream about two years ago where I looked up at the sky and saw the clouds open up to reveal the angry looking face of Neil deGrasse Tyson staring harshly down at me and yelling that if I didn’t stop drinking Coke I was going to die. That sounds hilarious on the surface, I know, but I knew exactly what it meant when I woke up. A full interpretation of this dream would take a long time to explain here but Neil did the job right for me. I gave up drinking Coke.

As more and more fear, stress, and grief piled up on me throughout these difficulties, my hair became noticeably thinner. In the beginning I was distressed about it.  I bought a wig.  And then I bought another wig.  And then I bought another wig. I never wore any of them because I just could not make myself do it.  It was not me that I saw in the mirror when I would try them on. So I just kept on doing what I always do which is play the glad game and keep going because the situation wasn’t actually as dire as it might seem, yet.  I began adding more vitamins and supplements to my diet to strengthen my hair and hoped that what was happening might be a deficiency of some sort.  When that didn’t help, I started a modified KETO diet and I actually did get some results with that in many very good ways but it didn’t address the hair loss situation.  Then came the dream. I saw my plumber coming out of a supermarket in a town where I used to live. The tap water in that town was god-awful tasting and smelling, so I knew what this meant immediately. The bottled water that I had been drinking was too alkaline, I discovered, and this was a major contributor to my hair loss. I was thrilled to learn that giving up the bottled water might be my salvation.  Well, not so fast.  There is a thing called cortisol that our body produces to help the system cope with high levels of stress. Give up all the water that you like. You will also have to reduce your stress level and bring down the cortisol.  HA! Make that happen if you can!

Scene Change.

I was watching The Police’s video for Walking On The Moon not long ago and I noticed how Sting’s hair was cut in it.  I began to wonder if a style like that might improve the appearance of my own hair since a shorter style might make the thinness of my hair seem less noticeable. I was able to find a hair style that was similar to Sting’s on the web but it was a little longer.  Hopefully, if it looked less masculine than Sting’s hair, I thought that I might be able to pull off that look and still look like a female and not like a teenaged boy. Finally, yesterday, I cut my hair.  The style of the cut did actually improve the look of my hair. It is noticeably thicker looking on top. I was at least half pleased with the result. So, I went to bed last night with a reasonably good feeling about what I had done. Then there was that moment this morning when I looked in the mirror and thought, WHO THE HELL IS THAT?????!!!!!

And now, back to Les Miserables.

As I assessed my new look in the mirror this morning, I realized exactly who I looked like; Angela Pleasence in Les Miserables. I LOOK LIKE A FREAKING 18th CENTURY FRENCH PROSTITUTE! Oh my god, what a wakeup call! Talk about going back to the past! The funny thing is, that is probably not too far off the mark for me when you consider that I have had past lives where I was maybe only marginally above being that when you factor in that I was pretty lax in the morals department in possibly more than one lifetime. Whew!  Practice what you preach, Psychic, when you get a look at yourself with the image of what you were probably pretty close to being once upon a time!

So, I have done what I have been telling people to do since 2014. I went back to the past when I found the future look for myself. My salvation here is that I can work around my French Prostitute hairstyle.  I can add some cosmetics, a stylish outfit and maybe a cloche hat to level it all out.  I just won’t stand on any street corners. There was no salvation for the real deal prostitute in the 18th century.  While we struggle here in 2022 with all of the problems that we have created for ourselves and the future doesn’t look all that rosy anymore, I cannot help feeling grateful for all of the ways that I can manage some of my problems where my past life selves never could.  Not when stealing a loaf of bread could get you prison time and a life long struggle to reclaim your life if that was even possible at all. So, I will stay mad about the politics and the bullying and aggression that I see every day now, but I will not get into a twist about seeing my past lives in technicolor when I look in the mirror again. Options are here for me if I can manage to hang on to them while the inflation rate cuts deeply in to my pocket book and nice people are hard to find. I am still glad to be here and still glad that I bought the wigs…just in case.

Vive la France. You speak to me even now.