St. Thomas Aquinas reportedly had a mystical vision at the end of his life, after which, despite the pleading of his friends, he did not write another word. It was told that on his death bed he waved his hands at shelves filled with his speculative theological, philosophical writings and said, "It is all straw."
On the feast of St. Nicholas in 1273, Aquinas was celebrating Mass when he received a revelation that so affected him that he wrote and dictated no more, leaving his great work the Summa Theologiae unfinished. To Brother Reginald's (his secretary and friend) expostulations he replied, "The end of my labors has come. All that I have written appears to be as so much straw after the things that have been revealed to me." When later asked by Reginald to return to writing, Aquinas said, "I can write no more. I have seen things that make my writings like straw."
A human being is a spatially and temporally limited piece of the whole, what we call the "Universe." He experiences himself and his feelings as separate from the rest, an optical illusion of his consciousness. The quest for liberation from this bondage is the only object of true religion. Not nurturing the illusion but only overcoming it gives us the attainable measure of inner peace.
--Albert Einstein
I think what the psychiatrist is saying about the possibility of Trump leaving the White House on his own accord is probably right. King Donald is sociopathically evil, but clever like a fox (interesting how Fox News chose that for their name--so fitting). He is likely to see that it's to his ultimate advantage with his cult followers to play the martyr. Those who, like Trump, are incapable of self-reflection will never be able to admit they made a mistake in voting for him --so they will stay with him and listen to Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham (sociopathic, hypocritical, gushing sycophants that they are) continue to idolize him and blame the Democrats.
We all know people (relatives, friends) who will certainly be Trumpsters to the bitter end -- even those who identify themselves as "Christian." They have an incredible ability to compartmentalize and justify everything Trump does -- and to project outraged anger and blame onto whomever Trump is pointing his finger at, at any given time. We see these cheering MAGA-hat followers at Trump's "rallies" (do you remember Hitler's Nazi "rallies"? If you are in your 80s, like I am, you no doubt do. Oh, how history does repeat itself if we don't learn the lesson the first time!). The Trump "true believers," like Hitler's devotees, are indoctrinated to their core by his lies and fear-baiting dog whistles to them. They agree with and respond to his hatreds of "others" ("not like us") -- and, lemming-like, they will follow him off the cliff of historical infamy that he is leading them to. The German people of Hitler's time continued to justify him and themselves, even after Hitler's cowardly suicide, and when the horrific atrocities of the Nazis were shown to them in all their depravity.
We can take heart that Donald Trump is now experiencing the truth of the famous quote attributed to Abraham Lincoln: You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time. Trump's day of reckoning is drawing ever closer. The trap that eventually eliminates all sociopathic, autocratic dictators in the end is getting ready to snap shut on this latest evil actor on humanity's stage. If interested, you can read the following to understand, through an expert's eyes, how Trump is now seeing and reacting to his inevitable forced exit.
I Got Kin (by 14th century Persian poet, Hafiz. Modernized by Daniel Ladinsky (oh so carefully to preserve the feeling of the heart):
Plant
So that your own heart
Will grow.
Love
So God will think,
"Ahhhhhh,
I got kin in that body!
I should start inviting that soul over
For coffee and
Rolls."
Sing
Because this is a food
Our starving world
Needs.
Laugh
Because that is the purest
Sound.
ALIVE INSIDE is free to view on Amazon Prime Video -- the MOST Heart-Touching film Ever! (If you don't have Amazon Prime, you can rent the DVD from Netflix or purchase it on Amazon.com) After you view it, you might want to go to Musicandmemory.org to make a donation to this incredible program that is reaching around the country and making huge differences in people's lives. Viewers of this documentary are being inspired to help the people in their own lives (wives, husbands, mothers, dads, grandparents, etc.) who are experiencing memory loss. This is such a wonderful thing, started by one man who discovered the power of music and its effect on people in nursing homes that he visited. Through his dedication over many years, millions of lives are being changed in phenomenal and awe-inspiring ways. Through the sound of beloved music from their past, life and love are surging back, bringing sparkle to the eyes and joy to the hearts (and often dancing to the feet!) of those who had lost all hope and interest in the world around them. ❤️
Please give yourself the gift of viewing this film. You will be SO GLAD you did! Please pass it on to others if you find it as inspiring as I did.
Just watched this French film tonight -- a lot of truth in it re. life and death. True story. Highly recommended. Guaranteed to bring a little wonderment into life.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/20/world/black-hole-neutron-star-scn-trnd/index.html
Something broadening to lift our minds from the idiotic tweets of an insignificant, minuscule orange creature who imagines he is the ruler of the inconsequentially tiny blue marble planet called Earth, on the far outskirts of an infinitesimally small mini-galaxy known as the Milky Way.
"If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer…And a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also its capacity to think and to judge. And with such people, you can do as you please."
Those are the words of Hannah Arendt. She was the writer who gave us the phrase "the banality of evil" when she was writing about Adolf Eichmann and the unexceptional people who were the monstrous administrators of the Nazi extermination camps. What is so scary about such people is that they aren't really distinguishable from clerks in hardware stores, or guys who sell insurance, ordinary schlubs who, given the power to do evil and a system to do it in, will.
It's a scary thought, a long way from the cartoon villains we prefer because they are, at base, less threatening. They aren't "us;" they're "them," the bad guys, readily identifiable, anomalies, freaks.
And there are some of those. Hitler was one. Stalin, too. Kim Jong Un and Mohammed bin Salman. Duerte in the Philippines. Putin in Moscow. And Trump, as well.
But the banality is in the lesser figures, the cheering supporters swept up in the hate and fear, the scapegoating, the relentless propaganda.
And the lies.
Look back at what Arendt says above about what results when the ability to believe in the truth gets undermined. Aren't we living in a country untethered from the truth, where even the best of us no longer seem to believe in truth with enough confidence to make us do something about the ugliness we have been marinating in since even before Trump delivered that ugly inaugural address about American "carnage"? That was a Steven Bannon production, as we may recall, part of his Goebbels-like attempt to turn off the light and replace it with shadows where phantoms lurked and white folks were endangered.
The lies have been off-loaded every day since, along with the clandestine raids on the treasury, the turning back of a vast number of regulations and bills the powerful and the privileged found inconvenient or onerous, impediments to their objectives, irritants on their journey to ever greater wealth and power. We've become a country that blatantly violates human rights, that takes children from their mothers, with a leader who calls out elected congressional representatives, targeting them for hatred and the likelihood of violence from his followers who have revealed themselves to be so much worse than "deplorables."
We appear to have lost "our capacity to act" and also our capacity to "think and judge." The rules changed overnight. Every day, we heard from the sources of information that we were "in uncharted waters," that what we were seeing from Trump and the Republicans was "unprecedented," or "not normal." Dictators we once dealt with clandestinely have been feted and praised no matter how thuggish, murderous, or oppressive to their own people. Our traditional allies have been offered offense on a regular basis. The values we liked to say guided us have been openly ignored or trashed. Grossly incompetent or corrupt people were put in charge of things. The once rather subtle power of the corporations and the lobbyists came out from under cover and became obvious.
Because, when a nation has lost a grip on the truth, when a whole damn population has "lost the capacity to think and judge," you "can do as you please."
And so "they" do. The Wall Street bulls run loose everywhere, knocking down anyone or anything that gets in their way. The economy is good; nothing else matters. Bigots and racists are just bargaining chips. Environmental concerns are swept off the table. It doesn't even matter that the economy that is so good is constructed on quicksand, as it was during the Bush years when tax breaks and crooked banking ultimately brought the world economy to the brink of collapse. Remember that, when we all lost our home equity, and it appeared the whole world was going to slide into a depression that would have made the one back in the '30s seem Mickey Mouse by comparison.
They do with us as they please. They lie in our faces even when there is videotape to prove we are being deceived. Lindsey Graham can say anything, contradict himself, let the hatred show on his face, as well as the corruption. Nothing happens. The beat goes on.
Trump's henchmen in his cabinet can be brought up on charges, can be investigated, can be caught red-handed. Corruption is revealed everywhere, from Elaine Chao (McConnell's wife, Secretary of Transportation) to Betsy de Vos (Secretary of Education, massive Republican donor, self-serving nitwit). Nothing happens.
Generals like Flynn or Kelly can be revealed as slimy opportunists who will lie or sell out their sworn duties to enrich themselves. Nothing happens. The beat goes on.
When one bad guy leaves a high post, a worse one is shuffled in, at the EPA, or in the Labor Department, or, perhaps worst of all, at the now laughingly-named Department of Justice (though there's nothing at all funny about the fact that the word "justice" has been rendered meaningless under Wm. Barr).
We once were lost, and we seem to be more lost with each new day. Lost and powerless. Miscreants and witnesses are summoned to appear before Congress. They don't bother showing up. Nothing happens. New charges of sexual misconduct by the POTUS surface only to be ignored. Demands for his taxes are also ignored and only the flimsiest of excuses for non-compliance are offered. We are lost. Will we ever be found?
The criminality of the powerful is in plain sight. Nothing happens. And the beat goes on, steady and propellant, driving us ever deeper into darkness as we march to it, some of us eagerly, some of us shuffling like zombies in a very bad movie, a few trying to break ranks and then targeted with louder and louder vilification and appeals to hatred.
"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;/Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world…/The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity."
That's from "The Second Coming," the oft-cited poem by William Butler Yeats, written when we were edging toward making much of the world a killing field in order to resist Hitler and fascism. (If, by chance, you don't know the poem, here is a link to a reading of it.)
Imagine that "rough beast" as you will, but it's hard not to see it coming. Hell, it's on TV every goddamned day.
Because, in a country where the plug has been pulled and truth has drained away and there is no center, there is nothing you can't do to the people who live there. Or to the children who come to be there, as the last place they thought they might find mercy, or refuge.
Creation said:
"I want to hide something from the humans until they are ready for it.
It is the realization that they create their own reality."
...The Eagle said,
"Give it to me. I will take it to the moon."
The Creator said, "No. One day they will go there and find it."
The Salmon said,
"I will bury it on the bottom of the ocean."
The Creator said, "No. They will go there, too."
The Buffalo said, "I will bury it on the Great Plains."
The Creator said, "They will cut into the skin of the earth and find it even there."
Grandmother who lives in the breast of Mother Earth,
and who has no physical eyes but sees with spiritual eyes, said,
"Put it inside of them."
And the Creator said, "It is done."
- Creation story from the Hopi Nation, Arizona
- artist: Vasil Woodland
She let go.
She let go. Without a thought or a word, she let go.
She let go of the fear.
She let go of the judgments.
She let go of the confluence of opinions swarming around her head.
She let go of the committee of indecision within her.
She let go of all the 'right' reasons.
Wholly and completely, without hesitation or worry, she just let go.
She didn't ask anyone for advice.
She didn't read a book on how to let go.
She didn't search the scriptures.
She just let go.
She let go of all of the memories that held her back.
She let go of all of the anxiety that kept her from moving forward.
She let go of the planning and all of the calculations about how to do it just right.
She didn't promise to let go.
She didn't journal about it.
She didn't write the projected date in her Day-Timer.
She made no public announcement and put no ad in the paper.
She didn't check the weather report or read her daily horoscope.
She just let go.
She didn't analyze whether she should let go.
She didn't call her friends to discuss the matter.
She didn't do a five-step Spiritual Mind Treatment.
She didn't call the prayer line.
She didn't utter one word.
She just let go.
No one was around when it happened.
There was no applause or congratulations.
No one thanked her or praised her.
No one noticed a thing.
Like a leaf falling from a tree, she just let go.
There was no effort.
There was no struggle.
It wasn't good and it wasn't bad.
It was what it was, and it is just that.
In the space of letting go, she let it all be.
A small smile came over her face.
A light breeze blew through her.
And the sun and the moon shone forevermore…
~Safire Rose
I watched two extremely interesting documentaries on Amazon Prime video today -- both of them free for Prime customers. My dear Holland would have loved these.
Capturing the Light (only 45 minutes long, but I think it will hold your interest! About an ordinary housewife named Dorothy and what happened in her life that is beyond normal explanation). And Newman, the story of an extraordinary man of science and his discovery that could have changed our world in magnificent ways--and why it hasn't. I was riveted to both films, as there is no rational explanation to satisfy the mind for either one of the manifestations that take place in each story, yet they are real (admitted by researchers/scientists whose previous skepticism was blown away in each case, after viewing the matter for themselves), with strong proof that seemingly cannot be refuted.
The story of Joe Newman reminded me of the Coral Castle phenomenon in Florida, created by a little man named Ed Leedskalnin (scientifically minded folks, see http://www.leedskalnin.com/) -- and also of Nikola Tesla. Newman's story brings to humanity's attention, proven magnetic energy and perpetual motion that flies in the face of physics as we have known it up until this time. And also the human faults, failings, and tendencies that so often come in and muddle up the best of plans and promises. Fascinating and highly recommended! You will come away from the viewing with a sense of wonder -- and maybe sadness, too. We humans always seem to be our own worst enemies.
So true, so true....
wise advice on how best to spend the time we have on earth.
The tone of the questioning was initially courteous. Then Elizabeth Warren spoke. Peering over her glasses, she launched into a series of questions so scathing that the Senate chamber fell silent. "Since this massive, years-long scam came to light, you have said repeatedly, 'I am accountable,' " Warren said to Stumpf. "But what have you actually done to hold yourself accountable? Have you resigned as C.E.O. or chairman of Wells Fargo? . . . Have you returned one nickel of the millions of dollars that you were paid while this scam was going on?"
Warren pressed Stumpf on whether he had fired any senior executives over the revelations (he hadn't); paraphrased his comments, on an earnings call, about how lucrative the sales-quota strategy had been; and asked him to tell the audience how much money he had made personally as the company's share price shot up during the years of the fraud. When Stumpf declined to answer, Warren supplied the number: two hundred million dollars.
"A cashier who steals a handful of twenties is held accountable, but Wall Street executives almost never hold themselves accountable," Warren said. "Not now, and not in 2008, when they crushed the worldwide economy. The only way that Wall Street will change is if executives face jail time when they preside over massive frauds." She declared that Stumpf should be criminally investigated, accusing him of "gutless leadership."
A video of the exchange, posted on YouTube, became a sensation. One news site called it an "epic takedown"; another described Warren "verbally destroying" Stumpf. In May, when I met Warren on the campaign trail, she told me that she was "furious" as she went into the hearing. "He was building a business model for a huge financial institution that was built on knowingly cheating people," she said. "I figured that he deserved every punch he got."
The episode was a pointed demonstration of Warren's ability to tap into public anger about economic unfairness. Warren is one of the country's foremost critics of Wall Street firms and big banks, which make much of their profit, in her view, by abusing consumers and taxpayers. It's a perspective that has grown out of Warren's work as an academic and has shaped her ideas as a politician, propelling her from Harvard Law School, where she was a professor specializing in bankruptcy law, to the Senate, where she has represented Massachusetts since 2013
On many economic issues, Warren has been remarkably prescient. She has spent decades warning Americans about the pernicious effects of income inequality, predatory corporations, and consumer debt, and about the failures of our financial system—issues that are at the heart of the 2020 Presidential campaign.
On the following link, it is explained how the sound of rain is calming to most people -- and something called "pink noise" (a combination of high and low frequencies) is better for encouraging sleep and covering over unwanted sounds than white noise. Pink noise sounds a lot like falling water. The link contains another link within itself for 10 hours of pink noise. Click on it to hear a sample of how it is different from white noise. I play a CD of the sound of rain every night when I go to bed -- have been doing this for years. It helps me to drift off easily and quickly. In this era of Trump, I wouldn't be surprised if most people need peaceful sounds like this to calm down their minds after being bombarded with the news of the day.
https://www.healthline.com/health/mental-health/rain-calms-anxiety#6
I just received the following Twitter message (at the end of this e-mail) and think it is worth sharing with all. It tells that the NY Times and Washington Post are putting out several UFO stories from military pilots lately -- drip by drip by drip. One woman on Twitter, after reading all these stories, has a good question -- Why isn't this the only thing everyone is talking about? Why, indeed? We are being visited by beings from other dimensions/star systems. What could be more important for mankind to know about? But, we, the people of this planet, are being kept in the dark about it. Many amazing things have been revealed by highly credentialed and high-placed, very credible government witnesses and whistleblowers over the past several decades. These officials, who believe our country's citizens have the right to know, have tried in numerous ways to get this story to the public. Sadly, most people have been fooled by government and military deception into believing it is all "fake news."
Those in real command in our government and in governments all over the world have decided our planet's inhabitants are not evolved enough to hear the truth (and as I look at Trump voters, I think they may be right about them, at least!). The powers-that-be fear that the religious fundamentalists of all types will go crazy and run screaming in the streets if they are told what has actually been happening on our planet. However, I think the international leaders (not Trump, obviously--he doesn't read reports and they probably haven't even briefed him on this topic) are now trying to get stories out, in a dip-the-toe-in-the-water attempt to educate the masses, slowly getting the public accustomed to--and hopefully accepting--the truth that we are not alone in the universe. I believe people like Steven Spielberg were enlisted to help in this effort, as we can see in his movies like E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. But now, it appears that the mainstream media in the form of trusted newspapers and magazines are involved in stepping up the process of education. Also, the British and French governments have opened their files on this subject -- and even the Vatican has spoken openly about the legitimacy of alien visitors. But the U.S. government literally closed the book on official UFO studies in 1969 and has refused to admit there is truth to what the UFO whistleblowers and witnesses (which have even included famous astronauts like Gordon Cooper, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin) have said. See: https://www.syti.net/UFOSightings.html
My several years of attending UFO seminars and hearing MANY sincere credible whistleblowers speak has been an eye-opener -- helping me to learn well-documented amounts of information on this topic. If you are also interested in learning about the most important story of this lifetime -- or of any lifetime on planet Earth -- just google Bob Dean UFO (a highly placed military man who, unfortunately, recently passed away) or Robert O. Dean (his full name) -- and, in viewing his talks, educate yourself to what has been going on for decades but has been kept from the public through government ridicule and deliberate subterfuge. Bob Dean is not the only person who has been trying to put this story in the public eye - there are hundreds, perhaps thousands now, of military/scientific/government whistleblowers who have told their stories to those willing to keep an open mind. Bob Dean is a particularly knowledgeable and articulate purveyor of this information, from his own decades of military experience at the highest level with a cosmic top secret clearance at SHAPE in Europe. I have personally spoken with him and regard him highly as a man of supreme integrity -- a sincere and legitimate truth-teller. Following are news links that were included in the Twitter message. I am grateful that Bob's talks and the talks of many others (like renowned physicist Stanton Friedman and Colonel Philip Corso) are now available for all to view on youtube. It makes for interesting viewing. The best way for any curious person to find out if this information is true is to listen to the speakers and judge for yourself.
My husband, Holland, wrote a book (under the pen name of Gene Andrade) on this subject (and its spiritual implications) called "Star Wisdom," which is becoming a fairly good seller on Amazon, so I think many people are beginning to get the message that we are not alone in the universe. One woman who read Holland's book was so impressed, she made a beautiful video of it for all to get the main message of what is important to believe and live your life by. She set it to music, with inspiring images. If you would like to view it, you can go to:
Posts
All Comments
