So, today I wanted to follow up on my post from yesterday, where I was calling on us to RISE UP and take our place among the thoughtful critical thinkers we were made to be.
If you didn't catch that, here it is!
If you are feeling unsettled, my desire is that this post encourage you.
If you are feeling frantic or unsure, my desire is that this post strengthen you.
If you are feeling confused or alone, my desire is that this post help you find a sure path forward.
I want to share a little of my journey with the truth, along with a little suggestion on how you can move forward as well.
In looking for a picture for this post, I wanted to share one my parents snapped when I was 4, because it most closely resembles me when I asked the question, "what is truth?" It's not on my hard drive, although I thought it was. I didn't want this to wait, so I used a current pic.
You see, my parents have often told me the story of a particular time when I was 3, that exemplifies most who I am at my core. As an aside, I chuckled out loud that I was 3 when one of the candidates for November started his political career. Anyway...
I had just gotten in trouble for doing something, who knows what, and my dad was talking to me about it, as he so often did in the most amazing way. I had apparently lied about something, right, because that's what's most easy to do to try to avoid consequences. We're all human, I mean. I'm not advocating it, but we all know we have that tendency to want to dodge the bullet. Anyway, with that disclaimer out of the way, he told me, "it's important for you to always tell the truth." I looked up at him, I'm told, and asked, "WHAT IS TRUTH?"
My parents told me that story so much growing up, and Mom and I have chuckled about it now that I'm an adult. (Ha! I've been one for a while, but you get my drift.) I have come to identify that as one of my core values, and defining experiences, even if all I can remember is my parents having told me I did that.
As an impressionable child, I'm not sure if I took that admonishment seriously, and just started to do everything possible to be as truthful as possible, or if it is really part of my DNA to almost fall over myself to tell the truth, but it has become a defining objective, to search for the truth. I want to know what is REALLY happening, and I can smell a lie from a million miles away.
So imagine with me when I came home from Germany in 2017 for Young Living's International Global Convention, to spend time with my mom, how shocked I was to find that the parrot box that displays "programming" was spouting lie after lie after lie about the scandal du jour, during the summer of that year.
Kevin and I haven't had cable except for the 18 months we lived in SC, which was also an incredibly spiritually chaotic time for me. Wow, I think I'll unpack that some time! I also hadn't really ever watched cable TV as an adult. It's been YEARS since I had access to nightly "programming," and Kevin and I have never had it, in our entire time together. Largely as a result, I believe, I remember it was SUPER easy to smell the latent curating that I mentioned yesterday. It was almost offensive, like old food. I literally asked my mom if we could shut the "programming" off, because that's what I could tell it was.
In the post yesterday, I talked about some of where the curating likely comes from, and today I'm a bit incensed that my tax dollars and yours go toward programs like that. I think that's a good subject for another day.
So what to do??? People want to know what's going on, right?
Listen, I get that. I think the first thing is to realize there's a problem with what we are being "programmed" to believe.
But is "programming" really better than nothing?
A month or so ago, I challenged my friends to turn off the news for a weekend, I believe it was. Many of you asked me if I was OK. Yes, I'm fine, and I was then! I offered the challenge for the same reason I'm currently going through a bodily cleanse right at this moment! To DETOX from the noise. The main reason I could see the "programming" is because I had weaned myself off "media" (which can also be read as plural for "medium," just saying). How can you detect things if you are immune to their effects?
How do you kill a frog in boiling water? You can't drop the frog in; it will detect the heat and jump out. So, what you do is put a frog in room temp water, to which it's accustomed, and even prefers, and then GRADUALLY turn up the heat.
I think many of you do not realize you're a frog in piping hot water. You have not detected the subtle ways you have been conditioned to believe certain things. Note that I'm not making an argument either way, although I certainly have my own opinions.
Because I wholeheartedly love and appreciate the care and time I've taken to search for the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God, I want this for you, but only if you want it for yourself.
Though I have an opinion, I am contributing to the problem if I tell you WHAT to believe. I'm merely suggesting you remove yourself from the "programming," with a period of time you DETOX, and THEN do NOT go back to mainstream sources. For reasons I mentioned yesterday, those are the ones that in the 2013 NDAA receive federal funds to CURATE a "program" for you.
I believe, if I remember right, "propaganda" was a word used in the legislation. If not, it was definitely intimated in the languaged used in those two sections, 501, and 1089, that I mentioned.
If you have your own will, and half a brain, which I KNOW you do, why not cut off someone else's ability to subtlely, like the frog boiling in water, affect how you think?
I have not even talked about suspending judgment. This post has been long enough!
PLEASE consider a media fast. Hopefully I've explained better why, this time. Last time I suggested a weekend. I'm thinking now, more like a week. The prevailing pressure is strong to think a certain way. We are friends, and I will tell you in love, I think you're smarter than that, to go where you are led. Blaze your own trail. Don't blindly FOLLOW what others tell you. I believe the first step is to decouple yourself from sources.
What I did:
- Remove Google from my phone
- If you can't do that, snooze all the media sources
- So that the only things that show up are "puppies and kittens"
- Turn off notifications on my phone so I can check FB when I want
- Set a timer of how long I'm allowed to be on FB, IG, etc
- Go live my life!
Life will happen anyway. You don't NEED to know everything, especially if it's "programming." No news is better than junk news.
Love y'all! Once you took those steps and determined how long you'd fast for, what did it feel like to decouple yourself, to cut the umbilical cord?
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