A sucker is born every minute: Trump's border wall

When presidential candidate Donald Trump, in 2015, raised defending America's southern border by building a border wall, I said, amen; do it by bringing home America's troops from Iraq, Afghanistan and other hell holes and stationing them on America's border with Mexico. One of my friends agreed with me. Nobody else I knew seemed to  take me seriously. Yet, about half of Americans took Trump seriously. They even believed he was going to get Mexico to play for the wall. They apparently did not know that Trump knew very well that a sucker is born every minute.

From Business Insider, which ain't exactly a friend of the Democrats:

A timeline of unfulfilled promises Trump made about his border wall, a cornerstone of his 2016 campaign which has faded from view in 2020

Mia Jankowicz Sep 6, 2020, 6:58 AM

• Since long before his presidency, Donald Trump has made the construction of a wall along the border with Mexico his keystone issue. 
• Since it was first suggested — to rapturous applause — in 2014, the issue has arguably propelled Trump into the presidency.
• The Washington Post reported that Trump mentioned a wall more than 200 times in his 2016 campaign, though it has played only a bit part in 2020.
• Trump has made a dizzying array of claims about it. However, there is still no manmade physical barrier along much of the US-Mexico border.
• Here are some of the key claims he has made about the wall that have not come to pass.

Donald Trump's vision of a "big, beautiful wall" between the US and Mexico arguably did more than anything else in his 2016 platform to propel him into the White House.

Border security experts, and many of Trump's allies, have pointed out that a wall alone is too blunt an instrument to help much with US border security issues. 

But the architect of the policy, Sam Nunberg earlier explained to Business Insider that this lack of subtlety is exactly the point. 

"The wall in 2016 was symbolic of Donald Trump: common sense, practical solutions, simplified answers — as opposed to long nuanced, detailed policy speak," he said

Trump recently told a rally that the wall is "almost complete" — while his campaign website says 216 miles have been completed. It does not mention that the US-Mexico border is almost 2,000 miles long.

Here is a run-down of the major promises the president has made about the wall.

April 2014: "I would build a border like nobody's seen before."

In April 2014, as Trump prepared to begin his bid for the Republican nomination, he made his first mention of a wall — or at least a fence — at a New Hampshire conservative event. 

In preparing for his speech to the Freedom Summit, advisers Sam Nunberg and Roger Stone struggled to remind Trump to center immigration in his speech. Trump was resolving to be "the hardest on the Right" on these issues, Nunberg later told Business Insider, but struggled to stick closely to prepared notes.

The simple idea of a wall appealed to Trump.

"We either have to have borders, and I mean strong borders ... and I mean strong. And you know I'm a builder, I build great buildings," Trump told his audience.

"Building a border, you know they talk about 'oh I don't know, how could we possibly build a fence that nobody can climb over?' I would build a border like nobody's seen before. Nobody's climbing over."

June 2015: "I will make Mexico pay for that wall."

As Trump announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination, a new promise arose — and it appears to have been totally off the cuff.

"I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will make Mexico pay for that wall," he said. "Mark my words."

According to Ian Volner, who has chronicled the Trump wall in his book "The Great Great Wall: Along the Borders of History from China to Mexico," the claim wasn't in the briefing notes circulated to journalists prior to his announcement speech. 

His campaign quickly wound it back, qualifying the promise as it made headlines. 

Whether Mexico was paying literally or figuratively didn't turn out to matter that much. According to The Washington Post, Trump would go on to talk about a border wall more than 200 times on the tumultuous 2016 campaign trail.

August 24, 2015: It will have a "very big, beautiful door"

"This will be a wall with a very big, very beautiful door, because we want the legals to come back into the country," Trump told CBS News. 

A big door to welcome documented immigrants hasn't been given much attention since. In a 2019 roundtable discussion on border security, Trump remarked on the doorways in an existing section of wall and suggested not having any.

"Because putting the doors on cost more than the property is worth," he said. 

January 25 2017: He orders "a contiguous, physical wall" (or similar barrier).

Anti-immigration executive orders came at speed after Trump took office.

The Border Security and Immigration Enforcement Improvements set in officialese exactly what Trump meant by the wall — a definition that left room for the many, many visions the president has described since.

"'Wall' shall mean a contiguous, physical wall or other similarly secure, contiguous, and impassable physical barrier," read the order. With numerous natural barriers along the way, the amount of new construction has been reckoned at around 900 miles.

June 6, 2017: "There is a chance that we can do a solar wall."

With this environmentally-friendly vision, proposed at a White House meeting with Republican congressional leaders, Trump suggested the costs of the wall could be covered by solar-power-generated electricity.

"We are seriously looking at a solar wall," said Trump, pointing out that the sun-drenched border would offer obvious opportunity. 

As Business Insider's Leanna Garfield reported at the time, a solar-powered array could conceivably recuperate construction costs, but only over decades. 

It was never mentioned again.

July 7 2017: Mexico will "absolutely" pay. This time, said with the Mexican president sitting next to him. 

U.S. President Donald Trump meets Mexico's President Enrique Pena Nieto during the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany July 7, 2017 Carlos Barria/Reuters

It's not possible to list all the times Trump has repeated his claim that Mexico will foot the bill for the wall, but The New York Times made a fact-check of the different ways that this could be done. These suggestions have ranged from cutting foreign aid to waiting for a literal check. 

Trump said it again during a G20 press conference in Hamburg with Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto did nothing to bring that closer to reality. 

As of time of publication, an official Trump campaign page called "Promises Kept" makes no mention of ways in which Mexico has, or will, contribute.

April 2017: The wall will cost $21.6 billion

In 2017, the Department for Homeland Security priced the wall at $21.6 billion, Reuters reported. 

Others disagreed. The Democratic Party asserted it would be at least $70 billion — plus maintenance costs — while a non-partisan oversight committee simply said the DHS costing was far too low.  

January 2018: He'll build it for even less than that, in a year

After another estimate suggested the wall would cost $18 billion, Trump ramped up expectations still further. 

During an immigration policy negotiation with Democrats, he said: "I can build it for less than that  ... We can build the wall in one year and we can build it for much less money than what they're talking about," according to MailOnline.

He went on to talk about the Wollman Rink, an ice rink languishing under failed municipal repair and a spiraling budget until 1986, when he offered to take over the refurbishment. He completed it in four months and 25% under budget. 

However, with the scrutiny of Congress, he has not been able to repeat this success with his border wall. 

December 21, 2019: Government shutdown

In mid-December, as Congress was wrangling with the president over the next year's funding bill, Trump made a late-notice demand for $5 billion for his wall — much more than the $1.6 billion that the Democrats countered with for general border-security funding.

The standoff triggered a government shutdown that lastest well into the new year. 

Trump begrudgingly agreed to a package including $1.4 billion for barrier construction on January 15, ending the shutdown. 

January 10, 2019: No wall, renewed talk of Mexico paying

A year after his self-imposed deadline, there was no completed wall. Instead, there were more attempts to salvage the idea that Mexico might foot the bill.

On January 10, Trump said: "When, during the campaign, I would say Mexico is going to pay for it, obviously I never said this and I never meant they're going to write out a check."

Instead, he said, Mexico will pay "indirectly," through renegotiated trade deals. As Business Insider's Bob Bryan explained, that's not how it works. 

February 15, 2019: Trump declares a national emergency

After the debacle of the government shutdown, Trump's next move was to declare the situation at the border a national emergency, enabling him to bypass Congress and approve billions in funding for his wall. 

As he announced it, he told reporters: "I could do the wall over a longer period of time. I didn't need to do this. But I'd rather do it much faster."

Another $3.8 billion was raided from the Pentagon's budget for the wall, which was considered a "higher priority item," NPR reported.

June 2020: Trump says Biden will finish the wall if he gets elected

With the project clearly not going to plan, and an election looming, Trump told Fox 10 in Phoenix that the wall would continue even if he loses.

He predicted that Joe Biden would have to continue the project or there would be a "revolution." Biden soon said the opposite: if he is elected, construction will stop.

August 18, 2020: "Almost complete" — even though it is far from it.

Trump, and his campaign, have made many different claims about how done the wall is. On the campaign trail on August 28, Trump told New Hampshire that the wall is "almost complete."

Yet on the Trump campaign website "Promises Kept," the wall's completion is discussed in the present tense. 

"Pres. Trump is fulfilling his promise to build a border wall, with large portions finished or under construction," says the site. 

The Trump campaign states that 216 miles have been completed, "with an additional 339 miles under construction and 183 miles under pre-construction." It is not clear what "pre-construction" is.

But what we do know is that most of that was a replacement wall. As of May 2020, only three miles has been built on fresh ground, The Washington Post reported.

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com

Mike Leach and Sloan Bashinsky: two Key West ships passing - almost

Mike Leach, R.I.P.

Sloan Bashinsky

From late 2000 through 2018, I mostly hung out in Key West and on Little Torch Key about 28 miles up US 1 from Mile Marker Zero in the self-proclaimed Conch Republic, which once seceded from America until the city officials realized they had seceded from FEMA and hurricane disaster relief.

During that time, I never heard anyone speak of Mike Leach. Prominent Key West men I ate lunch with many Fridays at Salute Ristorante on Higgs Beach, some were armchair college quarterbacks, never mentioned Mike Leach. After reading several fabulous articles and memorials about Mike sent to me by friends since his passing at age 61, I wondered if I had lived in an alternate reality? 

It certainly appears Mike was a well known, respected and beloved member of Key West’s self-proclaimed ONE HUMAN FAMILY - if you weren’t homeless, which I was many moons in Key West before I inherited some money. After going through that windfall, I spent many more moons homeless in Key West, until more money came my way from my father’s estate. 

A self-made man, Mike indeed was. Not me. Yet homeless, or not, I attended and spoke from out of the box, or from an alternate reality, at hundreds of city and county commission meetings. I ran for mayor of Key West six times, county commission three times, and school board once, and splendidly succeeded in never coming remotely close to winning. I published thousands of against the common grain pages on my blogs, goodmorningkeywest.com, goodmorningfloridakeys.com, which died and went to somewhere, and afoolsworkneverends.blogspolt.com, which mostly became dormant.

The second inheritance led to my visiting Tuscaloosa, Alabama a few times in 2017, and also Starkville, Mississippi, to see my older daughter and her husband. He was State’s Assistant Athletic Director (AD), after being its head baseball coach for many years. I was given a cowbell with my name on it, which I rang during an Egg Bowl (Mississippi State v. Mississippi) game in Starkville. I sometimes rang the cowbell when I watched Mississippi State football games in Jack Flats sports bar and grill on Duval Street in Key West.

In late 2018, I moved to Birmingham, Alabama, my hometown, which led to my making lots of trips to Starkville. I fell in love with the city, which still seemed to have its soul, which, I told some locals at the Starkville Cafe, Tuscaloosa had not managed to do. I ate quite a few meals at the cafe's communal table, behind which on a wall hung a sign saying, Danger Men Thinking.

By and by, Mississippi State’s AD and head football coach were hired by the University of Florida. My son-in-law became State’s AD and it fell on his shoulders to find State a new football coach. His first choice didn’t work out, but his second pick, Mike Leach, was a blue ribbon prize winner. 

I learned of Mike's hiring via a text from my daughter in a bathing suit with the ocean in the background. They were in Key West and had hired Mike to coach the Mississippi State Bulldogs. Not long after that, I was in Starkville and attended a private party where I met Mike and his coaches. Our conversations were brief and would be my only interaction with any of them.

Now Mike is gone to regale and challenge God, angels, heaven and other departed souls allowed in there. While 80-year-old loser by capitalism standards me wonders why the Lord has not taken me already? I told my daughter, if I get as sick as Mike got, then she lets that be publicly known. She knows I have executed a living will- if my doctors think I’m a goner, they pull the plug. No heroic attempt to keep me alive.

I relish the thought of a sudden departure and cheating the medical profession, hospitals, nursing homes and assisted living facilities out of my father’s money, which can be used for something more important. Perhaps law school graduate Mike Leach also chuckles over my making everything I have payable on death to people I love, which snatches lawyers' cherished windfall$ out of the jaws of victory. I smile knowing the mortuary will get paid only for burning my body into ashes, to be spread where my last will and testament directs - a beautiful city park in Birmingham.

As for Mike … 

I heard on the grapevine that Mike had a heart murmur for a very long time. I read online that Mike contracted pneumonia this fall and had not shaken it by the time of this year’s Egg Bowl, played in Oxford Mississippi on a cold, wet Thanksgiving night. I heard on the grapevine that Mike suffered two strokes at home, followed by a massive heart attack, which deprived his brain of oxygen for too long. There was nothing the doctors could do to bring him back.

I contracted a respiratory infection a little over two weeks ago. The coughing quickly became rough. I tested negative for covid at a walk-in clinic and asked for an antibiotic prescription, because I was historically prone to colds and flus going into pneumonia. I laid low for a week, and took it very easy for another week, and I’m still not over it. 

I can’t imagine what it was like for Mike. His coaches, team and the Mississippi State community needed him. He gave them everything he had. Now, he’s in heaven. Is that a good thing? I don't know. I know his wife and children and his coaches and players and his many friends miss him terribly. 

College football is really important in the South, and elsewhere. But it is not the most important thing. Not even close.

Sloan Bashinsky

16 December 2022

Chapter 33: A bit about lions, cobras, soul alchemy, dark nights, Kundalini and Melchizedek priest training

This morning, a good friend about half my age reported being visited by Archangel Michael in a dream last night. Michael mentioned my attempt to find receptivity at a Reddit spirituality group for some of what I had been taught the old-fashioned way about the Melchizedek priest training. Then, there was some kind of commencement exercise, a graduation ceremony. Michael told my friend that there are a few Melchizedek priest candidates graduating, who can be put to good use even though there is very little receptivity to what that they know and experience. Then, the headmaster of the school told Michael there were no Melchizedek priest graduates. 

Later this morning, I wondered if the dream was meant to point me toward something I posted last week into a Reddit spirituality group, and my and other people's responses thereto, on which I then sat and did not publish (thus, graduate)? That became Chapter 32: Energetic shift, or one hand clapping? in this unfolding book. 

Then, as if by chance, something popped up in my I-Phone, which I had published into the same Reddit spirituality group about 9 months ago: a written report of a spontaneous vision I'd shortly before a 4-year dark night of the soul began to lift, which led to an interesting, deep discussion.

something about lions

Once upon a time there lived a woman named Alya. She was the medicine woman in her tribe, using herbs and poultices and spirit ways to help her people. Yet she had one flaw: she hated lions, because a lion had killed her father. Her hatred caused her to cast spells against lions, which caused her husband great concern. He often told Alya that her war with lions was going to get her into big trouble, but she was a medicine woman, she knew the ways of the spirits, and she did not listen to her husband. 
One day while Alya was out gathering herbs, she spotted a lion sunning himself in tall grasses on the savannah. She hatched a scheme in her mind to sneak up on the lion and cast a spell on him, which would enable her to steal his spirit and have it for herself. As she crept closer to the lion, she began chanting softly and seeing in her mind’s eye her spell taking over the lion. However, she was so focused on what she was doing, that she did not see in her mind’s eye the lion’s mate returning from hunting. Nor did she see the lioness catch her sent, drop her kill from her mouth to the ground and circle around behind. Too late, Alya realized her peril, just as the lioness took her from behind.
Next thing Alya knows, she is in the spirit world, standing before the Lion Spirit. Trembling with terror, Alya wants to run away, but the Lion Spirit speaks to her heart, says, “There is something you do not yet know.” 
Then, Alya is back on the savannah, watching a hunter from her tribe sneaking up on a nest of lion cubs, whose parents are away hunting. The hunter has a twisted spirit, and decides to kill the lion cubs just for the fun of doing it, even though killing any animal just for sport is taboo in his tribe, which worships the Lion Spirit. On returning to his village, the hunter tells no one what he has done. 
When the lion and lioness return to their nest and find their dead cubs, they are enraged. They catch the hunter’s scent and track him back to the edge of the village, where the lion hides in a thicket and begins roaring and bellowing out his rage over what has happened. The hunter knows why the lion is there, doing that, but still he tells no one. 
Alya’s father, the tribe’s leader, prepares to go out and face and kill the lion, because it his duty to protect his tribe from marauding lions. And so he sets out to face the lion, even as the hunter lets him go without saying what has happened to bring this about, and that a lioness is also out there with the lion. 
Alya’s father quickly finds and confronts the lion, and is preparing to kill it with his spear, when he is taken from behind by the lioness. In her horror, Alya helplessly watches on, even as she now realizes that her hatred of lions was completely misplaced. She feels awful.  

Then suddenly Alya is back on the savannah, stalking the lion whose spirit she once wanted to steal for herself. The lion looks up, stares into Alya’s eyes. She shakes all over, is terrified, but does not look away. Then something takes hold of her, she says to the lion, “I have lost my father and you have lost your cubs. I will be your cub.” The lion looks deep into Alya’s spirit, nods, says, “And I will be your father, and will always protect your front.” Then beside the lion is the lioness, who says to Alya, “And I will always protect your back.

hummingbirdgaze

Something about the strength card in tarot. When I realized the true meaning of strength was about strength of heart and compassion, a lot shifted. Thanks for sharing. 

 

Puzzleheaded (me) 

You're welcome. I lived that ... parable? ... in another realm in June 1995, as my heart heaved and rivers of tears gushed from my eyes and oceans of snot from my nose.  

 

Omeyz

Beautiful. Thanks for sharing. 

 

Puzzleheaded 

You're welcome 

 

Hephsters 

It sure does seem that trauma is at the heart of growth doesn’t it?

I’m glad you found a resolution. I often feel utterly alone but wonder if there’s a part of me that has made it this way and that I’m to blame for my own struggles. 

In any case, I have no real doubts that I’ll pull through my own tests just as you have. Thanks for sharing! 

 

Puzzleheaded 

Soul Alchemy, as I came to call it, seems to be a solitary journey into God, as I grew up calling whatever is in charge of everything. It is not supposed to be easy, and if were easy, would there be any point to it? 

In my case, in my 45th year, early 1987, I had reached the end of my rope, felt I had failed in every way a man could fail, was out of bright ideals and knew it. In that desperate state, I prayed, "Dear God, please help me, I do not wish to die like this, failed." Pause. "I offer my life to human service." I hoped to be successful there and not die, failed. I wept. 

About ten nights later in the wee hours, I woke and saw two spirit beings above me in the darkness. Shaped like sifts. White with slightly blue tint. I figured they were angels. I heard spoken plainly into my mind, "This will push you to your limits, but you asked for it (I recalled the prayer) and we are going to give it to you." I saw a white flash as m y body was jolted by something electrical. That happened two more times. The beings faded out. 

That was the beginning. Slow, at first. I was moved to a different city, put with a new woman companion, where it really started. She was moving into soul alchemy, but not as fast as I was. She did not think I was crazy, but it was solitary. I did meet people who did not think I was crazy. Some of the ones who accepted as real what I reported I was experiencing could believe I was not using LSD, peyote, ayahuasca, etc. 

There was a dark night of the soul, which was very rough. Then, there was a black night of the soul, which made the dark night seem like a vacation. There was a later dark night. I lived on the street off and on. 

I had been well versed in the journeys of Francis of Assisi and John of the Cross, and of Rumi and his teacher, Shams. It was one on one with the Spirit World, and it was angels, then came demons. I had to face and come to terms with the Devil inside me, and in other people, and in spirit realms. 

I was made aware ETs and ultraterrestrial beings exist, but I was steered to not get very involved with them. 

I was not put in a cave or monastery. I was steered away from fastening to spiritual teachers, gurus, spiritual community. I was left in the ordinary world, where what life served up, or was arranged to be served up, was the grindstone and furnace and tsunami and earthquake and volcanic eruption and alien invasion, so to speak, through which my soul and my human body, emotions and mind were threshed and tested ongoing. That's still happening, but I'm not financially stressed now, thanks to an inheritance. 

This summarizes my soul alchemy journey. There are various ways to go at it. Some travelers use long -established practices and rituals, that's what John of the Cross did. And Rumi, I think. Francis of Assisi just had it happen to him, and he somehow survived it, with God's help. 

That's what Jesus in the Gospels experienced, and a number of his men and women disciples went on to experience it. 

Buddha experienced it. Lao Tzu experienced it. I think Yogananda experienced it. And Kahlil Gibran. Aboriginal shamans experienced it. Women experienced it, but the male paradigm did not record many of the women. 

I knew very well a woman who experienced it at the deepest of of levels. It was given to her by angels after she met me. Her soul had agreed to it. I met a few other people it was given to. 

I know a younger man it was given to, who is being pushed really hard and he is determined to stick with it, as he knows beyond any doubt that angels whose names are known in the Bible are doing it to and for him. 

He is not a church person. His parents are not church people. I am not a church person, although in past times I was at times. We don't know when we are ever not in church, so to speak.

Reddit-Book-Bot
Beep. Boop. I'm a robot. Here's a copy of
The Bible
Was I a good bot? | info | More Books

Puzzleheaded
The Bible, if viewed as an internal journey, is a good soul alchemy text. In many ways, I was a bot (programmed, brainwashed), and my soul alchemy journey has made me less of a bot.

Hephsters
Thanks for that, it’s actually quite comforting right now. I think I’m in a bit of a dark night of the soul phase but the light at the end of the tunnel is finally starting to twinkle through.
I think what I’m wishing for is that mystical experience like your angels experience. It feels like I’m trucking on alone even though I know it’s not really true but yes, it is indeed a solitary journey as you said.
I think patience is the key and perhaps one of my major life themes.

Puzzleheaded
I had read, and then it became my experience, that the dark night of the soul is not of this world but very definitely affects those who experience it. It comes and runs its course and it lifts.
Modern mental health, including psychiatry, does not have much to offer other than perhaps a listening ear. Psychiatric medicine isn't particularly effective and can interfere with and hinder or damage what is in progress, which might look like depression, for example, but is something else entirely.
I loved the movie Brother Son Sister Moon, which is about Francis of Assisi's dark night and what happened after he came out of it.
The commentaries of John of the Cross explain his perspective of both the dark night and the black night. I learned about that in Antonio T. de Nicholas' book, ST. JOHN OF THE CROSS: Alchemist of the Soul, which I stumbled across before the dark night arrived inside of me.
The dark night changes a person, a different person emerges from it. The black night, if it then occurs, changes a person much more. God, by whatever name called, is very involved in both, despite it might seem like being abandoned by God. Angels also are involved, even if they are not visible. The soul agrees to have the experience, the Spirit World obliges.
John of the Cross was a cloistered Carmelite monk, who used certain rituals known to provoke the dark night, and then the black night. Francis of Assisi simply had it happen to him from out of the blue. He was a young man, moving along, then he was apprehended and redirected, so to speak.
That said, sometimes a dark night accompanies fear of being who we really are, we cannot bring ourselves to deal directly, verbally, actionably, with something important. We clam up. We are in a prison or fear. I certainly experienced plenty of that, as well.
In all events, I appreciate your comments and hope the very best for you.

Demon_Blade
You are walking through the shadow of the valley of death. I too have made my journey. Fear no evil my friend and love be with you.
Part of the experience of alchemy is to break down old materials within your spirit , and create new materials. Your ego on this plane had some lead weighting your spirit down. No worries hang in there.
It's has been refered to as the first death sometimes. It's part of the rebirth process.
ouroboros and the symbolism attached to it, often references the infinite and it's ability to change and adapt. Also at the same times it means the patterns locking yourself into a loop .
Ex. Sometimes you literally have to get your head out of your ass, because while you may have the programing for you to maintain a "safe" loop. It's good to take your tail from your mouth sometimes. To change the loops at hand and create a more heavenly experience.  

All pretaing to you on this ego level plane. For we are all just writing programs for ourselves on this level.

Hephsters
Wow, I feel like some synchronicity is at work here. This is more info I needed to hear right now.
I’m literally trying to let old habits die off right now and struggling to move into a new phase of existence, one that I know will be infinitely more rewarding than the old phase but it’s still such a struggle to spit that damn tail out!
Is there a good alchemical ritual system that exists that I could practise to help with the breaking down? Or does it just happen naturally?

Demon_Blade
The universe told me to speak to you.
There is entirely new energy afoot. It's here for healing. It will bring up all the unwanted nonsense for you to sort through. It's is your reasonability to choose what do with it.
The snake naturally sheds it's skin, but sometimes it uses a rock to help in the process .
Take notice of all your patterns. You find something undesirable to you. Do something outside of yourself to break that cycle.
Before my process I had a real problem with other people. I always had to wait on them to do things. And if they ended up not doing anything I missed out in an opportunity. That was not fulfilling to my true self. So I just took a trip in my car for about a week to the beach. I slept in it every night. I did everything I wanted to do while I was gone. For that process I would have never done that before.
You know better than anyone what you truly need to do for yourself . Create a new paradigm
Be mindful of your thoughts without judgment of them. The next step can be incredibly crazy feeling to lose your concept of self. But if you jump into the fire you will only be what you really are
As above so below. So without so with in.

Puzzleheaded
Thank you for your comments, Demon_Blade. I myself had to be dragged kicking and screaming much of the time through the ego resistance and sheer stupidity in myself by what I understood were angels, who are still very much on my case as I approach official dinosaur status - I'm 79. Little did I know what lay ahead for me when it suddenly began in early 1987, as I described earlier in this discussion thread.
Speaking of snakes, here's a "parable" I lived in 1995 with heaving heart, rivers of tears running out of my eyes and oceans of snot from my nose:
the gift …
A sleeping man dreams he sees the back of a young yogi meditating in the lotus position. Before the young yogi appear two cobras, raised up, hoods flared. One cobra is pure white, the other pure black. Both beautiful. The white cobra says to the young yogi, “We came to you once before because you were innocent, and you knew we brought a gift and you believed you had to chose one of us and you chose me.” The black cobra says, “We come before you again because you now are wise.” The yogi, now very advanced in years, weeps, chooses them both. The sleeping man, now an old man, awakens, crying.

Demon_Blade
You are welcome my friend. It is my duty to share wisdom when needed. Those willing to listen will hear.
Better not know now they never known at all.
Haha the same experience I have had. I have come to find out most call it a Kundalini awakening.
All is of one , our shadow and our light . All exist within understanding. Find balance, tune it with love.
It's beautiful to experience what this yogi has had. That moment it clicks and you are humbled to all.
Thank you for the reminder, namaste.

Puzzleheaded
I don't know if I have had a Kundalini arousal/awakening.
In the 1987 or the next year, I read Gopi Krishna's autobiographic report of his own spontaneous Kundalini arousal, which went up the left hand path? and nearly finished him off. As I recall his reporting, yogis he consulted were not helpful. Finally, he found someone who did know something and made suggestions and Gopi was able using certain internal exercises to reroute the Kundalini up the correct passage -the right?, and he rode it out.
The second book I read a few years later was by a Christian contemplative, Philip St. Romain, who had a spontaneous Kundalini arousal, about which he wrote: Kundalini Energy and Christian Spirituality. Romain was having a hard time and read some books and figured out what was going on and used some internal exercises he'd read to help the process along. He concluded the Kundalini is not a supernatural but is a suprahuman experience, which leaves someone substantially changed.
Not long after, I read some of the writings of Joseph Chilton Pearce, who, after his work with child development and books about that and other matters, took up with the yogi Muktananda, whose autobiography I also read, which includes some of his experiences with spontaneous Kundalini arousal. I personally knew several of Muktananda's American students, who said he was having sex with young women in his ashram. Anyway, Pearce wrote that the Kundalini is a natural phenomenon in all people, which in olden times rose naturally with long used rites of passage into adulthood. But as civilized views took over, the rites of passage were hindered, damaged or squashed flat, and the Kundalini stopped rising naturally in most people. Pearce was trying to change education methods and other ways of raising children to allow them to experience natural Kundalini arousal.
I read elsewhere, can't now recall the source, that contorted body postures been seen during a Kundalini arousal, and  became haha yoga sought to reverse engineer arousal of the Kundalini. I did hatha yoga for years, and while it was excellent exercise, as was tai chi, I didn't experience a Kundalini arousal. Nor afterward, in all the many varied and often really wild internal experiences. did I seem to experience it.
I read another book in the early 1990s by U.G. Krisnamurti, different from Jiddu Krishnamurti. Also India native, U.G. described his search, including meeting Jiddu and they talked and U.G. told Jiddu he thought he had seen but not tasted the sugar. U.G. later moved to England, where out of the blue he had a most unusual, as he described it, opening all all seven chakaras, one at a time, bottom upward, with clearly visible physical distortions at each chakra. After which, his mind only worked when somebody or something came along that required his mind to work. People came from here and there to meet and talk with him, and he told them all what had happened to him was unique and he had nothing to offer them. Yet, he wrote some more books about the topic. Maybe he needed money?
The journey I'm on is very interactive with the human world, and with the spirit world. I once was shown, by angels I figured, internal exercises to do with my eyes closed, in which phenomena came and I embraced them, and then things happened inside and outside of me, most of it was quite spectacular and emotionally moving. That all ended with the advent of the black night of the soul in 1997, which lasted 16 months and began lifting when I moved on from the poor woman who had the bad luck to be with me when it descended upon me, leaving me feeling like half my brain or half my soul had died.
During the black night, I remained mostly aware, but was so screwed up and thought by most people to be insane, that I seldom talked about what I saw going on around me and inside of me. One friend kept having dreams about me, which showed me I was not in as bad a shape as I felt. Yet every morning, I spent about 4 hours plotting how I would kill myself the next day. Having done that exercise, I relaxed and endured the rest of the day, knowing it was my last. The next morning, the same process, arriving at the same exact way of killing myself the next day -slit my wrists with my Swiss Army knife. For nearly 16 months, that went on. Then, I left that woman, stuff started happening internally and externally, and I slowly was pull out of it.
Did I feel enlightened after that and a 4-year dark night in the early 1990s? Nope. Did things get better. Nope. Then began internal healing and other commotion caused by angels, accompanied by my being provided a new female companion, who, gosh, got her views of just about everything rearranged by what was happening to me and to her. Some of it inside of me was so terrifying that I had to have someone with me to endure it. That went on about six months. Then, a different kind of malaise, physical, came, and that went on about. 6 months. Dreams became really important - again. It got a little better, and yet another woman was provided as a companion. The angels took her through it super fast and she emerged very wide awake and a fully operational shamaness. Then, we had some very unusual experiences with angels and Jesus and Melchizedek, and we ran out of money and that led to our parting ways.
I started living on the street here and there, as I was fully aware, I thought, and oh my did I feel like as stranger in a strange land, and still do, although I now have one male friend half my age the angels are putting through a warp speed change, and it is not much fun for him. I had a male friend after after the back night, who also got put through it, but it seemed to be too much for him and he got really mad at me over something I heard and was told to tell him, and he went his own way and I am pretty sure he crossed over a few years later.
For him, me, the two women and yet two later women companions (one at a time), and this newer younger male friend, the core of the alchemy is dealing with what the human world provides for us to deal with and using our training and what the angels tell us to navigate it. That is the engine for all the rest. It resembles this and that I have read here and there, but the closest thing to it I have seen is how it went for Jesus in the Gospels and for his disciples after he moved on. Perhaps that's due to my Christian upbringing.
Muktananda wrote I think in his autobiography that he had thought he was pretty hot stuff - advanced yogi - until a real yogi did something that woke up the Kundalini in Muktananda, and then the fun began. Muktananda and perhaps other yogis followed suit and were delivering "shaktipat" to their students (sanyasans) to awaken the Kundalini in them. I knew several of those sanyasans pretty well in America, and they were struggling.
Then, there is A Course in Miracles, which I read in 1989, but did not use because I seemed to be embarked on an angel -designed course in mirrors. The core of ACIM is projection and not reacting to anything that punches our buttons.

 sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com

Chapter 32: Energetic shift, or one hand clapping?

 

A koan is something like a spiritual riddle in Buddhism. Such as, "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" Silence

This morning, a good friend reported being visited by Archangel Michael in a dream last night. Michael mentioned my attempt to find receptivity at a Reddit spirituality group for some of what I had been taught the old-fashioned way about the Melchizedek priest training. Then, there was some kind of commencement exercise, a graduation ceremony. Michael told my friend that there are a few Melchizedek priest candidates graduating, who can be put to good use even though there is very little receptivity to what that they know and experience. Then, the headmaster of the school told Michael there were no Melchizedek priest graduates. 

Later today, I wondered if the dream was meant to point me toward a post last week into a Reddit spirituality group, and my and other people's responses thereto, on which I sat and did not publish (thus, graduate)?

Energetic shift

Question

Does anyone else feel as though we are heading for a complete reset. That we have been living a ridiculous life for so long and now more and more people are starting to question this. Working 40 hours a week to merely exist. Doing a job we aren’t arsed about to put money in the back pockets of the large corporations. I guarantee If I was to run a poll and ask how many people would rather do a 4 hour work day and work 4 days a week the majority would vote yes. This is a life we could actually have but the majority of us do not have any control. I feel people are starting to question things a lot more and there is a tense energy in the air. I don’t know how much longer we can continue confirming and living this life. The world seems to be heading for a reset. Humanity and the all of the worlds species will be completely wiped out and we are all just plodding along working as oppose to spending time in nature, or connecting and being with our friends and family?! We need to all come together and start to push change.

Puzzleheaded (me)

If you, we, watch television news, read online news online, use social media, watch podcasts, we know there is zero chance we will all come together and there is 100-percent chance humanity, in the main, is devolving, As above, so below, As below, so above, paint the actual picture. The heavens are a screwed up, humanity is screwed up, the two reflect each other. It's on every person to separate from the herd, or not; to evolve, or not; to experience the fire and the rain of real soul alchemy, or not. No two people are alike, and there is no pat formula that works across the board. However, ruthless and relentless self-examination and introspection are essential, and that is not something the ego cares for even a little bit, nor does Evil, which is very real, as humanity proves every day. I cannot properly X-ray my own soul without help of angels known in the Bible. If my saying angels bothers some people, they can substitute Spirit World, or Source, or Force. It matters not to me. What matters is people need something far bigger and smarter than themselves to help them deal with their own egos and Evil. 

 

devianceisurissue

I have found the best course of action to be internal meditative work. If it feels like fear and hatred or some derivation of it try to understand it. If it feels like love and compassion and acceptance and empathy, then you're on the right course. And those still moments where coincidences build and synchronicities expose themselves to you, the messaging is clear. It's from within your own ego mind that the fear division allows the construct to grip you. You are loved so love yourself but love everyone else as you love yourself.

Ixora

For I am you. You are me. Every act of love I give is a reflection of self. The only way for me to truly find peace, is to understand that my ego has created my perception, and if I am feeling ANYTHING other than Love, Joy, Peace in this world, than my perception is wrong and I am disconnected from spirit.

Just corroborating your statement! The way the ego and our soul work in tandem is really quite simple. It's so simple understand but it takes so much practice and undoing many years of what the world has taught us. I was told by my teachers that everything I learned growing up was a lie told by the world. A belief that needed to be changed. It took years of hard inner work of meticulously pulling apart my beliefs to understand that I was the one forming the world I saw. 

 

devianceisurissue

Almost had a mental breakdown in my Awakening and since. Source provides.

Puzzleheaded

That goes along with waking up and increasingly feeling like you are no longer from this planet but are still living on it. 

 

hjay

This was beautifully said. And this is been my life for the past 6 years on my spiritual journey. I've done so much work on myself I don't even recognize who I am now and who I used to be. Searching hunting and battling every mental and emotional fear or anxiety to become the highest version of myself. I had no standards before my journey but now I have the highest expectations for myself 

 

LucidNomadicDreamer

We're living the days before the flood except Noah isn't one person speaking to "God". All of us here have spoken to Gaia. She has told us all the same thing: build an ark. Make your life one that is harmonious with Her. Once again, we must resume our role as the guardians of the soil. Gaia is the Universe and She will protect those that protect her. The rest shall perish. 

 

NotTooDeep 

It does seem that way on a cyclical basis. What I mean is every few generations, we have evolved enough to be better off than our great grandparents could have imagined. This creates a cultural tension between some of the elders and a lot of the young. This change and conflict can be seen by everyone. 

And to your points about the 4 hour work week, this rising general awareness has happened before; it is what brought us the 40 hour work week and child labor laws, reigning in the abuses of the self-entitled corporate overlords of olden times. Although I bet if you worked your poll a little differently, asking what kind of work people would thrive the most doing, you'd find we really aren't that committed to 4 hour work weeks. The kind of work is more important to most folks than quantity of that work. 

For sensitive people, there are more things they can be aware of but not understand. Sensitive people are more prone to reacting to major changes in energy. 

When the Earth changes her energy, it affects all life on the planet. Think major earthquakes for one example; just the energy, not the physical effects. Before an earthquake, there is a standing wave of energy built up between the parts of the crust that are about to move. Sensitive people pick up on this energy, even when that aren't conscious of it or can put a name on it. Our bodies are of the Earth. 

This global change in energy distorts and filters everything we see or experience in some way, amplifying some things and nullifying other things. Often times, the things aren't changed at all, just our perception of these things. 

Look up "The Population Bomb". It was published in 1968 and focused much of the energy of many other causes on one thing: overpopulation. To summarize: The oceans of the world can only accommodate so many flush toilets. The farms of the world can only make so much food. The fresh water of the world, once assumed to be infinite, is a limited resource that determines life or death. 

We've overcome many of the constraints that that book was based on; better farming techniques; better global supply chains. But, as the Theory of Constraints states, when you break one constraint, you find a different one takes its place. Today we call that climate change. 

I know it seems like the end of the world, but it seemed like the end of the world in 1968, and it seemed like the end of the world in 1929, and it will seem like the end of the world again. 

We get through stuff. We will figure it out. It will be messy and imperfect and really piss some of us off, but we'll get through this. 

Life here evolves into greater and greater complexity. Biology really does through a wrench into the physics stuff about entropy. The system of life on this planet will never reach stasis; it will only change and change again. Our part is to change it for the better as best we can. Even if we redistributed all the wealth of all the billionaires and ended world hunger, create universal health care for everyone, and create schools for everyone, we'd end up changing what we created. 

We don't all come here for the same reasons, but we all come here with the same basic abilities, and using those abilities changes things. 

I'm 70 and have asthma. It was caused in part from breathing copper sulfide (?) gasses as a small child living in a mining town near a copper smelter. A siren would go off when the wind would shift. We, every man, woman, and child, had two minutes to lay down below 18" from the ground and wait for the all clear. The smelter smoke would blow down over that town like a blanket of fog and if you took a deep breath of it, you could die. 

My asthma was later worsened by the smog in southern California in the 60s. I went to a shiny new high school on a hillside in the San Gabriel valley. Most of the year and especially in summer, you could not see our namesake, the San Gabriel mountains. There were kids in Orange county that never knew there were 10,000 foot high mountains just to the north of them. Then one winter, a big storm came in and blow all the smog away, and there were the mountains. Normally, the air looked like bourbon. Flights of small airplanes would be restricted to instrument rated pilots, the visibility was so low. 

That's not the case anymore. We figure out how to make cleaner burning cars and the air in L.A. is much cleaner. Still city air, but not like the 60s. 

The rich farmlands in the Tennessee Valley were severely under utilized because of flooding. Every year, some tributary of the Mississippi River would flood, wiping out families and crops. The Tennessee Valley Authority was created by the federal government, built a series of small dams, which curtailed much of the flooding and created the first electricity many of those rural farmers had ever seen. This is in the 1930s. Imagine that. Most of the states that we call "the South" had lots of farms with no electricity. 

If I learned anything from seven decades in this body on this planet in this country, it's we get through things. I don't know how. I don't know when. But I'm still hopeful we will get through this. 

Hell, there was a science fair/competition at the national level several years ago and the winner was a high school girl that invented a novel gene treatment for some really difficult cancer. We didn't teach her how to do that; we enabled and supported her, and got out of her way. 

One way to look at politics is who needs to get out of the way next. It's a generational thing again. We won't allow a civilian over the age of 65 to fly commercial airliners but we'll allow them to run the world's most powerful military and strongly influence its economy. 

I also expect that next week or next month, someone else will post on Reddit something very similar to your post without having read your post. They will pick up on a large change energy and will analyze as best they can what the reasons are for that large change energy, and they'll create a coherent story that explains their reasoning and their emotional responses. And they, too, will be mostly right. And then nothing will happen most of the time. 

Sometimes it takes a physical catalyst, like George Floyd, to crystalize us into action. We like our privacy and our lives, even when we're young and overworked and underpaid. But watching a murder slowly play out in real time committed by someone sworn to protect civilians? It brought us to our feet. 

So yes, I'm hopeful. I don't have to know or see how things will turn out to be hopeful. I just have to remember who we are. And the best in each of us is more effective than the worst in each of us. We rise to the occasion. This gives me peace.

And now that I'm sharing what I've learned about psychic abilities with the Reddit communities, how to ground and run energy, read an aura, heal yourself, I, too, am getting out of the way. I have no goal for what these younger folks who learn these techniques must do with what they learn. I know what the techniques can accomplish and how they accomplish that. I know what I've done with these techniques. So I share them and get out of the way. 

 

Puzzleheaded 

Dinosaurs, who have truly seen the fire and the rain, still roam this world, but are we a dying breed?

The personal and collective metaphysical, spiritual, not of this world factors aside, it sure looks crystal clear to me that humanity is on a fast track to destroy the planet on which ii lives. Nikola Telsa wannabe Elon Musk knows this very well; otherwise, why does he build space ships he hopes will allow him and his family and loved ones to move to Mars? What Martian, if such exists, in his, her, its right mind, wants human beings to live on Mars? So, back to the metaphysical, spiritual, not of this world factors. 

It has been said, it is better not to start on the spiritual path, than to start and then leave it. The fire and the rain are like the law's Jealous Mistress. The fire and the rain require every soul to be X-rayed and X-rayed and X-rayed, until there are no secrets left, nor any fig leaves. The fire and the rain take no prisoners. There is no we must do this or that. For the herd never was right, and never will be. It's on each person, or soul, to be consumed by the fire and the rain, and endure it, or not; embrace it, or not; become one with it, or not. Not to worry, there are many chances to do this, on this planet, or somewhere, contary to what some human religions teach, insist. 

But this is now, and the fire and the rain are now, and in the Gospels, Jesus said the Kingdom of God is at hand, now; it is not of this world, and to wake up, stop sleeping. While America is tugged back and forth by the "woke", according to the Republicans and the MAGAs, and by "the great unwoke," who are the Republicans and MAGAs. And by everyone else, who has not been woke up by something much bigger and smarter than themselves.

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com