Open (More or Less) Post on Covid 115
Oct. 17th, 2023 02:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ecosophia
We are now in the third year of these open posts. As the phrase "died suddenly" repeats in the mass media like a mantra, statistics for work days lost to illness and all-cause mortality mount up in heavily vaccinated nations, and more and more ugly facts about the official response to Covid spill out into public, we are entering what may well turn out to be the most difficult period of the Covid disaster -- the phase in which denial rises in lockstep with the death rate, and a great many people try not to admit what has been done to them by the people and institutions they trusted. It could get ugly, folks. So it's time for another open post. The rules are the same as before:
1. If you plan on parroting the party line of the medical industry and its paid shills, please go away. This is a place for people to talk openly, honestly, and freely about their concerns that the party line in question is dangerously flawed and that actions being pushed by the medical industry et al. are causing injury and death. It is not a place for you to dismiss those concerns. Anyone who wants to hear the official story and the arguments in favor of it can find those on hundreds of thousands of websites.
2. If you plan on insisting that the current situation is the result of a deliberate plot by some villainous group of people or other, please go away. There are tens of thousands of websites currently rehashing various conspiracy theories about the Covid-19 outbreak and the vaccines. This is not one of them. What we're exploring is the likelihood that what's going on is the product of the same arrogance, incompetence, and corruption that the medical industry and its tame politicians have displayed so abundantly in recent decades. That possibility deserves a space of its own for discussion, and that's what we're doing here.
3. If you plan on using rent-a-troll derailing or disruption tactics, please go away. I'm quite familiar with the standard tactics used by troll farms to disrupt online forums, and am ready, willing, and able -- and in fact quite eager -- to ban people permanently for engaging in them here. Oh, and I also lurk on other Covid-19 vaccine skeptic blogs, so I'm likely to notice when the same posts are showing up on more than one venue.
4. If you don't believe in treating people with common courtesy, please go away. I have, and enforce, a strict courtesy policy on my blogs and online forums, and this is no exception. The sort of schoolyard bullying that takes place on so many other internet forums will get you deleted and banned here. Also, please don't drag in current quarrels about sex, race, religions, etc. No, I don't care if you disagree with that: my journal, my rules.
With that said, the floor is open for discussion.
What do you do?
Date: 2023-10-17 07:34 pm (UTC)Re: What do you do?
Date: 2023-10-17 10:40 pm (UTC)Also, I don't have kids, but I fear greatly for the children of my friends.
Re: What do you do?
Date: 2023-10-17 10:43 pm (UTC)I shouldn't feel silly here of all places saying this, but spirituality or magic or whatever really, really, really does pull you out of the stronger parts of the current and then have you wondering why where you thinking this or that at all. So the trick to me is not how to combat the feelings of fear and solve what the fear is telling me to be afraid of, but of recognizing the stimulus, it's origin and it's motives. So by you choosing to sidestep out of the lockstep march to raise the head above the crowd and peek wherever an opening comes through a distance comes; but within it there isn't much that I find useful to do besides recognizing my emotional state and letting it settle until the next opportunity for clarity opens up.
Re: What do you do?
Date: 2023-10-18 01:26 am (UTC)If you can find what in the depths of your soul cries out to the heights of the divine, find a humble daily practice to build a connection with that divine, and hold fast, you will triumph. This has been working for me.
"In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed."
(verses from 'Invictus' by William Ernest Henley)
-Dylan
Re: What do you do?
Date: 2023-10-17 11:31 pm (UTC)2) Find the nearest potluck opportunity (if you're up for it, organize one), cook some chili, and go. Everybody brings dessert. Be the person who brings chili.
3) Even if you're a hermit, make an effort to talk to people IRL. Introduce yourself. Keep a scorecard if it helps (I talked to 5 strangers last week-- this week I will try to beat my high score!).
The real problem isn't covid, or even fearmongering. It's getting corralled into a world where all our communications are mediated by electronic devices and corporate services. It feels like it's the whole universe, when it's really just a handful of sock puppets screaming over the cardboard walls. Refuse to live there. Yeah, it sucks when all your IRL friends and family are consumed by it. But somebody's got to be the first to walk away. May as well be you.
Re: What do you do?
Date: 2023-10-18 01:20 am (UTC)And the summary analysis that the electro-gadget matrix is the fundamental problem. Break free! Talk to a human on the bus, or in the square, or in the grocery store! Vive la liberte!
Re: What do you do?
Date: 2023-10-18 03:09 am (UTC)If you are still watching a TV for anything but escapist movies, turn the TV off and throw it away. All of the "news" media nowadays is specifically engineered to upset you just as much as possible. On the rare occasions when I am unlucky enough to see a bit of it, I am amazed at just how foul and mucky it is.
- Cicada Grove
Re: What do you do?
Date: 2023-10-18 03:19 am (UTC)For example, I recall the day I stopped worrying about any sickness or death for myself. 6th grade, sharing a pediatric hospital room with a kid much worse off than me who ended up dying while I was having surgery. Something deep in me as I looked at her empty bed by a window with the setting sun filtering in through blinds just felt like a calm lake or snapped me into a new reality like a soldier in combat seeing fellow soldiers die all around knowing in my visceral soul: none of us get out of here alive. May as well stop worrying for one second and have as much fun as possible. Four years later I faced another medical "scare" (bone cancer) and was surprised how everything leading up to the big surgery seemed like a simple splinter. 100% acceptance. Had peace at the center no matter what happened. I was lucky. All the scans and tests said "cancer" and lose a leg but I had something harmless spoofing the tests.
I've met many people who faced horrible combat in wars, lost their entire family and nation to war, medical horrors, and similar other very bad experiences. Those who have learned how to be resilient, laugh in the face of true adversity, never to consider themselves a "victim" for one second seem to have the least fear. Maybe what paved the way for me was even before I entered nursery school people called me an "old soul." my Dad taught me by 1st grade how to be a warrior and sheepdog, never a sheep helpless to fight a wolf or bully. He told me most humans are happy or willing to be sheep-victims. Few will stand up and fight for themselves or others. I simply chose not to be a helpless sheep when faced with a medical issue and being bullied for it. Learned how to recognize and stop bullies fast.
By the time I was in college I tested off the charts for introvert on the Myers-Briggs test. I suspect not because I usually don't "need" validation from people to be happy, but because I don't care what they think if they are non-thinking sheep, nuts or too selfish. So, I took the test a second time and cheated. Pegged myself in the dead middle of the introvert/extrovert categories. That's how I learned the majority of people the test takers knew need validation from and connections to other people to be happy. Our society is rigged to produce a lot of fearful herd animals. By genetics? Nurturing and education from birth? Likely a combination.
I realized by 2003 I was willing if some nut unleashed a bioweapon with a 99.999% kill rate I'd still go out and help anyone I could to try to help myself and everyone else to survive it. I'd never cower in fear. I'd seek out hard data and press ahead. I'll never forget the look of confusion and even pity as if I was an idiot from a federal employee at a US military pandemic exercise who was flabbergasted I'd be willing to volunteer to go for real into a scenario "hot zone" for a bioweapon with a 30% kill rate where the exercise had a "safe & effective" vaccine to be administered and container cargos of ICU beds being set up at a convention center.
When the WHO-declared "pandemic" hit I watched the hard data, saw under 1% kill rates reported for people with mostly one or more co-morbidities and said to myself even if this was the Medieval Black Death kill rates of 30% or more I will not worry for one millisecond. It's just a nasty cold! Get a grip people!
Now for almost 4 years I work daily to stop rolling my eyes at the duped and those wallowing in fear/virtue signaling/etc. I have been tempted a few times to give the death-to-the-unjabbed cult the wolf-look-of-death. They will usually take a step backwards if I give them a full blast look. More often I just given them my best full warm smile and give a silent RIP prayer for them.
I grieved for a few days after my entire local family disowned me for refusing to be jabbed and wave a CDC compliance card whenever asked. Grieved because the odds are they will die too young and many will be sterilized. Grieved because no more "automatic" family holiday gatherings for me with people I knew for over 50 years. But slowly, I'm finding family living in other states and friends who are unjabbed or at least quietly regret being jabbed.
Being willing not to follow the herd means deciding never to live in fear. And, alienation by the sheep doing lethal things. Like being offered to play a game of Russian Roulette with loaded guns. A hard pass. No regrets.
W.R.
Re: What do you do?
Date: 2023-10-18 06:18 pm (UTC)Re: What do you do?
Date: 2023-10-18 09:45 am (UTC)Oooh! I love this image. Thank you.
Yes, don't live where fear is what is getting "mongered".
Re: What do you do?
Date: 2023-10-18 07:51 am (UTC)Instead, I recommend taking on an activity that demands your time and effort in the real world, something involving great responsibility and mental presence.
To anyone reading this: fear is the mind killer. If you feel a lot of fear, please go break out of it, you‘re no good for anyone if fear guides your decisions.
Re: What do you do?
Date: 2023-10-19 01:26 am (UTC)Cannot second this advice strongly enough. Fear is paralyzing; breaking through the paralysis with effortful, meaningful labour is what focuses and builds up courage. Any trauma counsellor will tell you something similar about getting through a terrifying experience without losing your mind.
In the past year I took a job at a childcare centre, caring for wee ones under the age of five. Great responsibility and mental presence, indeed! It has had a wondrous effect on pushing aside my own cares and building up my capacity to be calm in a crisis. (Having someone cry and wail into your face several times a day is not a crisis, but it feels like one, and it is marvellously good for strengthening the inner posture of equanimity!)
Dylan
Re: What do you do?
Date: 2023-10-18 03:18 pm (UTC)Re: What do you do?
Date: 2023-10-18 06:50 pm (UTC)What are you afraid of? Figure out why your response is fear rather than "What can I do-" or "How can I be" to make this survivable".
Is it fear or worry? - they ARE different.
Fear, if not worked with IS overwhelming (it's the response to being in mortal danger, no?). Worry can be conceived of as an abuse of imagination, to which the antidote might be letting your imagination find workarounds and ways-out, or using it spur you toward the light of of better possibilities - at the very least (even if everything goes kablooey), toward the innate-but-forgotten wholeness of your own soul.
Re: What do you do?
Date: 2023-10-18 07:35 pm (UTC)Re: What do you do?
Date: 2023-10-19 02:50 am (UTC)I also don't pay much mind to all the scientists and doctors (whom I listened to about covid) now opining about Israel and Hamas and Gaza. Why should I? I'm sure my plumber has opinions about all that, too, and he's a pretty smart guy. I'm sort of joking, but not really.
It also helps to remember that people were panicking about The End of the World back in the Middle Ages. And hey, I guess if Genghis Khan showed up on your doorstep, it was the end of your world.
Nom du jour: Carnelian Exiguous Sillyputtoid
Re: What do you do?
Date: 2023-10-19 02:39 pm (UTC)That's just wrong.
The only sane conversations I am having these days are on the Internet, on forums like this or on other alternate social media that I frequent. Without that I would be completely isolated.
The face to face communities I used to belong to are all totally in the Covid mania. My old singing group held its convention outside, and required a negative covid test the day of the sing to get in.
My local occult/New Age community is pretty much all hard left politically, and caught up in the mainstream hysterias - not a good place to go if you have the wrong thoughts about covid or gender or race or politics.
My daughter is a nurse, a big vaxx/drug advocate, and was one of the first to get shots for herself and her daughters, and one of the last to keep wearing a mask.
I have no face-to-face support to talk sanely on subjects like covid.
---
Okay I'm done ranting now... having said all that, I think there is a half-truth to the No Internet idea.
There is some media I avoid completely, including ALL TV and ALL mainstream news sites.
I avoid watching videos of any fear-porn topics, especially on current news events - or, any video I do watch is with the soundtrack turned off. I also limit watching graphic pictures.
I try to get my news and data from largely text sites, from sources I trust, where I have a bit of time to read and reflect on what I see.
---
And - for me - I need a place to stand OUTSIDE OF day-to-day reality, and in a larger context than the short-term myopia of current news - and even of just this one life.
Reading Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Epictetus and the other Stoics helps. So does Plato and the late Platonists.
Sometimes I need the Bhagavad-Gita or the Upanishads, a much, much broader frame of reference to consider this one lifetime.
Praying the Psalms helps sometimes, and sometimes it just makes me angry.
Wordless Prayer helps sometimes, as does chanting and meditation, sometimes.
It also helps a lot to think calmly about death, including my own - I'm 71 and the clock is ticking loudly.
Do I still sometimes wake up at 3 am filled with fear and panic? Yes - and when I do, sometimes the best I can do is to just be there in my fear and panic, let myself feel it.
Re: What do you do?
Date: 2023-10-19 04:38 pm (UTC)Re: What do you do?
Date: 2023-10-20 12:32 am (UTC)Also, our host is a fountain of practical advice on how to stop drifting in the currents of other people's thoughts and start sailing your own ship.
If you haven't already, pick up a copy of Learning Ritual Magic, or whichever of JMG's books appeals to you, and follow the instructions. Search this forum for how to do affirmations. That should get you started.