A man jumped from the 10th story and is falling to the ground. A woman at the 4th floor sees him from her window and asks, "Hey, how's it going?" The man replies "So far, so good."
So much of this isn’t going to be pretty.
A recent update from my little community on the east coast. This account is the result of a book club, held last week.
On the heels of many recent revelations - that should poke big holes in Officialdom’s Narratives - I was a wee bit hopeful that at our most recent meeting I’d see some progress.
How are they doing? Those who drank in the kool-aid narrative with the enthusiasm of a thirsty desert-wanderer who happens upon a water-source. Are they realizing the water was a mirage and they are still dying of thirst?
Since news had broken through to even legacy media watchers, I was tentatively hopeful. How does a true believer respond to the recent blows?
In my little neighborhood it’s seems a combination of more wine, more projection, and less self-awareness.
Deep sigh.
As I listened to the exchanges (concentrating on keeping my jaw from a permanent drop) I realized a few things: memories have to get shorter to pull off this kind of self-deception; an ability to suspend common sense must exponentially increase and self-respect must plummet (along with IQ) through the floor.
Oh. We’re still here, I thought.
Our group is now reading the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, which, if you’re not familiar, is an historic-fiction novel inspired by “real” events. (I know the notion we have a handle on actual history is also up-in-the-air.) It takes place in 1945-46, at the end of WWII in England. It’s been remarkable to read (real-life inspired) accounts of those who lived through the occupation of the Channel Islands that happened approximately eighty years ago.
I get the same feeling reading these accounts that I got watching Vera Sharav’s documentary, Never Again. Which is that we have an extraordinary ability to block out even recent events and act ‘as if’ these kinds of things won’t happen to us. Eighty years ago is nothing.
The book was suggested by someone in the group who doesn’t connect the story with what we are living through today. So many ironies. Its revelations are tucked away nicely, somewhere in her mind as ‘historical’. Kept there, it provides a comfy distance. If there are a mere few dots that need connecting for her to see how the forces behind the war, and its propaganda techniques and gaslighting never ended - but rather went on steroids - these are dots she will not connect. Pass me the bottle, will you?
(Oh! That’s maybe a good name for my book group: The Coventry Literary and Pass the Bottle Society. I’ll suggest at our next gathering.)
I’d written in an earlier post about a persistent feeling throughout my life, that things hadn’t really gotten started. There was a clear sense of waiting for something though that something was amorphous.
Recently, in retrospect, I’d realized this feeling was gone - likely at the start of 2020 though I couldn’t pinpoint a date. I assume this sense of waiting is over because “it” has started. What we’ve living through can be seen as both a continuation of a long history of a perception-managed-manufactured-reality and also as a culmination of that long history. The “all or nothing” stage that was activated with the COVID PSYOP.
Of course I had no idea what I was waiting for. My point in bringing it up again is that there was some part of me that knew something. However, even with that ambiguous sense, I still have days where I struggle, in coming to terms with everything unfolding.
What will it be like for those caught fully unawares?
We understand denial as a survival mechanism; a wall goes up that says: No further. Who’s to say when someone else is ready to tear down that invisible wall?
We are all adjusting to the upheaval of illusions being shed and the correspondent identities attached to them. In that kind of turbulence, checking-out and denying are likely needed. Denial has its place; it can save your life in one context but it also has its limits because it can kill you off in the next. (As my wise, Aunt Elise once told me.)
And we know too, there are plenty who are aware of much but simply will not allow in the intentional or nefarious part. They won’t, they can’t do it.
When I hear them pooh-pooh the idea of a globally coordinated plan, I used to feel, primarily, frustration. Now I tend to smile. Just wait, I think, in about another five minutes that conspiracy will be proven true too.
Still within this insane backdrop - I remind myself of this often - we are all here for these times. Including my neighbors, who I like, by the way.
We Are All Here For These Times.
We’re here for the Greatest Show* ever and I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else, (most days) but the price of admission depends on many factors. If you’re still supporting the provenly incorrect lies of your wanna-be controllers, in the face of the clear danger it presents to your very survival, you will be paying a high price indeed.
Regarding my little bookclub, yes, it is a bit disappointing at this juncture to listen to them as they hold onto a dead-zone version of reality. But instead of calling them clueless or idiots (I’ve done plenty of that) I find I really feel for them. Because as it all unwinds, they have an increasingly steep learning curve and will be going through a corresponding crises of identity as well. Yikes.
What will it take? (Maybe a good financial crash will do it?)
With the ratcheting up of pressure, what does that do to humans? The short answer is: It can break them, or it can transform them.
Not everyone is going to make it through. For those of us who do, we will find ourselves in a great transformation - individually and collectively. (Already underway.) This is an extraordinary opportunity to become stronger, and clearer versions of ourselves. And by extension, create a better version of the world.
What is a good strategy for moving forward?
There are the obvious things we can do: acknowledge what you’re grateful for; spend time in nature; have fun; listen to good music; build relationships, speak up, and do the best you can with what you’ve got to prepare for difficulties. While all of these are important, listing them feels a bit lame - by now we know.
But there is something deeper we can do. It’s simple, but not always easy.
It requires taking pockets of time to genuinely tune out of the reality-show and tune in to the silence inside. It’s always present. It never leaves; we do. With our focus externally directed - for compelling reasons - we can easily overlook this immense reservoir of silence and even, peace.
We don’t have to ‘find’ it - it’s just there. We don’t have to light candles or meditate. We’re already provided everything we need.
It restores us. It refuels us. It’s the Source of our very life which we can never be disconnected from, in truth. It soothes and holds those more superficial aspects that are understandably feeling the pressure and looking for relief.
We can rest in it.
The answer is not out-there. It can’t be. Out there is all change and flux and now, all collapse and chaos. It’s not to be ignored, but it’s also not to be relied on and doesn’t have the answers.
Does it seem too good to be true that we have been provided everything we need to move through these times? Right inside us? An always replenished Source which fortifies, regenerates and recalculates our path?
It’s true. (I feel no need to convince anyone of anything, my experience in this space renders any intellectualizing of it, moot.) I credit it with having toned down my burning-impatience with others into a mostly tolerable temperature, and sometimes even, into a fully neutral okay-ness.
The more time we spend in there, the easier it goes out there. The more we fortify with this inner sustaining force, the better we show up in the world.
We don’t know how things will unfold as this version of reality falls apart. I don’t know what those in my neighborhood will do. (Is there enough wine?) But, if I’m still in the neighborhood, I hope to be helpful.
A new reality-fabric is being weaved in real-time, simultaneous to the one being shredded. We all will have something to say about how that looks.
I hope we can weave one that threads us closer to one another. And I hope too, it’s big enough to cover us all and makes the world a little warmer.
Thanks for reading.
Buy me a coffee. 😊 https://ko-fi.com/kathleen87247
*as referred to by Jacqueline Hobbs of oraclegirl.org and whose work, in part, inspired this essay.
Thank you for this! I follow so many substacks for various takes on all that has happened in the past 3 years. Your posts always hit home! I've gone through so many phases: disbelief, anger, trying to convince family/friends, resignation, loss, crying, laughing, acceptance, activism, and finally, just smiling at it all. And then I read your latest post and smile again at how I'm not the only one feeling all these things, and usually around the same time! It's uncanny. I was just telling my daughter that I'm going inwards. Raising my vibes. Loving everyone. It's peaceful and very powerful. Thank you again for your uplifting messages, your humour, your insights.. it helps so much to know there are kindred spirits out there!
Normally I would say it would take starvation to wake people up, but many in the gulags were still singing the praises of the Party while their backs were against the wall. Naomi Wolf recently opined on the Jewish idea of golems. I'm....starting to notice this...
Kathleen, I am in awe of your patience with these people. I cannot do it any more. When I saw building 7 fall was my "moment." It was a long 20 years waiting for everyone to catch up. It's less lonely now.