Consept

@No Self Hey, thanks for taking the time to read and for replying in such depth, very much appreciated. I resonate with a lot of what you say, so great to get the conversation going. Ill have to look into that, surely must exist as its prevalent with most people. Yeah you might be right here, i tend to have a bias toward spirituality but in the context of the piece it could just be framed as genuine open-mindedness rather than going the full spiritual route. Having said that all all attraction to ideologies could be said to be because of a spiritual deficit or a misunderstanding of spirituality, the result of which is buying into an ideology wholesale, but either way the topic could be more concise. Essentially im trying to go as meta as i can with anything i write about but it gets difficult as it gives you such a wide scope that you an end up writing a book trying to deconstruct everything. Yes this is an excellent commentary on the flaws of the right and left, this could be a fruitful topic in of itself, as you dont get many articles that criticise and show the limits of both sides. Both are potentially dangerous if they are not grounded in some kind of non-biased (as possible) understanding. Yes ultimately which side whos on doesnt matter, what needs to be worked out is what is the best thing for the planet and for us as humans, it would be great if civil, non-partisan discussions could take place that involve various experts in each relevant field coming to conclusions on what we should do. Problem is the public still have tribal tendencies, in which they may get bored of that type of politics, they need entertainment, sense of belonging, purpose etc, if politics was how i laid out the current average person may not be interested in it unfortunately. Thanks for your input as well, very true, it is about how we learn through life, the issue is communicating this to the average person, or maybe the way is just to lead by example

Hey guys, so ive decided to build up a habit of writing, most likely will be around topics like spirituality, society, just different things. Usually i quite enjoy it even if its not for anything in particular, im trying to work on my attachment to outcome as well, many times when i was writing the piece below i was thinking about what other might think about it, so stuff to work on other than the actual writing. Anyway opinions welcome both on the content and the way it was written - Whats wrong with being woke? For a few years now there have been opposing sides engaging on the battlefields of twitter, youtube, newspaper sites comments sections and pretty much any place you can leave a comment and get a reply. This so called culture war has on one side the woke, social justice warrior far left and on the other the anti-woke which can include anything left leaning to centrist to far right. The war seems to be about what should be defined as mainstream culture, the woke might say people should be free to express themselves without any discrimination, failure to do this could suppress some peoples contribution of perspective and new ideas, the anti-woke might say people should be free to express themselves regardless of who is offended, failure to do this could suppress some peoples contribution of perspective and new ideas. Since both sides are arguing for and against this term its important to know what exactly ‘woke’ means. Ill save you the full etymology, but the term woke initially came from the African-American community to highlight those that were aware of the social and racial justice issues going on in the 1940s. The saying more specifically was ‘stay woke’ as in, be aware of how we’re being treated and raise awareness to others. In a spiritual context you might say someone is awake if they are aware of the illusion of ego, so essentially someone who is not run by their mind, the implication being that if you are run by your mind, you are asleep or unconscious, i am aware putting about 5000 years of spiritual searching into a sentence, but i will cover this topic in more death in another piece. Woke tends to imply a spiritual context, when i started hearing the term more and more a few years ago, i thought this was what people were talking about, what i came to learn is that its more a catch all for left wing politics. Specifically referring to things under the umbrella of social justice and socially liberal causes such as LGBT rights, third wave feminism, black lives matter and so on. Of course this differs with the spiritual idea of being awake, as being woke is being aware of some kind of content, whereas being spiritually awake is to be aware of illusion and so it is a negation. This idea of being aware of something that others aren’t is something that has been with humans, probably since they could be aware of something someone else was not aware of. There is a thing within all of us where we search for certainty but also to be right in comparison with most others. The trope of ‘i once was blind but now i see’ is the common denominator of all ideology, religion, lifestyles, its the pseudo hero’s journey of ignorance to enlightenment. ‘At one point i didn’t believe in God, now my eyes are open and i know God is real’ or At one point i believed in God, now my eyes are open and i know he’s not real’. This journey is prevalent in many films and tv shows, The Matrix is a great example in which office drone Neo, through the help of rebels, discovers that the world he lives in is a simulation and thus breaks out and realises there are no limits. This story gave birth to the term ‘The Red Pill’ of which Neo is given the option to take to reveal this illusion. The term ‘The Red Pill’ or indeed other colours of pills, has been co-opted to mean ones acceptance of a particular ideology as the dominant ‘truth’. As you can see there is a clear distinction between the spiritual meaning of awakening of realising all is illusion and the ideological meaning of accepting a particular ‘truth’ or more accurately a perspective, the main difference is content and belief. Another way to frame it would be a spiritual perspective would encompass all perspectives and be aware of delusion and other mental tricks, an ideology rejects all other beliefs except one. What is clear though, is that we all search for truth and we all seek to be awake, the mistake is that we believe a particular concept will mean that we’re awake. Whats funny is that no one seems to classify themselves as asleep, if someone suddenly becomes woke, they will assert that previously they were asleep and now they know what’s going on, if they then think wokeness has gone too far and pull back they would say, previously they just didn’t get the whole picture, now they do. This is pretty much the case for most people, question it yourself, what did you once believe that now you think is stupid and have you now got the whole picture? The point is that the picture is always the picture, our perception of either a small part of it or the entirety of it is what changes. It is a constant journey to see the whole thing, what limits this is being stuck on one section of the picture and fighting others who say there is more to it than that, however those saying there’s more could also be stuck on another part of the picture. Survival, both individual and tribal also plays its part in this, if you notice most people who protest or fight for justice for a specific issue are people affected by that specific issue. It seems obvious that this would be the case, but again its all to do with perspective, if you see yourself just as what you’ve defined yourself as then of course you won’t consider others causes, especially if it is seemingly in opposition with your cause. The feminist movement and the mens rights movement are often in direct conflict, this is because its often seen in a very binary way, either women are exaggerating or men are trying to distract from female issues. The truth is that there are issues on both sides, the dismissal of either sides plight just builds contempt and a stubborn need to win. Dropping all binary positions and seeing whole perspectives and incorporating systems thinking is not where we’re at as a society, we’re not really even close to that. It maybe something to consider teaching in schools but I’m sure there will be many parents that object to their child being taught that the ideology that their parents have taught them is probably not true, just look at creationism still being taught as undeniably true in some schools. So what can be done now? Ultimately it comes down to each individuals ability to widen their perspective and to not hold fixed positions. As i mentioned earlier we all seem to think we’re at the absolute pinnacle of knowledge, we need to realise we’re not and take a student outlook of constant learning. Specifically learn about the positions that oppose yours, what truth can you find within them? Most of the time we look at opposing views with our hearts beating just in case there is something that makes sense, in our heads we dismiss or belittle the opposing side to make ourselves cope with what might be truth and hang on to the perspective that’s given us certainty. Let go of fixed positions, true awakening and getting out of the matrix is the understanding that these positions are illusion, being enslaved in the matrix is thinking you have the right position that you need to defend or that there is a final boss position that you need to get to.

What ways do you speak of? Without the vaccine and even with some measures in place quite a lot of people have died, what do you think everyone has got wrong? Respect to your mum, but are there any specific studies you can point to that say this is dangerous?

Getting my mum to understand that she actually has to take some action, throwing it out to the universe and sitting on facebook wont get her the house shes been trying to attract

Its not been bad as im on infleximab atm so ive only had one flare up in the last 3 years or so, before that it was pretty bad. Yeah i get you, i will ask the docs before getting and do my own research as to whether it could affect my condition, obviously if it could i wont get it. In theory in the UK, im considered a vulnerable person so as long as it doesnt have some negative side effects i should really get it as im highly likely to contract covid if i come in contact with someone with it. If i get sick ive got a line to the department at the hospital and ill go in and get some treatment if need be. It really can be a horrible disease but i think theyve got decent meds atm. I fully understand being cautious if its fully active, look into whether it could have side effects for you or if anyone with a similar condition has had a trial. The other thing to be aware of is that if it is active it may make it easier for you to contract covid or flu, i get flu really easily. So it could actually be a good idea, providing it doesnt affect your condition, to get it just to protect yourself.

was thinking the same!

Paul Hedderman, i think hes one of the best non-duality teachers around, but does basically no marketing or promotion -

This is the key part of what you said, yes to some extent it is faith in that you are trusting experts in virology and disease and medicine to tell you what the best thing is in this instance. Also yes they may not be right in all aspects, they may not understand holistically how to solve illnesses, as in they may not be aware of how diet and stress can affect someone. However vaccines have a long history, not all good of course, but for the most part theyve potentially saved millions of lives both from death and also from debilitating illnesses, this is well documented. So this process of developing vaccines has historically done a lot of good, with very minimal but some bad happening. Overall its a net positive, especially when you consider something like 500,000 people worldwide yearly were either paralysed or died from polio and now its next to zero (im aware its not just the vaccine that caused this, but modern medicine as a whole). So if it comes to trusting what professional scientists and medical people who have studied for years to understand vaccines and how to improve on them, and know all the ins and outs of the negatives and positives and who are willing to do thorough testing, backed up by an organisation which in theory does not let ineffective or dangerous vaccines through, backed up by a history which shows quite clearly the positive effect that has happened due to vaccines, or trusting my aunt who posts memes about how dangerous vaccines are on facebook that she got from other facebook people, none of whom have read a science book in their life, then i would probably make an educated guess and go with the professionals. Imagine you were stranded on an island and you had a survival expert and a conspiracy theorist who had no survival experience but was always undermining the expert, who would you listen for your best chance of survival? I have ulcerative colitis which is quite a serious auto immune disease and i still feel that way. Selfish doesnt have to be taken as an insult its more of an observation, as in if i care more about my condition and my survival over others then yeah the technical definition is that its selfish, if i put others first over my own survival then that would be selfless, as im not acting from the 'self'. There maybe a good reason to be selfish but it still is what it is, its definitely not selfless. Realistically we all have moments of being selfish and selfless, its not cut and dry. Most people will end up taking the vaccine because they cant fly or go to certain events without one, which of course is also a selfish intention, but it will ultimately help others which is more of a side effect for the person with this intention.

I dont mean selfishness as a judgement, what im saying is that you or whoever are putting your self-preservation, fear, idea of freedom ahead of others. The research that is usually done in this state is to find something wrong with the vaccine in this case, what the person is looking for is justification for these fears, so that when questioned on it they can point to something that is usually irrelevant or misunderstood and say 'look its not my fears there is danger here'. This is why you get conspiracy theories because usually there isnt enough evidence or anything definite that proves their fears, therefore some exaggerations, conscious or unconscious, have to stretched to to uphold the fearful beliefs. Having said that i do i agree that people shouldnt just take it blindly and should get their head around what it is and maybe the history of vaccines, most people wont do this but in theory its important. They should also go into it not trying to prove right their fearful assumptions and just try and learn. Ideally youd want this taught in schools from a relatively young age so kids dont grow to be adults and only start learning about vaccines in this fear state

Really and truly if we're talking cold hard facts, the vaccine is very unlikely to be dangerous, if you look at all the trials that have been done, you do research, talk or listen to experts who have worked on the vaccines, it would be very hard to make an assertion that this is dangerous. The claim that its been rushed is not really valid as with previous vaccines most of the time to develop is just red tape and bureaucracy. This isnt to gaslight anyone with fears about it, but you really have to accept this is a fear born of ignorance on the subject. I get why there is distrust in the government but if we take all the history out of it and just look at is this vaccine going to be a net negative or positive youd have to say it will be a positive. Everyone that has been against measures like lockdown and masks, ultimately just want to be able to do what they want to do, thats fine but dont dress up selfishness as anything more than that.

Was gonna post this, literally no evidence presented, youd think if there was any evidence they would have shown it ages ago. Thing is his supporters are gonna go along and hang on every word said here, hes just taking a shit on american democracy

Surely it would just be a matter of information, as in all that could be predicted if information about everything in the world could be put into some kind of algorithm. Individual example would be taking one person and maybe looking at their brain chemistry, their upbringing, personality tests and evaluations, their past, whatever else. If you put all this together and have some high level algorithm, im pretty sure youd be able to predict a lot of what they do

OK heres the thing, what everyone seems to be doing is waking everyone else up, so regarding US politics, Trumpists are saying 'wake up dems are evil', dems are saying 'wake up trumps evil' and Dore seems to be saying 'wake up theyre both evil'. The implication is that their viewpoint is the 'right' one and everyone else is wrong. What this does is block them from having a wider perspective and looking at whats wrong within their current viewpoint. If you think of what a viewpoint is, its just a narrative of how you think the world is, if youre tied to it cognitively and emotionally, anything that puts that viewpoint into question will shake you and you may become defensive. Going within and working on yourself will let you see there are now view points there are just wider and wider perspectives, sort of like instead of standing too close to a painting and only seeing a little bit of it you can take steps back and try and see the whole thing. If everyone did this and cleared out their own personal bias' and self interest and need to be right we'll all, pretty much be looking at the same picture. Divisiveness and disagreement comes from these bias'. In terms of letting the world burn, there is only so much you can do. If you take it on an individual basis, if you had a friend that was a drug addict and hes life was a mess and he really didnt want to get better, you would have to accept that mentally hes just not ready, it maybe the case that he needs his life to get worse so that in a moment of clarity he makes a change, for your part you just need to be ready to help and available when he is willing to make that change. I feel its the same with 'waking people up', clear out your own bias' and work on yourself and when others are ready or when the country is ready you will be there.

I predict Trump will lose as more people voted for Biden, but i agree it is quite a challenge to prove more people didnt vote for Biden lol. But and im 100% serious, how much are you willing to bet that Trump will not be president on the 21st of Jan?

Everyday i think i cant be surprised by trump and everyday he surprises me. The claim is that Pfizer and pharma in general are against him and the announcement of the vaccine was delayed until after the election to affect votes To even think this is one thing but to say this as president of america and announce it a press conference, what is going on here???

Just for context there's more aluminium and mercury in a can of tuna than a vaccine, there's also more in breast milk and formula milk. Also the Mercury in tuna is the type that stays in your body whereas the vaccine one doesn't. Furthermore a vaccine you'd probably only take once in your life or at most once a year in the case of a flu jab, some people eat tuna or other fish daily or weekly and obviously babies have milk everyday.

I've never really got him either, at first I thought he was a spiritual guy who was pointing out blind spots in the spiritual community through comedy. But the thing is I never saw any videos without the comedy schtick so it was never clear what exactly he was about. Then with all this pandemic, conspiracy, freedom, trump shit, he seemed to land on the conspiracy side of the wall. I'm not sure if he's just going with his audience or whatever. Came accross this interview where he's not in character with Brian Rose who is basically a con man, talking about free speech, I think this gives a better insight into JP

@Kalki Avatar Just so im clear on what youre saying, your view is that there shouldnt be a lockdown and also anyone should be able to opt out of the vaccine. This still doesnt give a clear plan on what should be done going forward. We know deaths are increasing and will increase further without any measures, there have been 60k plus excess deaths in the UK and thats with all these measures in place. Also a major problem with covid is that a high number of people can have serious symptoms, they may not die but they will need hospital care, this has a knock on effect for others who have conditions and can not get timely treatment, basically it puts significant pressure on the nhs. As far as i understand your position, you are suggesting living normally and taking no action, this is not a solution and will definitely cause deaths and many other negative consequences. Your vaccine solution of some people take it some dont is also not really viable as there needs to be something around a 90% take up rate for the population to achieve immunity and eventually kill the virus. If the virus is going around say the 40% that dont want to take it, it will always be in circulation. So again what is your actual solution, im not convinced that letting it run rampant is a viable solution and i doubt if you were in power yourself you would be able to justify the huge loss of life that has and will occur without any kind of strategy. There have been worse virus' there affect was worse because medical advancements have occurred. This is specifically deadly because its not immediately deadly, so people can have no symptoms and spread it around. If it was ebola its too deadly which is why it didnt travel. Ive also mentioned that ive used excess deaths so regardless of all causes theres been a high level of extra deaths. Covid has a low death rate compared to things like heart disease yes, but hospitals are prepared and have a rough idea of how many will come in with heart disease, its also not contagious and will not get worse month to month.

This is the nature of most businesses in our current culture, you can see it as bad but really its just the current paradigm. The reality is most people would more likely respond to hard science and business than if the language was flowery and caring, it is what it is. The fact that we are in this paradigm has led to market competition which is why the vaccine has been developed so quickly. Also they have to look at it from a business point of view because vaccines are not a big money maker for pharma companies, that is why the government subsidises them when someone gets ill, because business wise its not worth it, the pay outs theyd have to make would mean they cant continue to make vaccines. In fact most companies wanted to stop making vaccines because it wasnt worth it, governments had to step in and cover them otherwise they wouldve just stopped. Its also important that these companies do make profits so that they can continue to develop vaccines and medicines, yes they probably take the piss and pay themselves crazy bonuses, but at the core the company at least can not lose money otherwise people will die. There is a lot of manipulation and medicine that doesnt need to be sold etc, there a lots of problems with pharma. So the pharma companies as they are, are just reflective of the society we live in, as we develop hopefully we can use less orange language, but just because its that know doesnt necessarily make it bad. Also again what would be the solution, assuming people are both against lockdowns and vaccines, what do we do to get out of this?

People definitely dont realise the impact this will have, I always used to wonder how someone like hitler could get into power and i think we are seeing how right before our eyes. I dont think its a stretch to group him with hitler or other dictators btw, i have no doubt that trump would be cool with a civil war or even splitting up the country

There was the Tea Party movement which launched during Obamas term - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_Party_movement#Public_opinion It was basically republicans who wanted more libertarian policies and were opposed to Obama, about 28% polled said they were part of the movement, so not really near Trumps numbers but still a good chunk of people. Obama said movements like this painted him as a far left socialist and because of that the pendulum swung too far back which is why people like Sarah Palin and then Trump came through. I think what Trump has done is add unashamed, populist language to this underlying movement and empowered poor people to engage with it, even though a lot of the time theyre actually voting against their best interests. So basically there was a relatively little, manageable fire simmering and Trump put rocket fuel on it.

I understand there should obviously be a concern for anything you put in your body and therefore there should be unbiased research that goes into it, BUT, heres my question - Most people who are against a vaccine are also against a lockdown or even masks and social distancing (generalising but in my anecdotal experience), so in this case what is the actual solution? Many have died already, towards a million in fact, and thats with all these measures in place. An argument i hear a lot is, x amount of people die from heart disease etc', thats true but why would you be ok with so many extra people dying? In the UK weve had nearly 70,000 excess deaths, which is deaths this year above the average, thats not nothing, thats real people that have actually died, imagine if no measures were put in place, how many more wouldve died. A vaccine is one solution, if its true that the effectiveness is 95% that means only 50k people die instead of 1 million. But lets say we dont go down that road, what is your solution to curb the amount of deaths that have and will continue to happen for the foreseeable future, balancing that with keeping the economy going and people living their lives, what would you do or suggest? (anyone whos against the vaccine, feel free to answer)

OK so i take it if the doctor said you have a life threatening illness in which you will die within the next week unless you take a pill you would refuse? Where do you draw the line, what about safety measures, like seatbelts in cars, which are modern safety tech, should those not be worn as theyre also fear based safety measures? What youre talking about is prevention which is important however to build up an immune system that can fight off a novel disease could take years if its even possible. So prevention is not a cure, for example you wouldnt say to a hiv patient if they have a healthy diet and exercise theyll be cured, it might aid the recovery but there proven drugs and treatment they undergo that has given most a normal life span, would you disregard these treatments?

Wouldnt any modern medicine be fear orientated? Should those with HIV just let it be and stop resisting?