The first event of profound impact upon me in my awakening process was the near-nightly recurrence of a quite memorable and vivid dream. In this dream, I am walking down a busy city street in an American metropolitan area. I get the sense that there is a lot of bustle, but I never get an impression of faces. As I head down the street, I make my way into a sports bar. The setting changes slightly from dream-to-dream, but while the scenery changes, the overarching message and the perceived sequence of events does not.

In each occurrence I get the distinct impression that I am in the midst of a crowd of people who, while conversational and alive, are decidedly in a hypnotic trance. This worries me. As my concern grows I scan the bar and find, to my astonishment, that the bartender is not in the same hypnotic state as my fellow patrons. I make my way to the bar with a look of consternation and bewilderment on my face. The bartender sees me, perceives that I am not in the trance like all of the others, and gives me a knowing glance, a slight nod and a wink.

“What is going on here?” I ask.

“The same. That same as it ever was. The same it may ever be” he responds.

“What does this mean? I mean, why is it that I am not like the rest?”

“Because you have awoken.”

“Can the others awaken as well?”

“Not likely, but not impossible” he retorts, with a perceptible tinge of weariness.

“Can’t we just wake them up?”

“They’re not meant to BE awakened. That must occur within themselves, on their own terms, and at a time of their own choosing. If ever” he replies.

“But what about those whom have awakened? Are there any more of us?”

“There are few, but … their numbers are growing.”

“Do you know why some of us have awakened, while many remain asleep or in this trance?” I ask.

“You are awakening so that you may fight for the light” he replies, and then winks mischievously, turns away, and disappears behind the bar.

It is at this point in the dream that I typical wake up, eyes wide open, with a strong sensation that something has shaken me — not so much a physical sensation of being jostled, but more of a spine-tingling chill and a sensation or thought/realization that something important has just happened to me or has just been imparted to me.

Now, it is strange enough to simply have experienced this recurring dream, but the course of events that began to happen to me next in my waking hours served to elevate the strangeness, or, at a minimum, served to reinforce the message I had been receiving in the dream.

I had a fairly substantial commute time for my job, which I typically filled with NPR news, or, in small digestible doses, sports talk radio. After experiencing the dream over the course of several consecutive nights, my subconscious mind began to bring the following thought to my waking, conscious mind: “let go of the programming!”

It had become intolerable to listen to even the news on NPR, as I had become increasingly agitated with nearly every “news” story they aired, feeling that something was amiss — as if the story being portrayed was obscuring the underlying truth and replacing it with half-truths and intentional deceptions. In other words, the news story narratives seemed to take on a very one-sided, superficial, and even deliberately misleading aspect, as if the reporters and producers were obscuring what seemed to me to be the obvious truth behind a story.

This misdirection and superficial reporting began to lead to instances in which I would literally begin to say things like “what a crock!” while listening to a given story, and promptly turning off the radio for the remainder of my commute. A few weeks of “radio silent” commuting proceeded thereafter. Gradually, I became aware of what had previously been missing from my commuting hours: proactively deciding upon the content to tune into, rather than subjecting myself to the memes and programming from the controlled media.

My initial solution to this was to checkout audiobooks from the public library on CDs, selecting a series of titles revolving around the great philosophical questions and the respected and relevant philosophers who have contributed to the expansion of (mainly) Western thought and philosophical ideals. Next up was a series of titles centering on quantum physics, dark matter, astronomy, and the mysteries of modern science.

As I progressed down the path of absorbing such great ideas from the leading recognized authorities and great minds, I noticed that I was becoming restless — even agitated — at the pace the content was being presented to me in this medium. It was at this point that I discovered an app on my tablet computer which offered the capability of speeding up the playback of the content. A god send! For, it appeared that the “information rate” at which I was capable of fully absorbing the content had a much higher time multiple than regular 1x playback speed. Soon, I was listening to audiobooks at 3x and not missing a beat with regards to the c0ntent — even whilst operating my car.

Around about this time, I began to notice the speed at which I could read a book’s pages had markedly increased. As my bookshelf and reading list began to thin out, I deliberately sought out titles on an array of topics which I had previously not even known about. Such authors as Paul LaViolette, Graham Hancock, Robert Bauval, Michael Cremo, Michael Tellinger, Erich von Däniken, and David Icke, to name but a few. Fascinating stuff!!! Here existed a world quite outside of the mainstream thoughtforms, completely challenging some of the most universally (and unquestioningly) accepted ideas held dear by the mass of humanity! I could not get enough — and by about the third month into this new literary journey I was absorbing written works at a pace of roughly 200-300 pages per hour — quite a bump up from the 40-60 pages an hour I was accustomed to in the past.

Okay, so what was going on? I mean, I was now listening to audio content at 3x and reading books at an alarmingly rapid rate.

Right about at this point the owner of the company I worked for directed me to Henrik Palmgren’s Red Ice Creations. Suddenly, it was as if a whole new world opened up before me. Many of the thoughts, ideas, and concepts which I had recently begun to sense and discover were coming directly to me in the form of an endless supply of speakers/authors/guests on this great program. Wow! There are others out there feeling, seeing, acting upon, and spreading the word about the exact same stuff I was going through at the time.

What a game-changer this was for me. Running across Red Ice marked a milestone, one in which I became acquainted with the works many, many great researchers and authors. For the next year I spent much of my free time studying a wide range of topics, arming my mind with what can best be termed as “mental self-defense techniques”. I had years upon years of programming and old habits to break, and I could almost taste the sweetness of mental liberation!

Now, I’m not going to say that every alternative voice out there in the public domain is bringing forth truth and logic, but the beauty of this journey has been that I have equipped my own mind with the tools and techniques to properly evaluate incoming information for my own use, or to simply ignore it. Henrik’s valuable technique of permitting a wide variety of viewpoints to be expressed by his show’s guests is highly commendable — as are his skills in drawing out the message each of his guests brings to the table. But, just as a rational and objective person should do, I run all of the incoming information through the trivium process before making a final conclusion as to the veracity of any new information.

After reading hundreds of books and listening to hundreds of hours of audiobooks and podcast interviews, I felt as if I were at crossroads of some sort: what do I do with the knowledge I have gained from the information I have absorbed? What specific actions can I take now?

The answers to these questions shall be the theme of the third and final installment in this initial series of posts.