Something Just Ain't Right: Part 2 of 3
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 somewhere in America. 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. The 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 who 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 typically 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 the realization that something important has just happened to me or been imparted to me.
Now, it is strange enough to simply have experienced this recurring dream. But the course of events that began to unfold 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.
Let go of the programming
I had a substantial commute for my job, which I typically filled with public radio news or, in small digestible doses, sports talk. After experiencing the dream over the course of several consecutive nights, my subconscious mind began to push a single thought up to my waking, conscious mind: "Let go of the programming!"
It had become intolerable to listen even to the news, as I had become increasingly agitated with nearly every 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 narratives seemed to take on a very one-sided, superficial, even deliberately misleading aspect, as if the reporters and producers were papering over what seemed to me the obvious truth behind a story.
This began to lead to instances in which I would literally say "what a crock!" out loud to an empty car, and promptly switch it off for the remainder of the drive. A few weeks of "radio silent" commuting followed. Gradually, I became aware of what had previously been missing from my commuting hours: proactively deciding what to tune into, rather than subjecting myself to the memes and programming of the controlled media.
My initial solution was audiobooks, a series of titles revolving around the great philosophical questions and the thinkers who have contributed to the expansion of (mainly) Western thought. Next up was a run of titles centering on quantum physics, dark matter, astronomy, and the mysteries of modern science.
As I progressed down the path of absorbing these ideas, I noticed that I was becoming restless, even agitated, at the pace the content was being presented to me. It was at this point that I discovered the playback speed setting. A godsend! For it appeared that the "information rate" at which I was capable of fully absorbing the content was a much higher multiple than regular 1x playback. Soon I was listening at 3x and not missing a beat with regards to the content, even whilst operating my car.
Around this time, I began to notice that the speed at which I could read a printed page had markedly increased as well. As my bookshelf and reading list thinned out, I deliberately sought out titles on an array of topics I had previously not even known existed: alternative archaeology, suppressed history, the deeper questions of who we are and where we came from. Fascinating stuff. Here existed a world quite outside 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 of this new literary journey I was absorbing written works at a pace of roughly 200 to 300 pages per hour, quite a bump up from the 40 to 60 pages an hour I was accustomed to.
Okay, so what was going on? I was now listening to audio content at 3x and reading books at an alarmingly rapid rate. I do not offer this as a boast. I offer it as data. Something in the way I processed information had changed, and it changed in lockstep with the dream.
Finding the others
Right about at this point, a colleague, a person I would never have suspected of harboring such interests, quietly pointed me toward the wider world of independent researchers, interviewers, and authors working outside the mainstream. Suddenly, it was as if a whole new world opened up before me. Many of the thoughts, ideas, and concepts I had recently begun to sense and discover on my own were coming directly to me, in an endless supply, from people who had been working these questions for years. Wow! There were others out there feeling, seeing, acting upon, and spreading the word about exactly what I was going through.
What a game-changer this was for me. Over the following year I spent much of my free time studying a wide range of topics, arming my mind with what can best be termed "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 is bringing forth truth and logic. Far from it. 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 discard it. The best of the independent voices share one trait: they permit a wide variety of viewpoints to be expressed, and they draw out each guest's message rather than steering it. I try to hold myself to the same standard. And, just as a rational and objective person should, I run all incoming information through the trivium, grammar, logic, rhetoric; what is being said, does it hold together, why is it being said, before reaching a conclusion as to its veracity.
After reading hundreds of books and listening to hundreds of hours of interviews, I felt as if I were at a crossroads of some sort: what do I do with the knowledge I have gained? 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.
May you find and keep the truth, life, and light.
~ Ron