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Wildcrafting Freedom

Freedom

Freedom is found nowhere but in the now-here.

wilderness

At the heart of human freedom lies the core of our nature, which is not specifically human at all: the spirit of wilderness. But what is wilderness? Is it just one of those endlessly debatable concepts like Love, Truth, God… or Freedom itself?

When I lived in the BC interior, on the edge of the officially designated “Purcell Wilderness Conservancy,” my community wrangled for years over government plans to log on the western side of the mountain range. On its eastern side, pristine values of trail and wildlife were compromised by hunting and horse access. On one all-day hike up 9000’ Mt. Willet, I approached the summit with its stunning view of wild peaks all around… and suddenly was buzzed by a helicopter, twenty feet over my head.

Same story in the remote Kalalau Valley of Kauai, Hawaii, where I hiked in on a rain-muddy trail with my daughter… only to be greeted by periodic sorties of tour helicopters over the stretch of otherwise paradisiacal beach.

After two decades living on the edge of wilderness, I moved to the city of Victoria. But even there, you can stand on the shore along Dallas Road, with the city not even visible beyond the vast Beacon Hill Park at your back. Looking out at the ocean (or part of it) stretching forty kilometers to another country—the snowcapped mountains of Washington’s Olympic Peninsula—you can feel directly in touch with wild nature.

Is wilderness, then, just a conditional lens of circumstance, a given visual frame within a sanctuary of passing time? Is it a state of mind? An aspect of our bodily life, below our consciousness, which yet connects us with all we cannot touch?

responsibility

Being in touch with wilderness, we owe a responsibility to it. It remains part of our family, and we of its family, though we might be far estranged in a digital, commercial, social, industrial, virtual version of reality, perhaps not even aware of our estrangement.

We might own a “parcel” of land, or think we do. But that doesn’t mean we are wedded to the wild. Honestly, we are deluding ourselves in treating land as a commodity, something we possess. Soon enough we will be buried there, somewhere, and it will repossess us. Or our ashes will be scattered, or potted, upon it.

We don’t own the land, in its own right, any more than it owns us, in our own right. It remains free, and so do we. Yet in the relationship is a live connection, a duty of care.

Reconciliation is about land… If we only look at land as property then it is a possession, and if it’s then a possession it is a resource or commodity. We should be looking at it more as having a relationship, because we are all affected by the harm we cause to the land. It means all of us changing how we think about, interact with and consume land. —Carey Newman, Coast Salish artist

empowerment

People in power always punish freedom with death. —Labyrinth of Cinema (film)

Key to our realization and manifestation of freedom is our sense of empowerment. Alienated from our true nature by fear of external, imposed control, we are disempowered, without means to exercise our inherent natural freedom.

Living in human society, of course, demands tradeoffs and compromise, even appropriate restrictions and impediments to pure freedom. It goes with the territory—even living with one other person in a single shelter in the woods. Likewise, in wilderness we are not abstractly free, in a void of concern, but bound to a web of respect for the other living things and for all the elements of nature: predators and pests, rocks and weather, cycles of plant life, the limits and possibilities of textures and tools.

We are empowered not only by the pure impulse of freedom beating within us, but by our knowing grasp of available resources, their gifts and limitations. We are empowered by our choices, and also by the clarity of accounting for consequences. We are empowered by playing freely in the field of common synergy, and by the truth of clear seeing.

Personal Evolution

No one can map your future but you.

All tyranny begins with the desire to coerce others for the greater good.—@Naval, Twitter

Engineers occasionally joke, “If it doesn’t fit, force it.”

The fundamental problem with universalism is that so few things really are widely agreed upon. Universalists exhibit a special kind of hubris, one that smacks of neo-colonialism: the insistence that others must believe as we do, if only we show them the obvious superiority of our thinking. —Iain Davis, “COVID World – Resist!”

owning the wound

If you’ve ever tried to be creative or productive when you’re in a bad mood, you know there’s more work to do… on the inside. Water can’t flow through clogged pipes. Personal evolution depends to a large extent on naming one’s wounds, which is to say, acknowledging and owning them.

It can be a lifetime process (or more), to release the bounds of the past—buried or fresh, karma or trauma, slights or vendettas. But with or without a self-help guru, it is within your power to affirm the process by which your pain happened, and to enlist in a courageous act, out of isolation, the help of others in supportive community. You have within you the freedom to heal that wound and move on to a more free-flowing, natural life. In doing so, you may discover or reengage with the work you can offer to the world—a gift arising perhaps even from that place of hurt within the psyche.

Meanwhile, back on Planet Covid, the larger collective drama plays out, in which the very soul of humanity is wounded to its heart. And that very process of owning and naming is outlawed, prohibited, canceled.

Decades of dumbing down the populace through government run public school indoctrination disguised as education, has produced millions of non-critical thinking barely sentient consumers who have their beliefs fashioned, choices formed, and opinions dictated by manipulative men operating in the shadows.

Those pulling the strings understand the psychological processes, societal relationships, and technology driven social media addictions of the masses. They know how to sell a narrative based upon the emotions, feelings, fears and biases of the masses. With so few capable of critical thinking and seeing through their deceptive manipulation of the story-line, complete control over mainstream and social media gives those pulling the strings tremendous power over the direction of society.

And if they can keep the majority at each other’s throats, distracted by trivialities, minutia, false narratives, and unable to decipher the truth, they can keep us subjugated and constrained while they pilfer and pillage the wealth of the nation. It is a despicably audacious plan but is working to perfection. But, as always with humans, their hubris and myopia have convinced themselves they are infallible and immune to defeat. Their greed and arrogance will ultimately lead to their downfall.

—Jim Quinn, https://www.theburningplatform.com/2021/03/22/who-is-shaking-the-jar/

The silver lining in our mass oppression is the blindness of our oppressors to their own wounded nature. They might scheme and rage at full throttle now, but the black empty heart of their enterprise can only implode in time, like every empire before it.

Under the boot of global fascism, we conscious souls still have the freedom, the responsibility, and the power to call out the civilizational sickness upon us, to diagnose clearly the social cancer. Canadian Doctor Roger Hodkinson nails it thus:

You’ve got to get a grip on this. There is utterly unfounded public hysteria driven by the media and politicians. It’s outrageous. This is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on an unsuspecting public…. It should be thought of as nothing more than a bad flu season. This is not Ebola. It’s not SARS. It’s politics playing medicine and that’s a very dangerous game. There is no action of any kind needed other than what happened last year when we felt unwell. We stayed home, we took chicken noodle soup, we didn’t visit granny and we decided when we would return to work. We didn’t need anyone to tell us.

mapping the future

Facebook company slogan: “Move fast and break things.” (John Durant, The Paleo Manifesto, 87)

The movers and shakers of the World Economic Forum, the UN, the EU, the World Bank, the WHO… they’ve long ago gamed their strategies for global control. Their future for us—all of us, no exceptions allowed—is already mapped out under Agenda 2030, or inscribed on the Georgia Guidestones, or modeled on DARPA supercomputers. So where does that leave our paltry notions of individual freedom and personal evolution?

Reality creation cuts both ways. We have already witnessed, through 2020’s mass masquerade, the all-important role of narrative management by Big Government, Big Media, and Big Tech, in collusion with Big Pharma. And what is narrative? Nothing more than a story, a string of words with meanings reassigned, for desired effect.

The faked story has no weight except in popular belief. That is still our domain as sovereign humans, even under the weight of lifelong indoctrination. A single spark of a true idea can dispel a lifetime of illusion.

Truth is truth, one, alone; it has no sides, no paths; all paths do not lead to truth. There is no path to truth, it must come to you. Truth can come to you only when your mind and heart are simple, clear, and there is love in your heart; not if your heart is filled with the things of the mind. When there is love in your heart, you do not talk about organizing for brotherhood; you do not talk about belief, you do not talk about division or the powers that create division, you need not seek reconciliation. Then you are a simple human being without a label, without a country. This means that you must strip yourself of all those things and allow truth to come into being; and it can only come when the mind is empty, when the mind ceases to create. Then it will come without your invitation. Then it will come as swiftly as the wind and unbeknown. It comes obscurely, not when you are watching, wanting. It is there as sudden as sunlight, as pure as the night; but to receive it, the heart must be full and the mind empty.

—Elva Thompson, Making Contact with Elementals

Attuned to the wild spirit of freedom within, we embark on a journey of self-discovery, revealing doors of creation and transformation—of ourselves, and of the world we once called home. The wild is calling us back now… back to all we might be.

—Zachary Stein

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Nowick Gray writes from Salt Spring Island, BC. His books of genre-bending fiction and creative nonfiction explore the borders of nature and civilization, imagination and reality, choice and manifestation. Connect at NowickGray.com to read more. A regular contributor to The New Agora, Nowick also offers perspectives and resources on African drumming, and helps other writers as a freelance copyeditor at HyperEdits.com. Sign up for the “Wild Writings” email newsletter for updates and free offers.

 

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One Unbounded Ocean of Consciousness

By Dr. Tony Nader
Reviewed by William T. Hathaway

Tony Nader, MD, PhD

In his new book, One Unbounded Ocean of Consciousness, Dr. Tony Nader has attempted something very difficult and achieved it very well. He overcomes the conceptual gap separating matter from mind, science from spirituality, the human from the divine, and takes us beneath these superficial dualities into a fundamental synthesis establishing the wholeness of life. He conveys the unity underlying all diversity, and he deftly and convincingly resolves the apparent contradiction between free will and determinism. Nader writes in a clear, step-by-step manner that makes this knowledge understandable and shows how it can benefit us as individuals.

His chapter on time is so deep and so different from any ideas I’ve previously encountered that I’ll need to read it several times over a long period of time to fully grasp it. But the vision it gives is so inspiring that I’m eager to do that. It’s a glimpse of how a fully enlightened person experiences the world.

Nader brings the ideas of Advaita Vedanta, the philosophy of nonduality, to a new level of breadth and clarity without the abstruse semantic gymnastics that characterize much of the Western writings on the topic. As a neuroscientist, he makes them concrete by showing how they manifest in our nervous system and how we can apply them to enrich our lives. Most importantly, he presents a practical method to experience higher states of consciousness and to eventually live in enlightenment.

The book is a bit slow going at first. I would have preferred more emphasis at the beginning about the benefits of this knowledge, why it is important to us. Also, Nader sometimes slips into long, rambling sentences laden with parenthetical phrases that could have benefited from sharper editing. But those are minor quibbles. On the whole the book is superb.

Chapters are posted on https://www.amazon.com/One-unbounded-ocean-consciousness-questions-ebook/dp/B08Z7C9WHB/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3T78CUHA6AKOJ&dchild=1&keywords=one+unbounded+ocean+of+consciousness&qid=1617970678&s=books&sprefix=one+unb%2Caps%2C261&sr=1-1

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William T. Hathaway’s novel of the climate change, Wellsprings: A Fable of Consciousness, tells of an old woman and a young man healing nature through techniques of higher consciousness. Chapters are posted at https://www.johnhuntpublishing.com/cosmicegg-books/our-books/wellsprings. His peace novel, Summer Snow, is the story of an American warrior falling in love with a Sufi Muslim and learning from her that higher consciousness is more effective than violence. Chapters are posted at http://shattercolors.com/fiction/hathaway_summersnow01.htm.

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Fake Democracy vs. People Power

In this brief survey I will outline first the pitfalls of our taken-for-granted system of massive government, then entertain an alternative approach addressing issues locally.

Part 1. Fake Democracy

Voter Fraud

The most crucial function of a corrupt mass media is to help engineer the outcome of rigged elections. This maintains a veneer of legitimacy for the criminal ruling class. —Martin Geddes

When we think of voter fraud, it’s usually abuses within the system of voting itself: ballot stuffing, hanging chads, software and hardware hacks, enrolling the dead or the undocumented. But the greater fraud is the fraud of voting itself. When the system is run by big money interests, a fundamental flaw in large nation states calling themselves democracies, corruption is the rule; and the operative fraud is the very premise that voting will change anything meaningful in the structure of power, or the entrenchment of the deep state.

Controlled Candidates, Rubber Stamp Law

When all the major candidates are bankrolled by megadonors and lobbied by all-powerful industry shills, their policies will reek of insider influence, regardless of whatever popular campaign bromides are shown by big data to sway the most votes. And besides the temptations of official or unofficial bribery, there are the barbed stings of blackmail, of the Epstein–Maxwell variety. No politician can escape the trap of the honeypot, once snared. And those who follow higher moral dictates are controlled by the ultimate sanction: assassination or, at best, an engineered coup. Meanwhile, in the halls of congresses and parliaments, the machinery of corruption rolls out tailor-made laws and regulations by the corporations, for the corporations.

Rule by Decree: “Emergency Powers”

When checks and balances get gummed up by popular appeals, legal challenges, and demands for accountability, the whole show is put on hold, switched to rule by decree, under all-purpose emergency powers, opaque and untouchable. The missing 2 trillion dollars in the Pentagon budget spring to mind, publically confessed the day before 9/11, and never heard from again. And of course the entire Western world, most notably the so-called liberal democracies, have fallen under the boot of corona lockdown, tasting the totalitarian essence of modern government (under the ever-reliable banner of “public safety”).

A Century of Propaganda

For the populace of this “democracy” theme park, nonstop daily injections of propaganda have finally brought to fruition the technocrats’ wet dream: herd immunity against truth. Since the early twentieth century, the art and science of propaganda has seen exponential growth in research, sophistication, technological gain of function, and scope of implementation. Combined with a parallel consolidation of control over mass media, funding of academia, and infiltration of both institutions by intelligence agencies, the masses (plebes and self-styled elite alike) are groomed from birth to be compliant, even eager, servants of the governing matrix.

False Flags and Red Herrings

To keep the fires of misdirected patriotism alive in the hearts and minds of the citizenry, the powers that be have recourse to that tried and true formula, the false flag. While red herrings are the milder form of corrupted rhetoric, with the false flag the entire narrative landscape is transformed into the illusion most fit to foment fear and loyalty. 9/11 again is the prime example, along with the Covid conspiracy: both successfully engineered to reshape the global reality for desired ends: the War on Terror (AKA conquest of the Middle East), giving way now to The Great Reset and Agenda 2030.

Mind Control Technologies

In the age of digitalisation, mind manipulation and thought control – especially through electromagnetic radio waves – have become ubiquitous reality. Only a conscious turning away from the ideology of digitalisation can save us from degrading into totally monitored robot humans. It is high time to stop this inhumane process and return to divine nature, because otherwise humanity will digitize itself away. —Karl Hecht, The Hidden Danger: Digitalisation and Mind Control. ‘The Prerequisites for Total Dictatorship.

As if complete narrative control (buttressed by censorship) wasn’t enough, the final frontier is found within the human body and mind. Technologies such as nanobots, biotransmitters, and 5G frequencies are now converging to enable both surveillance and direction of emotions, dreams, memories, and thought itself. In the end transhumanism aims to eviscerate the organic human being altogether, to leave Homo sapiens  behind in the dustbin of history.

Planetary Pasteurization

What we are undergoing now is the attempted pasteurization of the planet. At the heart of the supposed science behind the alleged covid pandemic is germ theory. We take it for granted that “germs cause disease,” but this is essentially (to borrow a phrase) a conspiracy theory cooked up in Louis Pasteur’s lab. The competing paradigm was “terrain theory,” which gave more credit to conditions in the body and the health of the immune system. Championed by Pasteur’s rival Antoine Bechamp, terrain theory was quashed in favor of Pasteur’s story.

Rockefeller money followed, sniffing a lucrative investment, and in short order the Western medical establishment was created out of this fiction, the evil empire of germs. Pasteur on his deathbed confessed it was a sham and that Bechamp was correct; but no matter, the wheels were already set in motion on the modern medical juggernaut.

Today Big Pharma is reaping the harvest: vaccination, antibiotics, mood-altering drugs, opioids… and the world economy has been hijacked with a toy gun called Covid-19. Worse, both human beings and our environment have been indelibly branded as unclean, unfit, unhealthy… an existential threat to the survival of the pure: the masked, the distanced, the vaxxed, the compliant, the pasteurized.

For contemporary discussions of germ vs. terrain theory see Bush, Kaufman, Young. The most concise explanation is given in this presentation called Pandemic Truth Warrior 1: “You cannot catch a virus”; because a virus is a solvent, made by the cell to clean up toxins. It’s a symptom of toxicity, not a cause of disease.

No wonder it’s never been possible to create an effective vaccine against the coronavirus (common cold). But what a tricky innovation, that alternative “therapy” now being jabbed wholesale across the globe. Since the body cannot “catch” a virus from the outside, the cells are instructed on how to make them, from the inside. Brilliant! Take that, you virus-deniers!

As a bonus, the geniuses of global control get to complete the trifecta of antidemocratic takeover: 1) psychological engineering, 2) social engineering, and 3) genetic engineering.

In their psychopathic dreams.

 

 

Part 2. Grassroots Local Action

At the forefront of the political problem is the factor of scale. In a nation of forty or four hundred million, it seems inevitable that a national media will require big bucks to operate, and therefore central control comes with the territory—whether corporate, as in the case of the six US conglomerates, or governmental, in the case of the CBC (the Canadian Brainwashing Corporation).

In an era when many cities in the world exceed ten million citizens, the same principle would apply. You might say that Homo urbanus, the urban human, is already in a sense transhuman, stripped of our natural rights and attributes, and endowed, augmented, enhanced (i.e., degraded) with a substitute set of controls and privileges, powers and disabilities, perks and dysfunctions.

So to consider political alternatives, the natural route to follow is back to our grassroots, the local and rural scale, where personal space and identity still have meaning, and collective decisions can still be made face to face (if we still have the courage to insist on such humanity, renouncing current dictatorial prohibitions). Here are a couple of examples of local grassroots action, in action.

Democracy vs. Republic: The Kootenay Diversion

Back in the nineties the megaplanners schemed to dig a canal linking the Kootenay and Columbia Rivers in southeastern BC. The Kootenay Diversion, as it was called, met with widespread disapproval by citizens of the region, upwards of 90 percent in opinion polls. Yet some Nelson city councilors favored the project, no doubt slavering over lush benefits accruing to certain well-placed interests including their own.

I called one such politician to account, citing the popular will and the principle of democracy. In response, he pooh-poohed my notion as naïve: “We don’t have a democracy. It’s a republican form of government. That means it’s the elected representatives who are empowered to make the decisions, not the people in general.” Duly chastised, I reminded him that it was still his duty to respect the will of the people who elected him; and if not, he would surely be booted out of office at the next opportunity. Sure enough, local democracy won out, and the misguided scheme to join the two great rivers was shelved.

Kootenay Forestry: It’s the economy, stupid.

Another conflict in the same era arose over the plan by BC Forestry to spray toxic pesticides in Kootenay watersheds—not only Roundup (proven now as carcinogenic), but 2,4-D, recognized even then as dangerous for the cancers it had caused as the active ingredient of Agent Orange in Vietnam. Head-to-head meetings with the district manager revealed the rationale at work: to maximize profits from logging. Never mind that the logs were mostly shipped raw to Asia—in effect subsidized by the BC government doing its best banana republic imitation. The bottom line was jobs, and spinoffs to the provincial economy. The health of local watersheds, and their logger-or-hippie residents, be damned.

Our only recourse then was direct action. Roadblocks with diaper banners; coordinated campouts on forestry sites; circles of children around spray helicopters to prevent them taking off. This war of the woods was won on the ground where we lived; and the G-men and their evil machines slunk away, in search of easier pickings.

In the bigger picture, that was just one battle, and the war goes on. Governments love to preach “public input” and faith in the representative model. Meanwhile, any legislation favoring sustainable ecosystems is quietly blocked or overridden. Concerned citizens are invited to view “development” plans, or wooed into conference rooms to hear assurances from panels of bureaucrats and hired experts. Nonviolent activists who go further in demanding change are characterized by government and the media as “eco-terrorists.” The public at large is muted, numbed by an oppressive sense of powerlessness.

Adding to the age-old asymmetrical imbalance of power is the complexity of current issues such as pandemics, genetic engineering, and telecommunications.

5G Knocking on Our Door

[Elon] Musk has invented a neuralink the size of a euro coin and is in the process of placing it on the skull with an incision through the scalp. This would create a connection or interface between the brain, this neuralink and a computer or mobile phone. According to Musk, this connection between brain and computer is necessary for mankind to keep pace with artificial intelligence (AI). Electromagnetic radio waves and the installation of the 5G mobile phone standard, even in space, are indispensable for this. —Prof. Karl Hecht, in “The Hidden Danger: Digitalisation and Mind Control. ‘The Prerequisites for Total Dictatorship.”

Two years ago residents where I live (Salt Spring Island, BC) were alerted to plans to upgrade the emergency communications system with a tower that could be used for 5G transmissions. Concerned citizens rose to the challenge by investigating the issue, inviting renowned scientist Dr. Martin Pall to present his findings on the serious potential harms of this novel technology to human and other biological systems. At a public meeting the local council took the concerns seriously, given that their mandate already contained the “Precautionary Principle” of putting public safety first in the face of potential risks.

Now a fresh proposal comes to locate a new telecom tower on the island, again with the capability to include 5G transmission. This new proposal requires public input by April 16, so it is unknown whether public concerns will win the day once more.

The telecommunications industry has been ceaselessly lobbying government at all levels to push 5G, which is not just “faster than 4G.” It is a new, untested technology with a radically different range of frequencies, effects, and applications. Touted to usher in a new age of the Internet of Things, 5G is not the inevitable result of consumer demand. It is being imposed from above to integrate us all into a digital grid of surveillance and “smart cities” (and apparently, “smart rural islands” too). In this looming vision, humans and all other living things become just that—Things—vibrating points in an infinitely expanding, interactive database. (To become better informed about all aspects of the 5G issue, see CALM – A Call to Action to Limit Microcells.)

The challenge in facing every issue, from global to local, is immense: to turn the dinosaur of top-down government on its head.  But the political potential is also immense, and at this late date in political and environmental history, the time has never been more ripe. While local communities deserve local control of resources and policy, local authority needn’t be absolute. It could be weighted in a proportional balance giving input to more distant political interests, at the regional, provincial, national and international levels. But local voices do need to be decisive, for a change. The time has come to hear people say, “My voice matters. The wishes of my community will be respected in the place where I live.”

Bearing Witness

The first and necessary step in a grassroots political movement is awareness. Just as important for a society in denial as it is for an addict in treatment, acknowledgment of the problem is key. From this awakening to reality—in front of our eyes, in our back yards, in our faces, on our streets and in our homes—comes action grounded in that truth.

How we describe the problem, of course, is a matter of interpretation. Not so easy to pin down, when words are chosen for effect. Unconsciously we shape meaning to fit our personal worldview. And unconsciously we absorb the meanings overwriting our reality, imposed by the masters of spin and engineering our synthetic views of the world.

Reality is reliable if we can come to it clear. The problem is overcoming collective bias when it’s been media-monopolized, homogenized, and now thoroughly, seemingly without redemption, Pasteurized.

In this climate of hegemony, the winner takes all.

Dialogue:
A. “You are a danger to our society.”
B. “No, you’re the one who’s a danger to our society.”

Poll:
A: *6 votes (*in dispute)
B: 4 votes

Result:
A. “You are a terrorist, so we’re taking you out.”
B. [fill in the blanks]

The Quakers (Religious Society of Friends) are long known for their exemplary commitment to “bearing witness” to violence and injustice. Not intended as merely a sectarian practice, this principle applies to every person of conscience. It requires courage, first, to witness and acknowledge a problem as it is, in reality. Then conscience of its own accord will move the spirit, and the willing body, to action: to bear witness.

“Action,” in the writer’s vocabulary, means either physical action or speech. Likewise the lexicon of the activist features another notable Quaker maxim, “speaking truth to power.” This personal scale of democracy is not fake but authentic, when a person heeds the undeniable call of conscience.

Historically Christian, Quakers also stress, like Gandhi, the inherent divinity or “light within” their opponents, despite differences on any given issue. But then, even Jesus had his limits. When the moneylenders have taken over the temple, it comes down to the imperative: “Get out!”

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image credits:

(feature): Protest: David Molko, CTV News
Conspiracy: Caitlin Johnstone
Henry: Nowick Gray
Truman: GreenMedInfo
Goebbels: AZ Quotes
Mind Control: https://gizadeathstar.com/mindcontrol/
Gates:  diarioliberdade.org/
Roadmap: DissidentSignPosts.org

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This post also appeared in The New Agora.