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Spot on, as always. Great reading, thank you.

We can see only that for which we are prepared.

We can interpret what we see only to the extent of our pre-event knowledge, training and experience.

We can act upon what we see and interpret however we want. We have a choice: to follow the mass reaction or to try to understand what is happening. The observation of the masses will provide some insights: the outcomes will be obvious. Here is where we have the opportunity to think whether their outcomes are what we want.

It sounds simple, but in real life it is a huge challenge. We have not been trained, taught or educated to stop for a moment and see what is happening.

The first paragraph of the above text is crucial: our interpretation of the circumstances determines our capacity to respond. We need to have a lot of questions and to ask them persistently - this is the only way to gain meaningful insights. Always, in all situations.

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Thanks, Dan. I appreciate it. 🙂

I agree 110%, especially regarding our need to persistently question in order to gain meaningful insights.

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Oct 31Liked by Mike Stone

I'm glad to see you beginning to address the psychic context - even if you hold it at arm's length as psychological studies show...

Human consciousness - through our known history - has developed and reiterated Separation trauma - as fear or pain of loss set into 'countermeasures' or masking defence-solutions (that frame our learned world) to buy time against a true reckoning.

By projecting conflicts to diversionary displacements, conflicted elements can be dissociated, and the 'scaping of a problem is camouflaged by the new arena as a remedy, or victory that soon becomes the framework for the underlying conflict to persist but in a 'novel set of problems'.

The compounding of unhealed conflict in a person, a family a group or society operates the scapegoating mechanism. This operates as a tension release wherever conscious integration is unable or unwilling to heal. But a persistent unwillingness to heal becomes an active attack on healing and communication, such as to nurture & culture guilted fear in the Others as leverage for manipulative and terrorising intent to possess and control externalised or Othered life and world.

This psycho-pathy goes to the root of 'Separation trauma' - or the inheritance of a mindset of loss of love & power to life perceived as treacherous & terrifying.

The Law of Mind is its Nature; what you give sets the measure of your receipt.

This can be said in many ways, but the important point is present tense.

GIGO applies to 'sow & reap'.

The output 'garbage' (perceived meaning) is feedback to the underlying thoughts that frame the meaning of our experience. Or that frame the Meaning of our true Existence in conflictive contradictions (garbage that delivers us to fear, pain and loss even while premised to 'save us').

Communication is always going on (is the Nature of existence).

Our specific focus in concepts derived from symbols taken out of original context such as to operate shifting lights in which to (not) see is largely operating as blocks and filters to Capital C Communication or indeed Consciousness. Our currently operating identifications are anything but in possession and control - but are premised in limitation and conflictive comparison as a mindset of denial, projection and attack.

Reintegration of our being is the healing or undoing of the 'Separation' belief. A belief that operates BY its defences - regardless the shifting threats or fears of threats and rumours of fearful threats that the defences protect and reiterate as a frame of interpretive response to all potential future unfolding. "Look within" is not a call to think some more, but to open to the moment at hand without presuming to judge, define or make a self. That life moves through us can then register as a directly shared & felt connection of the true qualities of being - but the 'Bridegroom cometh when ye thinketh not' - that is to say absent of manipulative intent, if only for an instant.

Demonisation of the Healing Messengers is the fear of threat of pain and loss that a temporary and conditional sense of control dictates against loss of face, control and life (in its terms).

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Thanks, Binra. 🙂 How the mind affects health is such an interesting and massive topic that I have yet to fully explore. However, from what I have experienced myself as well as the research I have done so fae, it is very clear that the mind is central to our health. We can't neglect mental health if we want to maintain physical health.

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Nov 10Liked by Mike Stone

But, is it "Fear" or "Belief"?

Both Placebo and Nocebo require that the subject believes that they will feel some effect, be it beneficial (e.g. due to belief in the healing skills of a faith healer) or detrimental (e.g. due to a belief that some authority figure being truthful in telling them that they are going suffer a horribly painful death due to infection with a deadly "virus").

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I think what you are commenting is too limited to the range of human consciousness.

Probably other animals like dogs, who have no mind at all or much less of a mind (opinions vary), can also experience both placebo and nocebo effects, even if they don't really have beliefs, or not beliefs in the same sense of humans.

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We have pets - 3 Cats and one Dog. They very clearly have beliefs (and I'm not talking about philosophical beliefs) in the sense that they have episodic memory (animal psychologists may disagree but that's due to the results they obtain from their appallingly ill-designed experiments) - e.g. our Dog can clearly recall walking routes and often expresses a preference for one over another and one of our Cats expresses a morbid fear (e.g. a belief in the likelyhood of being harmed by) of male humans (probably because injuries he suffered from on our first encounter with him were probably inflicted by a man). And since we have little clue about other species verbal and no-verbal communications it seems a bit arrogant to posit that they are incapable of possessing belief systems - Leo Szilard might disagree with you, I do.

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I believe I sometimes come off as arrogant because my natal Mercury is opposite to Pluto, and my Ascendant forms a trine aspect to Mars. And I guess you are like most people: unaware of the subtle humor of natal charts aspects and internet conversations.

Now, to our topic. I think you misunderstand my comment: I haven't said that I think non-human animals lack the capacity to have beliefs. My argument is that the placebo and nocebo effects may extend beyond conscious reasoning and beyond the space of beliefs.

Let me give you another example: imagine a new born baby, uncontaminated by any teaching of epistemology, or any kind of belief or opinion or regret or pleasure reserved for more developed human beings. The baby suffers some kind of disease. A person takes the baby and gives him some kind of "healing" energy, with words or whatever. No chemical is administered, no especial electromagnetic field. Just the intention that the baby will heal. Then the baby heals. The baby had no rational belief that he was ill, and had a remarkable low level of expectation with respect to the adult that holds him and heals him.

Does that count as placebo?

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Aries, but in fact a month late Pisces - there's only one event I'll likely be on time for, the one that afflicts us all.

Maybe I will contine to misconstrue what you say in that it seems (to me) that you are putting the newborn on the same plane of existence as I originally took you to mean for other species. Without any prior knowledge about the mother's state of health and the environmental conditions that may affect the newborn then how could we be certain as to causes??

I took a deep dive into what just doctors seem to think they mean when they attribute the cause of some malaise to some sort of virus (whose original meaning is ancient and not originally assigned to some minute and lifeless collection of atoms). My reading of such left me with a deep suspicion regarding the ideas unerlying germ theory and the current modern meaning of the term virus.

I have never taken the vax/jab so many were convinced to accept as protection from "The Virus" on the basis that it was developed in record time by "The Science" TM (how does a word describing a process "Science" - a verb - transform into "The Science" a noun?) and, in fact I haven't suffered from a cold/flu/chest infection/etc. which used to be regular annual occurrences since early in 2019 (D3 and related supplements to blame? Who knows? Perhaps that super knowledgeable Vietnames guy who, I've been told many times does know).

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Nov 8Liked by Mike Stone

Thank you very much, Mike, for your on-going efforts to share wisdom!

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You are very welcome, ShieldMaiden. 🙂

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Nov 8·edited Nov 8Liked by Mike Stone

Fear is also pumped up all over society.

America is the most propagandized nation.

The DemoCRIPS and RepubliBLOODS pretend to battle each other over stupid shit and platitudes.

https://teachersforchoice.substack.com/p/donald-trump-appoints-big-pharma

The way that this shit ends is when people realize that the hype and hopium is a distraction from the fact that both parties and the military medical industrial complex are full of crap.

That's where my hope lies.

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One effect of embracing collectivist ethics and "common good" appeals is increased vulnerability to herd instincts as described in this essay. We need to encourage individualism as more virtuous and indeed more efficacious in combatting pandemics of fear. Self-reliance vs. a hive existence. Good work Mr. Stone.

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Thank you, BuddhistRothbardian. 🙂

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A most helpful, well-researched, and illuminating article Mike. I have grown in knowledge (and hopefully also wisdom) during the last few years, and now arrive at a position closer to yours and many others questioning the "Virus" lies. And more to learn still...Allow me to share my 2-pennies worth, my own substack in which I choose Faith & Go(o)d Sense over so much Fear and Non-Sense (a.k.a. Lies, Fraud, Deception) out there.

https://rogerarendse.substack.com/p/choose-faith-and-good-sense

And ever mindful that:

☝️🏾☝️🏾The dominant systems are still alive and in place.

NOW is not the time to let euphoric fervour and new falsehoods replace Faith and G(o)od sense‼️

NOW is not the time to let disempowering fear & uncontrollable fury replace Faith and G(o)od sense‼️

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Thank you, Roger. I am very happy that you found the article helpful. 🙂

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The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear – fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable. What he wants above everything else is safety. - H. L. Mencken

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Nov 8·edited Nov 8Liked by Mike Stone

"Tempering fear others transmit to you

There's no way to prevent fear contagion from kicking into gear – it's automatic and unconscious, after all – but you can do something to mitigate it."

Such as understanding that as soon as you hear the phrase "deadly virus", they are completely full of shit and trying to start up another round of bullshit. There is no lion. Just idiots who think there is.

Why is it that pretty much no one took monkey pox or avian flu seriously despite it being shoved down our throats for months?

While most people seem to still believe in viruses, I don't think there can be another covid, without turning up the 5G towers to 11. I think people are mostly over getting vaccines because so many have been harmed. You have to almost literally have your head in the sand to not notice it. And how can anyone but the most willfully ignorant possibly think they worked whatsoever? Consider that the virus tool in the toolshed is almost finished in its usefulness for TPTB and the next one is climate change, I mean geoengineering. I think they're putting viruses away until people forget Covid. (the final tool is the fake alien invasion once the technology is good enough)

Your work is the best on this subject. I send people here who are ready to read it.

Ironically, I'm just getting over one of the worst "colds" I've had in years. Also ironic is that it feels exactly the way I did when I did an iodine supplementation that detoxes fluoride from the body.

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Thank you for the kind words and support, Sixway. 🙂

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