If we mind our mind, if we pay attention to what goes into it and what comes out of it, the way it works and processes information, we can up-level this into a “meta-position” as we call it in Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP) to see beyond the horizontal plane. This is a position “above and beyond” our usual perception. It gives us freedom, an elevation through imagination, to “see our seeing”, to peer into what informs our perception, to mind our mind.

From this view, watching our own mental/emotional apparatus, we gain some objectivity that is liberating. We can examine what we are told, for instance, by media, politicians and others who we frequently hold as experts and have the purview to question their verity. Is what they say true? Does it make sense? Is it all self-serving or is it for the greater good?

Minding the mind offers us an opportunity to watch ‘the mind in action’. How does it work? How is it influenced by external and internal sources? What is the quality, tenor and texture of the influence?

Bearing witness to one’s own sensory perception and mental awareness allows one a series of choices not otherwise available. It is a process of awakening from a slumber to another level of conscious reality. It is gaining the 30,000 ft. view on a situation, on reality, in a world where misinformation and disinformation are rampant and purposely propagated for personal power and economic motives.

On one hand, through “minding one’s mind” and creating a meta-position, one can free oneself from the Orwellian propaganda. Yet there is another level of potential available, of disabusing oneself of common illusions and going beyond “Maya”.

In fact, most wisdom traditions offer the possibility of full-out self-realization beginning with this process of self-observation and bearing witness to oneself and one’s perceptual apparatus.

All the great wisdom traditions discuss this in their own respective way yet are present in all of them. In so many ways, life is so simple, beautiful, and radiant and offers an array of choices. Yet society and media seem so often to close them down. There is an unofficial, tacit version of reality that has a cash register at the end of it, somehow monetizing virtually all human transactions, a tally that restricts the true expression of human consciousness and delight, the appreciation of love, art, Nature and each other.

Seeing one’s seeing opens that right back up again.

Media matters – reality has been Photoshopped

Media has become very powerful in lots of ways in the 21st century. From the careful manipulation of visuals, of content, it “photo-shops reality”. Commercial media frames the conversations within a highly specified, narrow range, thereby defining the issue and its potential perspective all within the framework to satisfy those from whom it financially benefits. This is entertainment, not news media.

One just has to look at which pundits are selected as experts on a given topic, be it political, economic, social, military or medical. The bias is obvious and the absence of opposing, or even differing views is too. The minds behind the media act as though the viewing public doesn’t notice! They live inside their own bubble, doing their economic master’s bidding. For any real news or information that is less biased, we are obliged to turn off cable TV, any TV for that matter, and turn to what is called online, alternative media.

It's also important to note what is especially newsworthy that is never too rarely mentioned.

An example is the agenda of the World Economic Forum. This private group of billionaires who hold no official office, are doing what they can to manipulate politicians to see to it that our ownership of our homes, cars and everything, is given up so that the WEF will own everything there is to own and we will ‘be happy”. Per their agenda, We the People will be beholden to them for everything. Preposterous you say? Of course, so do I. It’s so bizarre that it’s hard to even speak this aloud. Will people listen to this madness or, as we have good reason to suppose, will laugh at the absurdity and challenge any effort that seeks to bring such an absurdity to fruition.

This group of billionaires, who are now recruiting followers around the world, have had this bizarrely posted on their website for the past few years in plain view. These are confused people seeking to control others to protect and grow their wealth.

They use high-level propaganda to give the appearance of “doing good” for all--it’s subtle. This is exactly where “minding one’s mind” comes in so handy, in identifying and fathoming the manipulation of our minds and emotions. It’s for good alright, you betcha! Their good!

Of course, any sane person wouldn’t pay heed to such absurdity. The only problem is that the WEF’s coercive tactics are subtle as said and gaining at least some favor with politicians across the planet because of their powerful purse strings. And by the way, they have a chip in mind for everyone as well. They don’t realize that We the People may have a chip in mind for them and it’s not chocolate!

It is one with the program whose essence says: “You have no legal authority. Go sailing on your yachts and leave us alone gentlemen! Live and let live, now scram!”

This kind of maniacal effort to control is nothing new. The main new twist is the sophistication of the technology, specifically to control people’s minds.

What’s new in the news? Is it news?

In news, wouldn’t you want to know what’s happening in the world and some inkling of why? The news is whitewashed and heavily laundered, like money coming to European and U.S. banks from oligarchs all over the world.

The answer to these challenges lies largely in a shift of consciousness among the few and among the many, who will recognize the true pathology operating behind the scenes. The shift, the meta-position, will give purview to identifying the abnormality of war, the sickness involved in profiteering from it, the sickness behind seeking to control others and of the demonic ways of so much that happens in daily life when people are out of their integrity.

The shift always allows for a deeper, unifying field uniting all sentient beings and speaks to the interconnectedness of all in the web of life.

The tides, I suggest, are turning. People’s willingness to abide by politicians’ greed and insanity is diminishing—more ordinary people are seeing that the Emperor has no clothes and it is not a pretty sight!

The meta-position empowers one to see, from an elevated purview, much, much more of what’s really going on that is affecting all of our lives now and in the future unless we expand our consciousness with the intent to neutralize the perpetuation of this pathology and take actions to free ourselves from nothing short of The Matrix.

Political propaganda propagated everywhere

We are now being told of President Biden’s quality administration and track record including the newly passed Inflation Reduction Act. But what isn’t told is about the billions of dollars in subsidies given to the richest corporations in the country, big oil, as a feature of the legislation. Billions of our hard-earned tax dollars to go to Exxon one of the largest corporations in the world that pays almost no tax itself.

What isn’t cited is that Biden and Secretary of State Blinken refuse to discuss peace in Ukraine, Yemen or anywhere else, wasting our precious energy, money and time, while ignoring the hunger on our own streets and homelessness increasing by the week all over America. The wealth gap and the lack of heart in so much of what is going on is astounding. All the while appearing as the good guys on the world stage. Is that possible? Can they know what they know and still do such a good job of acting?

How do we know that the Biden Administration refuses to discuss peace? Because we don’t have a peace agreement. There is no peace. The U.S. keeps sending more money and weapons to Ukraine as though that is some kind of answer to the problem. This of course worsens the problem. Well, what is the problem? Perhaps that one country wants to control the world’s natural resources and will do most anything to do so.

As the richest, most militarily powerful country in the world, if our leaders want peace, they will make peace. It is not so complicated though politicians would have you think otherwise. They don’t want peace because war is much more profitable. It gives politicians a sense of peace that they have a purpose. This is how sad things have become in our world. That’s the only peace we see.

The question of establishing peace becomes complicated when there are other motives at play such as world domination, politically or economically. Then maneuvering through the maze of geopolitics becomes paramount—there is always a “what if” scenario at play that justifies massive expenditures.

Sane, cooperative world politics and jeopardizing what everyone most deeply wants in their hearts, as the song by renowned jazz musician Pharoah Sanders says: “peace throughout the land”, is polarized based on a few core assumptions:

More and bigger is better

There is no basis for this assumption. People who are too wealthy are often toppled over by the fear of losing their wealth. They are often consumed by the time it takes to invest what they have. Managing it is a full-time job, as is “managing the managers”.

Many wealthy people are obsessed with growing it at any expense because there’s always the chance that they will run out, lose it or what they hope is their social position. But Nature doesn’t show us that more is better. Less actually makes us nimbler and more adaptive. If more is available, it needs to be used for the benefit of others so that wealth is distributed among the many. Wealth is most often built by taking money away from others, such as low wages. Now there’s a chance to re-invent Capitalism so that it is more egalitarian.

The well-loved book Small is Beautiful teaches us that moderation works and local governance are productive and cooperative. One of the first lessons parents teach their children is to “share and share alike”. I’ve never heard a parent tell a child: “Whatever you have hoard it! Keep everything to yourself and multiply it like loaves, even if it means at everyone else’s expense”. If we ever heard such a communication from a parent to a child, we would say that that parent is sick and is unfit to be a parent.

There are limited resources

We have to fight for them and go for world domination to control them. If Mother Nature is recognized as our original Mother, she provides an abundance of food, water and shelter most everywhere. There is no dearth. One needs to be creative and “resourceful” to identify food, water and shelter at times, yet the basics are all around us.

There are many traditions that recognize that Nature wastes nothing and that that is a man-made concept. Even our excretions, part of Nature’s cycle, provide nourishment to our bodies and to our soil. In Nature, nothing is wasted. Only uncreative humans have waste because they are not using their natural intelligence. Waste is a concept, not a reality. What we perceive as waste is potential energy.

Others are out to get you; get them first!

On the contrary, the new understanding of our biological survival as a species is not the “survival of the fittest” but more like “survival of the loving”. The name of social scientist David Sloan Wilson’s book, Atlas Hugged, gives an indication that it wasn’t from killing and dominating or oppressing others through a perverse expression of capitalism run amok, but from laughing, loving, hugging, socializing, and through the release of oxytocin, building tribe, clan and community that we survived during our species’ earlier years.

If we lived by the Biblical phrase “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth”, as Tevya in Fiddler on the Roof famously said, “We’d have a world of eye-less, toothless people.”

Competition, not cooperation, wins the day

It’s actually the opposite. Today, neuroscience, combined with archaeology, shows us that humans have survived, not through the idea of “survival of the fittest” but “survival of the kindest”. Humans in hunter-gatherer communities and afterward in agrarian ones, lived by cooperation, building community, and the release of oxytocin because of shared warmth, affection and love.

Americans are in a double bind. We want a President and a Congress to pass laws and promote policy that will clean up pollution and carbon chaos but to vote for them is to also vote for those who are perpetuating war everywhere in the world which is generating pollution and carbon chaos. And the same people who allow billions in tax subsidies to go to the wealthiest of corporations, fossil fuel.

They are wasting our precious, economic resources for their own pathological thirst for power. To vote for any of them is to vote for self-righteous warmongers (with an occasional exception). What is the solution?

Money has to be removed from campaigns and direct voting, Participatory Democracy, needs to be promoted, stepped up and elevated.

At this point, I suggest, that we are beyond a Representative Democracy—it doesn’t work because the representatives only represent those who give them the largest amounts of money, and thus they do not represent the People despite their vow and oath of office to do so.

For years, I have been promoting the idea that every citizen budget 30-60 minutes a day to study, learn and then “vote from home” just as people today “work from home”, and weigh in on the important legislative reforms of the day which we ourselves have formulated side by side of the politicians.

For instance, the majority of the country is not in favor of the Supreme Court’s decision about abortion. Polls show us that the majority of people want women, everyone, to have the right to choose what they do with their bodies and sovereignty over what is theirs, not the government.

Another instance is the Supreme Court decision of Citizens v. United. This bizarre law views corporations as people. This allows corporate entities to make unlimited donations to political campaign coffers. When was the last time you saw corporations kissing? They are not people!

But a corporation, which technically is a legal agreement between individuals and a State, expressed typically as a company doing business, could never be confused with a living, breathing human being.

The Supreme Court’s definition, equating a person to a corporation, has nothing to do with life on Earth. Yet, we are obliged to live by this fiction. It is among the most onerous to the true Democratic Republic because it means that People don’t rule but “money rules”.

These kinds of rulings are not supportive of Democracy or peace but of autocracy and war. Only turmoil can ensue and that is exactly what we have today in spades.

What is true

  • Nature is abundant: There is food, shelter and water for everyone if these are used wisely and water is recycled.

  • Less is more: We need so little to survive and even to thrive. Most of what we buy is extra, even extraneous to actual survival.

  • Small is beautiful: We can live happily in relatively small houses, happily drive small cars and easily eat smaller meals.

If we can ‘mind the mind’, that is, step out of our usual mental state and create a meta-position above and beyond our usual state, we can catch ourselves habitually tending toward consumption and greed. We can re-engineer ourselves to be better, more balanced and loving human beings.

Neuro-psychology has provided us with study after study that demonstrates the way we as a species have survived is through cooperation, kindness and oxytocin being released along with serotonin and endorphins. These are released when people are enjoying life, enjoying Nature, sport, play, games and each other. From this communal activity, a natural form of governance emerges, of sharing food, water, shelter and song. This is not “Kumbaya”. This is rooted in historical and archeological evidence.

We can do better. We can move toward a real Democracy if we want to if we get money out of the campaign and election process. We can move toward more manageable, smaller centers of local governance and community if we choose to. We are moving toward cleaning up the messes we’ve made across the planet in every domain. It happens if we make it happen.

The more we mind our minds and assume objective meta-positions, the more this becomes realistic and manifest. Hope and love-in-action drive us forward toward these goals.