“To feel the love of people whom we love is a fire that feeds our life.”
~ Pablo Neruda
By Catherine Austin Fitts
I spoke to a colleague last week. We had not spoken for a year or more. Each time I speak with him we grow apart.
I remember when I first met him. He was full of light and laughter. He was a gifted, talented man. He was a caring, generous man.
He felt compelled to provide alternatives to the falsehoods that abound around us. So he gave of his time and talents. Over time, I saw him drained by what he saw going on around him and his efforts to do something about it. He carried the burden well.
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The last few times I have spoken with him, he is not the man I knew. He no longer lives in a higher mind. Now there is cynicism. Time is stretched; corners are cut.
The slow burn and debasement is wearing us down. The media is teaching human denigration at every turn. Many people who are appalled at the corruption have become cynical. The behavior of the alternative media these days can be as unproductive and misleading as the corporate media.
Being against something that is wrong does not relieve us of the responsibility to strive to be excellent; to create and provide that which is life-giving; to care for the land, for ourselves and for each other.
The moment that I realized what is happening to my colleague, I realized that it is happening to me, it is happening to people around me.
What can I do to return and stay in a higher mind?
I confess, this is one of the reasons that I live in the country. I can close the door and listen to hours of the great composers and read all day and all night. I can converse with cows, horses and trees but rarely see another person unless I seek them out.
There is something about avoiding places full of people who are frenetic or fearful that helps me remain coherent. Where I live there are few seeking social prestige or economic advantage, there being so little available for miles around. My neighbors and I enjoy our lives, tucked away in a corner of the world.
If we lose our virtues and we fall into a lower mind, then what will happen to our love?
Love is what must be nourished and preserved at all costs, even on days when someone you once loved leaves your life.
This is a test to see if I can leave a reply:
I love the honesty of this post. I think it is easy to fall to our lower selves over time. The dark keeps battering us. By keeping our connections with our teachings and our important friends and communities we can help ourselves from falling into the abyss of projection and negativity. I use the spirit of Solari to keep me informed and yet I can stay out of the anger and sadness that can follow when I read only the problems in the world. So keep up these posts and the heartfelt honesty. They really help.
And sometimes we can move beyond our old friends by raising our consciousness and love. Some of my old friends just would not move into love. They too need my love but sometimes I have needed to just move on.
Thanks again for this post.
Kita:
That is one of my favorite Cohen lyrics – There are many Cohen lyrics that do a marvelous job of explaining our circumstances.
One of my friends had a system of studying and extolling one Virtue a week. When I read your post, it reminded me of it and I e-mailed her for the name of it.
Some of us on the Solari team start off each weekday morning with a prayer. That helps as do sermons at the churches I attend and CDs I listen to in the car.
I have been reading the Pistis Sophia and will be attending a workshop in Italy on it this fall. I have not finished, but it has helped the most of all.
My intuition for me – not for everyone – has always been that the pathway was to walk straight into the heart of darkness seeing it squarely for what it is.
Back to my what my pastor said long ago – “If we can face it, God can fix it.”
The pea soup of denial is what seems to bog me down the most.
I really appreciate this discussion. We are trying to invent a way of understanding this – and options to move forward. I appreciate the help,
Catherine
Cybele:
Your words resonate profoundly with me. I agree. I struggle with out to stay “net energy plus” when those who are being drained want to drain those around them. The more we can learn to maintain and ethical obligation to give and receive energy – despite our environment and circumstances, the more we can gather energy for practical action.
This is why teaching people to adopt a victim mentality is so effective for control. It commits a person into a mode where they can not receive or give energy. They are committed to draining and being drained.
One of my favorite quotes is from TD Jakes who said “My elevator only goes to the first floor. If you want to go to the basement, you have to get off.”
I admire what you do very much. I don’t think I could be a social worker. The advantage of business, finance and investment, is you have math to guide the balance. I know you have time and money budgets too – but there is a heavy component that depends on emotional discernment,
Catherine
I completely empathize with the difficulties of being out in public sometimes. Sometimes the fear and despair and the frenetic race to stay one step ahead of things to stay asleep are unbearable to witness. I spend much of my time in my own company for other reasons but I consider being able to be out of that energy a blessing.
Thank you for speaking up about your experience of these things. I’ve lost friends under similar circumstances – watching them go from shining lights to being bent and then largely crushed and thus taken off the playing field is almost too painful to think about. These are the people we need the most. It’s good to find people and places that will extend a hand in support, such as here on your blog with your unflinchingly honest observations. Funny how it’s become passe to express such things in public nowadays. I’m with Joseph Farrell and I’ll raise the ante here: extoll at least one Virtue before breakfast every day and see what happens!
It takes vigilance and a commitment to being present and keeping your heart open to navigate on a daily basis. It’s certainly not easy, or even possible some of the time. But a good goal all the same.
I recently found this bit of poetry by Leonard Cohen very comforting to my heart in these times:
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in
As a social worker I find that I have to trust people’s fates. God set them on this path with a set of lessons. Sometimes I want to save them from their lessons. Sometimes it is horrifying to see people’s health, wealth, minds and happiness stolen from them. I have remind myself just because I saw things earlier does not mean they are ready to see it. Sometimes people only wake up when they have enough pain. As a society it is getting more painful and it is waking people up. Four years ago my senior home health patients believed in their country and government. Now even the most patriotic assumes they are being lied to.
In social work we say a dysfunctional system (like an alcoholic family) will continue in a dysfunctional pattern until their is a breakdown. Then their is an opportunity for breakthrough. I think we are commonplace and closer to various forms of breakdown. Some will not make. I have to trust their fate. Others will turn away and seek new answers.
When I talk to caregivers, I say that they tend to give until they are scraping the bottom of the barrel. Only then will they ‘re evaluate what they are doing. We are supposed to give from our overflow. Look at the things that give you energy, that fill you. Never let all those things drop off your priority list as “unimportant” or you won’t make it as a giver.
All you can do this plant seeds and love people in the moment. Then go home and love yourself and receive love from people who get you.
All the more reason for this Solari community, and those like it spiritually — Whitley Strieber’s, Joseph Farrell’s, George Ann Hughes’s, Jon Rappaport’s. Thank God for the Internet. Can’t wait till you have a Solari lunch in Chicago so I can meet others locally. Hang in there, Catherine.
Ah, yes, I should have added Whitley to the list! Thanks!
Slow burn has taken a lot out of us collectively, Catherine. You are one of the shining lights in the blogosphere.
Try to hang in there…we need you !
🙂
Great post, Catherine!
🙂
gosh Catherine, that sound so depressed. You’re working too hard girl. I have noticed with some alternative media people, Mike Ruppert and PCR that they are cynical. But if there is Christ, then it can be overcome I.
To be positive not always focused on the negative info…. I must say, that that’s why I spend time on Saker’s. He’s pretty positive.
And I think the quote out of the Apocalypse helps, “Only the power of endurance, of those who are devoted to the Spirit, will stand the test.”
Love Ann