Three months to go until the big 5-0 .. lessons learnt in 2024

My goodness, this life has gone quick. 

The 17 years that I was up north absolutely flew by. 

I don't usually give too much meaning to age numbers, even though I like birthdays. This particular birthday, I'm not sure if I'll truly feel like celebrating. 

Life absolutely broke me this year. 2024 has been a brutal year; so many people have gone through huge challenges. I'm no expert on astrological and energetic matters but there must have been something in the air the last few months.  

At the end of the tunnel there has been good and unexpected things happen for me; also there is the possibility of a new job which could see me move to a place I really love; nothing set in stone yet but I'm feeling optimistic. Sometimes there is a gut feeling about something - I had another job interview but I kind of knew I wouldn't get it. 

The biggest lessons I have taken are: 

Letting life lead or letting my higher self lead - some of you may have read a book called The Surrender Experiment where the 'hippy' author continually surrenders to life's perfection and ends up running a big IT organisation amongst other things. 

That I need to take small steps - for a long time, I have felt like I am far behind in life - being a late developer is hard and not something I would recommend - especially without suitable support when trying to function in a world that is so not catered for such people. But I continued to get nowhere when trying to get from A to Z.

Not everything is for me - It's easy for me to get entangled in a viewpoint or concept that my friends are into and think it should work for me. But some things just don't. Human Design goes way over my head. Books like The Celestine Prophecy and A Course In Miracles don't float my boat at all. Concepts around masculinity - such as Warrior, Magician, Lover, King - I think are good but they do not completely align with my character. 

That I needed to come to terms with my neurodiversity - Autism has always been a bit of a dirty word for me; still is to some degree, as someone who grew up in a time when it was seen in a negative light and when the needs of people like myself were not understood or catered for. In fact, it's more my ADHD tendencies that impact me day to day. But either way, my brain function is different to the majority of people (although the rate things are going, it will eventually be more common to be neurodiverse - not a good thing in my opinion). I agree with my friend who says a lot of it is brain damage - and yes I do believe my brain has been damaged somewhat. 

That I don't have to like everyone. Nuff said. 

That it's ok to have regrets or wish certain things had never happened - One thing I can't do is change the past. It happened. All I can do is rebuild. Whilst it's obviously possible to build good things from tragic situations - Andy's Man Club being one example (the founder lost his brother in law, called Andy, to suicide) - let's just say that a lot of us would change some of our past if we could. Life sometimes does give you more than you can handle, and that's a fact. 

Perhaps most importantly of all, I have learnt that I have to be true to myself. There have been times when I thought I was being really authentic and living a life that was suitable for me. Now I'm not so sure. Some New Age hippy practices, I'm not sure are for me now. It's so easy to get attached to a set of beliefs in order to fit in. Now, I want to build my tribe of people whose outlook really aligns with the outlook I have now. 

Image courtesy of gettythings.com

What is critical thinking?

When the COVID-19 shitshow came into view, many people were completely taken in, believing that there was a deadly virus that even healthy people could spread just by breathing. Whilst I will never be one of the people who says that the virus didn't exist - there was plenty of evidence, at least from my interactions with people, to suggest that there was an unusual virus going round, certainly in late 2019/early 2020 - there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that the severity of the virus was exaggerated by the media, and that all the big name politicians knew this all along. Although it's debatable as to whether the original intention was for the virus to wipe out many more people than it did - I think it possibly was. 

The fear porn was absolutely ramped up by the media. 

But then there was the other side, which I more or less joined forces with. The people who sensed that something wasn't quite right about what we were being told. The people who had researched on topics like the New World Order for years. I had made the decision fairly early on that certain things just didn't add up or make sense. And some of the people in these ranks called people 'sheep' for believing what the media was saying. At the time, critical thinking and 'being awake' was largely associated with seeing through the bigger picture of COVID-19.

Four and a bit years later, some these people who ridiculed the 'normies' are believing that all well known musicians are part of the New World Order, some even believe that male footballers are transgender, there are flat earth evangelists saying that you don't know God if you believe the earth is not flat, and just the other day I saw someone posting an image from the Simpsons and comparing it to an image with David Icke and someone else who I know personally, as evidence that David and my friend are shills. The most crazy thing I ever saw was someone saying that the shape of a football was the symbol of adrenochrome. And the extent to which people believe alternative media such as The Light Paper and other articles is, in my opinion, just another side of the coin to believing everything the mainstream media says. 

None of the above is evidence of critical thinking. There are several rabbit holes which, if one goes down them too deeply, can really mess with people's minds. And then there's black and white thinking - which can apply to religion, New Age spirituality or conspiracies. Thinking that we have knowledge of 'the truth' and that we are always right. That's something I've seen a lot of from the so called 'free thinkers', but - many of them predicted a terrible lockdown in 2022, some probably predicted we'd be living in 15 minute cities by now. 

To admit that we really don't know, on certain topics, is arguably the starting point for critical thinking. It's so easy to latch on to a school of thought or particular beliefs and then adopt these things as your own. It's easier to try and fit in to a crowd rather than march to the beat of your own drum. 

To me, critical thinking is examining the evidence in front of you, being aware that things aren't always as they seen and also accessing your own inner wisdom. 

MOB MENTALITY
This is one thing I particularly dislike and the media certainly encouraged this during lockdown - 'if you don't think what we are telling you, you are a bad person' is the basic premise, I guess - and it got to the point where people were grassing on their neighbours for breaking Covid rules. Such people should be embarrassed by their actions by now, although maybe they genuinely thought they were doing a good thing. The media and news outlets brainwash people to think a certain way and to shame people who behave differently. 
But this can also happen in conspiracy ranks - there were plenty of times that I saw conspiracists shaming others that just wanted to live their life as normal and not be totally drenched in what the New World Order was planning next. 

In summary, I have got to a place where I realise there are some things that I believe, but cannot prove 100%. I still believe that that Covid was planned and was an attempt at a power grab, and probably always will. But I also believe that some of the narratives coming from Conspiracy Land are without any real evidence and beliefs passed on by others. 

Peace. 

Beliefs are not necessarily 'truth'

One of the misused words is the word 'truth'. 

There, I said it. Just about every religious or spiritual path is likely to be referred to as the truth, at one time or another. Not to mention people's beliefs about what is going on the world. 

And it so often happens that people post something that they heard on Facebook without a shred of concrete evidence. Let's take the 'hotels are taking in lots of young, male immigrants' story. I do think there is legitimate reason for concern if this is happening - but I haven't seen this with my own eyes, and I don't believe half of what I hear from conspiracy land these days. So I'm not going to take it as gospel just because lots of people are saying it. 

I want to see concrete evidence. 

Of course, sometimes we can use our intuition. The first time I felt something was amiss with what the media were telling us about Cov!d was a gut feeling. I later saw clear, irrefutable evidence that people gathering together was not causing lots of people to become ill, far from it. At best, it was a case of an illness that was real being grossly overexaggerated, to the point where people who were suffering for other reasons did not matter. My feeling is still that there was more to the whole story than that. Certainly, the push for a vaccine was very sinister. And the government having parties should give some clue that the fear porn being spread by the media was not entirely accurate. 

I do believe that it was a control exercise. But I wouldn't say that this belief is absolute, irrefutable truth. Sometimes the whole story has more tentacles and storylines to it, and it's easy to fit a story around what you believe. 

And whilst we're at it, I certainly don't take any 'vision from God' as being absolute truth, either. 

It's worth doing research on things but there is very little that we truly know. 

One thing that's become very noticeable is that some of the conspiracy theorists can believe some seriously wild stuff and class it as 'truth'. I read of someone saying that Cristiano Ronaldo was born a woman along with other male footballers. I think it's fair to class that sort of thing as nonsense. 

I am starting from a clean state after my breakdown this year. My beliefs have been shaken. Now I'm in the process of working out what is real for me. And that's a good place to start .. 

Image courtesy of Flickr