REGAINING CONTROL OF YOUR REALITY 6 DEC 2015

This article is calling your attention to a serious problem facing us—that our attention is distracted from what is important, what will free us, and what will help us be spiritual giants. The World is set up to enslave us, and we are not even aware of it! In previous articles, I discussed mind control, slavery, poor choices, reality, the value of silence, & the differences I see in the new generation from past generations….this post builds upon all of those issues.

SILENCE IS GOLDEN. In prison, a no. of inmates told me they had been too busy & distracted in the outside world to examine their lives. They simply bounced from one activity to another. Our society even has a name for it…the rat race. Once prison life freed them from the distractions, they could seek & find God. In one extreme case, an inmate, who unfairly spent 10 yrs. in solitary, discovered the many blessings of silence. Early on, as a young Christian, my spiritual guides had encouraged that one keep a consistent quiet time. Noticing all this while in prison, I deduced that Satan’s biggest weapon is simply distraction.

WHAT IS REAL TO A PERSON…is a function of what his or her consciousness can sense. What determines what we view, hear, & sense?? It is WHAT WE PAY ATTENTION TO! However, our senses and what they pay attention to are manipulated, steered, even controlled more than we realize! Take for instance when we shop. Millions of dollars have been spent on many products to catch our attention by advertising and how those products display themselves…. But now we are simply at the shelf ready to pull what we want from the shelf…the placement of where the product is placed in the store has been designed to manipulate your attention, and certain companies pay extra to stores get their brand of the product placed at your eye level. (I find the cheapest items often have to be searched for at floor level.) So I watch people grab what they want to buy without thinking…many only see what is in front of them…and that has been designed. An extension of what I am getting at…was my thinking that good produce is what one sees in the grocery stores. Boy was I surprised when I joined a food co-op, where produce was bought directly from farmers. The produce was larger and twice as good. I had never imagined that quality could be so good. My thinking had been blinded to reality by the fact that what I had seen (in the stores) had become my reality. But how well have we studied how much our attention is controlled—engineered & manipulated?? As an assignment, I want you to start noticing where ads are placed in front of you…on restaurant placemats, on your email’s side bar, on the sides of vehicles and now even on some of the formerly blank sides of grade school report cards. In this “info age”, how much of the info thrown in front of us is of our own choice? The best advertised Bible studies may not be the best…but they are the ones which will catch our attention. Who can shut out all the noise of the world, to forge their own sensory world?? The World likes to define what grabs your attention…and in this way, it defines what is important to you and how you construct your reality.

NEW HOUSES. I recently looked at newly built expensive houses. One had no functional back yard; in other words the kids were not going to play in the back yard, and you were not going to have a garden. Yet, it was an expensive 2-story house. What we see shapes our reality. I can tell I am in Amish country because their houses have gardens & a small house for the elderly next to the main house. The small house even has a name—“dawdy haus”, which means the “grandfather house”. It is normal in their culture to take care of the elderly. But if we don’t see or experience something, such as gardening, its importance is lost. A garden is reality; and it is a reality that demands our attention, and for us to have some self-control. But the engineered realities of the World can be designed to appeal to the senses—for instance, processed foods w/ sugar & fat–like chocolate cake with sweetened cherries on top vs. something out of the garden. The goodness of God’s creation hardly competes with tailored-made items designed to appeal to the senses.

CRITICAL THINKING. When a person grows up, the child accepts his environment as “that is the way it is”. I did not grow up with my ear glued to a cell phone, my eyes locked on an iPad, and movies being a constant flickering of light. All the World’s enticements are bewitching the new generation, but what authoritative guide will prevent the World’s enticements from catching the attention of young people? Indeed, the fact that many of us are divorced, overweight, and addicted to certain shows, is evidence that the World is catching our attention more than what is best for us. Americans are committed to clean water, but neglect having an environment that is clean from attention thieves to permit us to have our own thinking. (Look at how often a beautiful body is used in an ad to get our attention. What is the connection between a caterpillar bull dozer & a beautiful woman?) The rich pay extra to have their private clubs to have their own space. Want to avoid a temptation? Find something else to place the mind on. Perhaps that is why Satan’s world makes sin so tempting to view? You can’t place your attention on what is best. How many guys think they want to marry that bombshell, who they have never met? Marilyn Monroe, the sexual goddess, was a dysfunctional programmed multiple who was a nightmare to live with…but given a chance, many men would have instantly married her.

SPECIAL ABILITIES. Humans have the ability to think of things that are not prompted by the environment. It is during these times that human thinking expands to higher levels. But this ability is being destroyed by our technological rat race. The person who only responds to the flashing stimuli of his electronic gadgets is missing out on the contemplation of the godly ascetic. Or to say this bluntly, we are being dumbed down by this rat race.

FOOLED BY THE IMAGES. Cartoons, ads, Hollywood movies, we are surrounded by fake images. Debt is a form of slavery. But the World tells you that you are gaining freedom with your credit card… the card’s ad declares “You’re in charge.” And your credit card has “no limits”. People would tell me that West Point’s uniforms took our identity away. I declared that the opposite happened; for the first time, people quit judging others by their clothes, their outward appearance, and got to know each other for what was inside, the real person rather than the superficial. You’ll note that MacArthur, Patton, Montgomery & other generals created special attire to set themselves apart. Our attention is on what we see. This is how disguises work. It is often how magic tricks work. It is how we are so easily bewitched in our American culture. Our minds aren’t trained to go beyond what catches our attention. Who will teach us to quit googling over the catchy images, and to seek what appears to be the bland reality? The image of the diploma is easier to display than really being a competent expert, so we favor a degree rather than competency.

CRAFTSMANSHIP. To be a craftsman usually takes focused attention, something that our controllers have stolen from us. Instead, today we are bombarded with intrusive mental stimuli—well, “intrusive” to those of us who haven’t accepted it as normal. Our attention is garnered, collected and continually harvested by those who seek to manipulate & control us. And our culture tends to unwittingly allow this misappropriation, this pilfering of our attention, without even calling attention to it.