Chapter 3
Am I My Story?
Deconstructing the Machine
"Do not stare into the eyes of your opponent: he may mesmerize you. Do not fix your gaze on his sword: he may intimidate you. Do not focus on your opponent at all: he may absorb your energy. The essence of training is to bring your opponent completely into your sphere. Then you can stand just where you like."
~ Morihei Ueshiba, Aikido master
Break through the illusion
In order for us to retrieve our essential self, we must first acknowledge, understand, and deprogram the lie we have been living. We must abandon ownership of shame or judgement when facing this lie, as this culturally conditioned lie is a simple fact of life here on ol' Planet Earth. We're all born into a world with pre-established rules and perspectives that were long ago set into motion. Those who are ready for their upgrade are tasked with discovering the true nature of this realm, and thus, themselves. Unwinding our cultural conditioning is but step one.
Step two, depending on how culturally entrenched a person may be, is much more challenging, for it involves acknowledging the fact that humans have been psychologically manipulated for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. That psychological manipulation is what's put the Cult in Culture. It's what creates the binary thinking of "Black or White", "Good or Evil." If we are to become sovereign-minded humans, we must examine the illusions that have been woven as the fabric of our reality. Only then can we begin to reprogram some of our hardware.
First, let's take a look at the hard drive.
Sometimes you gotta lose it to find it
If you've ever met someone who is experiencing a mid-life crisis, you may recognize the similarities they share with someone having a nervous breakdown. A mid-life crisis occurs after an individual has recognized that they've squandered their dreams and opportunities in the pursuit of fulfilling a collective expectation. These people usually go through an experience that has shaken them to their core - although it may not necessarily be 'an experience' per se. It might just be the final straw on top of the culmination of years and years of soul repression - living a dead-end, static existence for decades upon decades, until one day they're sitting at their job and they come to the conclusion that they've had just about enough. Guns come out, people die, explosions ensue - in old parlance it's known as "going postal." People in mid-life crisis mode freak out because they finally realize that they've been scammed. They've seen the lie for what it is and it can't be undone. The trigger could be as simple as them realizing that their brand new Liberal Arts degree is actually quite useless in the real world. Or perhaps they've finally come to terms that taxation is in fact theft. Or maybe they've realized that the Bible isn't God's word-for-word advice column. Whatever it is, these individuals have had a realization of some kind that now forces them to rearrange their entire belief system. And that is gonna take extensive work.
This is why belief systems are such delicate things, and why we work so hard to protect them.
Consider for a moment how many outdated belief systems our society is currently functioning under - like a debt-based economy, the necessity of war, … or… history, for example.
Our beliefs become the dominant programs that move us through life. They dictate what decisions we make, what dreams we pursue, who we take advice from, and who we believe we are. When these beliefs are challenged, they can cause us to constrict, defend our position, or shout, "blasphemy!" Cognitive dissonance creeps in. Imagine you're an atheist and the ghost of Charles Darwin comes up to you one day during your lunch break and pulls out an article from Scientific America and says, "Lookee here. This says you're an eternal, all-powerful being. Ghosts are real and death is but a dream." Your culturally conditioned mind would undoubtedly make you drop your sandwich.
It's big news, for sure. If it is true that we are infinite and all-powerful, then that means we'd have to examine our previous decisions and behaviors and ask ourselves why we've been limiting our potential for so long. Next, we'd have to ask ourselves if we're even capable of adapting and evolving in tandem with this new information, and if so, how?
The same could go the other way, of course. "Yo, I just found out - your life is meaningless! Existentialism is where it's at. You're just a cog in a big wheel of empty space and infinite entropy. Math and science say so! Here's the proof. No, that's not a math pun, it's actual proof!"
Machine Man's great epiphany
“Self-observation brings man to the realization of the necessity of self-change. And in observing himself a man notices that self-observation itself brings about certain changes in his inner processes. He begins to understand that self-observation is an instrument of self-change, a means of awakening.”
~ George Gurdjieff
George Gurdjieff, a Russian philosopher, mystic, and spiritual teacher, saw man's existence somewhere in-between the above two examples. Gurdjieff indeed saw awesome potential for individual humans on a spiritual level, although he ultimately proclaimed that "men are not men", just machines reacting blindly to outside forces, devoid of conscience and will. Gurdjieff believed that man as we know him is not a completed being; that nature develops him only up to a certain point and then leaves him, either to develop further, by his own efforts and devices, or to live and die such as he was born, or to degenerate and lose capacity for development. In short, humans are like machines - our actions are determined by our mechanistic, unconscious behavior. It is only until we begin to question our behavior do we start to witness what Gurdjieff describes as the "terror of the situation."
"Blessed is he who hath a soul,
Blessed is he who hath none,
Woe and sorrow to him who hath it in conception.”
~ Gurdjieff
Gurdjieff is saying that if you’re not serious about going all the way with this spiritual development stuff, don’t start. Idiots who never bother to awaken their own essence and begin the process of soul development can carry on living a merry blissful life of ignorance. The saint, on the other hand, who achieves the status of a fully awakened and developed soul also lives a life of bliss. But he or she who starts the process and then quits halfway through has at best half a soul, one that can never be blissfully free or fully ignorant of Maya. Half a soul results in a state of spiritual torture, because once awakened, Essence won’t go back to sleep. It's as if you’ve awakened Essence to its imprisonment in illusion, but decided to keep drinking at the bar with the barflies.
"First, if men do not change it is because they do not really want to change. Usually they confuse desire with will, and shirk the perseverance and effort without which no genuine will can be formed within them. Besides, anyone who wants to change himself must know himself, but the fact is that man generally believes that he possesses qualities or faculties which he does not actually have, and he aspires to the possession of higher ones while falsely laying claim to simpler ones. Man, in fact, does not know himself. Does not know that he is only [ ‘The Terror-of-the-Situation’ ] machine, and does not know that the key to all mysteries lies in self-knowledge."
~ Gurdjieff
Like any piece of technology, human nature is neither inherently good, nor inherently bad. Similar to a computer, if a child has a bad file-system format (conditions during a child’s formative years), a bad “operating system” (culture / environment), and bad “software programs” (erroneous, rigid, and dogmatic beliefs), their “output” (behavior) onto the “screen” (life) will also be bad. Therefore, these people will contribute to deteriorating conditions on a mass scale, for themselves, and all other beings around them. The behavior of a human being will largely depend upon his or her programming; the quality of the information taken in by them, which enables them to process and create efficiently. Garbage in → Garbage out / Quality in → Quality out.
Gurdjieff believed that each of us are moving through life with many little "I's". Another way to put this would be to say that we wear different hats for different occasions. You are not the same person with your mother as you are with your boss, and so on. The reasons behind this can be very complicated, but ultimately, they are results caused by your upbringing, results that have been hammered into you since the day you were born. We change our hats so frequently throughout the day that we are often unaware of it. Gurdjieff put tremendous weight on the act of self-observation, or witnessing. The act of witnessing our behavior and our emotions without judgment allows our subconscious mind to processes and reintegrate those experiences (doing so in the background) so that it may be picked up by the conscious mind at a later time. The more we do the work of witnessing the more we are able to unwind these mechanistic tendencies that are running on auto-pilot for the majority of our life. It is through this process that we begin to, as Gurdjieff believed, develop our soul.
Gurdjieff was of the impression that human beings aren't born with a soul, they earn it. As we're about to see, we have incarnated into a realm that has been manipulated and designed to lead us further away from our soul and into a tighter and narrower band of consciousness. While the question as to why anyone would do such a thing is implicit, the answer should be obvious to any sovereign-minded individual.
Puddy on the couch
Psychologists have long been aware of the malleable nature of the human psyche. Most people know of Sigmund Freud and his body of work concerning the unconscious mind, the id, and the ego. Freud concluded, much like Gurdjieff, that humans are sleep-walking around with repressed emotions, unresolved traumas, and unconscious desires, and, he believed, these subconscious programs play a tremendous role in an individual's daily conscious existence. Today, this concept is Psychology 101 for the modern student, but in its heyday it was big stuff and people with agendas paid attention.
Enter Edward Bernays, the father of modern propaganda, err, public relations. Much like his uncle Sigmund Freud (what an interesting coincidence), Bernays described the masses as irrational and subject to herd instinct, and outlined how skilled practitioners could use crowd psychology and psychoanalysis to control them in desirable ways.
The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. In almost every act of our lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons […] who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires that control the public mind, who harness old social forces and contrive new ways to bind and guide the world.”
~ Edward Bernays, "Propaganda"
Bernays practiced what he preached. Some of his best-known campaigns include:
An effort in 1929 to promote female smoking by branding cigarettes as "feminist."
Scaring people into thinking that the glasses they were drinking out of were unsanitary, and could be replaced by disposable Dixie cups.
Using the American Dental Association to convince people that water fluoridation was safe and healthy after being hired by the Aluminum Company of America.
Bernays was also instrumental in the Guatemalan coup in 1959 when he began working for the United Fruit Company. Bernays created the Señorita Chiquita Banana character and persuaded the public that bananas cured celiac disease. Bernays launched a massive effort in the US to discredit Guatemala’s government by labeling them communists. He flew reporters of major newspapers and magazines to Guatemala where they portrayed Guatemala as a communist state. In contrast, they portrayed the United Fruit Company/Chiquita as the great crusader against communism. The stories were of course fabricated and had one purpose: to weaken the Guatemalan government in order to strengthen the United Fruit Company. The end result was achieved. The CIA armed and trained the Liberation Army under the command of an exiled Guatemalan army officer. The result was the overthrowing of Jacobo Árbenz as president and a 40 year civil war. Some speculate that had it not been for the war, Central and South America may have seen their governments go in a different, more positive direction, rather than the great corruption that still exists in many of its countries.
The overthrow of Jacobo Árbenz devastated Guatemalan society and catapulted the country into civil war. This CIA plot was exposed in 1997, and without public support made possible by Edward Bernays, it's likely that it would not have been possible.
Is it really your favorite breakfast?
A final note on Bernay's accomplishments before we move on, because this brings us full circle regarding Gurdjieff's concept of Machine Man and the comparison of human nature to the computer.
In the 1920s, Bernays was approached by the Beech-Nut Packing Company. Beech-Nut wanted to increase consumer demand for bacon. Bernays turned to his agency’s internal doctor and asked him whether a heavier breakfast might be more beneficial for the American public. Well aware of the origins of his paycheck, the doctor confirmed Bernay's "suspicion" and wrote to five thousand of his doctor friends asking them to confirm it as well. This ‘study’ of doctors encouraging the American public to eat a heavier breakfast – namely ‘Bacon and Eggs’ – was published in major newspapers and magazines of the time to great success. Beech-Nut’s profits rose sharply thanks to Bernays and his team of medical professionals.
Now, a hundred years later, this "staple" of the American diet still stands. Many people consider Bacon and Eggs to be their go-to breakfast, but the truth is we've all been programmed.
A place for Normies and Conspiracy Theorists to come together
You may have noticed that over the years there has been an alarming global consolidation of power. This is no accident but a strategy designed to establish even more power, and ultimately a New World Order.
Now your typical 'machine man' might jump into a knee-jerk reaction and say, "That's just a crazy conspiracy theory." But anyone with five minutes and the internet can peruse dozens and dozens of speeches given by American presidents and other world leaders telling the public their plans to implement a New World Order. So why do some people still deny this?
The term "conspiracy theorist" has accelerated greatly since the time of JFK's assassination, and in many ways it has been weaponized to deter would-be free-thinkers from questioning the narrative of the elite. It should not come as any shocking revelation to any logical free-thinking individual that people in power desire to stay in power, nor should it be strange to accept that powerful individuals swim in the same waters. And while it is very likely that these individuals are in various power struggles amongst themselves, they are well aware that their small elite group is outnumbered by an order of several millions to one. They have seen, therefore, the importance of forming alliances in an effort to control individuals financially and psychologically. One can do any number or searches and easily find the devastating consequences of organizations such as the International Monetary Fund, The Council on Foreign Relations, The United Nations, The World Health Organization and countless other think-tanks, private clubs, and secret societies such as the Bilderberg Group, Skull and Bones, and the Freemasons. It is a fact that 20 out of 45 U.S. Presidents have been affiliated with some kind of secret society. 14 Presidents were freemasons. Yet today, many people scoff at hearing any mention of the Bilderberg Group, the Club of Rome, or the Freemasons. These machine-minded individuals are, sadly, casualties of psychological warfare. The afore mentioned organizations do indeed exist, they are extremely well-organized, and they play an active roll in social engineering the human psyche.
Take a deep breath, Karen
Before we go any further, I want to make a very important point before I lose a few of the Newbies. Over the years I have examined a plethora of conspiracy theories, from the most logically possible, to the outright bizarre and absurd. I find many of these theories fascinating. They allow my mind a chance to stretch its perceptions beyond my mundane acceptances of daily life and society at large. Conspiracy theories provide me with an opportunity to see reality in a new light.
The problem with conspiracy theories, however, is that they can be highly demoralizing and guide the conspiracy theorist into a wall of victim consciousness, whereby he or she believes that he or she is under the yoke of an all-powerful, small group of individuals who are sitting around a table in a dark room determining the fate of the masses. That is psychological warfare. This mindset greatly cripples creativity and potential, because it omits the fact that we humans are conscious co-creators alongside our so-called "rulers". Many conspiracy theories are therefore about as helpful as the problems they claim to be exposing.
There is benefit to going down a rabbit hole or two, of course. Conspiracy theories challenge our beliefs. They tone our critical thinking faculties. Revealing kernels of truth on an obscure topic could even have real-world significance for the researcher and even culture. But there's a fine line between knowing what to research and when to let go of a line to nowhere. Too much time in obscurity can tarnish the clarity of day-to-day existence. One could argue, however, that our day-to-day existence has already been tarnished, and that we are not living in the American Dream proselytized by TV and the FM radio. Regardless, extremes of any sort are unhealthy, which is why we must bend like the willow when the "waters of truth" come our way.
If our goal is to make positive changes in this world, it is imperative that we take an honest look at what we're up against. This is something that the love and light New Age Movement would prefer we not do. The New Age Movement would rather have us "attracting" nirvana by ignoring human trafficking, and that, my friends, is spiritual bypassing. Knowledge is only accrued through experience and exploration. Those who have dedicated themselves to the pursuit of truth and knowledge must remain constantly vigilant, as there are many snakes in tall grass.
All propaganda doesn't come from Russia - that's propaganda
In many ways, our behavior continues to be influenced and impacted by individuals long dead, be they Plato, Shakespeare's invention of the modern concept of love, or Karl Marx's collectivist ideals. An astute individual becomes aware when a phrase or meme takes hold of the collective tongue, when only a month ago that language was absent. But unlike the musings of Plato, or the 'sic bra' commentary we might hear at the ski hill, social conditioning takes a concerted, forceful effort to deliberately influence society for specific agendas.
This control of reality (i.e. perception manufacturing and the creation of 'consensus reality') is a powerful political tool, and has been since ancient times when the would-be sorcerers could appear to create solar eclipses simply by knowing when one would occur and then act accordingly. To control and manipulate the reality of the masses, one uses what is known as psychological warfare. And it is but one step from controlling a person's perception of reality to getting that person to act on it. Psychological warfare can be employed through catchy phrases and slogans, as Edward Bernays well knew, or, it can be disseminated through tv shows, movies, and entertainment industries such as the media juggernaut Netflix. Incidentally, the co-founder and the first CEO of Netflix, Marc Bernays Randolph, is the great-grand-nephew of Edward Bernays. Small world, ain't it?
Control over the media has been a long-term objective of the globalist elite. In February 1917, Congressman Oscar Callaway placed a statement in the Congressional Record describing the origins of what he called the "newspaper combination". According to that account, the J.P. Morgan Banking interests and their allies "got together 12 men high up in the newspaper world and employed them to select the most influential newspapers in the U.S. and the sufficient number of them to control generally the policy of the daily press in the United States. Today, 6 major media outlets control over 90% of the media we consume. So-called 'non-profit' outlets like NPR and PBS, who "rely on your funding to continue," get most of their monies from groups like The Rockefeller Foundation and the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), whose agendas are far beyond the "public's best interest", rather favoring very specific interest groups.
America's corporate media are an integral part of the economic establishment, with links to Wall Street, the Washington Thinktanks, Club Bilderberg and the Council on Foreign Relations and through them to the world's premier brainwashing center, Tavistock Institute, a long-established institution committed to social engineering. CFR is "the premier U.S. Foreign policy think-tank in the United States, and is one of the central institutions for socializing American elites from all major sectors of society (media, banking, academia, military, intelligence, diplomacy, corporations, NGOs, civil society, etc.) where they work together to construct a consensus on major issues related to American imperial interests around the world. As such, the CFR often sets the strategy for American policy, and wields enormous influence within policy circles, where key players almost always come from the rank and file of the CFR itself."
Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men's views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.
~ President Woodrow Wilson
Think tanks like Tavistock know that ideas are more powerful than any standing army. To get people to accept their imperial ideas, Tavistock seeks to control the way people think, especially science, the area where human powers of hypothesis and creative reason become a force for improvements in the order of nature. If you can control how we think, you control how we respond to events around us, no matter what these events might be. This process is called 'paradigm shift,' an overturning of existing sets of assumptions about society.
The percentage of "free information" (i.e. content created by citizens and honest, non-compromised journalists) is even slimmer when one considers Big Tech's involvement and the monopolistic influence of Silicon Valley and the like. Anyone who remembers the internet of the 90s knows just how much the digital online landscape has changed. Information was everywhere on the internet, and in those days was anecdotal at best. The smart-aleck saying, "Welp, I read it on the internet so it must be true," was once a common heard meme. Truth today is even harder to come by, because if the content doesn't tow the party line, then good luck making it through the Google algorithm. Censorship is alive and thriving in many forms and mediums.
We live in a dynamic world with millions of news-worthy occurrences happening every instant. Yet in today's climate, it has become the norm for a single story to dominate the airwaves at any given second for weeks on end and then disappear without a trace once the desired "effect" has taken place. This desired effect might be to encourage the public to protest a specific injustice, to demand legislators to focus on a particular issue, or to promote any number of social and/or environmental issues. We see this playing out all around us, and for those of us who have begun to recognize the pattern, its constant employment has become all too obvious.
"The receptivity of the masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetfulness is enormous. In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand by your slogan."
~ Hitler
Divide and conquer has long been the strategy employed by the ruling class. It is much better for them if we bicker amongst ourselves over race, politics, or any number of trivial issues, rather than if we were to pull back the curtain and see the frail wizard for who he truly is.
Propaganda appeals to our intellect, but it is far more effective when deployed against our emotional centers. The more emotional the slogan, the more passionate the reaction. If one cannot determine if a topic is being used for psychological manipulation, simply consider the emotional charge generated during a debate. If one observes heated debates over and over, then the subject has likely been manufactured and weaponized by the establishment. Recent history has given us plenty of examples: Global Warming/Climate Change, the Vaccine Debate, Black Lives Matter, the Gender Wars, etc.
"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it."
~ Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Propaganda Minister
The history of controlling the perceptions of the American people started in 1950 with Operation Mockingbird initiated by CIA director Allen Dulles in which the CIA controls the content of media information that informs our citizens up to the present day. Famous Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein broke the story in 1977 for Rolling Stone. Bernstein revealed the workings of Operation Mockingbird, in which many journalists – included Pulitzer Prize winners – joined the CIA’s payroll, writing fake stories to disseminate the agency’s agitprop and providing intelligence. Other journalists were threatened and blackmailed into cooperating with Mockingbird, and many were given falsified or fabricated information about their actions in order to engender their support for the CIA’s mission. The program has never been officially discontinued. If anything, it has ramped up.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false."
~ William Casey, Director of the C.I.A. 1981
The 2013 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) revision signed into law by Obama included an amendment to legalize domestic propaganda on the American People allowing the corporate media to create misinformation against U.S. citizens legally. This is allowed even though FCC regulations state: "It is illegal for broadcasters to intentionally distort the news, and the FCC may act on complaints if there is documented evidence of such behavior from persons with direct personal knowledge."
“The very word secrecy is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. And there is a very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment. And so it is to the printing press-to the recorder of man’s deeds, the keeper of his conscience, the courier of his news – that we look for strength and assistance, confident that with your help man will be what he was born to be: free and independent.”
~ JFK
False flags and head scratching
Big Brother would like to remind you that:
• The CIA had nothing to do with the JFK assassination.
• The Gulf of Tonkin was not a false flag.
• The Weapons of Mass Destruction was just a bad hunch.
• The official story of 9/11 is official.
• Your government's response to Covid-19 was entirely about your safety.
The 2001 attack on the World Trade Center was used as an excuse to implement a surveillance state on the American people. Conversely, the event would also become one of the greatest catalysts for human awakening that the world has ever known. The entire drama took time for people to process. The non-stop coverage of the collapse of the Twin Towers reinforced the trauma that millions of people collectively experienced, and continue to experience to this day. I was a sophomore in college at the time, and it took me five years to really question the official narrative. Years of social conditioning steered me to believe whatever I was told - after-all, I was no expert. Expert or not, however, some of the "facts" parroted by the mainstream media just didn't add up. I wondered:
- How was it possible that the plane that had crashed into the tower disintegrated, while one of the hijacker's passports was barely damaged amongst the rubble?
- Why was there literally no airplane debris at the site of the attack on the Pentagon?
- Why was the collapse of the Twin Towers identical to a controlled demolition when other buildings in other countries have burned for far longer and far hotter without falling?
-And how on earth did building 7 collapse when it wasn't even hit by a plane, and more importantly, how and why did a journalist say that it had collapsed before it ever did?
There are dozens (if not hundreds) of questions that remain unanswered. Many people have concluded, like myself, that the official story simply does not add up. But 9/11 does not stand alone in this. There are many "official stories" throughout history that don't hold water to the facts at hand. It should be obvious to anyone paying attention that we the public are being deliberately lied to.
Cognitive dissonance
The term cognitive dissonance is a phrase used to describe what happens when conflicting information meets firmly held beliefs, attitudes, or values. It is typical for most people to seek consistency in their perception, rather than challenge it. Tension and conflict within an individual happens when these two opposing forces meet. This inconsistency between what people believe and how they behave motivates people to engage in actions that will help minimize feelings of discomfort. People attempt to relieve this tension in different ways, such as by rejecting, explaining away, or avoiding new information.
Nearly everyone experiences cognitive dissonance to some degree. It can manifest in a variety of ways, such as being compelled through peer pressure to do something that goes against one's values or beliefs, or learning new information after a decision has been made and then justifying the bad decision. Justifying irrational behavior is a clear sign of cognitive dissonance. Feelings that arise can be regret, shame, stress, or embarrassment.
Dissonance strength can be defined most notably by two factors:
#1. The importance that is attached to the belief. How much weight does the belief carry in the person's life? Is the belief central to their identity? If it's a core belief about the self, then a greater dissonance will be present than if the belief is about someone else.
#2. The number of dissonant beliefs. The more conflicting thoughts an individual has the greater the strength of the dissonance. This is also more apparent in people with lack of soul-development, resulting in the many "I's". Personality fragmentation can cause different modes of thinking that may be in direct contradiction with each other, but still support the dominant personality like a house of cards.
People typically work hard to avoid discomfort. The discomforts of cognitive dissonance can influence the individual's behavior in noticeable ways, such as only seeking out information that confirms their beliefs. This practice is also known as confirmation bias, which can affect the ability to think critically about something important.
Blaming others for their beliefs is a common reaction of cognitive dissonance. Blaming is a classic example of shadow projecting, which we will look at in more detail in Chapter 11.
Giving knowledge the appropriate channels
Becoming aware of this information does not make us "better" people. It is not our job to stand on the moral pedestal and look down at the muggles while we pat ourselves on the back for our big unbiased brains. Quite the opposite, in fact. We are each guilty of cognitive dissonance to varying degrees, and it is important that we stay vigilant when we feel the stress and tension that cognitive dissonance brings. If we are to ever fully know truth, we must be able to stand in non-judgmental curiosity in the face of information that threatens the well-being of our Story. To deal with dissonance, we must either change our belief and/or change our behavior. It is important that we train ourselves to slow down and listen to information that challenges our perception of reality. We can eventually learn to recognize that tension and stress are indicators that we are about to expand - if we choose to.
The more embodied we become and the more we learn how to connect with our inner guide and inner knowing (Part Three of the book), the easier the lies of deceit will slip away and the faster the truth will reveal itself. Only then can we channel this truth where it must go.