1984 Future is here now: Whitney Webb

(Investigative Insights TV) It Begins: Plan for 2026 (They're not hiding it) | Whitney Webb

Refuse the National ID Card ('Real ID')

Refuse the national ID card ("Real ID")

Big Brother is watching you (1984), using AI.

Real ID is an unconstitutional "National ID" that ends state and personal sovereignty. U.S. Senator Rand Paul has introduced the “Safeguarding Personal Information Act” (S.2769) to fully repeal Title II of the REAL ID Act. Contact local U.S. Representative and U.S. senator and ask them to support this bill. TAKE ACTION TODAY

(The Jimmy Dore Show) Twila Brase joins Jimmy Dore to discuss Real ID

• Source: National ID: Citizens' Council for Health Freedom (cchfreedom.org)
• Already been tricked into switching? Go to DMV and switch back, says Twila Brase
• Opt out from standing in front of scanning AI camera before handing over ID and boarding pass at airports, warns Twila Brase

Overcoming difficulties: Let it R.A.I.N.

Tara Brach [adapted from her book True Refuge (Bantam, 2013)]; Wisdom Quarterly

 

Tara Brach (examiner.com)

Years ago some American Buddhist teachers began to share a new mindfulness tool that offers in-the-trenches support for working with intense and difficult emotions. 

  

Called RAIN (an acronym for the four steps of the process), it can be accessed in almost any place or situation. It directs our attention in a clear, systematic way that cuts through confusion and stress. 

The steps give us somewhere to turn in a painful moment. And as we call on them more regularly, they strengthen our capacity to come home to our deepest truth. Like the clear sky and clean air after a cooling rain, this mindfulness practice brings a new openness and calm to our daily lives. 

I have now taught RAIN to thousands of students, clients, and mental health professionals, adapting and expanding it into [True Refuge]. I’ve also made it a core practice in my own life. Here are the four steps of RAIN presented in the way I’ve found most helpful:

• R Recognize what is happening
• A Allow life to be just as it is
• I Investigate inner experience with kindness
• N Non-Identification.

RAIN directly de-conditions the habitual ways in which we resist moment-to-moment experience. It doesn’t matter whether we resist “what is” by lashing out in anger, by having a cigarette, [by sex, drugs, rock 'n roll or rap], or by getting immersed in obsessive thinking.

Our attempt to control the life within and around us actually cuts us off from our own heart and from this living world. RAIN begins to undo these unconscious patterns as soon as we take the first step.  

  

Recognize what is, accept that it is, investigate what's going on inside, and realize that there's no reason to identify with situations. More

Are thoughts the source of ego? (video)

(EckhartTeachings) Sample Q&A from the May 2010 episode of Eckhart Tolle TV.

• Q: Is the ego the source of our thoughts or are our thoughts generated elsewhere and passed through the ego?
• A: The ego arises out of the state of identification with thought. The moment of freedom arises when we realize that we are not our thoughts. Rather, according to Tolle, we are the awareness.

The Buddha would say we are not that either. But that very awareness is important and can be turned on itself and observed. Freedom from any identification leads to freedom.

Why rulers behave as they do (video)

(DB33) RFID microchipping of humans? Radio-frequency identification (RFID) is the use of an object (typically referred to as an RFID tag) applied to or incorporated into every product, animal, and person for the purposes of identification and tracking using radio waves. Tags can be read from a distance beyond the line of sight of the reader. Most RFID tags contain at least two parts. One is an integrated circuit for storing and processing information, modulating and demodulating a radio-frequency (RF) signal, and other specialized functions. The second is an antenna for receiving and transmitting the signal.

Survey finds Americans less religious

Most religious groups in USA have lost ground

Cathy Lynn Grossman (USA TODAY, March 17, 2009)

When it comes to religion, the USA is now land of the freelancers.

The percentage of people who call themselves in some way Christian has dropped more than 11% in a generation. The faithful have scattered out of their traditional bases: The Bible Belt is less Baptist. The Rust Belt is less Catholic. And everywhere, more people are exploring spiritual frontiers — or falling off the faith map completely.

PHOTO: Ex-Catholic Dylan Rossi, 21, a philosophy student at the University of Massachusetts in Boston meditates. "I don't know anyone religious and hardly anyone 'spiritual,'" he says (Garrett Hubbard, USA TODAY). Enlarge

These dramatic shifts in just 18 years are detailed in the new American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS), to be released today. It finds that, despite growth and immigration that has added nearly 50 million adults to the U.S. population, almost all religious denominations have lost ground since the first ARIS survey in 1990.

"More than ever before, people are just making up their own stories of who they are. They say, 'I'm everything. I'm nothing. I believe in myself,' " says Barry Kosmin, survey co-author.

• INTERACTIVE GRAPHIC, VIDEOS: Compare states, dates, religious groups, and non-religious numbers
• FAITH & REASON: What's your religious "path"?
• THE "NONES": Now 15% of the population

Among the key findings in the 2008 survey:

• So many Americans claim no religion at all (15%, up from 8% in 1990), that this category now outranks every other major U.S. religious group except Catholics and Baptists. In a nation that has long been mostly Christian, "the challenge to Christianity … does not come from other religions but from a rejection of all forms of organized religion," the report concludes.
• Catholic strongholds in New England and the Midwest have faded as immigrants, retirees and young job-seekers have moved to the Sun Belt. While bishops from the Midwest to Massachusetts close down or consolidate historic parishes, those in the South are scrambling to serve increasing numbers of worshipers.
• Baptists, 15.8% of those surveyed, are down from 19.3% in 1990. Mainline Protestant denominations, once socially dominant, have seen sharp declines: The percentage of Methodists, for example, dropped from 8% to 5%.
• The percentage of those who choose a generic label, calling themselves simply Christian, Protestant, non-denominational, evangelical or "born again," was 14.2%, about the same as in 1990.
• Jewish numbers showed a steady decline, from 1.8% in 1990 to 1.2% today. The percentage of Muslims, while still slim, has doubled, from 0.3% to 0.6%. Analysts within both groups suggest those numbers understate the groups' populations.

Ihsan Bagby, associate professor of Islamic studies at the University of Kentucky-Lexington, says that most national telephone surveys such as ARIS undercount Muslims, and that he is conducting a study of mosques' membership sponsored by the Hartford (Conn.) Institute for Religious Research.

Meanwhile, some Jewish surveys that report larger numbers of Jews also include "cultural" Jews — those who connect to Judiasm through its traditions, but not necessarily through actively practicing the religion.

Meanwhile, nearly 2.8 million people now identify with dozens of new religious movements, calling themselves Wiccan, Pagan, or "Spiritualist," which the survey does not define.

Wicca, a contemporary form of paganism that includes goddess worship and reverence for nature, has even made its way to Arlington National Cemetery, where the Pentagon now allows Wiccans' five-pointed-star symbol to be used on veterans' gravestones.

Religion as a hobby
Since the first ARIS study was released, other major national surveys have offered snapshots of the USA's faith.

The Baylor University Religion Surveys in 2006 and 2008 -- based on 1,721 and 1,700 interviews, respectively -- were distinguished by a look at how people described and understood God. The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life released its Religious Landscape Survey last year, based on 35,000 interviews, mapping Americans' beliefs state by state. It found that 41% of people had switched their religion at some point in life.

BAYLOR: How far is heaven? At least half will make it, Americans say
PEW: How people from different faiths answered questions on Hollywood, homosexuality, politics and prayer

The initial ARIS report in 1990 set the table for those surveys.

It was based on 113,000 interviews, updated with 50,000 more in 2001 and now 54,000 in 2008. Because the U.S. Census does not ask about religion, the ARIS survey was the first comprehensive study of how people identify their spiritual expression.

Kosmin concluded from the 1990 data that many saw God as a "personal hobby," and that the USA is "a greenhouse for spiritual sprouts."

Today, he says, "religion has become more like a fashion statement, not a deep personal commitment for many."

Kosmin is now director of the Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn.; ARIS co-researcher Ariela Keysar is associate director.

The ARIS research also led in quantifying and planting a label on the "Nones" — people who said "None" when asked the survey's basic question: "What is your religious identity?" More>>

MORE STORIES ON: Massachusetts Islam Hollywood God Pentagon Muslim New England Christianity Jewish Midwest Catholic Church Judaism Hartford Protestant Baptist Sun Belt Arlington National Cemetery Culture Rust Belt Public Life Bible Belt Trinity College Pew Forum Methodists Religious Identification Survey Wiccans Barry Kosmin Nones Study of Secularism University of Kentucky-Lexington Ariela Keysar Religious Landscape Survey