The Last American Vagabond - IMA: Why (and How) We Must Overcome the Fear Paradigm to Free Our Hearts & Minds

Episode Date: July 31, 2025

Today the Independent Media Alliance (IMA) brings you a panel focusing on the effects of propaganda/conditioning in the context of stress and emotional reactivity, how this drives continued submission, and how it has been historically utilized by power structures to keep you, as an individual, but also society as a whole, stuck in a perpetual state of fight or flight. This not only causes one to act reactively and emotionally but also suspends your body's most important functions while in this state -- such as the immune system. We discuss the current 24/7 news cycle and how this plays a major role in maintaining a state in which emotion often circumvents logic. We also discuss why it is so important that each of us work consciously to act, feel, and think deliberately, as opposed to allowing the momentum (political or otherwise) to guide our direction. Most importantly, we discuss ways to steel yourself against such manipulations, as well as practices that can help guide you back to daylight if you find yourself lost in a never-ending cycle of sadness, paranoia, and fear.Source Links:The Rise of Authoritarianism: From Parasite Stress Theory to LockstepMultiple Studies Predicted Governments Become Authoritarian in Response to PandemicsPathogens and Politics: Further Evidence That Parasite Prevalence Predicts Authoritarianism - PMCThe Parasite-Stress Theory of Values and Sociality: Infectious Disease, History and Human Values Worldwide | SpringerLinkNew TabMasks Lead To Bacterial Pneumonia, Oral Thrush, Systemic Inflammation & May Be The Cause Of “Long-Haul” COVIDWelcome to 2030: I Own Land, Live Among Like Minded People, and Life Has Never Been Better(24) The Last American Vagabond on X: "Another peer reviewed study just found that "Long COVID" is largely psychosomatic, not real. The newest study finds that Long COVID is "associated with factors other than SARS-CoV-2 infection, including psychosocial factors". #QuestionEverything #LongCOVID https://t.co/NQGfMg8x53 https://t.co/t8g3HrlTQN" / XPrevalence and Characteristics Associated With Post–COVID-19 Condition Among Nonhospitalized Adolescents and Young Adults | Infectious Diseases | JAMA Network Open | JAMA NetworkAssociation of Self-reported COVID-19 Infection and SARS-CoV-2 Serology Test Results With Persistent Physical Symptoms Among French Adults During the COVID-19 Pandemic | Infectious Diseases | JAMA Internal Medicine | JAMA NetworkRare link between coronavirus vaccines and Long Covid–like illness starts to gain acceptance | Science | AAASPsychological vs. Psychosocial — What’s the Difference?New Tab(1) Simon Sinek: Why Leaders Eat Last - YouTubeedso brain chemicals - Brave SearchNew Tab(100) Fear Is (Literally) the Mind Killer - Pleasure to BurnScreen Shot 2025-07-31 at 1.56.16 PM.png (1398×1202)More than a quarter of U.S. adults say they’re so stressed they can’t functionRates of Anxiety, Depression Rising Among Americans, Especially the YoungNew TabChronic Stress Weakens Connectivity in the Prefrontal Cortex: Architectural and Molecular Changes - PMCStress signalling pathways that impair prefrontal cortex structure and function - PubMedStress effects on working memory, explicit memory, and implicit memory for neutral and emotional stimuli in healthy men - PubMedChronic Stress Weakens Connectivity in the Prefrontal Cortex: Architectural and Molecular Changes - PMCChronic and Acute Stress Promote Overexploitation in Serial Decision Making - PubMedStress-Induced Functional Alterations in Amygdala: Implications for Neuropsychiatric Diseases - PMCThe effects of stress exposure on prefrontal cortex: Translating basic research into successful treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder - ScienceDirectAmericans Sleeping Less, More StressedEconomy, Election Spur Rising Anxiety Among Americans in 2024The Project Gutenberg eBook of Crystallizing Public Opinion, by Edward L. Bernays.New TabHardwiring Happiness - Rick Hanson, PhDBook Review: Addiction by Design – The Solari LibraryJACKET Pro Faraday CORDURA® Vertical Phone Bag – Magnetic Closure (4.5″ X 8″) | Solari Reportit's 2030 never been happier - Brave Search(6) Ken Klippenstein on X: "Senator Slotkin says of the CIA: "These are good, corn-fed people who just want to help their country." https://t.co/ApFhXE4E3J" / XIMA Archives - The Last American VagabondBitcoin Donations Are Appreciated:www.thelastamericanvagabond.com/bitcoin-donation(3FSozj9gQ1UniHvEiRmkPnXzHSVMc68U9f)The Last American Vagabond Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to The Last American Vagabond Substack at tlavagabond.substack.com/subscribe

We're going to be discussing the idea of the false binary. What an illusion of choice does, establishes the baseline assumptions and nobody questions. This is part of the fifth generation warfare that we've talked about. Voting for the lesser of two evils. It's definitely an emotional, psychological trap that people are in. You're cheerleading for an insane ideology because you think you're winning. The role we have is media. How do we help everybody understand?

This is theater, and you need to get back into the real world. If you're opposed to the agenda, you should. oppose it regardless of who's selling it to you. Welcome to another great panel of the Independent Media Alliance. We have a great conversation set up today, something I'm really excited to talk about that Kerry Wedler brought to the table around stress and the way that it's used to influence our opinions and the way we see the world. And really, something that I've talked about a lot over the years in regard to, just simply

put that emotion, circumvents logic and that power structures will use that idea to keep you in a state of fight or flight. And there's some personal stories to add today that are really going to open your mind. to, you know, possibly not just that this is happening, but other ways to deal with this than pharmaceuticals and whatever else is being thrown at us. Before we get into some opening points, let's quickly go around and introduce ourselves. I'm Ryan Last American Vagabond. Go ahead and we'll start with Kit. Kit Knightley from Offguardian.org. Hi, I'm Carrie Wedler. I am an independent YouTuber, journalist, content creator, videos. I have a subset called Pleasure to Burn, and I'm really

excited to talk about this today. My name is Derek Brose with the Conscious resistance in The Last American Bagabond. I'm Catherine Austin Fitz with the Salary Report. Hi, I'm Akeem Anwar from Above Phone and Take Backer Tech. I'm Steve. I host AM Wake Up and Slow Newsday. Outstanding. Well, let's get into this. I'm going to open with a point that Carrie wrote in her substack, which I think is really a good way to start this,

and I'll throw to her on kind of set in the table for what this conversation will be. and I'll bring up the substack. And by the way, you guys should check out her substack and support it. It's some really great work here. Really just the basic idea that from the way I'm seeing this and there's plenty more directions we can go in, she writes, when the brain's survival mechanism is activated, it physically draws blood away from the frontal lobes, including the prefrontal cortex. This is the brain's highest functioning region.

Among many other responsibilities, the prefrontal cortex plays a key role in rational decision making, concentration, complex learning and reasoning. This region is of the brain. most resembles the concept of the mind. When the fighter flight response is activated, this part of the brain is understandably turned down as the more primitive instinctual regions take over. This makes sense if you're running from a tiger,

not if you're navigating complex political issues, choosing which lesser evil to rule over you, or watching stressful events on social media and television. Chronic activation of the stress response can have significant health consequences, affecting nearly all systems in the body over time. Stress-link conditions include well-known, ones like cardiovascular disease of autoimmune disease and digestive dysfunction.

Just really interesting to think about the reality that simply being stressed out in a constant long-term way can cause, damn near everything we're seeing today. And maybe not injections are the answer. So thanks for being here today. Let's throw it to Kerry to get us started on her thoughts on that. Hi. Yeah. I'm so excited to talk about this.

I wanted to give a little bit of background on how I ended up going down this drabett hole, which is that in 2019, after an extremely stressful week or two in my life, there were all kinds of emotional issues, childhood issues coming up. At the end of the week, I felt like my whole body was blitching out. It felt like there was like electricity running through my body. And at the end of that week, I started getting really itchy. My skin started flaring up with eczema. And I didn't think much of it because I had eczema as a child.

I've had it on and off throughout my life. So I just figured, okay, I'll wait for it to go away. It did not go away. And in fact, the more stress came into my life, the sicker I got. And it went beyond skin issues to an entire systemic chronic illness that I struggled with for about four and a half years before I found a program rooted in neuroscience and neuroplasticity to heal from a glitched out fight or flight response. And I was dealing with chronic migraines and they were getting so bad like my fingers were going numb, my mouth was going numb. I had all the

I couldn't see. And it was starting to get pretty disconcerning. It was virtually every system in my body was malfunctioning and it was sort of like a frog boiling in water. It started with skin. I didn't think much of it. I was still functional. It wasn't bedridden. But by the time I came to this program, I was really starting to get a bit freaked out by how unwell I was. And I found this program that uses neuroplasticity to help rewire your brain to create new neural pathways to help your brain and your fight or flight, your limbic system all start to calm down and understand that perhaps it's overreacting. And as I started doing this program and I started realizing how often my heart was racing and my adrenaline was pumping, I started thinking about the work I do, which is I've

been making videos and writing articles about everything that we care about at the independent media alliance for over a decade now. And I was actually very reactive for the majority of the content I was creating. You can go back and watch my old videos and you can see it in my face. I'm just so activated. But I started thinking on a broader scale of, well, okay, if I'm this stressed out and I don't even buy the propaganda, what's going on with people who are completely indoctrinated into the system, which runs so much on fear and keeping people in a state of uncertainty and anxiety. And that's when I started looking into studies on the effects of chronic stress on the brain, the prefrontal cortex, and it started coming together for me. And I don't claim

to have every single answer on this. I want to make that really clear, but it's become a real passion for me to understand how this factors into so much of the chaos we see in the world today. Yeah. The one thing that stood out to me with what we were briefly talking about before is the idea of, as you framed it being kind of stuck in fight or flight, right? And this kind of long-term manipulative, you know, whether that was always the design of, as you write about, like, you know, using fear to control people or just how it was like the happy byproduct of where they ended up, it's clear that this is something that is a massive problem. And my opinion is it's being treated as not even the right term. You know, they're claiming to treat it with

pharmaceuticals. And many, in some cases may in fact suppress the immediate visual problem, but don't actually solve that problem. And then we just go through these cycles of continuing to be there. And, you know, I guess I wonder out loud of the group, you know, is this something that has been by design, you know, to keep us in this, you know, not just the fear, but like the actual chemical side of it from a scientific level. And, you know, all the different ways this can go with children, you know, with the shows they're watching and how it trains them and whether, you know, what does it like to live an entire life stuck in that? Anyway, just whoever wants to jump in, I think this is a really interesting conversation. I'll jump in real quick. Thanks for sharing

that, Carrie. It's, I think it's, this is really timely. Hopefully everybody who's going to be hearing this will understand the value and the importance of it. Because sometimes I think even as part of what you're describing there, that because people will become addicted to the constant news cycle or whatever, whether it's something bad about the person they hate or something to celebrate the person they love, obviously Trump is a big part of that. If it's not related to that, people will tune it out, right? So because this doesn't have Epstein in the title, there might be some people who are like, this isn't relevant, because they become addicted to that constant news cycle of just like the dopamine response, the cortisol, all the stuff that goes along with that that you're

describing. And I was just thinking about this, even with myself this morning, before we were doing this because I don't know about you guys, but every now and then I get sucked down the rabbit hole of debating idiots on Twitter or elsewhere. And, you know, that's a great thing for all of our mental health, of course. It does a great job of keeping us balanced. But in all seriousness, I find myself in that. And I started thinking, like, and I've tried this over the years and I need to get better at it. But how detrimental that is to my mental health to get sucked into that? Because not only is it not productive, and I have 10 projects I'd love to be working on instead. And then I realize, oh, my God, I just spent two hours

checking Facebook or Twitter and going back and forth with people. And not really in any sort of substantial way where we're learning from each other, which is the best case scenario, but where it's just like, yeah, you're a moron. Okay, you're an idiot. I'm like, ah, why am I giving into this? Right. And just how that has already shaped my mental state. I mean, I've been doing this work now for 15 years.

So 2009, 2010, that's when I joined Facebook and started posting stuff about conspiracy theories, right? And it was nowhere near to the level it is now, not only my ability to reach people and interact with people, but the engagement with these topics. So back then, I was sort of shouting into the abyss and nobody was listening. Now it's, these topics are everywhere, especially on Twitter. And so there's a million different opinions coming from all directions to tell you that you're either right and sort of reinforce that dopamine, yes, I'm correct. Look at me, my ego. Or to tell you you're an idiot and you're wrong and just to kind of miss with you that way. So yeah, it's something that I definitely feel more and more personally

that even those of us in the independent media, especially those of us who are trying to be influencers or leaders or thought leaders or whatever you want to say, that if we're all messed up in our mental state, like, how do we expect the people who are following our work or casually listening to not be that pulled? And maybe some of them are better off than us because we're so deep. We're like so, so deep into it. And some people, maybe they just tune into a podcast once a week, right? And they're not as online 24-7 like some of us. But I definitely see how this has impacted my own mental state and I often wonder like how much of my own self has gotten addicted to that, addicted to the need to debate people and argue with people because I don't enjoy it,

but then I find myself going back and doing it. I do enjoy a little bit of verbal sparring. I do. I think it's fun. I think it's a good intellectual exercise for me to hone my arguments better. This may come as a shock to some of you, but I have previously been a combative type of individual. And it's not so much that I like the arguing with an idiot online thing. Sure, whatever. We've all fallen victim to that once or twice. But I do think that a very important component to all of this is something that I call dumping my brain out,

which is something that I try to do every night where I'll just check out complete, from everything that's been going on, like my girl and I will watch a movie or read. I like the Terry Pratchett Discworld series for dumping my brain out because it's just, you know, a complete fictional reality that doesn't really get into the political too much

and it's just a fun way to check out. And I think as long as you maintain some sort of balance that way, you can still, you know, I guess get in the pit as it were. And, you know, Mosh pit rules apply to internet debates too. He just, you know, elbows out, knees up, keep moving. Somebody falls down, pick them up. I think it's an innate part of how humans work is we tend to respond better to something that's emotionally instigating. And so, you know, big media already knows this. They've been doing it for years. It's crisis after crisis. And so that'll keep someone

plugged in on the couch, just tuning in to whatever happens next. And of course, now it's gone season six of Clown World, where there's a new twist ending every week, it seems like. So they've really mastered the craft at keeping you pulled in and looking for their next move. But one of the problems that I have with independent media and really this larger space is that now individual content creators, they know that fear gets clicks and fear gets engagement.

So we've really gotten away from the essence of objective journalism and really just talking about things for what is the most emotional impact that I can make. Well, how can I twist this headline? And so a lot of the conversations that are happening on the internet aren't happening in good faith. There's a lot of people that I would call out that are just using fear to spread their message instead of one that's balanced and with hope. And, you know, through IMA and through events like the people's reset, there's always trying to keep that hope at the table, which isn't as exciting as the world is doomed. But that's what we need to do as content creators. And as people have shared as being personally embroiled in it, yeah, it's like when I started

writing, I was like, how do you guys do this stuff? Because it keeps coming out week after week. And you really need to disconnect. You really need to disconnect and dump everything out of your brain. Yeah, I appreciate what you guys have shared and what Steve has said, too. And I think that when people are absorbing content, this occurred to me the other day, have we ever asked ourselves why we are even watching the information that we're watching? Is it just entertainment?

Are we trying to inform ourselves? What are we really searching for? Because I think a lot of people are addicted to that fear. And so they just keep doing the same thing they always have, even though they can't do too much about 90% of the things that are going on. on the world. One quick point to add to that, Akeem, which is really interesting, and completely agree. We've gotten to an interesting point, though, where I think we can all acknowledge that it is pretty serious right now, right? So we are at a point where it is like,

oh my gosh, that this might well be the end of certain society. But I agree, though. We shouldn't, it's about factual reporting around it where there are people that are, you know, hair on fire screaming about every problem. And they've been doing that back when it wasn't this crazy, right? So it's still this interesting, but now you've got that overlap, which makes it even more difficult. But excellent points to include an all that. I would to jump on the back of that, I would say there is a difference between engaging very much with real problems that should cause you to be concerned and being pulled into like the like the white noise of entirely made up scare problems. Like I mean, Derek said that it might be different

for us from normal people and I would say absolutely as different is worse. Like it's a, it's a grandiose comparison, but it's like comparing normal normal people living in Ukraine to those people working around Chernobyl trying to clear up the site, we get exposed to more by choice. And it does put us at a greater risk for that kind of thing. And that the difficulty is in differentiating things that do genuinely require attention and things that are designed simply to make you afraid or make you feel powerless and that kind of thing. Carrie, did you, in your work, have you looked at one of the tactics that have been in recent times most effective at moving people into fight?

flight. What are the tactics, what are the effective tactics we're dealing with? You know, I love that question because I was just talking to Ryan about this. And I'm going to quote, right, and I'm sure you guys are familiar with Edward Bernays, he's kind of the father of American propaganda. And in his book, crystallizing public opinion, which he wrote in 1923, he cites the basic human emotions. And he's referring to a psychologist of the time named William McDougal, but I'll just read this little bit. He says, the public relations council extracts from his clients causes ideas, from his client's causes, ideas which will capitalize certain fundamental instincts in the people he is trying to reach

and then sets about to project those ideas to his public. William McDougal, the psychologist, classifies seven primary instincts with their attendant emotions. They are flight, fear, repulsion, disgust, curiosity, wonder, pugnacity, anger, self-display, elation. It goes on and on, but the key here for me was the fight or flight. And the next paragraph says the action of public health officials in stressing the possibility of a plague or epidemic is effective because it appeals to the emotion of fear and presents the possibility of preventing the spread of the epidemic or plague. So this is 1923, which I think it's crazy to go back and read that now.

But I think it really, it comes down to a survival mechanism. It gets people to really fear for their physical safety. If you look at whether it was COVID or you look at the conversations now, the narratives around immigration and sex, sending in the Marines to Los Angeles. It all is very much about life or death. Everything is such a heightened response. And I think when you can get people into that frame of mind, or rather lack of frame of mind,

because you're getting them into more primitive centers, as long as you can get them into that survival mode, I think there's a much greater possibility that they're going to be compliant. And they're going to do whatever they can to not have to feel that way anymore. It's a basic human survival instinct to want to survive. And if people are constantly being told

that their lives and livelihoods and the core of their identity, the civilization, the society, they're all at risk. I think that's a good indication that they may end up getting caught in that response. A good thing to go to. And Derek, if you want to talk on this, this is your article for TLAB. This is a really interesting overlap to, I mean, just don't lose that point. She's talking about Bernay's highlighting exactly the logic of why these things apply and why we saw that through COVID-19 and many others.

The rise of authoritarianism, excuse me, Derek wrote this from parasite stress theory to lockstep. It's one part and two-part series. This is the first one. Multiple studies predicted governments become authoritarian in response to pandemics. And I'll include the studies that go along with this as well. Just argument the point being that, oh, go ahead, Derek. You want to explain it? Go ahead.

Yeah, no, I'll just add on that because I think Catherine had some more. But that's what came to mind when Carrie was speaking about Bernay, specifically with the mentioning of the plague. Those studies, which go back to the 70s, show that people, that when they study different responses from people, groups of populations, in response to famine, to war, the threat of a pandemic, et cetera. They studied like six different scenarios, and they found that threats of pandemics

had a very specific, unique response to it. And they'd even said in the studies, even if it wasn't a real threat, even if it was an imagined threat, that the people would become more obedient and governments would become more authoritarian. But I think that, you know, for me, the whole thing, and to add to where I think Catherine, you know,

is pointing to is that it's the fear of the unknown. I think that's another big thing besides like Kerry's saying life or death situations, but also just the fear of the unknown. That's why so many people in our audiences constantly are theorizing about what might happen or what this might mean or who's a shill or who's controlled opposition because they're afraid of what's lurking around the corner, of what they don't know and what might, you know, come up and bite them. And I think that that goes back to Kerry's original point about the brain being overactive and sure, if we had saber-toothed tigers back in the day to be worried about, the brain had a job to play. Now it's

just become people constantly afraid of conspiracies, which, obviously, obviously are real things, not all of them, obviously, but do exist. And so people are constantly just in this fight or flight, you know, a phase because of the fear of the unknown as well as just being constantly told that civil wars around the corner of World War III. I mean, and I do blame a lot of people in independent and alternative media for that. So I wanted to tell you about, has anybody here read or studied William Tiller? So, Carrie, this is somebody you might want to look into. So Tiller was the head of material sciences at Stanford. And he was able to raise money to do private research on the ability of

human intention to change material reality, including at great distances. And he was able to prove that it did. And so I had him on the Salary report. And I was doing the pre-interview and I asked him what he thought of community prayer. And he said, well, you know, you have to be really careful. He said, if the people doing the praying are coherent, it helps. But if they're incoherent, it harms. It can make things worse. And I realized when he said it, oh, I need to organize my life so I can be more coherent. And so I started to look at the kind of tactics you're talking about and what they did to our sense of coherence.

And what I've seen is things will be done that cause us to feel incoherent. And then we will do anything to try and get back to a state of coherence. And what is often offered is sort of a fake coherence, almost as a salve, if you will. And so part of the tactics somehow relate, I think, to coherence and incoherence and trying to keep people in a state of incoherence. Well, it's actually quite funny about that. It just pulls us back around to what Steve was talking about before,

because I don't know how many of you have read the Discworld novels. but the two best in my opinion, one called the Hogfather, one called Small Gods, and both deal with the idea the human belief shapes human reality, basically. The gods exist if people believe they exist.

And I think, you know, I'm not sure I would subscribe to that, but it does put an awful lot of interesting things into discussion about what the purpose of propaganda is and the power of convincing people of things that aren't true. Well, and I've often referred a prayer as a direct energy weapon. And it's, you know, energy focused to the concentrated, you know, in a concentrated manner

for a specific outcome. And I would agree with the concept that, you know, chaotic or perhaps like prayers of desperation could backfire very, very easily. they're there are you guys familiar with the Maharishi effect where if you get like one percent of a prison population meditating or one percent of a population meditating then it has like a ripple effect outward and they've done experiments in prisons where they've taught meditation classes and then overall violence in the prison goes down as a result it's kind of the the same general philosophy behind it because you really are um you know pushing out out concentrated energy with a intended outcome in a very, very direct manner. And it's something that I think people don't take seriously and probably should put a little bit of study into it before you really try to implement it as a practice. Well, what's interesting, though, is you can look at it from two different ways, right?

One side of it is more of the esoteric, like, is there, you know, the directed intention and what that can do in more of a, I guess, spiritual sense or energy sense? sense, but then on the other side of it is, like, the scientific, like, what does that do to your body from a chemical sense? And like, the, that's a good point to bring this in, actually, for those that don't know about the, you know, what these chemicals are. So we're talking about cortisol, right? We're talking about the idea of fight or flight. That's cortisol. That's what gives you that. And so you know, to the point that what Carrie is making, when that happens, your hair stops growing. Your immune system shuts down. It's meant to be that

moment of survival, so everything ceases. But we're talking a good little, remember, it's Edso, EDSO, EDSO, it stands for endorphins, dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin. Where endorphins are pain relief, happiness, dopamine reward, you know, accomplishing something, satisfaction of achieving goals. Serotonin is pride and social bonding, whereas oxytocins, they call the love hormone. It's interesting to think about that because what we're talking about is the idea of the negative side of what these things can do, and there's two different ways to look at it. Because I do, I agree with Steve that there's other angles to it as well.

But, you know, what does the idea of the propaganda for me and what we're highlighting, I think, is more about the social manipulation through these things of the propaganda and putting you into that state, right? But, I mean, what would you, what do you think more on that, Steve in regard to the more of the esoteric side? I mean, there's so many different, there's so many different depths to it. And at some point, you kind of do just become like, this is where you get into like the astral projection elements of it and, you know, ways that you can. physically travel without necessarily leaving your house. And I think that, again, this is incredibly serious stuff. And I don't think that people should approach it haphazardly or without an extreme amount of veneration for the thing that they're about to participate in. Because of the further down that road you go, like with anything, you know, the rewards can become greater, but so do the risks.

and your ability to catch an ego about it and then have that become what you're practicing rather than the practice being the thing that you're practicing is right there. So I would just, I would advise not necessarily like caution per se, but respect, a healthy, healthy dose of respect. If I could add on to that, I mean, I think it's a famous knowledge. about the placebo effect when you compare the Flipsigo effect in many, many different studies, they find that placebo has about a 30% efficacy. And so it really goes back to you tell people they're sick and they believe it. So this belief, the belief in the intention has a massive power

that we don't understand yet. And going back to the whole met, there's people in physics, they talk about scalar waves, which is how it's really the energy of, of consciousness and that information that can be transmitted, which scalar waves are faster than light, and they can go through everything. So that might be one way to explain how there's this interhuman interaction. But the question I'd like to pose is that if it was just as simple as intention,

could we change our reporting to have more, to be able to look at the bright side and always be pointing in that direction, pushing towards positive news, would actually push the needle, and people's mental and spiritual well-being. I think that's interesting to think about. I would love to add on a couple of thoughts here because I love everything you guys are saying. First, to key into what you mentioned,

it made me think of the study that there's a great documentary called The Brain That Changes It's Free on YouTube. It's about 55 minutes. It's about neuroplasticity. And they mentioned a study, and I've read about it in the guy's book as well, where they took people and had them sit at a piano and practiced playing piano with their hands.

And then they took another group of people and they just had them sit at the piano and they had them visualize the same thing that the people who were actually using their hands were doing. And at the end of, I think, a week or some period of time, they found that the people who just imagined playing the piano who didn't actually use their hands, they were playing almost as well. They had seen almost as much of improvement as the people who were physically practicing. So to me, that really illustrates the power of our brains, of our minds, of what's possible. And just one other thought, because I think there's so much to talk about. But speaking, this is a spiritual practice. I wanted to come back to my brain rewiring program. I have done one called the dynamic neural retraining system. And it's funny because I came to it of like, I can't be sick anymore. I've tried everything. Nothing's working. And I just came to it for physical benefits. But what I have found in doing this practice is that it's deeply spiritual. And most of it is visualization. It's teaching your brain and creating new associations to help calm the fight or flight. And it's almost entirely visualization. And it's also a practice throughout the day of say, I had all these food sensitivities and garlic was a really bad one for me. And something they teach in the program is

you have to catch yourself every time you have a negative thought about garlic. You have to catch those thoughts and reroute them to something more positive. And as it happens, it works. I was down to eating. I'll save that for what I give a full conversation about what I did, but I was barely able to eat anything without having really severe eczema responses. And now I'm eating almost everything again. I have maybe a few foods left to rewire, but it really comes down to the pathways I'm creating in my brain. And that sounds really scientific, but for me it's become some spiritual

because once I quiet that down, once I can reconnect to Earth and stores, it's been one of the most enlightening experiences of my life. And it's so much more than the physical, which has improved so, so, so much. Almost every symptom I had is gone. Do you think... Go ahead, go ahead, Derek.

Yeah, I just wanted to sort of step in there where Carrie was going and comment on some of the other threads there. Specifically, and this is to everybody, but Carrie, since this was sort of your initial thought to get this panel going, I mean, I know you're somebody like myself and probably everybody here who believes strongly in personal responsibility. And we're going to have people listening to this who are maybe excited or interested in these ideas. What comes to mind for me is so the personal responsibility side on one side, it's us. How do we as journalist content creators not just feed into the constant negative news cycle while at the same time trying to do our job of educate people and spread awareness and things like that? So I think that's one thing, like for each of us and everybody who's a part of the IMA or anybody else out there who's listening to who puts out podcasts and content. Like how can you make sure you're not just feeding into that and following just the latest trend or outrage of the day or of the week, right? That's one thing.

But then also to put it back on the audience as far as personal responsibility goes. And you were sort of touching on this with some of the things you've done. But I was just going to pose the question to you and everybody else. Like what sort of ideas come to mind for you that things that people can actually. do because we've sort of hinted at some things, the program that you've followed, people talk about meditation and group prayer and things of that sort. But I think ultimately it does come back to the individual because there will be some people who hear this that will say, this is a bunch of woo-woo hippie stuff.

The globalists are trying to kill us. You know, why are we out there hanging them from the closest tree or pulling out the guillotine and focused on that and not so much seeing the role that their own mind and their own heart and their own kind of place of being is playing in the whole grand scheme of thing. So yeah, what do you think about that in terms of personal responsibility? Oh, we can do both. I'm just kidding. Go ahead, Gary?

Yeah. We can do both. You know, it's interesting because I'm coming at it from a perspective of I was actually ill. Like I was so stressed that my body had become like a battleground of just constant survival mode. And so for me, I had to do something a bit more extreme. I had been doing yoga and meditation for over a decade when I got sick. Like that was, or maybe not over a decade at that point been maybe seven, eight years.

But now I've been doing these things for over a decade. And for me, unfortunately, it was not enough. But this program was. So if you're someone who's really, really struggling, whether with physical health issues or anxiety, which was also a big factor for me, maybe something like rewiring your brain is essential and maybe it would really help. But another book I read that's so simple. It's called hardwiring happiness.

and it's also rooted in principles of neuroplasticity, but it's all about little steps throughout the day, maybe five, 10 seconds at a time to just pause and find something positive in your experience. It could literally be like, I'm sitting on my couch right now, and it's really comfortable. And I appreciate that.

And I just stop and I soak it in. I have flowers sitting right in front of me. You can't see him on camera, and that brings joy. And it sounds silly. And again, I can understand, I can imagine people commenting if I tweeted this, you know, just, oh, this is so stupid.

I have better things to do. Like you said, the globals were taking over. But if we're, if we're going to accept the premise that all of these individual thoughts and actions really add up to a collective consciousness, the more we can do to, and this speaks to what you were saying,

Hakeem, about sort of rewiring form of positivity and not to fixate on the negative. Because the negativity bias is, is inborn into the brain. This is something that helped us survive. It's, I think it's actually in this book, hardwiring happiness.

He talks about, like, well, if you're a, you know, a hunter-gatherer and you hear something behind a bush, you could either assume it's a tiger or you could assume it's the wind. It's probably safer to assume it's the tiger because if you assume it's the wind and it's a tiger, you're going to die. And so it's really a natural survival mechanism, but we don't have to live like that in this day and age anymore. And so much of this overreaction is just a knee-jerk response from the brain trying to protect us, which I appreciate that. I talk to my limbic system a lot. That's also part of my program, which is like, hey, thank you. I see you want to help. I got this. Like just stepping in and taking that personal responsibility to be a container for and be able to hold something. space for so much stress in this world because it is it's overwhelming and whether it's by design or it's which i think i kind of lean that way at least the people who are aware of it um i also think a lot of

people believe it themselves i think a lot of the reporting during covid a lot of that was stressed from the people writing the stories because they believed it i don't think it was all just manipulation um but i think there's a lot to be said for becoming really aware of what's going on in your mind and your thoughts and gently and lovingly helping turn more toward all of the beauty in this world and all of the possibility and all of the people who are doing great things because there's so much. And it's so easy to get mired in that fear, both because of the top-down propaganda and because of our natural wiring in our brains. So I just think that becoming aware of that and learning more about it.

Again, the book is called hardwiring happiness. Let me get the guy's name. Let's see. Hard wiring happiness. Rick Hansen. And a lot of it's rooted in like booze. And oh, you got it. Amazing. And meditation and a moment to moment awareness of where our thoughts are going and how that can affect the physical world. It's interesting, though. I mean, I would, please go ahead, Kit. Go ahead.

Regarding whether or not it's real, you know, I mean, I think the numerology argument applies. I don't believe in numerology. Unfortunately, there is evidence that suggests some people in quite important positions of power do believe in numerology. So you have to at least understand it and understand that. they consider it to be a real thing. Is prayer and manifestation definitely real? I think it's been proved so. It could be. But if positive thinking wasn't important, they wouldn't try to stop you doing it. Like, they wouldn't need to fill the airway for things to scare you if you not being scared wasn't a good thing for you and a bad thing for them.

But here's what's interesting to add to the overlap to it, though, is that both these things are important. Like, for those out there listening who, like Derek said, who may hear more of the side of this that they think is more esoteric, more unprovable. Both of these things are important in the conversation, right? The actual scientific reality of just pumping you full of fear and how that chemically changes the way you see things and your choices, but also the deeper part of that, which I also agree with. I think there's much more to this story that we don't want to hear, which I was going to ask you, Carrie, about that very point in your treatment. So do you think that this was the treatment solving the stress and that's what helped it, or simply the rewiring

that circumvented that stress? Like, you see, saying like the difference between the actual physical you know or you know the esoteric how do you see that in the way you went through it well for me it's coming to this realization that our bodies are so intuitive and wise and that all i had to do was remove the dysfunction and my body is just doing its job like coming back online like everything has just been functioning so much better now and it was i think it i guess i consider it like the treatment is the rewiring but i did not take anything i i actually stopped taking any supplements because I wanted to really know if this was working. And the first week my migraine stopped. That was the first symptom to go away. The only migraine I have had since doing this program

was the day after the election because I was not mindful and I was on social media all night and I was checking the news. I want to see what was going on. And I woke up. I threw up the next morning. I was in bed all day. And it was like, oh my God, I can't believe this used to be my reality. This was three times a week. I was this sick. And that came just from even just like at that point one week into the program, because it's a minimum six months to properly build new neural pathways, but one week into the program, even just the belief of like, oh my God, this is so what's been going on with me. And I know that this is going to help. It's this intuitive knowing. Like when you've gone through this and then you do a program like what I did and you hear the way it's described, it just it hits so

hard. You're like, no wonder nothing else worked. I've been a glitched out mess in my brain. And it was going on much longer than that the last five years. It was something I think had followed me my whole life, but finally came to a head and then got really bad. Because I had been in good health my whole life. But I had the eczema. I had a brain tumor when I was 17 or 18. It was benign. Came out of nowhere.

No one knew why. All these little things. Migraine started at 13. And then I sort of went off the deep end and everything became, it was like no going back, except there is going back because I just had to create new neural pathways in my brain. And I'm not sure if I fully answered your question. question, but it shows either one of two things, right? Either that this is just positive thinking and part placebo that solves it in itself or that you can literally circumvent all the

nonsense for being told selves that, you know, just by removing the stress from your life and rewiring. I think it's probably a little bit of both. I think that's also think about. And it's physically, I mean, you're literally physically reducing the cortisol. You're reducing the adrenaline. You're slowing your body's knee jerk response to that. A lot of it has to do with a dysfunctional vagus nerve. So there are real physical aspects to what's changing, but what's amazing is that you trigger these physical changes through your mind and through your visualization.

And so much of it is I don't want to give too much away because it's a very in-depth program, but so much of the program, you do an hour a day of active rewiring. And you start the round, I do three or four rounds a day. You start the round by visualizing the trigger, whether it's something that gives me anxiety, sometimes it's posting videos.

That's what I've had to work on a lot, because I get really stressed out, or whether it's visualizing a food. And you can feel the reaction. Like I can feel my chest gripping. And then you go into the round. And you start interrupting that reaction. And then you visualize that trigger as a positive. So you kind of tuck it into one of your positive visualization.

So I'm like out in the redwoods and I'm with the earth and I'm hugging the trees. And then there's something with garlic in it just for me in the forest. And I eat it. And it sounds so silly, but it truly works because you're teaching your brain. Like, no, this is actually a good thing. We don't have to worry about this. We don't have to have a whole life or death reaction to it. And it's been so beautiful for me.

And really, I probably wouldn't have believed it. If you have told me this two or three years ago, I was so caught in my illness and what was wrong and how I couldn't get better. And it's funny and it's a little bit ironic because that was perpetuating my illness is this belief that I couldn't get better and that everything was going to make me sick and all these foods were dangerous and I was going to get a migraine. And it really was changing my mind. So Carrie, I have to mention I and some of the people who work for me were in a very stressful situation many years ago, and there was legal stress and danger, financial stress and danger, and physical harassment and danger. And what would happen is something terrible would happen, and it would put us in such a state that we literally couldn't think of how to imagine our way out. And so we created something called a beauty tool. And the beauty tool was a list.

It was several pages long. And it was a list of all the things we could do for ourselves to make ourselves feel good or spoil ourselves. That didn't cost a lot of money. It had to be highly economic because there was a lot of financial stress. And what we discovered is when we would get put in a stress corner, we would pull out the beauty tool. And we literally couldn't think of these things if we hadn't had a written list because we were so stressed. out. But we could pull out the tool and then say, okay, let's do these two. And it would work to get us out. I love that. Thank you for sharing. It's so beautiful. And it's so simple. You know, I think with so

much chronic illness in America around the world, I think it's so easy to feel like you have to get the medical interventions and you have to do what the doctor says. And in my case, the doctors didn't even know what was wrong with me. They knew I had eczema and I got offered a shot. And one doctor had kind of a good idea to trick my brain into not reacting, but there was no, no holistic sense of how to fix it. And it feels so big. I was so sick, it was such a mystery, but then you talk about things like this. And it's, it's so helpful. And in the moment you feel it, you know that something's changing and you're interrupting something. Now, have you looked at Joe Dispens's work and how it compares to what you're talking about? Not deeply, but he's actually recommended reading in the

program I did. So I'm aware of his general philosophy and his approach. And I think it's very much in line with the program I've done. Well, it's interesting. We could take this into another direction that I'm like, I'm almost hesitating because I'm going to take it into a negative direction. And we're talking about the positive side of it. But on that note, actually, what I think is interesting is that, you know, it's, I've had this conversation many times over the years where people go like,

hey, can't you talk about some of the positive stuff? And my grappling with that is that, okay, I want to be objective and honest, right? And so me grabbing a positive story to insert it into it feels dishonest because it's not necessarily the biggest and most important. But when I find a large story that I think is in the, you know, I will include that. And sometimes I do try to if I see it come across my path, but maybe that's me failing to bring it. You know, so I grapple with that because I agree. And I think it is, but I'm going more towards the idea that we can talk about these negative stories, but as like I'll highlight, I think we all do that, you know, this is maybe feeling

negative because we're at a point where we're more people are questioning authority more than ever, you know, that kind of a way. But I'm saying this to kind of segue into the point about things that I think are darker around this, you know? And like, like, I wanted to go to something like neuro weapons since they're like neuroscience, because that got brought up. And Catherine's talked about this in the past and wondering how that might intersect. And I did, I know that you did want to talk at one point about something like long COVID and the overlap to that. So if we can go in any direction, what do you guys want to talk about? Catherine, what do you think? So I think it's very, you know, during the, during the time we were dealing with significant

harassment and if you if you look at sort of the whole area of targeted individuals and sort of the tactics they deal with there is a whole technology from you know from sort of old style well well you have psychic warfare and literally people are are paid to sort of are hired to pay to be psychic warriors all the way to very high-tech weapons to put you in a in a state of stress So we're not just dealing with propaganda. We're dealing with lots and lots of technology. If you go to Salary, there's a collection called Mind Control. So if you put it in mind control, you'll pull up.

We tried to keep all the best links and sort of videos, books. One of my favorite is a very deep dive into the history of the gambling industry focused on the technologies used to create gambling addictions, using slot machines. So it was a professor from both Tufts and MIT and it's a it's hundreds of it's very long. It's very detailed. But what you realize is that there if you if you run down that that section, Ryan, you'll find the book. It's it's really extraordinary. But what you realize is somebody spent go down to the book section. Yeah, addiction by design is the one you just passed Yeah, there it is, addiction by design.

Remarkable book, but what you realize is someone, an industry has spent literally billions of dollars and decades trying to figure out how to use slot machine software and hardware to create physical addictions. It's extraordinary. And what you realize is we're dealing with, you know, we're up against a very, sophisticated high-tech industry, you know, that is using everything from classic propaganda to real high-tech technology and invisible weaponry to get us hooked in this way. And that's why we have to be careful. I just read a new book. We'll write a review for it for the Slear Report called the Tech Exit. And it's by a person, a mother who's basically gotten all of her kids off of technology, and she does a real deep dive on sort of what your kids are exposed to in terms

of technology and content. And it's pretty, pretty frightening. So we are dealing up against people with massive resources to achieve the goals that you're talking about. I'm not at Catherine's level yet with the psychic warriors. Right now, I'm dealing with the keyboard warriors. Those guys are annoying, but I think they're only level three. Now, I just wanted to add to that. Like the technology aspect, we were talking about earlier, what are some techniques you could start to use at home to better your health? And I mean, I have a phone company, and yet I would say that carving out time, a significant amount of time away from the phone where it's not in use is the best thing you could do. Because without all the weapons that they have, it's the phone and the laptop and the social media that are running 24-7. So they're always, it makes it so easy to pull you back down into that dark space.

And of course, children are targeted more than anyone. There was a recent study published of 100,000 young people who saw that girls who were given a phone under the age of 13, they had double the number of suicidal thoughts than kids who didn't get their phones until later on. So I mean, with our phone company, we say that we don't, you know, we don't recommend giving phones to kids this young. I think I had my first laptop at 11, and that was a little bit too young, I think. And so the more time you can spend away from the devices and away from the anonymous trolls online that bring you down for every positive message you send out will likely be better for you. So maybe the next time you could install an app like screen time, which will tell you how much time you've been on the phone. And that'll give you a picture of why your thoughts, your feelings, and emotions are the way they are.

I hate to say it, though, that some of those screen time apps are a little invasive, but I agree with the logic of, you know, keeping an eye on it. I'll just quickly point out. And I'm not going to give the brand lest you think I'm trying to promote these for my own benefit. Go find something like this, which is a pouch that you put your phone in that completely blacks it out. One pouch actually blocks like the radiation still works. The back pouch blocks it and blacks it out entirely. I've got one from my computer. But like I put my phone in this. And like anytime I'm not working, which actually frustrates a lot of people. But I think it's very important because you just need to disconnect. We shouldn't be slaves to this thing dinging at you every time jumping to it, you know?

So, Ryan, just to let you know, we just started marketing Faraday bags for phones at Salary. And all allies get a complimentary one. So I put my email address in the chat. And anybody who wants to email me address, I'm happy to send you a complimentary one. I need to email you anyway because we got to get you on the show. I wanted to hop in real quick about visualization. I know it's been mentioned a couple times. And actually something that Carrie said as well as Catherine just brought this up for me.

So some of you guys know my own story of dealing with drug addiction and depression and suicide attempts at a young age. Like this is all before my activism. So it's a journey I was on before I even got into the chaos of trying to keep up with the daily news and all the imbalances that that can create. And I can just say that for me, when I start. started to move away from my states of depression and self-doubt and insecurities and all that stuff, that meditation was a powerful tool for me, as was prayer. But visualization, creative visualization, that's a specific phrase there. I think there's even a book called creative visualization was very useful for me.

And especially what you were describing, Carrie, in terms of like kind of becoming hyper-aware of which meditation helps with, of your own layers of consciousness. So you talked about like communicating with your limbic system. and that sounds silly to a lot of people and maybe even some folks on this panel. But I do think it's like becoming aware down to that level of like recognizing when you're feeling the tension in your chest or in your jaw or wherever you get it and then being able to like you describe, communicate with that part of your body or your brain and say, hey, like I understand why you're doing this.

Thanks for the warning or the concern. I'm in control here. And, you know, when you can get down, that to me is like, that's real freedom. That's real liberty. That's cognitive liberty, mental, liberty, physical, spiritual. people sometimes just think about being free as like, oh, we want the government to leave us alone. But you can still be a slave in your own mind, of course, and then through that to your own body. So visualization is extremely important, I think, in this whole conversation.

And to that point, Catherine, I was just looking up the interview we did in like 2023. It was the end of 2023. And you were talking about your beauty plan idea. It was something you mentioned then, and maybe you'll remember it because I can't remember the name you gave it. But we were both talking about just the importance of each of us and those at home really spending time, like instead of obsessing over agenda 2030, focusing on what does your 2030 look like? And I actually wrote an article for TLAV years ago about that, sort of taking that whole idea of you'll own nothing and be happy and then spinning it on its head and saying, what if we all envisioned our 2030? And here's my vision of that and just kind of spent some time describing that. And you and I, Catherine, back then, were just discussing the importance of encouraging people to do that.

And I think you said that you and the Solari team sort of have this year-end practice where you guys do that. Do you remember what I'm talking about? Yeah, so we do backcastings. And we did, the last one we did was with five legislators from Ohio, Idaho. And we did a backcasting of, for 2030 for Idaho, where Idaho had made a significant difference in preserving freedom in the state. And it had spread across the country. So it was 2030. and we were prosperous and Idaho was very successful.

And what we did was each person told the story in a different area. Some people took education, some people took health, different topics, and talked about how freedom had been preserved and achieved. In other words, we start with success and then we tell the story of how that success happened. And the year before the Salary team had done it just as a team for sort of how

freedom ended up winning. So I think backcastings are very helpful to helping you imagine. I love that. I love that idea. I think we need more of that for sure. And still the same kind of point applies is that, you know, this is something, it's about like people may be thinking, oh, you're talking to your body and maybe that's exactly what you envision. Maybe that's really what it is, but it's the intention. It's the idea of putting that in out into the world. And, you know, it comes back to this really clear point of just the power that you have with that intention with your mind, with what we can accomplish in our body. And what I was mentioning before is the point of, you know, kind of reverse

with the COVID-19 illusion. And what was discussed on that is showing how the long COVID, we talked about this many time, I think all of us probably, the overlap of the psychosomatic aspect and showing you how terrible that can be in the other side of it, you know, driving you to this place where you're so consumed with this idea that your body starts shutting down. And it's not, nothing to do other than the panic and the control, you know, and there were studies that really did break that down. It's just a powerful thing to think about what you can do with that power of your mind, good or bad. So I do have to mention the thing that helped me the most was spiritual warfare training. I had a wonderful church in Washington, and I spent two and a half years in their Bible

Institute studying spiritual warfare. And one of the things they always taught us was to pray for our enemy. And so I literally had people who were trying to kill me. I was constantly dealing with physical harassment or poison, but I used to pray for everybody involved. And what was interesting is when you pray for people, when you go into a higher mind and you find solutions, you would never find if you were in fight or flight. But the other thing is you understand their point of view. And that intelligence is invaluable if you're trying to stay alive. So I found spiritual warfare techniques to be fantastic. You know, one of the key techniques when you're in a fighter flight, and to get out of flight of flight,

scripture says he dwells in the midst of our praise. And you go into a state of praise and you just start giving thanks for anything you can think of. And it's by building that praise that works. I wanted to mention to you, Carrie, I'm going to go into the archives and see if I can find it and dig it out. John Rappaport has the most fantastic imagination series, but imagination exercises.

And he has all these exercises that you can, can use to just, and it's I think what you mean when you say neuroplasticity. But one of my favorite is to, as you're driving down the road or you're walking down the street, just start spreading precious gems and diamonds on the rooftops and the trees of all your neighbors as if you're blessing them. And all I can tell you, it has the most marvelous impact on your attitude. Just, you know, like Johnny Appleseeds spreading diamonds and pearls everywhere in your neighborhood. The history of psychic warfare as regarding the CIA is actually very interesting.

It's probably most famous through the men who stare at goats. But it's one of those things that makes the CIA seen both scary and funny because you know that they spent like a severe amount of money, basically hiring Cubans to sit in the dark room stare at pictures for Del Castro and wish he was dead. And it probably wasn't even the top 50 things they tried that year that but absolutely insane. But it also brings us around something quite interesting, which is a question I've been asking in my mind for a long time, which is the decline, purposeful decline, at the campaign against religious thinking, especially in the West for the last 30 years or so, maybe more. Because on the face of it, you would say religion historically has offered an

incredible tool for social control through, you know, Catholicism in the West and the Ottoman Empire and that kind of thing, it always has done. And yet there is this surge in not just atheism, but a sort of nihilistic atheism, especially in what you would call like the Enlightened and the centrist. And you wonder why that is. And it's because I think what you have with regards to prayer,

with regard to religion, is you have basically three possibilities. Either it works because there is a higher spirit and it doesn't mean something. Either it works because the power of your own, of human consciousness to manifest things, or it works simply because it makes you feel better. And either way, that is something that the powers

would be kind of thought to have in people's minds. So it's interesting to see them cut off a potentially useful tool because it supplies calm. And the power of calm, I think, is undervalued. So, Kit, have you ever read Dr. Robert Temple's book, A New Science of Heaven? I have it on my bookshelf, but I haven't read it. Someone gave it to me. So what he says, and I believe he's right, is 99% of the universe is made up of plasma,

and plasma is alive and intelligent. So I would say one of the reasons it has an influence or it has an impact or it works is because we are dealing, you know, life is alive, and it's ever. It's intelligent. One of the reasons I think religion works and one of the reasons I believe it is religion where it's where you access the proper knowledge and training basically teaches that faith, you have the ability through faith to create your reality. So it's teaching an individual that through their practice, through their good habits, through how they conduct themselves. they can build a successful life, a successful family, a successful world. And they teach them certain practices of how to do that.

So scripture says faith is the substance of things hope for, but not yet seen. And basically what it's teaching you is, you know, it's almost teaching you the same thing you read if you read Ingo Swan, which is part of our reality is concrete and material. But part of our reality is invisible. and we need to believe in it, attend to it, and use it to our advantage. And it's by opening the doorways to those invisible world that it gives you power. And that's one of the reasons I think the powers that be would rather use religion for control or just drive you into atheism because you lose your power.

You lose your, you know, love is your power and you lose your love without that faith. And I love this conversation. This has been a good one. Yeah, I was just thinking the same thing. It doesn't come up enough in the field that we're in. And I make a point in my work in general on the day-to-day stuff to make sure that I'm not crossing the line of my personal religious beliefs with what I'm reporting. But it doesn't mean that it's not monumentally important in my worldview or in any number of ways around how this affects the way we see the world. And I just think it's so fascinating to think about this is like the point you just made it, which is kind of what I was saying in the second.

before about the, you know, regardless of how it actually works, it still works. You know what I mean? Whichever way it's actually working. And, you know, it's just the power of positive thinking in a very simple sense for those out there that are, you know, not religious. But obviously, this goes much grander than that in many different ways. Go ahead, Catherine. So let me ask a question because, you know, if you look at what each person here is doing, it's extraordinary because, you know, I can just hear your parents in the background saying, oh, you know, what you're trying to do is such a long shot. It's so hopeless. I don't know why you're doing this. But if you look at each person here, each person here is, is demonstrating a remarkable

faith in the possibility of building a human civilization against all odds, right? 100% agree. And I think that's a profound thing to think about, you know, that, you know, it comes to that, but also just the fact that we are willing to gamble on this because we believe in this. And I think we can all acknowledge, I mean, Carrie probably more than most has suffered a lot of consequences for simply doing what she believes in or what we know, what we believe in as a group, as individuals. It's just a powerful thing. You know, and I think on another note that connects to that, I think that's the one of the main parts that is shaking people free from everything. Because as this gets more ridiculous and more cartoonish, it becomes possible not to see the difference between people

that actually stand with principal and those that just jump to the next story every day. Or as Keem's pointing on just focus on only the negative and it's always hyperbolic it's it's an interesting time yeah i just want to add just a brief little thought on that which is in the program that i do one of their tips is don't watch the news when you're doing this program so that was a bit difficult for me it's like well i kind of have to if i want to make my videos and i want to talk about but i i went quite a while when i first started the program i didn't really post anything i was very quiet because i do get activated and now I have better tools and better inner resources and just an overall calmer system. So I feel okay doing it, but I think it's so telling this is, you know, I wouldn't say that

the program is necessarily like, I don't think the people who created it share our beliefs. You know, they're wonderful people. I'm so grateful for them. But like, I don't know that, that they're thinking about volunteerism and, and, you know, the status system. And yet even they're saying like, yeah, you probably don't want to watch the news. It's not good for your healing. And so what does that mean for all of these people who are addicted to the news cycle and constantly consuming all this negativity and confirming their negativity bias. And again, just to stress the importance of, like, yes, it is important to be informed. It's vital and you should know what's going on in the world. But I think there are limits. And the boundary, I think, should be your well-being.

Well said. Absolutely agree. And let's go ahead and kind of wrap on that amazing note right there and just, you know, kind of go around, you know, if we give our final thoughts on this and, you know, I'll just, I'll start it off with, you know, it's a battle, right? I mean, because what we're describing is almost asking people to not look at our work in a small way. You know what I mean? So it's like this battle. So it's really it's to, it's each of us in our individual fight and all of this.

And like she said, of course, you have to be informed. I mean, I think that's important. But, and I don't want to say then just listen to the people you trust because that's the exact opposite of what I want you to do.

Go and look at many sources. Consider these thoughts, but I agree with Kerry entirely. It comes down to your well-being, health and emotional, spiritual and otherwise, that has to be the most important. And,

you know, but nonetheless, if you're, If you don't have the time to dig into all these things, just remain objective and consider all possibilities they're in front of you and don't fall into the emotional, you know, merry-go-round. They just never stops because that is the most important, I think, to this conversation is don't get trapped in that never-ending cycle of cortisol pumping fight-or-flight because you will get lost in it as Kerry's highlighting today. So great conversation. I agree, Derek. I'm glad we had this one.

We should focus on it again in the future. I'll just add to that. It's time for us to be freedom lovers. because there's nothing that we need to fight for. And everyone on this call is a perfect example of that. And I hope that it was just the shift, the shift in mindset and the shift in intention that we can bubble this flow of positivity out to more people. I try and add a positive story to every show I do on the T-BOT show,

which is on Substack, T-BOTT.com. And I think it's really important because these positive stories, they could be the things that change the world. But if we aren't the one... Well, of course that happens. I'll give them an opportunity to... He's going to jump back in. All right. Well, why don't we jump to whoever's next?

I would say one thing we could do is just we've got a wide-ranging and, like, fairly high-concept discussion. I think if we went around and just said one thing, one practical thing we do, like one practical thing we consider it be the most important thing to do to maintain positivity. I think that would be a nice way to wrap up. I mean, I don't sure if I'm going to go first or if anybody even agreed with me. But like, go for it, Kit. Go for it. Okay, well, just as a story, I would say animals are very important. in late 2021 height of COVID

a stray cat just wandered into my yard one day and he now lives here and I would say he had such a massive impact on the way I run the website and the way I think about the world and like he is a grounding influence like animals make you realize what's real and what matters and when you touch them you'll feel more grounded in reality I think This is kind of going against the positivity grain, but just he disappeared two weeks ago, and I haven't been able to find him.

And the stark difference in, like, how the world feels now that he is not around is stark. I use the word already. And I think that is one thing, like, I would encourage people to get an animal and adopt an animal off the streets. It's had a hard time of it. I think that was a very positive thing to do. and it kind of brings you back to reality. God, I can't, I can't second that enough. And I have to say, just on a personal note, kid,

or anybody out there with that same expression, like that says, that says so much about who you are in my mind as a person in just in every possible way, because I think animals are, you know, the way people respond and act with them. Yeah, it says a lot about who they are. Anyway, I agree with that entirely, kid. Thank you for that.

You want to jump in next to Keem since you dropped out? Yeah, that was perfect timing. That's what I said. Yeah, I just, well, wanted to say how amazing this panel has been, how awesome it has been to get some tools from everyone here. And now it's really about living in compassion. And this is something I've struggled with for a long time. For me, it's like seeing the homeless in my hometown. And then there's like when I'm driving by, there's a struggle like, all right, stop, you know, talk to them,

say hi. But then there's that fear, ego response, which is like, don't do that. You don't know what they're like. They could hurt you. They could rob you. All of these things. And a week ago, I decided to have some courage and be more positive. And so I saw a sign where someone said, I need a cold drink. It's this lady on the side of a road under the underpass. And so I stopped and I parked. And I did it. I grabbed some waters.

I grabbed some lemonade. I stopped and chat with every homeless person. And really, if you talk to them, they're trying to change their lives. They're trying to get off the street. And I just love their determination. They're saying, I'm getting off the street. And then when I got to the lady under the underpass, it turns out I start chatting. chatting with her. She's actually, she's been under this underpass. We've been homeless for years.

And she's now gotten a grant from the city to paint this entire underpass. And she's painting it in all the colors and she's representing the other homeless people in the city. And I thought that was such a beautiful thing. And so it's like if you just, you have the courage to shift into that positive mindset and put yourself out there, you'll get it all back. So I just wanted to end with that. I'll go ahead and jump in. Just seconding and thirding, everything that's already been said. Kit, yes, definitely on the animals front for sure. I mean, I've recently got a dog for the first time in 20 years after having a traumatic experience, the last dog I had. And he has been very healing as well, all the animals that I've been lucky enough

to love. And I'm one that loves animals from dogs to cats to rats. So I love them all. And I see cats and just shared some videos of cats and dogs. And I don't use Instagram much, but when I do get on Instagram, my entire feed is dog and cat videos. So that kind of, that's my way. way of checking out from this stuff, I'm just like, I'm tired of hearing about Trump and whatever else, and Kerry's got rev there. I would just add, you know, besides animals and what's been shared, and I mentioned earlier about visualization, and I do think visualization is very powerful and it's a great tool. And by that, I mean literally using that powerful imagination you have to visualize, to see, to smell, to taste the things you want to become reality. And putting weight into that,

that's one of the tools that I think really just changed in my life in so many ways and allowed me to see beyond the circumstances that I was in the past. Just being able to imagine that I could be there and then to see myself living and existing in this place that is now my reality, it made it very real. So I'm grateful for that. And the other thing, just again, back to personal responsibility for everybody listening to that. I've been finding myself increasingly frustrated about this and I just want to reemphasize it. stop rewarding the content creators and the podcasters who are feeding you garbage. Stop following them. Stop donating to them.

Stop subscribing to them. If every other week they're telling you at Civil War, if every other week they're telling you World War III is about to happen, or whatever is about, you know, just if you can, you have evidence to see, okay, this person's been wrong. And not only they've been wrong, but when I watch their content, I come away feeling worse and I feel like hopeless. And not just because they're reporting truth,

but because they're exaggerating or they're, you know, just embellishing the facts, stop rewarding them and stop punishing yourself by going back to those places. So that's one thing. Take it into your own hands and don't support those who are putting that sort of energy out there and that kind of content. And then last thing, just for the good of everyone, take care of yourself. Well, I'll jump in with the kit's idea of the ending part. I'll just say to add to that. Funny, both you and Derek kind of, at first I was like, the dog thing is exactly where my heart would take me. And then the idea of the, you know, mental, I'm just going to take it another physical point, like a real, like, you know, I often talk

about like grounding or going out, you know, putting your feet on the ground, getting outside. I think we all have a similar thought on that. Gardening is something that I think is profound. And I personally, I've always loved that. It's big in my family and I've just fallen into it this last year. I shared a video earlier and I have to do an update. It's insane. Half my backyard is overtaken by butternut squash and corn is just ridiculous. And I have, I don't have enough yard is not enough size for it. But I recommend something like that, you know, finding that passion that you can put yourself in, you know, and the animal part, again, I just can't stress enough because I really do think that what we're talking about today, it's that power of intention.

I think it's just this pure thing that comes from these animals that it just, you know, unconditional love. And it does change you. It really does. And so I think that's an interesting point to add. And all, you know, just in general, I think I really appreciate all this, what we're talking about today for more reasons than just the discussion point of, you know, changing the way you view it. I'll include a video that I've watched a long time ago from a person called Simon

Seneck. That's where the Edso thing, that's his little acronym for it. And it's interesting to think about, he titles it why leaders eat last. And he really does a great job of bringing it into why the leadership, if you call it that today, is not that. At one point, it was about, you know, them being on the outside, protecting us in the middle. And now it's, it's them in the center. All of us, the fodder protecting them. And it comes back to these same kind of ideas and what drives us and how they use them against us. And so it's a really great conversation. Thank you for saying this up, Gary and I'll pass it to Catherine. So I was just going to say the thing that one of the things I love is music.

And in the most stressful periods in my life, the two things that would always bring me back to coherence were the first thing was my cousin's cows in the pasture behind my house. I don't know if you've ever gone and talked to a cow, but they'll just look at you like, you know, you just need to calm down and chill. You just way too. They're so, I don't know, they're very placid. So it was the cows. But the other thing was listening to the Goldberg variations by Bach.

So Bach is unbelievably complex, but in a very high mind, and it always sort of pulls you out of the dungeon. A lot of times when I'm working, so when I'm in the Netherlands, we have wonderful flea markets here. And for 10 euros, you can buy the complete works of all the CDs, the complete, the complete works of Bach, the complete works of Mozart. I've never had so many complete works in my life, thanks to the flea markets. And I've got one of these CD racks that'll play 50 CDs. So I just, I have marvelous music all day long. I love it. I think this is, you know, definitely a different slice of what we're getting into in our lives. And I think people really enjoy it. So I think we should have more talks like this in general. Anybody have any final thoughts before we wrap up today?

I have a couple. Oh, no, after you, Catherine. I just want to see if, picture of your butternut squash because I've had a force of butternut squash it must be a tenancy thing so just remember to send us a picture of your butternut squash sorry Gary go ahead no worries that's important I agree with everyone music nature animals all these things are so important and I wanted to before I give my last little tip which I actually already mentioned but I want to reiterate I just want to address my guesses there are going to be some people watching this to go oh my god this is so stupid well you're going to change the world the positive thinking like I get that.

I understand. I think the question I would pose to you is how does it feel otherwise? Like if you really get connected to your body and you start sensing what it feels like when you're in that negativity and when you're reacting, even if you're completely broken out of all the programming and indoctrination, my guess, I could be wrong, my guess is that you're probably feeling it in your body. You're probably feeling gripping and tension and activation. And I guess the question is, do you like feeling that way?

when you become aware of it, does it feel good? And if not, then what I would love to direct you toward, which I mentioned, is this book hardwiring happiness because, sure, it's a little bit woo-woo, and it talks about, you know, Buddhism and everything, but it's also very rooted in neuroscience. So there's a scientific appeal to it as well that I think if you're skeptical of all the woo-woo stuff, that is a little more grounding and provides a foundation to understand. But it's also, like, it's less daunting than meditation. I think meditation can be scary for people who don't do it. It's still kind of scary for me, and I've been doing it so long. Like, I still kind of avoid it. I'm like, no, it's time, Carrie, we have to meditate.

But with this idea of soaking, as he describes in the book, it's like five, 10 seconds at a time. And it's so minor. It's like this water tastes really good. Wow. And I love my dog. Oh, she moves. She's so soft. You know, all these little things, whether you're out in nature or your gardening, just taking the time to pause and enjoy that, it can make such a market difference in your day-to-day experience.

And even if you are still following the news, which I think to some extent we should, even if you are. And even if you are taking all that in, I think it's just practical to try to balance that out and come back to being and grounding and connection as opposed to all the chaos and stress that is constantly pushed on us. Well, all said, I think it's a good note to end on. And thank you all for being here today. And I'm looking forward to the next panel. And I'll end with my usual as always. Question everything. Come to your own conclusions.

Stay vigilant.