I recently had cause to visit the Mediterranean island of Ibiza for several days. The place seems to be a curious mixture of ancient history and mythology, the jet-set life, quiet beaches and tranquil forests, and party-party-party.
I wasn't there primarily for any of these, though, but to attend a wedding. Getting to Ibiza from the Highlands of Scotland is just a little more involved than two-hours on the Ryanair or EasyJet express that's the way from London. No, it's three hours by rail or road to Edinburgh, hotel overnight, before flights the following morning, change Madrid (way out) or Barcelona (return trip).
It was a four-hour stopover in Madrid, five in Barcelona; I can report that the airport in Barcelona is infinitely more pleasant for such a wait than is that of its central Spanish counterpart. Both provided ample opportunity for looking around, checking out what's going down, etc. Personal sensitivity dial adjusted accordingly, so as to prevent total exhaustion by the experience.
Airport waiting areas have little to commend them. They are, however, a great place to watch people, along with various aspects to those people's life. One glaring and discomforting observation was the complete disconnect between propaganda (what we are told life is) and reality (what people actually do). On the one hand, dire warnings about human-induced global warming continue to flood out of high-level summit meetings of extremely important people. Simultaneously, more and more of the affluent sections of western populations (I include here folk from India, China, and the rest, whose lifestyle and aspirations have been effectively westernised) gad around the planet like it's just a millpond. Folk use air travel the way that I use the local bus. The number of people who travel halfway round the world simply to do business at a meeting in Dubai or Singapore has skyrocketed over the past thirty years; I know quite a few people who conduct their life in this manner personally, a situation that would have been impossible until recently. Officially, this is all frazzling us to cinders, but nobody says a peep.
So, at the airport we can observe the total disconnect. I also observed something else, which for me was all the more wondrous. Everyone - or nearly everyone - is absorbed in their machines. Nobody stops, ponders, breathes in the life around them, absorbs in mystical quietude the deeper layers to what is going on. No. It's fast, sometimes frantic, head-down, and relentless. Info, info, info, the main medium for consumption. Substantial communication between individuals is out, soon to be rendered emotionally impossible. Facebook, What's App, Instagram, Twitter, whatever else people use these days. Selfies, photos of Fred at the pub, more photos of Millie the poodle, info about what Shirley had for lunch, what she's watching on tele, how long it took to get home from work. Selfies, more selfies, smile please. This would appear to be the substance of people's lives, the end product of this magnificent culture of ours.
In amongst this endless procession of modern life, its relentless march, the masses of people signed up to it without even realising they've taken out the subscription, something unexpected happened. I gave up hope. I finally gave up all hope for the mass of humanity. Or, rather, any vestiges of hope that I had been clinging onto finally drained away. I was a million miles from Neil Kramer and his optimism about the effects of growing consciousness among more people, and the great things about to happen. No. There really was no hope.
It's not that people are horrible. I am sure that many of those I witnessed at Barcelona airport are friendly, sympathetic, quite caring and warm. Interesting to speak to: more than me, no doubt. There was no sense of antipathy on my part. No. It was simply a question of people's ignorance, of wanton thoughtlessness, of signing up to a programme without realising, a programme that leads to greater superficiality, stupidity. A programme devised to contain, to keep the individual as a sub-individual, in a tiny crappy box within an enormous and magnificent universe. A programme that only leads further and ever further from deeper realities, from soul, from god. Absorption in the trivialities of daily life on Facebook takes us far from god, that is the inescapable essence of the matter. It leads far from the direct personal experience of awe in the presence of the sacred, the divine, call it what you will. It cannot be properly excused.....
Funnily enough, rather than experience panic, existential angst, or personal trauma, after the 'moment of no hope', I felt a sense of relief and relaxation come over me. Whether or not I personally felt hope would make not one iota of difference to the fates of the millions of people out there anyway. Life would unfold as appropriate whatever my feelings about it all. Further, I felt that, were everything to go up in flames, or whatever medium the angry gods might prefer, it wouldn't constitute such a disaster after all. For sure, I'd rather us all stick around and try to make a decent fist of things. But, in the cool clear light of day, the absence of people who have strayed so far from the path of divinity, who have betrayed, or at the least ignored or forgotten, the needs of their soul, would hardly count as tragic. The grand experiment wasn't turning out too well, so starting again from the beginning might not be such a terrible idea after all. And while that may sound harsh, it seems to come accompanied by the ring of truth.
What is hope anyway? Maybe it warrants a little monograph, under the umbrella of the Star card in the Tarot. It seems to be a particular response to our ability to envisage the future, in this case in a better form than is the present. As a survival mechanism, helping people to get out of bed in the morning, it serves a purpose. But beyond that? It could quite possibly be put into that bag of unnecessary attitudes and feelings to be thrown out in an act of psychic uncluttering. Whether or not I personally feel 'hope' probably makes little difference to what I do or don't do during the day. If something turns up that I sense requires me to jump up and down, to generally create a stink, I shall still do so.
Part Two
A recurrent theme on Pale Green Vortex has been the toxic nature of 'news'; at least 'news' as presented in the mainstream media, and indeed in good parts of the independent and alternative versions as well. It deceives, telling the unwary what to think and, as significantly, what is important in the first place.
I personally observe a conscious distance from these sources of falseness and negative programming. I will typically check one or two mainstream outlets daily, taking roughly three minutes of my time (I mean this literally). That is plenty to get a good idea of what topics are being pushed today; and, on the rare occasion when there is something to be followed up, I shall proceed to do so. The independent media I check less frequently, but will invariably spend a little longer perusing.
This strategy has enabled me to develop a far more objective view of what is going on. It's the same with many things: full immersion makes a wider perspective difficult, if not impossible (hence the need for couples to seek outside help with their relationship problems, even if they are both qualified therapists). As with the epiphany in Barcelona, I find an enormous disconnect to be in place. Check out the headlines. Daily, there are stories given great prominence on the themes of racism, sexism, gender inequalities and injustices, discrimination against transgender folk, people being nasty against people with black skins or of Muslim faith. You get the picture. These, we are being told, are the issues, the important stories, the 'news' for today.
This is the biggest bullshit you will encounter in your life. For the vast majority of folk, these are 'issues' which effect them not one bit ever, or only on a superficial level. For most people, this is not 'news' at all. Yet every day it is forced down the throats of the unwary, as being the big problem of the day. It is this incredible disconnect that leads to the inevitable conclusion that 'news' is not news at all. It is an agenda in operation, a programming, to beat down people's resistance, until they finally submit to a set of values, a way of thinking, which someone somewhere has deemed is what is good. In truth, like Facebook, it leads far from our authenticity, far from the divine. If 'evil' exists, it is this: whatever leads us far away from our sacredness. And race, sex, and gender issues as presented in the mainstream media do so because they seek to eliminate our sense of distinctness, of being a unique and different being.
On a metaphysical level, the recognition and valuing of distinctions, as in the union of opposites, appears to be an essential prerequisite to 'wholeness', entering into the divine, call it what you will. So by attempting to remove our sense of sex ie the masculine and feminine within life, this agenda is in effect setting out to bar our personal contact with the sacred. 'God becomes self aware through the experience of opposites.' So, if evil exists, then this is it - in my book, at least.
Part Three
All of which brings us neatly to 'The Secret Covenant of the Illuminati'. This is a text that turned up in relatively recent times; it sounds super scary, nefariously nasty. The one thing that's sure about the Secret Covenant of the Illuminati is that it isn't written by a member of the Illuminati. It is far more likely the creation of some bloke waiting for the delayed late night train to Bolton. Nevertheless, the document is a brilliant expression of what might be said by an Illuminatus, or chief archon, or whoever or whatever may be lurking in the shadows, should they wish to make their actions and motives known. The Secret Covenant points up succinctly many of the inconsistencies and incongruities surrounding events, ideas, 'news', all of which lead one inevitably to smelling a very stinky rat somewhere. It is a decent checklist of the horrors, incongruities, and vicious weirdness, that may lead any reasonably intelligent person to conclude that all is not as it is claimed to be.
The biggest giveaway, or deception if you prefer, is the point where the Illuminati claim that they are enlightened (that is, after all, the meaning of their name: illumination). Whatever they may be, the Illuminati ain't enlightened. The term 'enlightenment' is generally taken as referring to a state of non-duality, the implications of which include a certain connectedness and fellow-feeling for the rest of life. The mentality that spawns illuminati-hood, on the other hand, is sharply and exaggeratedly polarised - as starkly dual as you can get. It feeds on the lust for, and sadistic enjoyment of, domination and control over other beings. If you sense your one-ness, for want of a better term, with others and the rest of the world, that thirst for control just won't exist. It cannot do so. If they are anything, the Illuminati are likely to be sad, tormented beings who have access to other dimensional worlds in extremely darkly polarised form.
Should you wish to check out the secrets of the Illuminati's covenant - and it is worth five minutes of ones life to do so - they are not so secret after all. In fact, they can be easily found on YouTube.
