It’s just another day.
That’s what I’ll say about the ongoing fray: it’s just another day. Nothing shocking. Nothing new. Nothing newsworthy except the glue, the sticky headlines that grab the mind, and tell it what to do. Think this! No, think that! They battle back and forth, these pernicious headlines, whipping our attention this way and that.
Just breathe.
That’s the biggest lesson I learned while enduring a decade of chronic pain. While waiting for the VA to amputate my foot, every step of every day was marked by a deep, inescapable, nagging pain. Limping for a decade with a fused ankle had taken its toll on my body; my hips and back were all jacked up, my neck and shoulders were way out of whack, and for a period of time it seemed like there was little I could do to mitigate the misery, except medicate with heavy narcotics.
The VA gave me plenty of narcotics. Vicodin for regular pain. Morphine for breakthrough pain. Gabapentin for nerve pain. Methocarbomal for muscle pain. All of these drugs helped, some, but more than anything they just dulled the dreary days and muddled my mind. Mental acuity was impossible to muster. It was like I was going through life with a paper bag on my head—but then I learned to breathe.
It was amazing. I bought a small library of books on yoga and meditation, and in fairly short order, I was able to kick the narcotics and manage the pain holistically. I asked my doctor what would happen if I just stopped taking all of the medications—if I quit cold turkey would it kill me? He said it might feel like I was going to die, but ultimately I would live, though he highly recommended I come off the drugs gradually over the course of months. But that’s not really my style.
I was desperate to reclaim my life. Now I had a whole new tool box to help rebuild my body and my mind. Through thousands and thousands of hours of yoga and meditation, I learned just how intricate and inextricably linked the body-mind connection is. I learned how to access, activate, and explore this connection, and that allowed me to manage pain using little more than the almost magical power of the ancient breathing techniques I was learning to master.
Fast forward, and I ended up not having to amputate my foot. The doctors were stunned by the remarkable progress I was making. I’d lost 75 pounds. I’d regained range of motion that had been hindered for over a decade. I’d gained balance and strength in ways that I’d never imagined having, even in the days of my athletic youth and military service. Not only has learning how to properly breathe led me down this journey of healing and recovery, it was literally transforming me from the inside out.
One day the doctors asked if I would be willing to come in and share with others what I was doing. I was all over it. I created a presentation called Finding Focus—because where the focus goes, the energy flows, and this is key to pain management. Pain management, at its root, is mental management. Addressing the mental-emotional connection that is hyper agitated by chronic pain is the most direct way to lower pain levels, a fact that is born out by both science and personal experience.
What it really comes down to is managing perception. In the depths of meditation, pain can be observed, evaluated, and released. We need not grip and tense up, though that is the most natural knee-jerk response. More than that, as one learns to manage pain perception, the relationship to pain evolves. Pain can be separated from personal identity, and though that might strike some as purely esoteric, the reality of this internal shift manifests as a physiological affect, wherein our bodies release different biochemicals and hormones, which ultimately determine how we “feel.”
The pain may still be there, the body may still be broken, but the pain takes a smaller place in the mental space, thus the experience of feeling pain is lessened—and all of this happens via the use of powerful breathing techniques that allow us to elevate awareness, harness the mind, and access our inner resources. It’s pretty cool stuff.
Years later, I went on to open a yoga studio. Prior to this stage in life, I’d always thought of yoga as a New Age hippie cult, but after shedding the doubt to try it out, I found out just how powerful this ancient science it, in particular the breathing. Now make no mistake, there certainly is a New Age hippie cultish aspect in a lot of yoga circles, but it doesn’t have to be that way. As human beings, people can turn pretty much anything into a religion, and cult like fetishes seem to be par for the course.
I’m sharing this part of my story with you so that you can better understand where I’m coming from, and also so that you know when I say “just breathe” I’m not just making stuff up or playing patty-cake with platitudes. As I’ve said repeatedly since I started The Torch Report, I believe that the solution to political chaos lies in the elevation of personal awareness. Until more people are capable of managing their own minds and emotions, there is very little hope that society will return to the principles of liberty.
Over the last several months I’ve written many reports on psychological warfare. Since the first of the year, we’ve explored memetics, menticide, and the myriad methods of mind control that the global cabal is using to enslave us all. Going further back, the special report on Communist Mind Control spelled out exactly how the cabal is exploiting loop holes in human nature to foment a transformation of consciousness that is conditioning the masses to accept their utter insanity.
This is the “woke mind virus” that Elon Musk and Bill Maher were recently discussing.
People are waking up to the fact that the woke are off their rocker. These people are completely detached from reality and operating in a carefully constructed illusion. Their collective insanity is simultaneously instigated and supported by the state sanctioned narrative. This assimilation into the collective cult is what is driving the delusional behavior of the useful idiots, who are ultimately being harvested for their votes. This is the real impetus behind the systematic destruction of happiness and the “delicate task” of developing dissatisfaction that’s destroying global mental health.
Which brings me back to the breath.
Breathe deep.
There’s news out today about a man using AI to win the lottery. Another article talks about how AI is already running the financial markets. Other people are using AI to create clones of themselves that are capable of fooling one’s own mother. Stories like this have led the “Godfather of AI” to quit his post at Google in order to warn us all about the very real dangers posed by this rapidly advancing capacity of artificial intelligence—citing “profound risks to society and humanity.”
Dr. Geoffrey Hinton (aka The Godfather of AI) has two primary concerns:
It’s impossible to stop evil people for using this AI for evil purposes.
With this AI, the average person will not be able to know what’s true anymore.
Interestingly enough, he’s right on both accounts, but it’s kind of obvious, isn’t it? Being the progressive that he is, his take is that we need more government regulation and oversight. We need the government to control the AI so people can’t use it for evil. We need the government to control the AI so that people can know what is and is not true. Let me ask you: do you believe this is what we need the government to do?
Do we need the government to have more and more control over the most profound technology ever created by human kind? Is the government somehow immune to being evil? Does the government have a monopoly on what is and is not true? Should the government have a monopoly on what is and is not true? Should the government really have control over the flow of information (i.e. state censorship)? Is it really all that wise to trust corrupt politicians with these incredibly powerful technologies?
Friends, the writing is on the wall here. Advanced AI is here to stay, it’s going to fundamentally transform society, and even our very concept of humanity. The allure of being all-knowing, all-powerful, and still just as lazy as ever before, will no doubt entice the masses to embrace the transhumanist fantasies being fueled by the rise of AI—and make no mistake, there are massive political implications to all of this.
To prevent the worse case scenario from playing out, we need an awakening.
If the worse case scenario actually does begin playing out, we need an awakening.
To find solutions to all of our problems big and small, we need an awakening.
If we want to rise up, resist, and reclaim our destiny as free and independent human beings, we need an awakening. In a world turned upside down, it’s hard to tell which way is up. In a world that’s gone insane, it’s hard to maintain sanity. In a world full of confusion and illusions, it’s hard to know what’s real. For all of this, we need an awakening—and if there’s one thing I know for sure, as learned from a great deal of pain and suffering, it’s that this awakening begins with the breath.
Breathe deep. Life is good. We’re going to get through this.
Just don’t forget to breathe!
PS: Don’t forget, now it’s easy to catch up on previous episodes by listening to The Torch Report on iHeart Radio, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or Apple iTunes —enjoy!
TR 356 - Breathing Through the B.S.