By Zy Marquiez
BreakawayIndividual.com
“Life is a matter of choices, and every choice you make makes you.” – John C. Maxwell “Sometimes it’s the smallest decisions that can change your life forever.” – Keri Russell
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HOICE IS THE most powerful tool we have. Everything boils down to choice. We exist in a field of infinite possibilities. Every choice we make shuts an infinite number of doors and opens an infinite number of doors. At any point we can change the direction of our lives by a simple choice. It is all in our hands, our minds, and our minds.” Life, as a journey is a notion that has always been incredibly fascinating to me for myriad reasons. Each of us as individuals is not only the main protagonist in our own story, but we are taking unique path towards whatever destination we are headed towards. Those destinations will be laden with curious circumstances, and these circumstances can become the foundation for our each and every step, or they can serve to steer us from our current path. Yet, our bearing is always our bearing – as individuals. Where you go is your choice and only yours. The totality of your life when it’s all said and done will be a confluence of all the choices you make. These choices will reverberate in countless ways, with countless people and spawn countless circumstances. The aggregate of all of this will ultimately dictate what your story will become. Life is an interesting journey, for you never know what obstacles you will face and overcome, what other individuals you will meet on your journey, and where your road will ultimately lead. The roads are many, and the choices more so. On this journey, as individuals, we are all headed somewhere. But where? Each of our paths is so wonderful, that nobody else in the breadth and scope of history will take the same path. Read that again. That’s a very intriguing proposition, for it means all of us take a path that’s so unique, that nobody could ever mirror it. Could individuals take the same steps we take, or that others have taken? Surely. But that will never be a one-to-one
Illusion From page 16 Yet whilst it’s hard to totally agree with the above prediction that in the near future over ninety percent of our news will be written by algorithms, it does show how those in the industry perceive our ever-decreasing human future. My own sense is that with the continued rise of social media there will be a healthy civil journalism from the people on the ground. There is also likely to be an increase in alternative news gathering and dissemination. Yet it does beg the question of whether we will be able to discern the difference between human-generated news and an algorithm. How would you know that something you read online was written by an algorithm or not? And this takes us to the issue of trust, which is likely to be a growing area of concern in the years ahead. As the illusion of our information intensifies, the notion of trusted networks and trusted sources will become paramount. And trust is a matter of discernment. During these years we will need to strengthen our senses of discernment. To Page 17
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correlation to ever single step you take, every single choice you choose. If you’re going to pave a path nobody has ever paved, and it was your ultimate path, what would it be? Where would you go? What would you do? What will you accomplish? Have you thought about it? It’s something to ponder deeply. In life, no path is linear, but choices all connect. Every circumstance, every choice, every moment, every breath, is a dot. The displacement of these dots upon the canvas of life connect to paint an incredible picture, the picture you make with your own life. This picture is the very manifestation of your consciousness, of your being, of everything you have ever been, are, and will be. These dots, these moments, all couple with each other because life is seamless, and in that seamlessness is where we can get caught up in the moments. Something else that operates seamlessly is water. Water is always operating like a gong, holding full potential in its totality. The same way one strike upon a gong will make it reverberate throughout, one drop of water will reverberate throughout a pond for instance, and affect it greatly. Your life as an individual is no different. One choice
have discernment means that we have an active critical faculty – and that means being alert. Alert to the sources of our news, opinions, and cultural reporting. And especially alert to what is being told (or fed) to us through our leaky political channels. We need to be alert and observe how the information is being played out through our mainstream institutional channels. Most of the news and information that will be on ‘public display’ in these years will be directed at an emotional level. And much of this too will be a pendulum swing between trite entertainment and emotional fear. The saturated world of information in which we now live can be a rich source for us or it can be a distracting circus. It is our responsibility to decide which one we wish to make it. We need to really see what’s going on, and to see through the show. We have to take out the trash before it has a chance to enter into our minds. Working on being the grounded observer is subtler than we may ever suspect. And in our increasingly carnivalesque cultures it is ever more needed, and a counterbalance to the sparkling spectacles that beguile us. The spectacle, I suspect, is about to get a lot more expressive. Extract from the book Bardo Times:
has the power to change not only your life but that of others. That’s incredible power, something that’s not oft-ruminated upon. In that sense, your choices become waves – a manifestation of an instance that travels to its destination. And just like waves will ultimately travel to a destination, your choices will ultimately travel to an endpoint, wherever that will be. One thing waves teach us is that, if we don’t keep our balance, we will get swept by them. As someone who almost drowned twice, I was taught not to fear the waves, but become one with them. Swimming wasn’t the problem, it was the fear of drowning. We as individuals need to be cognizant that waves will do what they always do, and as such, we individuals need to respond in kind: do what we can do. Knowing that there are options when one is caught in such a dilemma: I had choices to make if ever the moment came where I was being swept by a riptide, and came they did after the first instance. When I responded to these circumstances in fear, I was swept in pure terror, and let’s call it sheer luck the why I ultimately made it. When I realized that when that circumstance happens, being swept by the waves, if you
hyperreality, high-velocity, simulation, automation, mutation – a hoax? About the Author: Kingsley L. Dennis is the author of The Phoenix Generation: A New Era of Connection, Compassion, and Consciousness, and <The Sacred Revival: Magic, Mind & Meaning in a Technological Age, available at Amazon. Visit him on the web at http://www.kingsleydennis. com/.
Endnotes
1 Hedges, Chris. 2010. Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle. New York: Nation Books, p45 2 Ford, Martin. 2015. The Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of Mass Unemployment. London: Oneworld Publications, p87. [i] For more information, see – https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/12/15/ turkey-silencing-media [ii] Taken from a randomly selected online sports website; in this case http:// www.demathacatholicbaseball.com/inthe-news (accessed 25 May 2017) [iii] For more information see – https://www.narrativescience.com/
don’t give into fear, then you have total control and you can adjust accordingly, like water. Water always adjusts according to nature, according to the circumstances. Water can even transform into something else under the right circumstances. Individuals are no different. Individuals can – and do – transform at certain times in life. But those transformations usually seem to happen under the most extreme pressures – just like diamonds are created. Or, as in my case, possibly drowning. When the riptide has its name woven in water and it comes after you, you can’t give into fears because it’ll be fear that ultimately sweeps over you. This has born itself out in my life countless times, not just in the possibility of drowning. It’s become known to me that when my choices are based out of fear, many of my worst circumstances I could ever imagine took place, including those possible drowning incidents. But if I responded with balance, full control of all my being, I realized that things that seemed like obstacles were merely speedbumps, and thing that were real obstacles were easier to either overcome or sidestep. Why does this matter? Because on our journey, we will face myriad obstacles. Some obstacles are problematic, and some just seem so. As someone who used to be afraid of dark (actually, if we are to be 100% accurate, I was terrified of it. Yes, don’t laugh, it’s the truth) I used to hate sleeping in the dark. If any of you know me or have read some of my writing though, I write about darkness a lot and have for well over twenty years. How could I write about darkness so much if I hated darkness with the totality of my being? Because the darkness itself does nothing. My perception of it was what brought about fear and dis-ease within me. I’m not saying that evil doesn’t exist, please don’t misunderstand me. I’m just talking about how our minds – my mind in this particular example – can be afraid of things that are merely shadows, and how those things can really take its toll on us at times. At least that has been the case within my life. Realizing the disparity between the truth and perception, I became empowered
Please see CONSCIOUSNESS, page 19
