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The Road, The Tree - Ministry X - 031 · Ministry X

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Daniel Daniel, Yeah, not where where facts? Where where where the ministry
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X Fringe Radio Network. Just checking my levels here and we'll get started momentarily.
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H m hm. So do the time so much? You which you
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requirement one our se tech cheap step bump up. All right, let's go.
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Welcome to the show. This is ministry X. I am your host,
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now the dig Bible podcast. The fringe Christian movement is three generations deep now
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as one of our founding fathers has gone to be with Jesus, doctor Michael
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Heiser, this podcast, Ministry X, and many of your favorite fringe Christian
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really understandable for the average person. And the bedrock of his teaching is
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examining scripture from the standpoint of the people who wrote it and the culture in
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which it was written, and just seeking to strip away all the reform theology
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and evangelical denominational interpretations and ghost's right to the Hebrew or Aramaic or Greek.
13:05
So what was considered fringe like ten or fifteen years ago is common now.
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Nephelim, Genesis six, divine counsel, angels, demons, deliverance, miracles,
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these things are foundational now for future fringe missions, and that new frontier
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is spirit wars, engaging with angels and demons and spiritual gifts, the full
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armor of God, dreams, visions, healing, prayer. Like doctor Heiser
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posted on his Facebook page back in February, if a church wasn't a time
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or a place, it would suspiciously look like the Book of Acts. And
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so now that doctor Heiser has departed this realm, there's going to be other
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teachers who step in and take up the torch. I mean the fringe boomers
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like jud Burton, Derek Gilbert, Tom Horn, Steve Quail, La Marzouli.
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These guys, they're getting old, but they've passed on their wisdom to
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the next generation. And some of us are going to see the tribulation time,
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I believe, and that's going to require new weapons. And I'm so
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encouraged to see this end time harvest. And so many of us, our
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faith walk, our spirit quest has been realized because guys like Michael Heizer helped
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awaken us to what was in the Bible all along, our spiritual reality and
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a more operational understanding of God's design, God's plan and the centrality of Jesus,
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the mission of Jesus, and so doctor Heiser holds a special place of
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reverence in our hearts here at Fringe Radio Network with many intersections, and of
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course we carried his Naked Bible podcast here on the network and Pure Normal as
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well. And we're going to miss Doctor Heiser and Naked Bible podcasts, But
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because those teachings, those episodes, those Q and a's are so valuable,
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We're going to rebroadcast those episodes, starting with episode one, so that these
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that helps support the network so we can continue to expand and reach more people,
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which is really the goal here. And in a manner of speaking,
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I checked out of this world a long time ago when I was about thirteen
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and made a covenant with God, and so in many respects, while I've
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been able to function to a modest degree in the world, my thoughts have
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always been of a spiritual nature and to the outside world. To my peers,
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that's comparable to being a little weird, a little crazy because while they
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were concerned with graduating high school and preparing for college and a career, or
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finding the right person to start a family with. I just want wanted to
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learn. I asked God to lead me to the truth. I remember the
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moment. I went to college for personal enrichment and took a lot of classes
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on anthropology, religious studies, geography, psychology, astronomy stuff. I was
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interested in things I believed would get me closer to those spiritual truths. But
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I wasn't working towards a career. I was just soaking it all up.
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And around the same time I started experimenting with drugs, I started recording music
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of my own and producing some singers. But what really fed my soul was
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finding those spaces in nature where I could just disappear, not like missing four
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one one. I mean I would come back, But I grew up in
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the San Francisco Bay area, and you had to drive a little ways to
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get out of the suburban sprawl if you really wanted to get away. So
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I would retreat off into the hills. I would pack my little pipe with
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some buds, a notebook, a tape recorder, a bottle of water,
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and I would hike, often in an altered state of consciousness, or alternately,
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I would walk the creek bed meditatively. I would record my thoughts what
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I perceived to be my higher self. I would hum sing, write song
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lyrics, sketch of my notebook, record like sound effects. I would collect
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interesting rocks or artifacts. I would fall asleep under the shade of a tree.
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It was my heaven on earth, and then the high would wear off.
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I would hike back to my bronco and reluctantly return to the ordinary world,
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where I needed to work and do chores and attend to my responsibilities and
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obligations. And I suppose most people thought my head was always in the clouds,
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but I was really seeking God and truth and meaning and purpose. So
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this episode is kind of about my old testament. I kept a journal on
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my Macintosh, which I called the Searching Scriptures, where I recorded many of
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these insights. And if I wasn't putting my thoughts into my music, I
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was putting them into my journal, which evolved into a more poetic form over
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time. And during this time period I would also get deep into the i
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Ching, Taoism, and various occult studies, ritual magic, shamanism, and
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this would intersect with my earlier interest in the paranormal and various forteen topics like
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ghosts, UFOs, aliens, psychic powers, ancient civilizations, dreams, going
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back to my early childhood and being exposed to my father's book collection on a
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lot of these subjects. Really, I was a naive little boy, immature,
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foolish, but earnest, I suppose, And just for context, this
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takes place from around nineteen ninety four to about two thousand, so a period
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of just about six years, and in two thousand I would meet my future
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wife and get married in two thousand and two, and then in two thousand
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and three my daughter was born, and by necessity I had to come back
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down to earth and life became about making a living and supporting a family.
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I gave up the drugs, and the music and poetry kind of got shelved.
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So this is sort of a confessional and a testimonial episode. I'm going
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to actually read from the Searching Scriptures and play some of that early music.
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I won't be taking any bong hits while recording, though, but I'm going
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to try and recreate that atmosphere and a less scrupulous person might take all this
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knowledge and insight and these spiritual errors and seek to manipulate people. I mean,
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if I wanted to, I could construe all this naive wandering into some
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mystical origin story, or hide it all and pretend that I was born with
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some sort of divine spiritual wisdom. I could, with the knowledge I have
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about mind control and psychology and all these esoteric subjects, form a cult.
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Of course, I wouldn't call it a cult. Instead, what I'm gonna
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do is rebuke myself and my Old Testament searching scriptures with actual scriptures from the
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Holy Bible, because these cult people are still out there, and they're still
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seeking to capitalize on your desire, your need for meaning, your innate craving
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to have a connection with your creator, your connection with the eternal. And
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I've encountered some of these people over the years, whether we're talking about covens
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or just insane band leaders, or these self help gurus or delusional wanna be
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shamans or psychonots. I'm not a prophet or a priest or a pastor.
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I'm named after a prophet in the Bible, and interestingly, I'm fairly skilled
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at dream interpretation, and my dream life is very interesting and I draw in
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my dreams for a lot of illumination. But so can you. You don't
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need me to get to God. You need Jesus. So this is a
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confessional and a cautionary tale. Don't allow anyone to divert you from the truth,
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the word who is Jesus, Because people are out there who want to
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sell you books, who want you to follow them, and they want praise
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and accolades for themselves. Oh, they're so spiritually in tune and they have
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this amazing or No, it's witchcraft, it's hypnotism, it's mind control,
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and it's nothing more than pride, the pride of Lucifer who wanted to be
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worshiped like the most high. Take it from me because I saw into it,
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and I saw the deception and the deceptions. The lies are getting more
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intricate in these end times, and the confusion is thick. So what I
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want you to see is my searching in earnest and my stumbling, and I'm
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going to describe how it all came crashing down and ultimately how I found my
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way back to Jesus. So I'm going to open up the searching scriptures,
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and I had several volumes of this something, the Road, the tree,
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and long walking, But you don't know where. That's the difference between you
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and me and maybe I I see you. All our work, our struggles
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cannot survive the collapse because how long is a legacy? Forever cannot be because
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it all falls apart soon. Our great stories, myths, plans, magic
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paper hold forever, ideas we finally found to work together. Trying is not
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important if not remembered for eternity. Searching for forever, Maybe there is a
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forever that can retain a legacy until after the crash and return it to our
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new selves, the ones that will come after us, our spirit children,
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limbless, mindless spheres of light, knowing only the source of their being.
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How strange, so attached are we to our material needs? Ourselves? So
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special? So important have we earned? Do we deserve a legacy? That
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was an entry from my journal, the Searching Scripture. We're going to start
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here Searching Scripture Book one Book one, Searching Scripture, which is just my
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journal and poems and stuff that I wrote way back in the mid nineties.
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So what I'm gonna do is gonna take these poems that kind of represent things
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I was contemplating and going through that period of time, and contrasted with scripture
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from the Bible, because my views have changed a lot since the time when
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I wrote this material, and a lot has transpired in that period of time.
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And yes, that was me humming the baseline of the road the Tree,
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one of the very first songs I ever tried to put to tape.
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Didn't have a keyboard, didn't have a bass, So did a track of
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that, and then I overdubbed some vocal and just out of control symbols on
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a little drum machine that I had. So let's find some scripture to correspond
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with the poem I just read Legacy. It doesn't really have a title,
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but we'll call it legacy for reference sake. So now look at here of
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what I discovered when I was reading the Bible from a Biblical perspective. Legacy
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is not, you know, the stuff you leave behind, your artwork,
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your music, your writings, your podcast archive. Your legacy is the inheritance
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that you give to your offspring. So when ancient people the Jews talked about
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a legacy in terms of leaving a plot of land or an inheritance, usually
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going to your firstborn or eldest son. Now, when we read the Bible
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with the ancient Hebrew perspective, this is what we get. And I want
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to take you to John chapter seventeen Gospel of John chapter seventeen, and will
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start with verse twenty. Neither pray I for these alone, but for them
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also, which shall believe on me through their word, that they all may
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be as one as thou Father art in me and I in thee, that
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they also may be one in us. That the world may believe that thou
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hast sent me, and the glory which thou gavest me I have given them,
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that they may be one even as we are one, I in them
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and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one, and
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that the world may know that thou hast sent me and hast loved them as
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thou hast loved me. Father. I will that they also whom thou hast
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given me, be with me where I am, that they may behold my
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glory which thou hast given me, for thou lovest me before the foundation of
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the world. So in the same way Jesus had a relationship with his father
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in heaven. We have a relationship with Jesus, and that ultimately for believers
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will become our inheritance, our heavenly inheritance in God's kingdom in the world to
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come. So unlike the very desperate, mournful tone of my poem, like
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no matter what, you know, nothing's going to be left behind for us
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to remember. You know, the Sun is eventually going to turn into a
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red giant and engulf the whole planet. Nothing's going to be left over unless,
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like an episode of Star Trek or something, we create this probe and
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we upload all our identities and memories and thoughts and knowledge and stuff to some
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probe and send it out into space. And that's our legacy, you know,
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like the is it the voyager probe that they sent the Solar Record?
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I mean the Golden Record. I should know that. Come on, Yeah,
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a father was concerned with having a son to pass on his name.
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That's his legacy. And the way the ancients looked at it, when you
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stopped talking about your ancestors, that's when they ceased to exist, when they
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vanished from your memory. That's why we have oral traditions, oral genealogies.
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And you see some of that in the Bible, but you also see it
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all throughout human culture, and you know, linking us back to our ancestry.
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And this is also part of the puzzle when we look at the various
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bloodlines and how the influence of the Nephelim continued through ancestor worship, the rafaim,
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the worship of these had ancestors, these departed god kings, the departed
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warriors. So they cared about their name. Abraham cared about having offspring that
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would carry his name forward into future generations. Now we're just like, oh,
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all my stuff, man, I can't take it with me like my
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PlayStation. See how far we've gotten from you know, the viewpoint that existed
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at the time the Bible was written and before that. But anyways, just
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a little observation, let's find another one of these crazy poems, and the
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stars would still be seen blinking in the sky. He moved forward towards the
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collar, the college man the cotton. Then, as the size of side
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one four, a magnificent garden surrounded him. He looked around. To his
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right there was a farm overflowing with rice, millet and yams. To the
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left, a dense forest and a still pond. Behind him was a grassy
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meadow, and in front a small cottage surrounded by orange copy rode adender and
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lilac. It was still a morning miss shrouded and the garden as if it
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had no doubt. The sun was still beneath the mountains in the east,
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and the stars could still be seen blinking in the sky. He moved forward
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towards the cottage. The greenery was so dense it seemed to wrap around his
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ankles, brush on his face, and tap on his shoulder, as if
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trying to tell him something. And then there was a voice, came,
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visit me in my guardens. The image on the wall calls me back to
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gloomy autumn afternoons. How neatly framed it all is now, don't I wish
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to step inside my painting and turn into a painted man walking through a soft
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pastel dreamland, Vague flower globules in knee high gray brown, grassy bristles,
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clouds roll above sculptured mountains, a breezy run at dusk, in complete isolation,
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clodding through dirt and thistles, running straight into my perils and falling right
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through. Well, that's an interesting one there, and leading into that was
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a little bit of short story I had written. And then as that fades,
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I'm reading an entry, another entry from the searching scriptures here no title
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for that one. We can call it globules maybe. So this is my
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sort of escapism. What I really like to do is walk up in the
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hills and just disappear from everyday suburban life as a teenager, as a young
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adult, and I would bring my notepad and I would just write stuff like
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this or song lyrics or whatever the case may be. Let's still going at
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a minute level. I don't know if you could hear that, just barely
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in the background, but I was staring at actually one of my paintings when
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I wrote this or that was the inspiration, was one of my own paintings.
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Yeah, I did poetry, I did music. I painted for a
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period of time, I drew cartoons, did a lot of different creative ventures.
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The only one that's really stuck though over the years is the music,
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I guess, and to a degree writing. I did a newsletter for a
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while, I did a blog for a while, and the synthesis of all
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that is sort of podcasting. When I get to do a little bit of
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all of that, and hopefully it's somewhat entertaining, not too boring, certainly
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embarrassing for me. Yes, I go through some of this old stuff,
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old recordings, old writings. So let me find a scripture that seems to
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go along with this sort of escapism mood theme in the last two words,
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our last two lines of that poem running straight into my perils and falling right
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through. So in my case, this wasn't like running at something head on,
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like a bulldozer or something. It was more like disappearing to sort of
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another dimension and kind of floating through, floating through those obstacles by sort of
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ignoring it or pretending it doesn't exist. But it could have been just very
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well, procrastination, stubbornness, rebelliousness. But at the same time, I
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did go on these hikes, on these spirit quests, you know, to
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seek God, to seek wisdom, to seek knowledge, or just be around
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you know, beautiful things, beautiful creations of God. But I hadn't yet
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come into my full understanding of you know, God's distinction, you know,
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from his creation and that sort of thing. So I want to read proverbs
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for proverbs for hear ye children, the instruction of a father, and attend
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to know understanding, not pretend to know understanding. For I give you good
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doctrine. Forsake ye not my law. For I was my father's son,
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tender and only beloved in the sight of my mother. He taught me also
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and said unto me. Let thine heart retain my words, keep my commandments,
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and live. Get wisdom, get understanding, forget it not, neither
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decline from the words of my mouth. Forsake her not, and she shall
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preserve THEE. Love her, and she shall keep THEE talking about wisdom.
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Wisdom is the principal thing. Therefore, get wisdom, and with all thy
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getting, get understanding, exalter, and she shall promote THEE. She shall
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bring THEE to honor. When thou dost embrace her, she shall give to
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thine head an ornament of grace, a crown of glory. Shall she deliver
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to THEE. Hear, O, my son, and receive my sayings,
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and the years of thy life shall be many. I have taught THEE in
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the way of wisdom. I have led THEE in right paths. When thou
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goest, thy steps shall not be straightened. And when thou runnest thou shalt
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not stumble, take fast hold of instruction. Let her not go. Keep
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her, for she is thy life. Enter not into the path of the
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wicked, and go not in the way of evil men. Avoid it,
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pass not by it, turn from it, and pass away. For they
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sleep not except that they have done mischief, and their sleep is taken away
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unless they cause some to fall. For they eat the bread of wickedness and
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drink the wine of violence. But the path of the just is as the
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shining light that shineth more and more unto the perfect day. The way of
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the wicked is as darkness. They know not at what they stumble. My
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son, attend to my words incline thine ear unto my sayings. Let them
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not depart from thine eyes. Keep them in the midst of thine heart,
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for they are life unto those that find them, and health to all their
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flesh. Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the
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issues of life. Put away from thee, a frowered mouth and perverse lips
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put far from thee. Let thine eyes look right on, and let thine
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eyelids look straight before thee. Ponder the path of thy feet and let all
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thy ways be established. Turn not to the right hand nor to the left,
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remove thy foot from evil. So I really could have used this father's
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advice from Proverbs four. You know, when I was eighteen nineteen years old
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when some of this stuff was written, eighteen nineteen twenty, a youngling still
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and sort of seeking my own path, my own spirit quest. But instead
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I would look for this wisdom in nature. And I viewed nature as not
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just a representation of God, but as God. That God was inherently the
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same thing as his creation, that only our minds created some sort of separation
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between the two, and I think buried at the core of that there is
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sort of a mystic truth about that. But we shouldn't worship the creation versus
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the creator, the intelligence behind the creation, that's our true God. But
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there is a relationship there to be seen between Father and Son. Again,
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same sort of theme. Jesus is God, but Jesus is also a different
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form of God and incarnate form of God, God the Father. They're one
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and the same, but there's a distinction in their operational nature. Someone that
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explains this really well from sort of an orthodox perspective, as jaydier So,
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I was very young, very early, getting into this sort of mystic realm.
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But what ended up happening is I drifted into more of the New Age
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witchcraft, neo pagan shamanism realm to connect with God and connect with wisdom versus
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going straight to the source, going straight to Jesus, going straight to God
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and God revealed through the Holy Scriptures. I was distrustful of it. I
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didn't have the heart, the correct heart, or mind, or attitude or
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indwelling of the Holy Spirit to understand it the way I understand it now.
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This is the part where I get to talk about my UFO cult. You
48:02
can sign up on the website. We've got kool aid and refreshments. We're
48:10
going to summon the ultra terrestrials and join us in July for our expedition into
48:17
Hollow Earth. We'll visit some of the sites where people have actually vanished off
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the face of the earth. Focus than yous, Focus than yous. How
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these are the master tapes, so I don't want to play them more than
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necessary. That's why I pushed me over the Yeah, I got me in
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the green. Uh just is a mysterious apparations and whose presence is peace and
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often felt by many creative people created people. Oh Man's like, I'm trying
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to do something really beautifoil and they can beat me, and all of a
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sudden, you just get fun in the place. Sometimes I feel like there's
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a guard and cause get it out. I look at it, I get
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a shadowy figure, you know, and h m hm, So I guess
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I should get into it. The Road the Tree, So that was the
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name of that the very first song there I played. Understand this is broken
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up over several evenings, so that's part of the spell. But the Road
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the Tree is in reference to one of my favorite hiking spots actually growing up
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in California, back in the East Bay Hills. Lots of hiking adventures back
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there. There was a big regional park and maybe some of yous know what
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I'm talking about. So this regional park was shared by ranchers and they let
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their cattle out on the hills to grays, and I remember trying to go
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into like Kung Fu mode and see if you could approach the cows while you're
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walking the trail and not spook them, because they'll all turn and look at
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you as you slowly walk towards them. But you have to get your our
52:05
just right otherwise you'll spook them. You have to be so I used to
52:08
play this game with the cows, like if I could just meditatively, like
52:15
calm my mind and everything and just stroll right through the herd of cows without
52:21
them, you know, spooking and bolting off in every direction. That was
52:27
the challenge of the day. But this trail I used to walk, Okay,
52:31
the road, the tree, the tree was the turnaround point. The
52:36
tree was and there was a particular tree. There was lots of trees out
52:38
there, but this particular tree I had decided was the marker point at which,
52:45
you know, nine times out of ten, I would stop at the
52:47
tree and turn around, and that was my hike. And every once in
52:53
a while i'd go past the tree, I'd go all the way up the
52:57
back side of the hill and back down through the ravine and somehow wind up
53:01
back at my truck. So the road, the tree, and all are
53:10
walking. I had a sort of visionary experience there with that tree. It
53:17
became a special tree over the years, and one time, stoned out of
53:24
my mind, I put the branch up to my forehead. I just pulled
53:29
it toward me and leaned over. And this was a particularly warm day.
53:32
The sun was blazing. It's like the middle of the afternoon, and uh
53:39
yeah, the tree like was talking to me. And so that's how my
53:45
path differed back then, Like I would have weird experiences with like raccoons and
53:55
newts in skunks. I had some skunks follow me around, lizards, snakes,
54:14
rattlesnakes. One of my powers was I was able to pet a baby
54:22
rattlesnake. It wasn't really a power. I just didn't know it was a
54:30
rattlesnake until I pet it and it shook its rattle at me. And then
54:36
I learned later that actually the baby rattlers are far more venomous. So I
54:44
could easily been dead or in pretty bad shape by the time I got back
54:50
to my truck. But I managed to escape that situation, praise God.
55:06
And had to sacrifice a lizard one time. It was a mercy killing.
55:12
Poor guy got ran over by a bicycle and so his lower half was completely
55:20
smashed and he's just has this look of pain on his face with his mouth
55:27
gaping open. Just like so I took a big rock and I said a
55:37
prayer and I smashed his skull, and that was my religion. It was
55:45
very sort of animist in a way, you could say. So the road,
55:52
the tree as a map marker. This is part of a larger system
56:01
of spirit and dream navigation that I had worked out at the time. So
56:07
basically this is what I called my sy map, which basically you take your
56:14
dream world and the locations that you remember from your dreams a lot of times
56:21
recurring dreams, where the location is roughly similar to a location in the real
56:29
world the waking world, maybe in your neighborhood or a place you used to
56:34
live, or where you went to school, or could be any number of
56:38
locations, and then you overlay that over the actual topography of the land,
56:45
so that becomes a sy map. It's like an augmented reality interaction. And
56:54
so then you could visit the real life locations and then establish some sort of
57:00
connection to the dream world as part of that overlay. And a lot of
57:08
my ideas were more, you know, sort of gnostic at this time,
57:14
but that was a part of my religion when I went hiking, when I
57:20
went out, I would visit these symp locations. I even had photographs of
57:28
them. Somewhere, and it took a very shamanistic approach, even though I
57:38
didn't call myself a shaman or a medicine man or anything like that. The
57:45
idea is the same. You enter the dream world, you enter the spirit
57:50
world, so that you can affect changes or affect reality in the real world,
58:01
in the physical world. But who's to say what's for real and what's
58:09
merely a fantasy? And honestly, I didn't know. I got to a
58:15
point where I couldn't tell the difference, and that's a really scary place to
58:20
be, as I will get into. So let me find something that reminds
58:34
me of this, and then we'll do some more scriptures. This is a
58:40
fun exercise. Some of this stuff is just really cringe and I don't want
58:47
to read it. I'm trying to find better selections. Look and you may
58:57
find, but that ain't no guarantee of mine. Don't think it's all coming
59:05
to apart. You're living, you know a short cut, pat you don't
59:14
think it's all art. One day you're living, you know a short term.
59:31
Don't think about that day. You're living in hot, dry summer air
59:51
is whipped in through my window. It's a nice day for a drive you.
1:00:01
The brown, dusty hills are crackling under the heat of the white sun.
1:00:07
The engine only adds to the mixture. Its fuming, burning racket seeps
1:00:15
into my consciousness. The streets are baking, melting. The black asphalt glows
1:00:23
and shimmers. It seems as if some of the wild animals have wandered out
1:00:30
of the hills and are roaming about the streets. As I make a left,
1:00:36
a red wolf is standing on the center divide. Is it really a
1:00:40
wolf? Wait until I tell Claire about this? As I pass the misplaced
1:00:50
creature, he lets loose his characteristic cowl. Yes, it really was a
1:00:57
wolf. Somehow I end up at the park and I'm sitting down on a
1:01:01
horizontal branch of a shady tree relief. The narrator directs my attention to the
1:01:10
green chameleon behind me as he crawls onto a brown speckled branch. His camouflage
1:01:19
matches perfectly. As the narrator points out, am I in some kind of
1:01:25
documentary program? A slimy bug creeps up and unknowingly upon the lizard, turning
1:01:35
its head to meet its fate as food for the invisible predator. Then I'm
1:01:43
joined by a native. He sits down to the right of me and offers
1:01:49
a sip of dingy water from a mason jar. No thanks, I said,
1:01:54
and continued to sip my privileged crystal clear water from the regular drinking glass.
1:02:06
Then a rippling in the grass below catches our attention. It was a
1:02:12
snake, un serpentina, I decreed, yes, the native said. It
1:02:24
slithered around and came up below me. It was a flat black color with
1:02:30
a swirly, almost paisley patterned gold ribbon of color on its back. It
1:02:37
flared its neck out like a cobra, but wasn't facing me, and we
1:02:42
were too high up for him to strike, so I remained calm. For
1:02:50
some reason, we were compelled to fetch a sword. His dad kept them
1:02:53
inside a glass showcase, but as we entered we noticed the house had been
1:03:00
ransacked. It was too late. We continued on down the street and at
1:03:07
some point ended up in a lush mountain jungle. I had lost my companions
1:03:14
along the way, but figured I would meet up with them down the path,
1:03:17
and after some modest trail trekking and steep climbing, I spotted them resting
1:03:23
on either side of a cavern opening. I clawed my way into the steep
1:03:30
entryway and made my way inside, noticing a sign sitting in the archway that
1:03:38
said them. I took this to mean we had stumbled upon some secret Coult's
1:03:45
headquarters, but it was temporarily vacant. The entryway broke into about three rooms.
1:03:55
There were other doorways, but they had been filled up with large rock.
1:04:01
There was a central room and an office, and even a back door.
1:04:05
The dirt floor was reddish in color. Then I noticed a container of
1:04:11
paparrika and realized it was this that covered the ground. I just wrote some
1:04:20
wacky stuff. I dumped the remainder out the back door to see that it
1:04:30
matched in color and texture. The complex even had a sprinkler system in the
1:04:35
ceiling. I headed into the office while my friends made themselves comfortable in the
1:04:41
big room, where there was a rug and a sofa. Inside, there
1:04:46
was a desk and a chest of drawers. I searched through them and found
1:04:50
a stash of the group's literature. All I noticed was a page with a
1:04:57
circular mandala design on it, composed of about twenty or more interlinking crescents.
1:05:05
Something of African origin, I figured. Then I opened a drawer stuffed with
1:05:13
envelopes addressed to various individuals, seemingly members and supporters of the organization. Some
1:05:21
of them were thank you notes. All of the envelopes had a ream of
1:05:26
money in them. I didn't check to see how large the bills were.
1:05:30
I just started grabbing. I came out of the office to show off the
1:05:39
fat wad of cash I had in my hand. Then I noticed that the
1:05:44
bills were some strange currency. They had the face of some shrewd man in
1:05:49
the middle, and the borders were lavishly decorated with serpents. Why the snake,
1:05:57
I wonder, and what does this can communicate about keeping consciousness at the
1:06:02
forefront of our mind, which is essential to living. Break into this realm.
1:06:11
Once you taste this, it pulls you, motivates you. Here where
1:06:17
you cease to yield to unconscious action, you develop strength and humanity. You
1:06:25
arrive at the place called home. You create futures, You break down all
1:06:32
barriers. You stop no longer be coming, but be looking, seeing,
1:06:45
feeling. Now is the time to ask the painful questions. Now is the
1:06:53
time to cry to the wind. Now is the place where you find your
1:06:59
heart, and today, with all its stupidity and misery, reveals its hidden
1:07:06
mystery. Sometimes I find myself here and with hurt, a faint clicking or
1:07:15
murmuring, giggle, scream, or car racing by outside, and I laugh
1:07:24
at the days that split me in two and leave me sprawled out on the
1:07:28
floor. When oozing into the carpet, are my heavy thoughts growing in my
1:07:34
mind? Are the weeds of time saves me from this fate. So I
1:07:45
was really depressed too around this time, and journaling and doing this sort of
1:07:53
thing was the way I sort of self medicated. It was like therapy.
1:07:59
Making music was therapy. But that's what I was doing. I was crying
1:08:06
out to the wind. I wasn't crying out to God. I was like,
1:08:11
oh, the you know the four directions. You know. I was
1:08:16
calling out to the wrong spirits. So how do we know the right spirits
1:08:26
or right spirit to call out to? Well, it comes down to fruits
1:08:36
and also scripture when we want to find answers to these questions. Tewod Corinthians
1:08:54
eleven, verse two. For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy,
1:09:01
For I have espoused to you one, husband, that I may present you
1:09:06
as a chaste virgin to Christ. But I fear lest by any means,
1:09:12
as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety, So your minds should be corrupted
1:09:17
from the simplicity that is in Christ. For if he that cometh preacheth another
1:09:24
Jesus whom we have not preached. Or if ye receive another spirit which ye
1:09:29
have not received, or another Gospel which ye have not accepted, ye might
1:09:35
well bear with him. And that's Paul talking about the false prophets, Dark
1:10:10
Tiger, Secret Document. I return to you tonight. My mind has been
1:10:19
spent. All this thinking seems to have gotten me nowhere. I can't help
1:10:26
but think this world just ain't fair. But I do not want to end
1:10:32
up with this mess as my artistic triumph. I see a brighter hope calling
1:10:40
to me. I am admitting I need help. These forces I have fed
1:10:47
with unclean wishes have built up this dungeon. Now I can only pray for
1:10:57
a second chance. My body aches for love as my heart beats furiously.
1:11:04
I want this to go away, and the only thing that matters is my
1:11:10
life and my love. This is the one voice I must follow. It
1:11:16
can be whatever I see. I cannot worry. I should have known this
1:11:21
would come back and bite me for all the times I refused to listen.
1:11:28
But I am wide open now, oh so uncontrollably. So God, protect
1:11:38
me from my demons and show me your light. Now is not my time
1:11:43
to go. So at this point it was a regular thing for me to
1:12:11
be getting high late at night and writing and making music. But meanwhile relationships,
1:12:18
friendships were falling apart. My newsletter was out of control. I was
1:12:25
working full time and going to college and dealing with a lot of anxiety about
1:12:33
what seemed to be a calling on my life and a decision I had to
1:12:38
make, you know, whether I would take an exit ramp from my spirit
1:12:44
quest and find my proper place in the Norman world, or I was going
1:12:51
to be faithful to God and seek his kingdom. So this was a process,
1:13:00
and moments after writing that entry in my journal, I experienced what many
1:13:04
might describe as a shaman's initiation or a dark knight of the soul. I
1:13:14
took one more bong hit and I knew it was one too many. Now
1:13:23
in the material world, I was having an anxiety attack or a nervous breakdown.
1:13:30
But in the spirit world, my rebellious attitude, my constant wrestling with
1:13:36
God, allowed these demons to manifest. All these unclean spirits that I had
1:13:44
invited into my life through the drug abuse, casual sex mixing with you know,
1:13:54
probably undiagnosed mental illness, bipolar depression, childhood traumas well. They all
1:14:03
had their way with me. That night. I knew what was happening to
1:14:06
me. I clutched a silver crucifix which I had gotten from my grandfather's casket.
1:14:24
It was decorating his casket, and I just cried out to God.
1:14:33
I ended up in the er at two am with heart palpitations, and the
1:14:40
doctor assured me that my anxiety was the issue and warned me that my marijuana
1:14:47
could have been laced with any number of harmful substances. But I knew that
1:14:54
wasn't it. You know, I'd been smoking off this stuff for quite a
1:14:58
while. I had to go into the spirit world and work out what was
1:15:03
going on with me with my spirit man. I remember being afraid to fall
1:15:11
asleep because I thought I would slip into a coma, And when I finally
1:15:18
gave into the exhaustion, I did fall asleep, and I had a horrific
1:15:25
nightmare with hounds of hell ripping apart my corpse. And I go into much
1:15:33
more detail concerning this dream. If you want to read it, it's on
1:15:38
my old blog Oneamerican blog dot WordPress dot com. I'll put a link in
1:15:45
the show notes, but suffice to say, I didn't sleep for a week.
1:15:51
After that. I went to work, I ran errands, I had
1:15:57
conversations with people, but in a dissociative state, and finally, I think
1:16:05
my boss caught on to the fact that something was wrong with me, and
1:16:12
when I confessed that I hadn't slept for days, she gave me a couple
1:16:15
days off and I was finally able to rest and I came back into myself.
1:16:24
But I was never the same after that. I gave up the marijuana,
1:16:29
I tanked the E King Student Network and the Oracle newsletter, and I
1:16:33
was single again. So I'm going to read one more entry from the Searching
1:16:45
Scriptures. And one morning it happened. While shaving, A curious quiet entered
1:16:57
into my head. My thoughts ceased, the warring of words was interrupted,
1:17:03
and with the window being open, a revelation came to me. While my
1:17:10
eyes were fixed on my face in the mirror. My ears, however,
1:17:15
were drawn outside, where I heard the birds waking up too. And when
1:17:20
they wake up, they warm up their voices. They each one rehearse their
1:17:26
different calls, and not until they get the first one good do they move
1:17:30
on to the next, starting with a one syllable note, and moving on
1:17:36
to a brief musical phrase, to putting the calls in different combinations, to
1:17:45
forming sentences and different meanings which only the birds and their creator can fully understand.
1:17:55
Then they would stretch out their wings and fly off to put into action
1:17:59
within had practiced, And in the quiet left behind, another bird awakened,
1:18:04
also to rehearse his unique calls, to stretch out his wings and fly off,
1:18:12
and to put into action what it had practiced. And not until several
1:18:19
days later did I realize the importance and actualness of this revelation as being a
1:18:26
message from God, the Creator, through his creations, speaking to me,
1:18:32
answering many of my questions in one lesson, quieting many of my doubts,
1:18:40
moving me to recognize the depths of His works, his far reaching wisdom and
1:18:46
power, his appreciation for beauty. This is my Creator, my God,
1:18:54
the one true God I have been found today. So I'm gonna wrap it
1:19:03
up with that reading and one more Bible scripture also to go with that,
1:19:15
Ecclesiastes twelve. And I'm gonna stick with the King James for this episode.
1:19:26
Ecclesiastes twelve, and I'm gonna start with verse one, read one through eight.
1:19:32
Remember now, thy Creator, in the days of thy youth, while
1:19:36
the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt
1:19:42
say, I have no pleasure in them. While the sun or the light,
1:19:47
or the moon or the stars be not darkened, nor the clouds return
1:19:54
after the rain. In the day when the keepers of the house shall tremble,
1:20:00
and the strong men shall bow themselves, and the grinders cease because they
1:20:04
are few, and those that look out of the windows be darkened, and
1:20:11
the doors shall be shut in the streets, when the sound of the grinding
1:20:14
is low, and he shall rise up at the voice of the bird,
1:20:18
and all the daughters of music shall be brought low. Also when they shall
1:20:25
be afraid of that which is high, and fears shall be in the way,
1:20:30
and the almond tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper shall be a burden,
1:20:35
and desires shall fail, because man goeth to his long home, and
1:20:42
the mourners go about the streets. Or ever the silver cord be loosed,
1:20:47
or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain,
1:20:54
or the wheel broken at the cistern, then shall the dust return to
1:20:58
the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return unto God who gave
1:21:01
it. Vanity of vanities, Saith the preacher all is vanity great verse,
1:21:15
basically talking about when you're getting old, remember the days of your youth and
1:21:21
the wonderful blessings that the Creator has given you, because pretty soon you're gonna
1:21:29
bite the dust and your spirit's gonna go be reunited with God. And so
1:21:35
I love that scripture. So I'm just breaking into book three here in my
1:21:45
journal, not the Bible, And there's a lot more that I will save
1:21:50
for future episodes when I pull out the dusty searching scriptures again and we can
1:22:02
pick up where we left off, which is my experience with the Jehovah's witnesses
1:22:11
and more broken relationships and friendships and family drama and my discovery of the Internet.
1:22:20
Next time on Unsolved Mysteries, you could help solve a mystery, but
1:22:30
for now we're gonna leave it there. You've been listening to Ministry X on
1:22:35
fringe radio network. Let's take a quick break and we'll get to some news
1:22:40
on the other side. They never know the B and the codebreakers discover and
1:24:16
decipher long lost letters by Mary, Queen of Scots. This is in the
1:24:26
Smithsonian magazine. I'm going to read a little bit from this article because this
1:24:30
was really interesting. Over the course of her nineteen years in captivity, Mary
1:24:36
Queen of Scots wrote thousands of letters to ambassadors, government officials, fellow monarchs,
1:24:45
and conspirators alike. Most of these missives had the same underlying goal,
1:24:50
securing the deposed Scottish Queen's freedom. After losing her throne in fifteen sixty seven,
1:24:59
Mary had fled to England, hoping to find refuge at her cousin,
1:25:02
Elizabeth the First's court. Mary's paternal grandmother, Margaret Tudor, was the sister
1:25:11
of Elizabeth's father, Henry the eighth. Instead, the English Queen imprisoned Mary,
1:25:17
keeping her under house arrest for nearly two decades before ordering her execution in
1:25:24
fifteen eighty seven. Mary's letters have long fascinated scholars and the public, providing
1:25:30
a glimpse into her relentless efforts to secure her release. But the former Queen's
1:25:35
correspondence often raises more questions than it answers, in part because Mary took extensive
1:25:42
steps to hide her messages from the prying eyes of Elizabeth's spies. In addition
1:25:49
to folding the pages with a technique known as letter loocking, she employed ciphers
1:25:57
and codes of varying complexity. And it shows a picture here of the cipher
1:26:02
the code key I guess basically, which is really just extraordinary. Uh remember
1:26:13
how girls passed around the little notes in class. But it was like a
1:26:18
little diamond shape folded up piece of paper, and each triangle you could flip
1:26:26
it and fold it back and forth. It'd be like one two three four,
1:26:30
okay, open up three three four two one. And it was like
1:26:33
this code to unlock this unfold this message that they were passing around in class.
1:26:40
I don't even know if girls still do that in school, but meticulously
1:26:45
folded secret messages. Let's continue in the article. More than four hundred years
1:26:53
after Mary's death, a chance discovery by a trio of code breakers is offering
1:26:59
new insights into the queen's final years. As the researchers write in the journal
1:27:03
Cryptologia, they originally decided to examine a cache of coded notes housed at the
1:27:12
National Library of France as part of a broader push to locate digitized, transcribe,
1:27:18
decipher, and analyze historic ciphers. Those pages turned out to be fifty
1:27:25
seven of Mary's encrypted letters, the majority of which were sent to Michael de
1:27:30
Castilleau, the French ambassador to England between fifteen seventy eight and fifteen eighty four.
1:27:38
All but seven were previously thought to be lost. Interspersed with a collection
1:27:45
of early sixteenth century Italian papers, the documents were written in mysterious symbols that
1:27:50
offered no clues as to their sender, recipients, or date. Lead author
1:27:56
George Lascri, a computer scientist and NAE cryptographer based in Israel, tells Smithsonian
1:28:03
Magazine it was only when scholars spotted the word Walsingham, the last name of
1:28:10
Elizabeth's spymaster, Francis Walsingham, that they realized the letter's significance. Quote This
1:28:16
was the bingo moment. Lastree says, we were very excited unquote. Before
1:28:25
getting too excited, The trio set out to confirm whether the letters were already
1:28:30
known to historians. While they found copies of a few in British archives,
1:28:35
fifty or so are new to historians and a real gold mine for them,
1:28:40
says Lastrie. In total, the letters contain fifty thousand words of deciphered material.
1:28:50
In a statement, John Guy, author of the two thousand and four
1:28:54
biography that inspired Josie Rourke's twenty eighteen film about Mary's, says, this is
1:29:00
the most important new find on Mary, Queen of Scott's for one hundred years.
1:29:04
I'd always wondered if de Castineau's originals could turn up one day buried in
1:29:10
the National Library of France, or perhaps somewhere else unidentified because of the ciphering.
1:29:15
And now they have to decrypt the letters. Lasry worked with Norbert Biermann,
1:29:23
a German pianist, and Sotoshi Tomokio, a Japanese physicist and patents expert.
1:29:31
First, the men transcribed the documents, rendering the one hundred and fifty
1:29:34
thousand symbols readable by a computer. Then they employed a hill climbing algorithm,
1:29:44
in which a computer tries out different cipher keys, making small changes to high
1:29:47
scoring keys before attempting to decipher the text again. Put simply, codes involved
1:29:55
simple substitutions with specific symbols standing in for letters, numbers, or words.
1:30:01
Ciphers are more complex, using algorithms to transform messages into seemingly random strings of
1:30:08
symbols. Mary's letters fall under this second category, so the article goes into
1:30:17
more detail about how they actually decrypted a lot of these letters. I'm gonna
1:30:23
skip ahead a little bit, though. The rediscovered letters address a quote wide
1:30:28
range of topics that will be of immense interest to historians unquote, says Lastri,
1:30:33
mentioning more than one hundred and twenty individuals. They add color to many
1:30:38
events, from the doomed marriage negotiations between Elizabeth and Francis, Duke of Andrew,
1:30:45
to the capture of Mary's son James the sixth of Scotland and the future
1:30:49
James the First of England in fifteen eighty two. Well fascinating, all right,
1:31:00
Let's move on to our next story. From long dead queens to alien
1:31:09
beings, Meet the people who claim to be alien star seeds. This is
1:31:15
from futurism dot com, and we really need to address this star seeds question
1:31:28
because hashtag star seeds had something like one point five billion hits or something on
1:31:38
I don't know if it was TikTok or Twitter, some social media. Oh,
1:31:45
I think they're gonna tell us, Oh, it's real. A group
1:31:48
of people who, according to TikTok, Instagram, and countless New Age blogs,
1:31:54
refer to themselves as star seeds and believe that they are aliens from different
1:31:59
star cars and planets reincarnated inside human bodies. Their valiant task is to help
1:32:06
usher in a bountiful golden age for humanity. Naturally quote, star seed is
1:32:14
the modern name for what was known in antiquity as angels. One YouTuber,
1:32:19
who goes by the Alchemist, explains in a recent video they are residents of
1:32:26
higher dimensions that specifically incarnated into a human physical experience with the intention to help
1:32:32
raise the collective consciousness of humanity. The concept, which has been around since
1:32:42
at least the nineteen seventies, appears to have exploded in recent years, likely
1:32:46
a result of the rise in the modern New Age wellness industry. Seriously,
1:32:55
just type in hashtag star seed on TikTok and you'll get over one billion results.
1:33:00
But as a team of psychologists can drinkwater. And Neil Dagnol from the
1:33:06
Manchester Metropolitan University and Andrew Denevin, a lecturer at the University of Huddersfield,
1:33:16
explain in an essay for The Conversation about the phenomenon, there's a helpful theory
1:33:23
that might explain why so many people believe this stuff. They claim it's because
1:33:30
of the Forrror effect, a common psychological phenomenon based on psychologist Bertram Forrr's nineteen
1:33:35
forty nine paper called the Fallacy of personal validation, which posits that it's incredibly
1:33:43
easy to get people to identify deeply with vague personality descriptions that can apply to
1:33:48
just about anyone, especially when those common traits are framed to validate the individual
1:33:55
desire to be seen as unique. I'm not like other girls. I'm an
1:34:00
alien girl. Think astrology, but in this case it's aliens. And indeed,
1:34:09
like with astrology, there are a number of different types of star seeds
1:34:14
which come from different star clusters or galaxies or planets or what have you,
1:34:19
and apparently have different personality traits. Look, yes, people are different,
1:34:26
but even before you reach that point, the reasons that people are drawn to
1:34:30
the idea of being a star seed in the first place, which according to
1:34:34
the conversation includes feeling a lack of belonging literally just having empathy and experiencing mental
1:34:41
health issues. Really just seem like the side effects of being human. That
1:34:46
said, a disclaimer, as noted in the expert's essay, there are probably
1:34:51
some outfits who believe themselves to be aliens in a much more real way,
1:34:57
particularly those who might be affected by skill it'sophrenia or similar disorders. The star
1:35:03
seeds, on the other hand, are likely just suffering from a bit of
1:35:06
self rarefying. But hey, we all cope with the burdens of humanity in
1:35:12
our own ways. Besides, what do we know, We're just silly old
1:35:15
earthlings after all. Well that's a cute little article. Didn't really get into
1:35:23
a lot of the deeper things about this whole star seed phenomenon. But it's
1:35:29
not really new actually. But I tend to agree with the article that it
1:35:33
is on the rise people having these alien identities, and then they throw in
1:35:39
that this being mixed with angels, the angels of antiquity. We keep seeing
1:35:45
these connections in this sort of new agish religion that's an ecumenical thing that's cropping
1:35:53
up. There's going to be the alien component to that. And that's what
1:35:57
this podcast is about, largely, the things that we get into. Hence
1:36:03
why I decided to cover this article in the news now, this last one
1:36:12
in science News sciencenews dot com, and I did see this carried in by
1:36:17
other sources. Deaths of despair are rising. It's time to define despair.
1:36:30
As twenty fifteen wound down, a foreboding but catchy phrase from a scientific paper
1:36:35
blew across the cultural landscape with unexpected force. The expression deaths of despair was
1:36:44
born after Princeton University economist Any Case and Angus Deaton, Case's colleague husband and
1:36:50
a Nobel laureate in economics, dug into US death statistics and found that during
1:36:57
the nineteen hundreds, people's lifespans had generally lengthened from roughly fifty years to nearly
1:37:02
eighty, but then near the end of the century, one segment of the
1:37:06
population took a u turn. Since the nineteen nineties, mortality had risen sharply
1:37:13
among middle aged, non Hispanic white people, especially those without a college degree.
1:37:21
Case and Deeton reported in December twenty fifteen in the Proceedings of the National
1:37:27
Academy of Sciences. The reason, to a large extent, white working class
1:37:31
people ages forty five to fifty four were drinking themselves to death with alcohol,
1:37:39
accidentally overdosing on opioids and other drugs, and killing themselves, often by shooting
1:37:45
or hanging. Vanishing jobs, disintegrating families, and other social stressors had unleashed
1:37:55
a rising tide of fatal despair. Case in Deeton concluded this disturbing trend mirrored
1:38:00
what had previously occurred among inner city black people in the nineteen seventies and nineteen
1:38:05
eighties. Case and Deeton now say as low skilled jobs vanished and families broke
1:38:11
apart, Black victims of crack, cocaine, and even the AIDS epidemic represented
1:38:15
an early wave of deaths of despair. Even today, mortality rates for black
1:38:20
people still exceed those of white people in the United States for a variety of
1:38:25
reasons, with black overdose deaths on the rise over the last few years.
1:38:31
The most meaningful dividing line for being at risk of deaths of despair is whether
1:38:36
or not you have a four year college degree. Deaton says, huh,
1:38:45
but despair has no clear scientific or medical definition. Psychiatric disorders plausibly related to
1:38:50
a sense of despair, such as major depression and anxiety disorders, have been
1:38:57
studied for decades. Despair, derived from a Latin term meaning down from hope,
1:39:02
might be just another way to describe these conditions, or it might be
1:39:08
its own special form of suffering. Some researchers regard despair as a distinct psychological
1:39:14
status, one that can potentially be traced back to early childhood and may pose
1:39:19
a risk for suicide, illegal drug use, and maybe even physical pain.
1:39:25
For that reason, mental health clinicians need to work to distinguish despair from depression,
1:39:30
even if despair isn't a disorder in psychiatry's diagnostic manual, says psychiatrist Ronald
1:39:35
Pyes of the State University of New York's Upstate Medical University in Syracuse. Quote.
1:39:44
An overreliance on what is sometimes called quote the Bible of psychiatry is likely
1:39:50
to be misleading or inadequate when assessing the risk of suicide and illicit drug use.
1:39:56
He contends, so interesting findings, and it's also interesting that they mention
1:40:08
the Bible of psychiatry. Here, referring to this diagnostic manual, I would
1:40:19
say, there's probably lots of sources of despair that affect people, But how
1:40:29
often are we turning to the Bible, not the Bible of psychiatry, but
1:40:33
the Bible? And when do we turn to Jesus? When do we turn
1:40:39
to God to help sort these things out? That's a lot of what I
1:40:44
did in my journal. I was really just talking to God and just going
1:40:50
through it. And so my generation we were still raised with these ideals and
1:40:59
these gender roles, you know, where men were expected to provide for their
1:41:04
family. But when the economy goes to shit, and we're just seeing the
1:41:11
beginning of it now, but then what how many more deaths of despair are
1:41:18
we going to see? But how often are we going to turn to Jesus
1:41:24
and God versus a psychiatrist and anxiety pill medication? I mean that just said
1:41:33
in the article about overdoses on opioids. Don't you think we should address what's
1:41:39
causing the depression. I'm sure it's a little bit more complicated than you know,
1:41:44
just a four year college degree, and the economic pressures this next generation
1:41:50
is going to have to face are far greater than anything I had to face.
1:41:59
At least there was still a chance that if you got a good job,
1:42:03
you know, you could maybe afford a mortgage. And we managed to
1:42:12
hustle and patch it all together and make a living. But I worry about
1:42:17
my children, and there's gonna be a certain degree of checking out of this
1:42:28
world for the saints, for the believers. So this is all tied together.
1:42:36
Somehow, it all ties together. I'm gonna leave it there. I
1:42:43
got a ton of articles here piled up, but I don't want to keep
1:42:46
you for too long. I appreciate you listening. You can check me out
1:42:54
on GAB, the ministry x telestream on Telegram download the Telegram app. I'm
1:43:01
also on me We go to Fringe Radio Network dot com, go to ministry
1:43:06
xpodcast dot com, and as always, you can shoot me an email if
1:43:12
you have any questions, comments, suggestions, stories, testimonies. If you'd
1:43:17
like to be a guest on the show, my doors are open. Ministry
1:43:27
ex at proton mail dot com. Ministriekis Atrota mail dot com. And until
1:43:32
next time, remember beware the alien saviors. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.
1:43:43
I'm gonna still off the evening by reading some poetry of mine. This
1:43:48
is my band behind there and say hiver yeah, okay, okay, uh,
1:44:02
well it hasn't really started yet, so chilled. H Where will I
1:44:15
be a million years from now? I think I'll be scattered around. I
1:44:24
will not be I as I knew myself. Please don't sort of stuff.
1:44:33
Go ahead and start the song okay about the couple Follo