I’m not militant about my status as a television non-owner; I don’t think tv is inherently evil or that I’m “better than YOU!” I’m writing this blog to share my experiences, thoughts and the benefits I perceive to being free of this ubiquitous device.

I removed the television from our house in January of 2008. My primary motivation was that here in the UK, we have to pay a yearly license fee of £142.50, or risk a hefty fine. I don’t agree with the cost or the requirement of a licence to watch TV, as I believe it to be a tax on television ownership and the thin end of a very big wedge. Along with my satellite subscription, TV was costing me over £40 a month! That’s a big chunk of money for something I barely had time for.

Finances aside, these are my gripes with television:

The cultural impact of television advertising: I don’t like subliminal advertising, or advertising that outright demands that I live a certain way. TV adverts do exactly this, bombarding us with popular lifestyle choices for music, clothing and attitude. Of course adverts are designed to cater to the most profitable demographic; they are driven by revenue.

A by-product of targetting the mainstream is that viewers don’t realise there are alternatives, and so they buy into what advertising tells them without a second thought. They do not question what is presented onscreen. Consequently, there are hordes of people who don’t express themselves, and instead like what they are told to like, believe what they are told to believe and wear what the fashionistas tell them to. They find safety in numbers; non-conformity is seen as something freakish to be mocked, rather than an interesting diversity.

Women (and some men!) make themselves ill trying to emulate the style and looks of bulimic actresses and impossibly-sculpted actors. Adverts hint that we are somehow worthless if we do not conform to their ideals of youth and beauty. One anti-cellulite cream featured the thighs of a twelve year old boy, and shampoo adverts regularly use models with hair extensions.

Television advertising has played a large part in creating a generation where few can think for themselves. *Disclaimer* -not everyone who watches tv is a drooling vegetable.. like with anything else, an awareness of it’s effects and a degree of moderation work wonders.

It’s called television programming for a reason, kids

Television’s use as a “soundtrack for life”: Too many families turn the television on as soon as they wake up, and do not switch it off until the last person reluctantly goes to bed. That’s around sixteen hours of noisy mental bombardment. I do wonder if these people are so afraid of having an original thought that they drown them out in this way.

As an empath it is anathema to me not to have some quiet time each day; to read, to lay and think, or simply to enjoy the silence. The loss of television had a profound effect on my two young daughters; if the “box” was on, I had to fight to gain their attention.. without it’s influence their attention spans increased and they began to engage in creative, imaginative play.

Walks to school became nature trails as they took more and more notice of the world around them, asking questions about creatures we saw; snails, slugs, birds, ladybugs and even the dreaded spider.

The News: Political news is mostly speculation, and by definition mostly imaginary. I find little truth or value in current affairs because of it’s skewed facade.

If news programmes aren’t the easiest way of manipulating the public, then I’m at a loss as to what is! With their doom, gloom and often outright hatred of those on the fringe of society they draw our focus to everything we don’t want in our lives. Plenty of people have an aversion to those who draw welfare benefits. “Cheats!” “Scum!” “Parasites!”.. again copying sentiments they hear on the news. The key word is aversion, aka negative manifestation.

By focusing on something, or on a group of people, by blaming it/them, you bring it into your experience. Public opinion, and thusly experience, is directly related to news stories. The horrific death of a child at the hands of an abuser makes headlines; and for months after our industrious journalists bring us more and more harrowing stories.

The power of the media is truly frightening. (that’s another potential blog!)

One can cut out these downsides and still enjoy some quality entertainment! “Then why throw away your TV?” I hear you ask, “Why not watch what you enjoy and turn it off?”.

Well, I didn’t find the few programmes we enjoyed worth the monthly expense. Along with that.. if you have young children you will be aware of their capacity to nag.”Muuuuuuuuuum, I want to watch Peppa Pig!” would soon become “..and I want to watch this, and that, and that….”. Children aren’t great at moderation and I’m a lousy disciplinarian. Removing the tv was the best choice for us as a family.

Within a week of getting rid of our tv, I had increased energy and clarity of thought. My creativity increased and I felt happier. I worried less about the future, which I believe was down to being news-free. I felt less irritable and stressed and more laid back about life in general. Visitors often commented on the pleasant atmosphere in our house, and that it was lovely to be able to chat unhindered.

When I see television in use outside of the home, I am very aware of it’s presence. I am irritated when I see it used in waiting rooms, shops and even the post office! In these situations it is spouting inane streams of “info-mercial” crap which only seems to put the patients and customers into a benign and glassy-eyed trance.

We still enjoy watching DVDs and streaming videos on the computer; the children appreciate selecting their viewing and see it as just one more form of entertainment rather than a necessary component of existance.

It’s a big leap of faith to make; television is deeply ingrained in our collective psyche and culture. A compromise I’d suggest is buying a cabinet to house your tv. Choose to watch, rather than have it on in the background. To use television consciously is to snap out of it’s control.

–Gehenna

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<———- It’s over thataway.

There are quite a few newer posts that have moved up in the ranks fairly quickly, so if you’re a newer visitor to the site, you may find something you haven’t seen yet.

If you have a favorite post that’s not on there yet, send it to all your friends and it probably will be by the next time I make the list!

Thanks for all your feedback and ongoing support!

–Palehorse

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This is shaping up to be a place where we can interact more closely with those who follow our site (and they can network with each other), and we’ve got ideas for the occasional special event to take place there. Stay tuned!

Also! Reminder: We’re still accepting submissions for the Carnival of Healing on the 25th. Two more days to get your submissions in!

–Palehorse

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What is a blog carnival?

A blog carnival is an event where a blogger agrees to post links to entries by others on a given topic. It’s a great way to network, and increase the readership of all involved.

What is the topic of this one?

Healing, duh. I’d like this edition to have a more spiritual / alternative health (rather than medical or fitness training) focus, though all entries geared toward improving one’s health will be considered.

Any other rules I should know about?

Don’t send me posts consisting of lists of links, or anything blatantly self-promotional. These will be considered spam, promptly deleted, and a good laugh had at your expense.

Alright Cranky McGee, but when’s the deadline?

I will accept submissions up until 12AM (GMT) on Friday, though the sooner you submit your entry, the better the chances of it being included.

Thanks, and I look forward to reading all your submissions!

–Palehorse

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Apparently Feedburner moved all its feeds to Google without telling anybody; as a result, feeds were cut off if you hadn’t transferred them to a Google account by today. I’ve done that now, and it should be working again.

Sorry for the inconvenience!
–PH

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I’ve just managed to get the feed back up and functional; should work fine now. I apologize for any inconvenience!

–PH

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Editor’s note: Upon writing out the piece on the subject of who is targetted and why, I realized I had a monster of a post stretching over five pages. At this point I figured this subject was important enough to make it a “series within a series,” and would be a lot more readable if broken up into six chunks. So, off we go!

One of the pillars of my approach to negative entities is that, as with everything else — I can’t control the actions or intentions of other free-willed beings. If someone thinks it’d be a good idea to punch me in the nose, I can’t stop them from trying; all I can do is anticipate the confrontation and defend myself to the best of my ability. Likewise, I can’t stop a negative entity from wanting to target me if they feel so inclined. What I can do is learn everything possible about why they might choose to attack me, and thus make myself a less attractive or visible target. The purpose of this part of the series is to share what I’ve learned about who is more likely to be targetted and why.

If there’s one single piece of insight I’ve found that is key to the negative interference phenomenon (and regular human interaction for that matter) it is this:

When I am not living consciously, not taking full responsibility for my thoughts, words, actions and energy, there’s a good chance something else will, and that something will not have my best interest in mind.

When I’m not in full control of myself, there’s an opening for something else to control me. When I act in ignorance, there’s an opening for something to influence my actions negatively. When I act in fear, I have already given something outside myself control over me. When I’m
not using my energy consciously and efficiently, it can be pulled in directions that are not beneficial to me.

When I am not making full use of my free will, it can be subverted for purposes that are not in my best interest.

Developing on all these fronts is a lifelong pursuit, and I certainly don’t make any claims of mastering them all — but I do know that simply recognizing these things are important represents a huge leap in one’s spiritual development. It also represents all the ways to see that one’s well being is not being interfered with, by negative entities or anything else. The best way to counter negative interference is not by focusing on it, but by working on YOU.

This does not mean that anyone who hasn’t done serious work on self mastery, or is vulnerable, will be targetted by negative entities. Many people will never see any serious negative interference in their lifetime. Many people are also living with negative interference while not recognizing the problem, however. As an analogy, imagine you’ve left your house unlocked overnight. You may or may not get robbed, but the point is that if someone does happen by who wants to break in, they can do so easily. It would be helpful to keep this in mind as I go through examples, so if one does fall under one or more of them, they won’t become paranoid (and thus possibly attract negative attention that wasn’t there to begin with, or convince themselves it’s there when it isn’t.)

The next post will go into the first example of a commonly targetted individual.

–Palehorse

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You may be familiar with the theory of dreams that says every character, place and situation within the dream represents an aspect of the self. I believe that in a sense, real life is the same way. We “dream” people and situations into our experience that represent aspects of ourselves — the only difference being that in life, the other dream characters are self-aware and are dreaming you into their experience for their own reasons.

Common sense would seem to dictate that there is an objective and “real” universe, “out there” that exists and is what it is independently of our perception of it. Discoveries in quantum physics have disproven this however — the behavior of a particle changes based on the presence of a conscious observer. Extrapolate this to the macrocosm, and it becomes evident that the universe is being continuously co-created by Consciousness.

Based on parallel universe theory, the idea that everything that can exist does, somewhere/when, I’ll take it even further. I posit that in a sense, we are each at the center of our own individual universe. My universe may overlap with those who enter my sphere of influence and share a lot in common — but it might also be very different, in very real and significant ways.

Think of it like a venn diagram, where one circle is my reality, the other is yours, and the place in the middle is where they overlap.

Now picture billions of these circles, all moving in and out of each other, flowing and rearranging continuously in infinite configurations. If we picture a visual representation of this image, we would end up with something resembling the Flower of Life.

The place where two circles overlap are the reality shared between, say, you and I. This area consists of our shared beliefs, perceptions and experiences. When we say we know someone, the person we know exists in this overlapped section. But can you know me as I know myself? If you’ve cultivated self-knowledge and objectivity you’ll know more of the true person just as you know you true self. If you haven’t, your impressions of them will be largely colored by your own perceptions; they’ll simply be a character in your dream.

The part of the circle that doesn’t overlap represents the part of ourselves and our reality that is not shared. How much of our fundamental experience of reality do we really share with the random guy we pass by on the street, and how much do we simply assume that we do based on what we suppose is “common sense”? How much of our reality do we share with the random guy across the world and how much do we simply assume based on our own beliefs, experiences and perceptual filters?

The statement “history is written by the winners,” is often used to convey that what we take for granted as being “the way it happened” may or may not be the case. If we take into account the concept of divergent timelines, it may even be possible that one’s history depends on which timeline they’re on, and continue along, when timelines overlap.

I’m reminded of a few times in my life where I and someone else remembered two completely different, mutually exclusive versions of an incident that was too recent for memory to degrade that much, but too mundane for either of us to have any vested interest in changing the details. Since its only happened rarely, I don’t think its a problem with my memory, and since its happened with a few different people I don’t think it was theirs either. Each time while it was happening I had a sense like “pay attention; something unusual is going on.” Ever since, I’ve always wondered whether we experienced some sort of timeline crossover. According to countless accounts that I’ve read, my experience is one among many; some similar, some even more likely to make one raise an eyebrow. The concept of “alter-vus” is an interesting one, which is defined as your experiences not matching your memories. For example, today you find a fully stocked and operational grocery store where you know there was just an empty lot yesterday, and everyone you ask remembers it as “always having been there.”

Back to the flower of life… the larger circle around the collection of smaller ones could be said to represent the greater consensus reality. This would consist of the physical and metaphysical laws that preserve the appearance of a coherent and continuous experience. Then again, as far as I’m concerned, rules and laws are handy for providing structure just until we’re able to transcend them… I believe that within the larger structure is a lot more possibilities than we could ever imagine; many of what we take to be rules or even laws are simply common assumptions. Within those larger boundaries, vast numbers of personal realities can exist comfortably — largely because we never question the assumption that they’re all the same.

“This is all very interesting” (or downright nutty as the case may be) you may be thinking, “but what’s your overall point?” That’s a damn good question, glad you asked. The point is that if we get rid of the assumption that we’re all playing in the exact same proverbial sandbox, then we’re left with some very important implications. If my reality is literally my own creation, and not contingent on any other person or entity, then I have a lot more freedom to act and create, to choose who to share my reality with, and decide what parts of other creations I want to allow to color my own. If I want to make an awesome cake, I would include chocolate but exclude ketchup; if I want to create my ideal experience I need to be equally discriminatory about what I put into it. This starts with what qualities I exhibit in my own life, and extends to the people I choose to share my life with.

That’s not to say I’m trying to emphasize separation — we have enough of that in this consensus reality already! But that brings me back to the subject of self knowledge and objectivity. With self-knowledge and love, objectivity and discernment, we begin to attract more people and influences that are compatible with our reality, and recognize those that aren’t. At that point an interesting thing begins to happen — the circles within our area of the Flower start to show greater overlap, “the divine within me recognizes the divine in you,” and there arises a new creation that we may have only thought was possible in our wildest dreams.

Namaste indeed!

–Palehorse

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