We are a filter...
We filter everything through our bodies. Food, Water, Soda, Beer, Alcohol, Cigarettes, Candy, Drugs… all flow through our biological systems and become incorporated into our being. We are creatures of habit, and indulge in our desires as we see fit. That's ok… its human nature.
But the old cliché is so very true: "You are what you eat". Every substance we put into our bodies, everything we consume becomes a part of us. We are consumers that are slowly poisoning ourselves with everything we ingest.
We also filter every stimulus we receive through our brains. What we see, feel and hear, etc., is processed through the neural impulses that are a part of our biology. So what we consume with our bodies - Food, Water, Soda, Beer, Booze, Cigarettes, Candy, Drugs - has a major impact on what flows through the sensory processes of our brains. The substances we ingest leaves an impression on how we perceive our reality.
Typical humans on this planet are bombarded by thousands of advertising messages intended to make you buy something. These advertisements have been refined over the years to capture your attention and induce you to act. Our brains filter these messages on a subconscious level.
Each of us is surrounded by thousands of advertising "impressions" every day. Why do you think you hear the same commercials repeated over and over again? Because a constant barrage of ads inundates us, it takes a threshold of awareness for you to even realize that you're receiving a message. Repetition is the key to breaking through all of the stimuli to make that message stick and induce you to act.
Just as we process the substances we ingest, we process the impressions we ingest. Like food and water, the impulses to "buy this" and "do that" become a part of our being. The messages we receive - even ones we don't realize we are receiving - have an impact on how we perceive our reality.
On average, we'll eat at least 5 meals outside of the home this week. At least three of those meals, we'll eat at a Fast Food establishment of some sort. The rest of the time we eat, we're eating something pre-packaged that requires little or no effort for us to prepare. Much of the food you will consume today will provide you with little or no real nutritional value.
There is a relationship between the food we eat and the advertising messages we receive.
We succumb to the marketing messages we are bombarded with, and we eat food because it makes us feel good. Part of the reason why it makes us feel good, is that our brains have been programmed through the advertising we receive that tell us… "If you eat this food, you will feel good."
Is it any wonder why we are all so confused all the time? In addition to the foods that our bodies process that give us no nourishment, our minds must process thousands of advertising messages designed to sell us these foods. We are literally eating ourselves to death because we are being told to do so.
Almost two-thirds of us (particularly humans in the US) are overweight or obese. Sixty-six percent of the US population consumes far more food than their bodies need in order to function. Obesity accounts for a 10% to 50% increase in mortality rates amongst all types of death, and accounts for more than 10% of the healthcare expenditures in the US.
We cannot help it. For example, go anywhere in the US, and you are no more than a few miles from the nearest global hamburger franchise. That particular franchise, by the way, innovated the mechanisms of "fast food" production in tandem with mass marketing techniques.
With "billions and billions served", most people on the planet have eaten at least 1 McDonalds hamburger, and the few who haven't certainly know the global McDonalds brand by name.
Unless they have never been exposed to Television or Radio. Which is unlikely because in the US, 98% of us have at least 1 TV in the house. Globally, more and more of the world's population get more and more viewing options every day, giving advertisers greater markets to exploit.
Not only are remote areas getting more TV access, televised content is appearing in more and more places. Don't get enough television at home; take it with you on your laptop or cellphone. Everyone on the planet can have access to televised advertising on many different media platforms, just about anywhere in the world.
Even the messages we do choose to tune into are filled with meaningless content meant to distract you from reality. We fill our minds with violence and sex, in the shows we watch, the web sites we visit, and the video games we play. Again, most of the content we consume is embedded with advertising.
Entertainment is the biggest industry on the planet. If you look at all the activities that are paramount in our daily lives, being entertained is certainly the one activity that each of us participates on a regular basis. It's as if each of us needs a constant background of entertainment, even when we are working.
We're very passionate about our entertainment too. We know more about the actors and singers on this planet, than we know about our own families. Even people that don't really do anything but party and pose for the cameras, seem to capture our attention more than what's going on with the people in our immediate circle.
We're consumed with politicians, criminals, athletes, models, singers and talk show hosts. Celebrities are the focal point to countless hours of programming every day because we're so bored with our own lives, we'd rather watch someone else's. All because we're bored with our lives.
Most of us, on average, will spend more than 26 hours watching TV this week. We'll spend another 6 hours watching movies. We'll spend 10 hours (at least) on the Internet this week, and another 10 hours (at least) playing video games. In all of this "leisure" time, we're bombarded with advertisements, both overt and embedded, designed to make us act.
But our inactivity is just as much a part of the problem. Only a quarter of our population "works out" with any regularity at all. An hour and ten minutes each week, on average, which comes out to about 10 minutes a day exercising. Of all the dozens of hours we spend idly avoiding boredom each week, three quarters of us don't get any exercise at all.
So we sit around on our fat asses watching television, and we don't really do anything. We've become addicted to the stimulus provided by our wonderful mass media. As we filter more and more media, we filter more and more advertising designed to make us want this and buy that.
Then, like sheep, we find ourselves at the mall buying things we don't really need and eating food that we know is really not good for us to eat. We've bought in to the advertising that has been designed to make us do these things. Our entire society, our civilization, is completely built upon consumerism… It's the cornerstone of our reality.
It extends into our work life as well. Most of the people employed in the world are just cogs in the consumerist machine. We're either making things to sell to other people, or we're selling things to other people. Most of what we make and sell, none of us really needs.
Even when we don't really need something, we're told we need it, and therefore we want it. For example, there would be no need for a medicine for "restless leg syndrome" if we'd get off our ass and exercise. Yet a corporate scientist somewhere did research for a drug, and the marketing department developed a creative use for it… It stops your legs from shaking.
We filter our reality through the lens of mass media, mass marketing, and mass consumerism. All of which is controlled by the ruling elite of international banks, multi-national corporations and ultra-rich "royal families" bent on controlling your very existence. Money is the primary means of control, with politics providing a backdrop to make us think we have a say in our lives.
We really don't have a say in our lives in the materialistic realm. Media events are constantly staged to slowly enslave us, by making us feel afraid all the time. We are scared to death of everything from terrorists and murderers, to salmonella and bird flu, all courtesy of the corporate news departments. By the way, the Top 10 media conglomerates control most of the world's information systems, including the content you'll find on your nightly newscast.
The media controls your perception of reality. You filter through the physiological and psychological functions of your brain the constant barrage of messages beamed there through television, radio, and yes this little device you are reading right now, the Internet. What you believe is a part of someone's marketing campaign.
The sad thing about all of this, is that we all know there is more to life. That we, as individuals, have a greater purpose than to merely absorb what we've been told to think and do by the media, the marketeers, and the ruling elite. Yet we lack the discipline and control to make our lives more meaningful.
We'd rather delve into the artificial reality that we get out of some sort of box, than to face our true problems and achieve the true potential lying within us all. We would rather sustain this imposed ignorance, than to educate ourselves to see beyond the controlling monopolies, and the virtual slavery of the materialistic realm.
As human beings, we are all better than all of this. We can become aware of the fallacies of the materialistic realm and begin to change the way we think about our existence. There is much more to life than what we have been told by the institutions that surround us. The constant cycle of greed, corruption, power and control must be broken for humans as a species to continue our evolution as free beings.
Not to mention our evolution, period. We have arrived at a technological precipice, where we are becoming aware there is a finite period of time our planet, our sun, our galaxy, even our universe will exist. At the same time, we are consumed with our own personal mortality, writing wills and designating who gets the money, without thinking of the legacy we leave behind for our children, our grand children, and so on...
Our progeny is only the legacy that any of us individuals can possibly leave behind. As humans, do we want to raise our children to merely be cogs in the mediocrity machine that is existence in our culture? Do we want to become a race of slaves, born into debt to some greedy old dude that controls the interest rate? Do we want to continue to teach the same old fables, stories and outright lies passed down through the ages to our children?
Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, the Bogeyman, all fables our parents used on us as a means of control. As a child you probably believed in Santa because you were taught to believe that way. From your family at home to your teachers and classmates at school, all of the authority figures and peers in your life told you Santa was real and you accepted that reality.
Until you learned the truth.
Personally, I was crushed when I learned that Santa was not real. Sure, at the time it was cool that still got new toys at Christmas. But my whole world was shattered, bought off with trinkets from an imaginary man named Santa. Something that I truly believed in - something I knew deep down in my heart was real - turned out to be illusion. A lie told to me by the people I trusted most in my life… my parents.
In reality, as children we are programmed by the global institutions bent on controlling our population. Because after most people learn the truth about Santa, we still continue to perpetuate the Christmas myth. Buying and exchanging gifts, travelling to family gatherings, and consuming larger than normal amounts of food, all amount to the biggest corporate profits of the year in all phases of the economy.
Not to mention that we pass this corporate/consumerist construct on to our children, year after year. Buying things you do not need with money you do not have in the name of Jesus Christ. Spending yourself into the slavery of corporate debt, while completely striping away any religious meaning to the celebration of Christmas.
Why do we want to perpetuate a reality that is built on lies?
Awareness is the willingness to accept that reality is not what it seems. What we watch on TV as we cash our paychecks, buy our groceries and pay our rent, is not the epitome of human existence. There is more to our lives than what we have been taught and told by the political, social, corporate and monetary institutions that have been controlling us for a very long time.
Beginning with your connection to god.
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