August 20, 2021 Update

 

I finally signed a contract to work for another year. The next day, I received an email saying that the first month of classes would be online.  In the small university town that I work in, I estimate conservatively that another one-hundred small businesses will permanently close. If I apply the same estimate to all of Taiwan, we’re looking at an additional 12,000 small businesses that are likely to permanently close their doors this year. While small independently owned businesses are increasingly being forced to go out of business, large businesses are thriving. This situation is rapidly going to become unsustainable.

 While they’re saying that we’re just going to have the first month of classes online, I’m guessing that we’ll be having classes online for the next 3-4 years — if we're able to have classes at all. About ten million or 41% of the people on this island have already received their first dose of a so-called vaccine. Aside from government representatives (who look like talking zombies, if you ask me), the scientists, doctors and specialists that I listen to all say essentially the same thing, it’s not a vaccine, but a bioweapon.

 After two months of unsuccessful attempts to persuade my partner not to get injected, I recognize that she is probably going to do so sometime next week, and that she has made her own decision, perhaps at a very deep level. The only compromise I could get out of her (for better or worse) was for her to switch from a foreign made vaccine to a Taiwan made one. Taiwan’s president, Tsai Ing-wen, is also apparently scheduled to receive her first injection of the same vaccine, next week. The good thing is, as I’ll be working from home, I’ll be able to care for my partner in case the so-called vaccines turns out to be a problem. Perhaps I’ll even get to see if those spike proteins have any effect on me. Fascinating times.

 My summer vacation has not gone as well as I had planned, I didn’t get to go swimming for the first two months, and I wasn’t able to convince my partner to just say no to the vaccine. Nevertheless, I apparently still have a job, and I’m told that the swimming pool may open this week. Thus, as I’m now planning to teach online, at home for the foreseeable future, perhaps I’ll be able to go swimming every day. That would be cool.

 While there is much more that I could say (for the umpteenth time) about where we are and where we’re heading, I feel that the time for talking is pretty much over. It appears to me that a time of reckoning will soon be upon us, and I’m quite sure I’ll have something to say about that.

Adjusting to Online Teaching

 Although I could guess that our school was going to move classes online once again, I didn’t guess that the change would come so soon. One weekend I’m home visiting my partner, planning to return to school on Monday morning, and then on Saturday night, two weeks ago, I got an email saying to move all classes online beginning Monday. I was all set to start cruising into wrap-up mode for the semester, and then, boom, every class has to be video recorded with electronic attendance and so on. What else can I say but, goodbye end of semester happy slack days.

 Thankfully, as it’s now just a matter of rolling over in bed, turning on their smartphones and checking in, most of my students seem quite content to participate. How much they’re actually paying attention and/or focusing on the class is anyone’s guess. Not to worry though, I reckon it’s only a matter of time before a software update begins monitoring their rate of focus, eyes on the screen and so on.

 Additionally, and quite surprisingly I might add, I also seem to enjoy communicating online with students. Whereas before, I was thankful just to have a semi-captive audience (once students actually made it to the classroom), we now have software monitoring what time they check in and how long they stay. I can only guess where this is all going. So, I go down my attendance list, check to see if people are actually listening when I call their names and I ask them how their Covid vacation is going — extra credit if you have a story to tell.  And if that doesn’t work, I always have plenty to say and (lol) I never seem to get tired of saying it. After all, I figure that someone outside of the mainstream news propaganda outlets ought to at least attempt to explain to people, especially young people, what the heck is going on these days, why it’s happening and where we’re heading. Overall, this online teaching isn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be.

 Moving on to the main issue at hand, the CONtagion monster has again returned to Taiwan, and its name is of course still Fear. With afternoon temperatures hitting 39 C, I’m seeing big SUV’s passing by me with their windows rolled up and only a driver inside — obediently wearing a facemask. Here in Taiwan, If the government says wear a facemask when you go outside, then that’s what everyone does, including me. Lol, because, if I don’t obey, not only might I have to pay a fine of $500, but I also might end up on the evening news (as an example of an uncooperative foreigner). No way!

 For about a year, I was quite reactive to the so-called new normal (standards ideocracy), but that was before I forgave myself for being so stubborn and decided to finally let go of logic and reason — threw them out the window and released myself of that burden. Really, forget about attempting to make 3D sense of what’s going on in the world; better instead to remain grounded and focus on principled living — doing unto others as you would have them do unto you, judge not lest ye be judged and so on.

Considering the long term Possibilities

 

In terms of the school calendar, today is the start of week 13, which means we’re only about 5 weeks away from summer break. However, I usually start winding things down by gearing up for final projects, presentations or reports around week 14 or 15. This semester, five of my classes are doing speaking presentations, speeches or self-introductions, wherein they are required to prepare the written part, present it in class, make a video of them presenting anywhere and then post everything to their blogs. While this may sound quite simple, it can be quite challenging, especially considering that it has to be done in English, their second or third language. Thus, although I’m technically considered a language instructor, I would say that my focus is mostly on getting students to embrace practical aspects of communicating, e.g., how to format/write simple emails or essays, post them to their blogs, prepare presentations and share them via the internet. It’s sometimes quite challenging for me, too.

 Anyway, what I really wanted to talk about today has to do with the rhetoric I'm noticing these days. Quite suddenly, my school instructed all of the instructors to become operationally proficient (my words, not theirs) in a new online teaching platform. Coinciding with this, I’ve also been noticing an uptick in the COV19 rhetoric in Taiwan, which leads me to put the odds at about 50/50 and increasing, of us having once again go online for the coming fall semester. What do I guess is really going on? Even though the Taiwan government has made arrangements to take delivery of and distribute tens of millions of doses of mRNA concoction, many people (apparently the vast majority) don’t seem to be interested in participating in the experiment. Thus, and again I’m guessing, the pharmaceutical industry that seems to be calling the shots these days has perhaps decided to provide a little more motivation for the people by ratcheting up the fear factor, which is exactly what is now happening in Taiwan.

 In terms of the organizational structure or design of the global consciousness, the world system and so on, I think it must be basically the same design (in aggregate) as our own mind consciousness systems. Therefore, the more we understand the inner workings of ourselves, the more we’re going to understand/comprehend the externalized sum-total of ourselves — as the world system, the global consciousness, the global mind. Bringing everything back to myself, looking into myself and then looking to the without of myself, my external reality, I would say that the energetic aspects of the system itself is going to continue to diminish and/or deteriorate. Why? Because this is exactly what has been occurring within and as myself.

 For whatever reason (mostly, I think it has to do with movement in my personal process), my mind is far less charged than it used to be, which from my perspective, is awesome, so much more livable. However, this has also meant that I’ve had to change the way I do a lot of things. For example, as I’ve sometimes written before, I no longer even consider allowing the autopilot of my mind to just drive the car while I think about other things. I’ve also noticed that I will often not have a stored or easily accessible memory of something that I just did, even though I know I did it — just don’t seem to be able to recall those images of it being done. So I keep pushing myself more and more to go with physical living, step by step.

 Sometimes we only focus on the immediate effects change, and forget to consider the long term possible outcomes. For example, in looking at the stimulus and/or stimuli that are being injected both into the external reality as the world system, as well as the physical body of earth and man, the immediate effects appear to be devastating or even horrible. However, when I expand my perspectives to consider not only the short-term effects, but also the possible to probable outcomes (and how well they are aligned with our goals), I begin to see a different picture — a more sensible one perhaps.

 For example, when it comes to the concerted effort to mask and social distance the masses, the immediate effect would seemingly be to increase (perhaps exponentially) the prevalence of mental and physical instability within many societies throughout the world. However, in looking objectively based on what I’ve learned about the human mind consciousness system (especially its development), a silver lining begins to appear regarding certain crucial aspects and/or components of the enslavement system. From my perspective, the entire enslavement system is being methodically attacked in what looks to be a concerted effort to disrupt, overload and short circuit the entire system from the within to the without and the without to the within. The trend lines all point to the same conclusion, all stop, system failure, system implosion.

 So the good news is (from my perspective), even though we gotta walk through hell to get to where we’re going, at least we’ll be out of hell. When it comes to change, there is a slow way and a fast way, and it looks like we’re now on the fast track.

 PS. yesterday, I received an email saying that all classes will go online for two weeks starting Monday/today. So yesterday was quite busy for me, kind of exhausting. That being said, I’m now starting to consider the possibilities of teaching online… get a new phone, some of those earpods, maybe even a Gopro… I could be walking through a market, hiking outside, etc., while chatting with students. And if I get one of those notebook tablets, I could just set up anywhere. I consider the possibilities.

 

Stably Walking through Disruption

Having been called to an emergency meeting at my school last week, it was no surprise to me that I would have to make some changes to my agenda and routine in response to the virus. Not very much does surprise me these days; even going back to the month of December, I could feel that there was something different in the air. Due to intuition or whatever you want to call it, I ended up leaving a lot of tasks open ended. At the meeting, all of the instructors in the foreign languages department were told to move everything - from a classroom based learning structure to an online learning structure - by next Monday, which was three days away - like mission impossible.

However, now that I was clear to me how how things were going (including having a general guess as to how this virus thing (as but the first wave of consequence is going to play out, peak and die down until the next big event and so on over the the next 4-5 years), I now needed to figure out how to get prepared in time classes to begin in three days.

In addition to having to learn how to use an education software platform that I had never bothered to really learn because I deemed it to be outdated in comparison to Google docs, I would have to effectively use that platform, design new course material, organize it with detailed instructions for students and so on. I’m laughing a little here because I guess that working 14-16 hours a day is normal for many people, but not me. I like doing things at my own pace, taking afternoon naps, going for walks, while also always being prepared for disruptions - which is why I had 2-3 months of emergency supplies on hand even before the virus scare, just in case there’s a really a big earthquake, but I guess that’s another story.

In terms of how I used the process that I’ve been walking for several years now, writing out my mind in mind constructs and so on, I simply did what I’ve become very good at, standing as the directive principle, identifying the programs that were already in place, redesigning them to then reprogram the outflows.

My first directive though was to remain stable and primarily move myself physically rather than mentally so as not to consume too much substance (literally) and end up burning myself out by thinking too much. In observing myself moving, I found it really cool that even though there were so many points (like de-energized molecules) surrounding me, that I probably would have in the past used to define myself as being emotionally stressed out, this time around, I simply walked through them, all the while being sure to breathe and keep my awareness grounded. It was kind of like finally being the director of a team, me, as a mind, being and body cooperating for the common good. Herein I now see that what I’m really getting at isn’t so much in relation to difficulty level of what I had to do. Rather, it has to do with “how” I ended up doing it, stably, almost completely without the emotional impacts that I would have had to also deal with in the past. And I call this Progress in my Process.