There are 3,130 cases of covid-19 in Costa Rica. 37 of them are hospitalized including 3 in intensive care. Authorities now fear the health system could collapse because of the rapid and exponential growth in cases.
The first case was detected 115 days ago. It took 83 days to exceed 1,000 cases but then just 21 days to add another 1,000. Even scarier, another 1,000 were added in just over a week. 2,000 cases have been added in under a month in this second and stronger wave of the pandemic.
The speed of appearance of new cases has been increased by 10 times, according to the manager of the CCSS. It is more important than ever to take care of ourselves to slow the spread.
If we reach a rhythm of 280 daily cases, or 2,000 weekly cases, the hospital scenario would be critical. With these numbers, 74 would need hospitalization including 26 in Intensive Care. In the second week, 52 ICU beds would be needed and in the third week 257 would be needed. The CCSS has only 257 ICU beds and only 24 of them are adapted for covid-19 care. The CCSS is working on adding 32 ICU beds for covid-19 patients, bringing the total to 56 beds.
Although we didn’t see colorful flags throughout the city this June 28, International Gay Pride Day, due to covid-19, the would-be participants celebrated virtually. People of all ages came together from the isolation of their homes.
On various digital platforms, activities were carried out and messages were shared. They celebrated love in all its forms and called for the fight for their rights to continue so that everyone can freely be and love who they love without hiding.
Same-sex marriage has been legal in Costa Rica since March. Still, equality is needed in the day-to-day so that sexually diverse people can be in any space without feeling discrimination or fear.
The ultimate goal is equality for all vulnerable groups, such as lgbtiq, people with disabilities, senior citizens, indigenous people, and all other sectors that are often forgotten or face social, cultural, or economic barriers.
Dogs are faithful creatures and good to have as pets. They are wonderful companions and have a strong sense of smell and instincts hence are able to detect danger around us and provide protection.
For them to live a healthy and happy life, the owner must ensure that they are taken care of well. They have to be fed well, exercised, and treated when they fall ill.
As a caring owner, one of the best things you can give your dog is flaxseed oil. It has a lot of health benefits. The details are outlined below. Check this link for more information.
What is it?
This is a supplement extracted from the seeds of the flax plant. It belongs to the same category of health products as fish oil. It also contains omega – 3 and omega – 6 fatty acids.
These are known to promote organ development, fight inflammation, and strengthen immunity to mention but a few of the uses. Sometimes it is more preferable to fish oil because it lacks the taste and strong scent of fish that some dogs don’t like.
Food can also be made from the seeds which are rich in dietary fiber.
What are the benefits?
It is rich in fatty acids – as mentioned earlier, it is a great source of omega– 3 and omega–6 fatty acids. These are contained in a balanced ratio thus preventing side effects such as oily skin which is usually because of too much concentration of the fatty acids. These are essential in the proper development of various body tissues and the functioning of systems. It also contains antioxidants such as lignin. As such it boosts immunity. See more benefits in this link https://www.dailypuppy.com/benefits-flaxseed-oil-dogs-1118.html
It promotes healthy joints – the supplement aids in cartilage growth and regeneration thus ensuring smooth joint movements and quick healing. It also has alpha-linoleic acid that together with the antioxidants helps fight inflammations and other joint diseases thus guaranteeing joint health and pain-free motion. This allows the dog to move freely and exercise which translates to good condition.
It aids in digestion – dogs eat lots of stuff some of which might be difficult to digest properly thus causing constipation. This might also be due to digestive tract disorders. The supplement has healing properties that can treat the disorders and also lubricate the tract well hence promoting proper digestion and absorption. This allows for free bowel movements that prevent constipation.
It fights diseases and regulates body mechanisms – the supplement has been found to not only strengthen the immune system but also fight diseases that are already present. The antioxidants help fight off cancerous cells and agents thus preventing cancer. It also regulates the cholesterol levels and metabolism hence placing your pet at a low risk of heart diseases.
It promotes healthy skin – for most pets, their health condition is usually reflected by the appearance of their skin. This is in terms of color, texture, and developments such as rashes. A dog with dry itchy skin might simply be in need of a proper bath or it could mean that its skin’s oil is depleted. Poor skin condition makes it vulnerable to contagious infections transmitted by contact. This supplement restores the skin to its natural healthy condition which looks good and also provides protection.
Are there any side effects?
The supplement is very safe for consumption and does not have any adverse side effects. If administered in proportions larger than prescribed, then pets might get mild nausea. Dosage is usually determined based on the breed, weight, and age of the animal among other factors. Prolonged excessive use can lead to oily skin which goes away when usage is stopped or reverted to normal. Click here to know more about flaxseed oil.
Conclusion
Supplements are good for pets just as they are for humans. They might be expensive at times but the tremendous benefits that they possess make it worth the price. For good results, you have to administer them consistently and be patient. Remember to stick to the specific dosage for your pet as indicated on the bottle. If it’s missing, then contact your vet first and have them direct you on the right amount. Also if there are any adverse side affects you should immediately stop the usage and take them to the vet.
Cannabidiol has recently become an object of attention and research and this is more so because of its touted health benefits and also its legalization in the United States due to the Farm Bill of 2018. It has grown popular as more and more people become aware of the benefits they can derive from cultivating, using and selling it.
As a result of this, there has been an eruption in both the sale and use of cannabidiol, with more and more farmers, manufacturers, and retailers joining the party and becoming a part of the industry.
When it comes to issues regarding cannabidiol or CBD, there are a lot of things to consider. CBD which can be used for either recreational or medicinal purposes can be extracted from the hemp plant in several ways including CO2 extraction which is the best form of extraction. It can also be extracted via the use of a solvent or olive oil extraction. It is usually extracted from the flowers, leaves, stem, seeds, and stalk of the plant. You can read and learn more about it here.
Types and Strains of Cannabidiol
There are also different strains of hemp from which CBD is extracted. One of the major differentiating factor is the amount of cannabidiol or THC contained in the different strains. While some may be cultivated to contain high levels of cannabinoids and tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), some will have low levels of THC or none at all.
THC is the substance in cannabis that gives it its psychoactive effect. It is important to know that the allowable legal limit of THC in the United States is 0.3%. Common strains include Charlotte’s web, Cherry Wine, Pineberry, Elektra, Lifter, etc.
Another information that may be of importance is the different forms or types of CBD available. They are Full spectrum, broad-spectrum, and isolate. Full-spectrum CBD is a form that contains all the compounds and substances like flavonoids, terpenes, essential oils, and omega-fatty acids found in the hemp plants, including THC. broad-spectrum is a CBD that contains all the compounds with the exception of THC. Isolate is one that is purely made of CBD without any other substance contained in the products.
Common CBD Products
Cannabidiol can be made into many different products. The most common of these are:
Cannabidiol can also be used for animals. It has been used to treat different forms of ailments in domestic animals like dogs and cats. It is also used to maintain their wellbeing.
Cannabidiol usually has little or no side effects when used but low-quality products or wrong use of CBD can bring about some undesirable side effects such as:
Depression
Hallucinations
Nausea
Tiredness
Dry mouth
Dizziness
Irritability
Low blood pressure, etc.
All of the above can be avoided with the proper use of cannabidiol and also by purchasing high-quality CBD products. The best form of cannabidiol is an organic one and while there are many growers, manufacturers, and sellers, they all do not produce quality products. Some just want to make a quick buck and won’t mind selling products that are ridden with pesticides and other additives that may be harmful to the user’s health or may not be as effective.
However, there are manufacturers (check over here) that ensure you get the best and highest quality of organic CBD products as your health and well-being is of great importance.
Conclusion
Knowing, identifying, and buying the correct kind of CBD product is essential to avoid been preyed upon by unscrupulous and low-quality product sellers. Ensure you check labels before you buy any product.
If unsure, you can request the lab report for the products. A reputable manufacturer or retailer will be able to offer you that. Another thing is to avoid is very cheap products. This is usually an indication that it is not organic but of low quality. That is not to say that high prices necessarily equal good quality. In any case, you still have to do your due diligence.
SUPERNATURAL
I wake up in the morning and standing next to my bed are no other than Dean and Sam Winchester of TNT’s Supernatural. Sam says to me: “Paul, we have enough cases, this is a case we are giving to HPI, we know you will do well and we give you our blessings. I wake up again, only to see that it was a dream, that’s what I get for binge watching Supernatural. If you have a chance, please watch this show, it’s a blast of supernatural energy, see the trailer here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiMtGDs3ocQ
Now to the case for today, the case that the Winchester brothers gave my company. Oh yeah, it was a dream….or was it?……….
INITIAL REPORT
Date to be there: June 20, 2020, Saturday. Time to be there: 6pm Contact Person: Ms. L . Address to be at: Parts Unknown, CA. Activity: Entity leans over her bed; she is engulfed with electricity, after the entity leans on her bed. Head pressure, feels like she is underwater. Knocking on walls heard, something lurks in the hallway. She feels her energy drained. INVESTIGATORS: DO NOT TAKE PHOTO OF MS. L OR IN FRONT OF HER HOUSE. THIS IS A CONFIDENTIAL INVESTIGATION.
RHYTHM OF THE NIGHT REMIX
A lot of our cases are done at night, it appears that supernatural entities power up when the sun sets and the first song I heard on the radio headed to the investigation, is this song, Rhythm of Night Remix. This song is perfect for the investigation: www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnYwU5TmLVM&fbclid=IwAR379tzVA1UGWfLRFFh8-FAZGwkq6II4i2Pfjq6bLMohZjhpM7niJr4Z0-ASpecial Note: We actually captured a lot of evidence before the sun came down, but what the hey, this is still a good song!
THE INVESTIGATION
When we first started, we weren’t getting any evidence, but as things started moving along we captured EVPs in the backyard, in Ms. L’s bedroom and in the garage. HPI Paranormal Investigators Roll Call: Deanna Jaxine Stinson – Psychic Medium – HPI Co-Owner; Rob Kirby; Paul Dale Roberts – HPI Co-Owner. Deanna detected an older gentleman by the lounge chair and I went over there and captured an EVP. Special Note: All EVPs you can hear on Deanna’s LIVE feed. The older gentleman may be Ms. L’s father. We walked into Ms. L’s bedroom and smelled perfume, when before there was no smell. I captured an EVP that sounded like a woman saying “yes”. Rob saw a small entity move quickly along the living room floor. I saw a figure move across the living room mirror while I was interviewing Ms. L. Ms. L showed us various orb pictures and a picture of an entity that looked like a dog with red ears. This photo was taken in her home. I used the dowsing rods and the entity showed me with the dowsing rods where it was located and I immediately captured an EVP. Deanna at some point of time, felt the presence of a boy that committed suicide in the neighborhood and Ms. L confirmed that there was a suicide in the neighborhood. During the LIVE feed, another psychic watching the LIVE feed, detected a nearby suicide. Three times we heard soft knocks on the wall when we asked the entity to show itself. I saw an orb move swiftly in the hallway with my night vision goggles. The temperature reader hit red once in the living room.
THE CLEANSING:
Deanna conducted a metaphysical cleansing using angel metatron and in the spirit of St. Francis, I conducted a Roman Catholic house blessing. Afterwards, I gave Ms. L a sprinkle on baptism. Special Note: Angel Metatron means “the Youth”, a title previously used in 3 Enoch, where it appears to mean “servant”. It identifies him as the angel that led the people of Israel through the wilderness after their exodus from Egypt (again referring to Exodus 23:21), and describes him as a heavenly priest. Metatron is also referred to as Michael. Metatron was an angel and the Scribe of God who recorded the Word of God. In Heaven, Metatron was personally selected by God to write down his word and then God disappeared.
BASS LAKE ROAD:There is a road near the home called Bass Lake Road. I received two reports that a disheveled woman is sometimes seen walking alongside this road, looking lost. Darren Lockwood from Placer County says he saw this woman and when he slowed down his truck, she looked at him with a blank stare and then vanished. Ms. L confirmed that this road is indeed haunted and she tells her story about this road on Deanna’s LIVE feed.
Instead of scaring up a couple of ducks as I ride down the dirt path to the creek, I surprise a man standing in the middle of the stream. He is foraging in the hip deep water, but I don’t ask why. We say hello and I sit a little way upstream to watch the sunset.
Swallows are playing on the air and skimming the surface of the water. Quail cavort in the bushes along the stream, and I hear pheasant squawking in the fields. Though near the horizon, the sun is still shining with brightness and considerable warmth.
Life is exploding around and within one. There is no division, outside or inside, nor even as ‘outside’ and ‘inside.’ I look beyond the fields to the canyon and foothills, and see them as if for the first time. At my feet, a mother merganser with her brood of 7 new chicks swims upstream. She spots me and hurries them along.
Passive observation vies with insistent questions for pre-eminence in the mind, but after a while the questions give way to silence and a deep reverence and seriousness. Standing up after an hour, I feel something beyond words and all description. One is empty; there is (though I’m hesitant to use the word) love.
Is the brain capable of observing without an observer? What is the observer? What part does it play in the division, conflict and fragmentation of the world? These are crucial questions, not only for awakening the meditative state, or even for psychological health and healing, but also for ending the division between people.
The observer is the first division of the human mind, and from that mechanism all other division originates: ‘My family and your family;’ ‘my tribe and your tribe; my country and your country;’ ‘my religion and your religion.’ Thought operates in dualism, and as long as thought rules, dominates the brain and human life, there will be war, poverty and ecological destruction.
What is the observer? At the most basic level, it is the psychologically separative mechanism constructed by thought. The observer is comprised of prior experience as the filter of memory, and the illusion of a separate, permanent self.
If one attentively asks oneself, ‘what is the observer?’ one will see that at bottom it is actually nothing but thought constantly separating itself from itself. The observer is inextricably part of the entire movement of thought; one only experiences it as separate from that which it is observing, in oneself and the world. The separative mechanism within the person—the alleged observer —is the basic impediment to direct perception and wholeness.
Wikipedia gives this definition of observation: “observation in philosophical terms is the process of filtering sensory information through the thought process.” That’s a good definition of the observer, not of observation. It assumes that the observer and observation are one and the same thing, when in fact they are distinct phenomena. Indeed, though it sounds circular, true observation occurs when the illusory observer is negated in undivided observation.
In actuality, the observer is an infinite regress. It never sees itself because it is always removing itself from the field of observation. Thought is unable to see itself separating itself from itself, which is what allows the observer to be continuously experienced as an entity apart. To end the observer, another capacity of the brain is required, that of awareness and attention.
To observe the observer, and catch it in the act of infinite regress, one has to allow, through passive watchfulness, awareness to grow quicker than thought. In doing so one attains the insight that the observer is really an inextricable part of the entire movement of thought. At that moment the separative trick ends, and one’s basic perceptual process changes. The effect is like holding a mirror up to a mirror, and both mirrors suddenly breaking, allowing direct perception of what is.
In this process of attention, the ‘I’ doesn’t do anything, since any action of effort or will is still from the observer. Attention to the entire movement of thought, beginning with gently questioning the workings of one’s mind, ends the habit of divisiveness in the mind, at least temporarily.
Even so, the brain is so accustomed to looking through the lens of the observer (having done so for tens of thousands of years) that it falls back into the habit whenever there is inattention. That’s why besides taking time every day to sit quietly and passively observe, being mindful–aware of what one is doing, thinking and feeling in the present—is essential.
Passive observation produces intense, effortless attention. Ending the infinite regress of the observer, the “flame of attention” burns away the extraneous material of memory and emotion, releasing energy. It takes energy to release energy, but once released, the brain liberates capacities far beyond the personal and paranormal.
The manager of the Juan Santamaría airport provided insights into the eventual reopening of the airport for regular flights. Airlines push for a start date to be set but this will depend on the course of the covid-19 pandemic in the country.
The start date was originally scheduled for July 1st but the third phase of reopening the country had to be put on hold due to a second wave of covid-19 cases. The manager explained that this is just one step back and there will be many steps forward.
It’s important not to be the last country in the region to reopen borders because if that were the case we may lose flights and tourists to other countries that opened to them first.
There is great interest from airlines to return to Costa Rica as well as from tourists because Costa Rica has a low number of covid-19 cases in comparison to other countries in the region so it is seen as safer. The estimate is that when the airport is reopened there will be 18 airlines and that eventually all 30 will come back.
At the moment, doctors from the CCSS are serving at the airport for the arrival of the few flights that are coming in but this will not be sustainable with increased traffic. Protocols for social distancing and safety in the airport have been submitted for approval.
Keyor Navas and some companions from the PSG have undergone blood work and tests to detect the new coronavirus. The results will be ready soon. The national goalkeeper, already at the facilities of the Paris Saint Germain, plans to return to practice on Thursday.
In total, 27 people, teammates and coaching staff, are getting ready to train for the Champions League and cup contests. Not all of the players got the blood tests provided by the club’s health kit. They were given masks with the PSG logo.
Today and tomorrow the players will undergo physical tests at the American Hospital and then on Thursday they will have the first training session on the field. Next up, they will have a few friendly matches.
The team is already in the quarterfinals of the Champions League. It will play in the League Cup and Coupe de France as well, both in July. The final parts of the continental contest will take place in August.
A huge dust cloud is heading towards Costa Rica. It originated in the Sahara Desert. This is something that happens annually, much to the despair of those with respiratory problems. It brings with it a stop to such heavy rain.
This year the cloud of dust is the largest we have seen in half a century. It’s currently over the Caribbean and heading towards Central America and the United States. Experts estimate it will reach us this Tuesday.
We will have reduced vision due to the dust from thousands of miles away. We will also see haze and red sunsets. Allergy sufferers are advised to stay indoors. The use of masks and glasses can also help. Airplane pilots will notice a reduction in visibility in the morning and afternoon.
The clouds form and then cross the north Atlantic every three to five days from late spring to early fall. They can cause a 3-kilometer-high layer.
The Ministry of Health cannot control every situation, for example, over 20 people decided to attend a baby shower and this resulted in 11 new cases of coronavirus, including the pregnant lady. These 12 are among the 69 new cases from Saturday.
This situation is not unique, unfortunately. On June 18, a similar tragedy occurred when 17 guests of a party in Alajuelita were infected with covid-19.
The Minister of Health made this announcement and a call for attention. He reminded us that everyone must take responsibility and collaborate in the midst of the very difficult situation caused by the pandemic.
The country has experienced a total of 2,127 cases of covid-19. 1,014 of them have already been recovered.
Because of scattered cases throughout Desamparados and cases in Alajuelita from the party, an orange alert has been established for these two cantons.
1. The Cemetery
There is a significant amount of opinion on this one due to the nature of study. This is probably the most literal you can get to finding the dead than any other place there is. The question of respect remains as a silent given, as in do not take or remove property, damage headstones, or anything that would be considered irrevocably bad. There are ways if you really want an easy way to see a ghost to go about it! You can say their name with honor, read the headstone and express kindness and my team has gotten e.v.p.s this way with the spirit saying thanks. However, when I was a teenager, me and some friends went into a cemetery during both day and night to search for ghosts and try to contact the spirit world by using a Ouija board. The energy was very chaotic and when I got home I immediately went to bed and then awoke to a feeling like a child was jumping on the bed that I was sleeping in. I looked over and there was imprints like feet size going in the same motion as if a person was there. When I realized, I left my room in terror and ran up the stairs with the child’s spirit still there, attached. It must have taken a liking to the fun I was having and thought we could continue. Also, in my family, I am named after my dad’s sister Deanna who committed suicide at 16 due to bullying about her condition in which she had seizures, so she took all of her medicine and then my dad, as a boy came into her room the next morning, jumped up and down on the bed, but she was dead and would not wake up. This could be a demonic connection or a totally unrelated event, either case- be very careful in cemeteries.
2. On A Ghost Tour
With experienced ghost hunters and storytellers to aid, they oftentimes stir up spirits by telling their stories. It is like the superstition, “Speak of the Devil,” in which you say a person’s name and their ear starts itching, or they suddenly walk into the room. As a psychic medium, I have noticed some spirits take great joy in the renditions and also join in with the group to meddle. With so many eyes focused on the history teller, they like to surprise people by walking around behind everyone. Perhaps you may also catch the glimpse of a paranormal time traveler, whose soul purpose is to give paranormal tours throughout many times and dimensions from Earth and beyond. Hearing renditions of tales spoken the way they were meant to is very valuable to spirits who used to be performers or storytellers.
3. Private Houses
There’s nothing more spooky than staying the night over at someone’s house when you suddenly discover that you are not alone. Perhaps they didn’t want it to be awkward, so they relayed the information to you before you tried to get comfortable of their ghosts. Personal stories, experiences and emotions are all woven in with the supernatural creatures who dwell with the same family of people for generations, or those who belong to certain houses and land to which they were dedicated. Old guardians, protectors and familiars exist here eternal by those witches who summoned them from the abyss of solitude. You can find quite a collection in these places.
4. The Wilderness
Where there is quiet, there is peace and that is what a lot of spirits are drawn to. In much of a similar fashion, the people you know in life who adore being outdoors at any cost might gravitate towards those same places in the afterlife. It may be someone who had a busy life and now finds sanctuary in the natural beauty of Earth. Whatever the case may be, the wilderness is home to many ancient and beautiful creatures. You may find free spirits, native energy and elemental is abundant here. More than likely you will definitely be able to capture a great photograph.
5. Landmarks & Historic Places
That is because they inspire people both living and dead to do great things and confess great feelings in these places. Be it from a proposal at the Eiffel tower, to a dreary tree someone choose to hang themselves on in a display of loneliness and desperation or a great banquet hall that communities celebrated in for frequent joyous occasions, these are some of the places where you will be sure to find similar spirits with the same emotion as the landscape. There may be reenactments performed, helping the spirits to trigger and project the past into the present and bring us with them or people constantly bringing up the same type of memories many others experienced as well there. Blame it on one of the many dimensions where time has ceased to exist and be brought back to years you never knew could be recorded in spirit as well as books.
6. Abandoned Spaces
O.k. so the number one thing here to remember is that this is one of the most dangerous locations to choose because of the lack of control or authority here. Many demons rule over the Hells in which is won the right to exist by aggressive or unhallowed means. This translates to a build-up of negative energy which attracts dark forces such as criminals and devilish activities. People who are down on their luck may gather here as well as the only sanctuary they know is chaos. There are probably many barriers here which will not allow you to leave once they tear you down to this level. Be careful of sharp objects, such as rusty nails, dirty boards, parasites, wild animals, drug users or anything really as no one owns these places except the streets and other feral forces.
7. Dark Areas
Wherever you can get to that is really dark I highly recommend. This is because when your sight goes out, your other senses will be heightened and you will experience the paranormal in a very intense way. Besides trying to process, you will be living in the moment, on the edge of fear so much so that it will release chemicals in your brain and adrenaline to keep you going and trigger that primal instinct you were given before all the cultural and human conditioning we experience growing up in the “Real World.” Also, anything that is glowing in the sky or Earth will be easier to spot in dark places and your hearing will be amplified.
8. Your Dreams
Literally in your dreams is a whole haunted world that you are already co-existing in spiritually as well as the third dimensional world as we know it. If you practice good lucid dreaming techniques, you can open up whole new worlds, spaces, places and time that you could have never imagined existed before. Not only that, but you will be inspired in the waking world by what you saw and you may express it in such a way that you can bring spirits to life. This could be in the form of writing, painting, speaking and so much more. Some spirits will crossover from astral realms back into ours and try to takeover objects or people once they have spotted you, so be sure to summon angels for protection and guidance from evil.
9. Scenes of Violence
On t.v., in real life or anywhere that someone has expressed great amounts of anger, sorrow and violence can curse all that is around it. When the blood spills, it makes it particularly hard to ignore. It’s almost like tearing apart the fabric of space time itself through this shocking leverage of energy. Emotional people are literally freezing time with their tears as well, if only for a moment, to record the data in so many ways. This can be in the form of radiation, poison, contaminated waters, infertile lands or people. So, be extra cautious of the environment in these situations.
10. Famous Locations
Be it where a t.v. show filmed and immortalized the situations, or where a celebrity had a great moment. Maybe it is where a horror movie was made or a haunted location glorified through the silver screen, anywhere it was made possible to be known and cared for by the masses creates great places to investigate. Energy lingers here always and so there is something to be said for going and experiencing this for yourself- which you first saw through the lens of another. There is allure, provocation and a feeling of glamour, all of which illicit visits from fans, both ethereal and magick to view and psychically touch spaces where the presence of someone they admired was felt. Perhaps we will be struck with the same luck and charm as they were!
Many of the movies that Hollywood has churned out in the last 20 years are based on the premise that evil is interesting while good is boring. That’s hard to argue against since it has obviously paid handsomely. But the truth is, as a pundit recently wrote, “At this point in the Trump era, it’s a constant challenge not to let oneself be bored by evil.”
Looking beyond the parlous borders of the United States, a small news item jumps out at the reader from man’s atavistic past: “On Monday evening, in a brutal hand-to-hand battle, Chinese soldiers killed at least 20 Indian soldiers with wooden staves and nail-studded clubs, in the severest escalation of the dispute on the Sino-Indian frontier in decades.”
Looking up the word ‘atavistic,’ the online dictionary leads with this trenchant example of its usage: “Our atavistic fear of one another, our tendency to extreme violence and destruction, particularly under the stresses of conflict, the ease with which we seem to lose our own humanity, and with that, all those higher noble qualities we all possess – mercy, compassion, forgiveness, our love for each other as members of the human race.”
Throwbacks to tribalism/nationalism and pre-Bronze Age hand-to-hand combat notwithstanding, a non-theological, non-psychologized philosophy of evil is clearly called for. But what would such a philosophy look like, and how would it help anyone but the debating societies of academic philosophers?
Even before World War II was over, Aldous Huxley excoriated “the utterance of speech-making politicians, writing, “In half an hour’s yelling from a platform it is intellectually impossible for even the most scrupulous man to tell the delicately complex truth about any of the major issues of political and economic life.”
I wouldn’t quibble with that, except to point out that Lincoln made a pretty fair stab at it. Nonetheless, despite or because of the abundance of such fecal froth as primal skirmishes over obscure borders in the high desert between China and India, or children mercilessly caged on the frontier between the developed and underdeveloped world that the US-Mexican border represents, the age-old problem of evil demands an adequate response.
The present world almost makes one long for the good old days of the stable Cold War, when, as my philosopher-friend in Costa Rica says, the concern was only “who had their fingers on the red buttons.” Whether we’re talking about sharpened sticks or the still ominously futuristic looking SR-71 “Blackbird,” mass murder and the preparations for mass murder by one tribe against another haven’t essentially changed in untold thousands of years.
American commentators wring their hands and gnash their teeth about how President Trump believes his “personal interest is the national interest,” but at bottom, self-centeredness and nationalism have the same source—the division between me and you, us and them.
Even so, that doesn’t come close to giving an adequate, non-theologized, non-psychologized philosophy of evil.
The obvious first question is: What is evil? Though this certainly doesn’t cover it, one can say evil is an egregious eruption of hate and violence in an individual or a people.
The next question is: Does evil have collective intentionality in human consciousness? This is the sticking point for philosophy, psychology, as well as most decent people. Everyone that is, except religionists, who believe that good and evil preceded man and are in cosmic, supernatural conflict.
Dismissing the latter as juvenile and clearly unhelpful in the history of humanity, we’re left with the fact that eruptions of collective darkness happen all the time. Something larger than the individual, or even a bigly group of people, can burst into the open and take over a person, or a nation. Evil is first an inner phenomenon before it is an outward manifestation.
For example, despite exhaustive investigation, the FBI found “no single or clear motivating factor” in the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino slaughter of 58 concertgoers in Las Vegas on October 1, 2017, the worst mass shooting in the land of mass shootings.
And despite decades of analysis and thousands of books, there has been no adequate explanation for the eruption of evil in the people who gave the world Beethoven and Goethe, which produced tens of millions of deaths in World War II, as well as the Holocaust.
Laying my philosophical cards on the table, my core premise is that other than practical and scientific knowledge, the content of human consciousness, individually and collectively, inexorably tends toward accumulating dark matter, which is now leaving less and less space within, suffocating hearts and shrinking minds.
So what we call evil is a conscious or unconscious intentionality of malevolence and chaos that erupts in an individual or a people out of the unaddressed dark matter of innumerable generations.
The cipher that sprayed machine-gun fire down on the throng in Las Vegas was not motivated by solely individualistic factors. In his utter weakness of character and complete absence of compassion, he became a conduit for the vast content of darkness in this culture.
Evil is man-made, not cosmically generated. There are life hating self-hating things in human consciousness that want the destruction of the human spirit and spiritual potential. Violence and chaos are means to that end.
The best Hollywood depiction that I’ve seen of how evil operates is the movie, “Fallen,” with Denzel Washington. Though falling back into a theological framework, it depicts how easily evil can flow into and through inwardly dead people.
For decent, reasonable people, unlike the faceless, face-maskless mob attending Trump’s rally in Tulsa today, losing sight of the culture and world we live in has become analogous to losing sight of the Covid-19 pandemic—one risks being infected by the real or metaphorical virus.
The antidote to evil is awareness and a scrupulous inner life. And an inner life requires being very honest with oneself on a daily basis. In short, when I feel hate, I must see it as it is without excuse or blame, face it, and remain with it.
The ancient saying true: “Bring forth what is within you, and what you bring forth will save you. Do not bring forth what is within you, and what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”
Contrary to what you’ve heard, free speech doesn’t really exist in America, or on the Net. The mainstream media patrols the boundaries of acceptable narratives, and Google arbitrarily censors material. Censoring my political pieces is bad enough, but Google went too far in expurgating my column yesterday, “What Is Our Place In the Universe?”
Sometimes a “Meditations” simply doesn’t appear on the octopedal “search engine,” though it’s at or near the top of the other two wee search engines, Yahoo and Bing. But other times, like with yesterday’s piece, my column initially appears on the first page in the same position as Yahoo and Bing, only to disappear altogether an hour later.
That means it isn’t removed by an algorithm, which would be rotten enough, but by some human acting out of God knows what motivation. Given how much crap floats around in the massive septic tanks of the Net, that’s hard to take. Especially when Google gags a column of the caliber of “What’s Our Place In the Universe.”
What’s the reason? Friends think a fundamentalist Christian mole is embedded at Google, and “Meditations,” which perhaps conveys true spiritual and philosophical insight, is an existential threat.
I’m not so sure. Is it that that anything that comes too close to the unfixed, ever-moving truth, anything that may spark actual insight in readers, has to be suppressed, because the entire edifice of so-called civilization wouldn’t last a month if ordinary human beings began having ignitions of insight?
After all, opinions and beliefs, however wretched, are fine, but once you really begin going beyond opinion and belief, you’re a danger to all power structures, acceptable narratives and psychological authorities.
I’ve had more than my share of experience with censorship, both from old-timey newspapers, and online websites. For example, when I moved to this sylvan, superficially friendly town in the mid-1990’s, I talked the conservative editors of the infamous Chico Enterprise-Record into a spiritual and philosophical column called “Contemplations.”
There was one condition—I couldn’t write about politics. Agreeing to that precondition was a mistake, but the column appeared for three years and was read by people from all ethnic groups, economic classes and educational backgrounds.
Before email killed letter writing, I actually got snail mail at a post office box, and regularly showed a sampling of it to my editor. In short, to use another crustacean metaphor, I was happy as a clam to have a local voice and be contributing “Contemplations” to the community.
Though it’s ancient history now, when I read a scathing report (by an American no less) about the cosmic scale of corruption in the Oil-for-Food program in Iraq, I thought it safe to write about it.
Without explanation, the Enterprise-Record didn’t run my column. A couple months later, after three years without missing a deadline, the E-R, without notice or explanation, simply stopped running “Contemplations.” Enter George W. Bush and the invasion of Iraq, followed, after the Obama interregnum, by Donald J. Trump and the destruction of even the semblance of democracy in America.
With regard to the Net, a few years back a friend told me about the secretive work her daughter was doing at Apple AI. The young woman is a brilliant anthropologist hired to do Google knows what. When I wrote a piece about it, being careful not to use names or provide any specific information, my site manager was directly contacted by the young woman, saying that she and Apple would bring a lawsuit against him if he didn’t immediately pull the column.
The question is, why censor “Meditations” at all? A careful reading of the two offending columns, “What Is Our Place In the Universe,’ censored by Google, and “What Is Apple Up To?”, censored by Apple, gives a clue perhaps.
The Big-Tech project is control, or at least manipulation, of virtually everyone through the exploitation of thought’s programs (that is, our conditioning) through AI programs. So if there is a deepening insight into thought by even a small minority of individuals, that goal will be defeated.
It’s become a commonplace, especially by old school columnists, to decry, deride and dismiss “the Internet” as dumbing down, if not destroying common sense and basic human decency. But the Net is a straw man, since they may as well decry, deride and dismiss human consciousness itself.
A cliché goes, “nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.” The truth is however, that ideas have no true power to effect change; insight does. And apparently, insight must be squelched. Not gonna happen.
For at least 100,000 years, since ‘modern man’ first emerged from eastern or southern Africa, we have been as we are—tribal, self-centered and sub-consciously dominated by the adaptive strategy of symbolic thought.
Now, as the fragmentation of the earth and humanity by the unwise use of ‘higher thought’ reaches the breaking point, pressure greatly increases for a transmutation in the human brain, allowing a new, true order of consciousness.
That a single species should have the power to destroy the planet that gave rise to it is not just an existential mystery; it poses a cosmic question about consciousness itself. What is consciousness, as we generally know it, and is another order of consciousness possible?
On one side, many take false refuge in the idea that humankind is utterly unimportant, an infinitesimal speck on a speck in space. But the very fact that humans evolved along with all other life, yet have initiated the “Sixth Extinction,” begs the question: What is the place of this supposedly intelligent species in the universe?
On the other side are people (often so-called religious people) who insist that the previous five extinction events (defined as “a sharp decrease in the number of species in a relatively short period of time”) means that nature itself is destructive, so we should expect man to be. Does one really need to point out that there is a vast difference between a natural event and one caused by an allegedly sapient species?
Conventional atheists and New Agers say that humans are insignificant, and that our destructiveness is evidence that life is a chance event against a background of chaos. That’s false on the face of it. The universe unfolds from simpler orders to more complex orders; only man generates chaos. Besides, there is an unresolved mystery to the emergence consciousness, not to mention the irreducible mystery of life itself.
Of course, we can wait until astrobiologists confirm that the emergence of life is as much a property of the universe as the formation of planets. Astronomers have discovered thousands of ‘exo-planets’ orbiting distant suns, some in ‘habitable zones’ probably with water, like earth.
In the lifetimes of many people alive today, astrobiologists will discover, I posit, that rudimentary (single celled) life is quite common in the universe; that multi-cellular organisms are quite uncommon; and that sentient, potentially intelligent species such as man, are rare.
Many people believe that we’ve already been contacted by extraterrestrials, and that they ‘seeded’ human civilization, or are about to invade it. Perhaps we’re being watched, but there probably is a “prime directive” that prohibits truly intelligent life from interfering in the transition to intelligent life of potentially intelligent life, such as Homo sapiens is now excruciatingly passing through. (Optimistically speaking of course.)
Therefore just as the laws of physics apply everywhere in the universe, the laws of chemistry and biology do as well. No extraterrestrial life will be stranger than some of the prior genera of animals, or many of the deep-sea life presently found on earth. So are there laws of transition to truly intelligent life that apply to creatures like man that escape the bonds of niche and begin consciously manipulating their environments, however different they may appear than humans?
I feel so, and that all sentient (i.e. self-conscious) life passes through the same crisis of consciousness that humankind is presently experiencing. (It appears that Homo sap is an especially pigheaded, almost incorrigible example.) The intelligent species that have made the transition have neither the capacity for inter-species conflict, nor the desire to interfere with the processes of conscious, non-technological transmutation in sentient species on other planets. (The idea that we should apply our anthropocentric history of colonization, domination and extermination to extraterrestrial species is just plain silly.)
This hypothesis is testable. If science discovers that life has emerged twice in our own small solar system—say, under the ice-encrusted surface of Jupiter’s Europa, or in the waters of little geyser-spewing Enceladus circling Saturn (which is presently very bright in the southern sky in the northern hemisphere after midnight by the way)—it would mean that life is abundant in the universe. Of course that still leaves the question of intelligent life, but the probability of Homo sapiens being alone in the universe then drops to nearly nil. (Of course, we are alone, as individuals and as a potentially intelligent species, until we cross the threshold of intelligence!)
However I’m not as interested in the question of extraterrestrial life as I am terrestrial consciousness. The brain that gave rise to religion and science is the same brain that pits the religious mind against the scientific mind. However neither science nor organized religion can solve the human crisis, because both are the product of a dualistic consciousness—misapplied symbolic thought.
We can no longer put off the increasingly pressing question of the fragmentary nature of human consciousness. The human mind has separated and fragmented animal and plant species from the seamless wholeness of the earth’s ecosystems to the breaking point. And in doing so, we have also divided ourselves to the breaking point. Can we resolve the crisis of human consciousness in time to preserve the integrity of the planet, and ourselves?
The universe did not begin in chaos, but in silence and order. ‘Chaos’ does not exist in the cosmic sense; order flows out of order. Chaos is a byproduct of the improper use of the adaptive strategy of symbolic thought. Disorder is generated by thought.
An immanent, inseparable intelligence exists in the shrinking spaces of the natural world, but one can still feel the universe, and the immanence within it, beyond the man-made world, and on clear night if you’re fortunate enough to see the Milky Way. It has come to the point where if one doesn’t have at least a moment of communion with nature every day, one completely loses one’s way as a human being in this insane world.
The value added tax (VAT) on cross-border services such as Uber, Netflix, and Airbnb will be collected starting on August 1. This collection can be done by the service providers or by debit or credit cards.
Customers of these services will have to pay a 13% tax, based on a June 12 resolution on Collection of Value Added Tax on Cross-Border Digital Services. The details were published in La Gaceta, making it official.
These services are intangible goods consumed or enjoyed in the national territory but provided from companies based outside of Costa Rica and operating through the Internet or digital platforms.
The list of the first taxable services will be available on the www.haciendo.go.cr. The list will be updated at least every six months to include additional suppliers and/or exclude those which have voluntarily registered as taxpayers.
The Minister of Health, Daniel Salas, reached out to the residents of the country, and especially the northern zone, asking them to accept the isolation centers rather than protest against them. “Communities have to help us help them,” he said.
As of yesterday, there are 50 new cases of covid-19, bringing the total in Costa Rica to 1,662, in 74 cantons. 907 of the cases are still active. Conglomerates were detected in San Carlos and Guanacaste.
To contain the spread of the virus, patients without conditions to self quarantine at home must be treated in isolation centers. It is understandable that no one wants their community to house the covid patients but it is necessary to avoid community transmission.
One of the isolation centers was installed in a hotel in Santa Rosa de Pocosol. 17 Nicaraguan citizens are located there. While this sparked outrage, additional such centers are to come so that outbreaks don’t get out of control. There is another isolation center in La Carpio, in La Uruca.
The CCSS guarantees that all patients with covid symptoms, even the uninsured, will be treated as a measure to protect public health.
I hate doing ghost investigations on weeknights, because the next morning I have to get up and go to work. But, this is one ghost investigation I had to check out. I was meeting up with Shannon ‘Ms. Macabre’ McCabe at her home right after work. We headed out in her black VW sports car affectionately called, “The Ectoplasmobile”.
Shannon and I discussed various investigations that we have been on all the way to the small quaint town of Newcastle, CA. Shannon drives like a bat-out-of-hell and there was many times I was putting my foot on an invisible brake pad. As we drove past a makeshift grave on the side of the road, I said silent prayers that Shannon would get me to Newcastle safely. She did, but then thoughts of Shannon driving me back home came to my mind and I started shivering again. I was more scared of Shannon’s driving than I was of any possible ghosts we might encounter at Constable Jacks.
Let’s get a run down of what haunts Constable Jacks, a very cool bar, nightclub that has live band entertainment. Historical records provided by H.P.I. researcher, Kristen Sheley indicate that:
” A ghost of a young man in his twenties haunts this old saloon and restaurant. Employees nicknamed him ‘Gary’. He is blamed for wine bottles and glasses that fly off the shelves behind the bar. The glasses never break when they hit the floor. Gary is known to roam the basement and switch lights on and off. This establishment was formerly known as Soracco’s Restaurant and Saloon, located at 525 Main Street in Newcastle. The former owner Gus Soracco thinks that Gary the Ghost was ‘done in’ at this bar. Gus Soracco has felt Gary’s presence behind him, when he used to close down this establishment.”
Now that this establishment has turned over to a new owner Jacquie Looper, she has her own stories. Jacquie’s grandfather from 1910 to 1920 was the owner of Constable Jacks. Her grandfather was the Constable of Auburn, CA. Some of the activities that have occurred under her watch include:
1. Dishes flying off the shelves.
2. When Jacquie was saying that she didn’t believe in ghosts, 10 to 12 bud vases flew off the refridgerator on their own accord.
3. Her daughter Sheena Looper has witnessed a spotlight blinking off and on and then only to discover that the spotlight was not even plugged in!
4. Bottles of beer exploding.
5. Patrons have claimed to seen a young woman in her 20s, with blonde hair peeking around corners wearing a pioneer dress.
6. Shylah & Dana (daughters of Jacquie) were cleaning around the bar late at night when they called their mom and asked her why the flashlight was left on at the bar and why the candle was lit. This has never happened before, but for some reason the flashlight came on and the candle was lit and no one was around to light it. The girls hastened it out the front door, scared to their wits! On another night, they witnessed a candle one of the girls was holding in her hands and it lit on its own, then they heard running footsteps across the roof. Again, they made haste out the door!
7. Sheena relates to me that the town of Newcastle burned down 3 times and that this bar also once caught on fire. You can see the burned timbers in the basement. The basement at one time was a brothel. A psychic who came to this establishment believes the ghostly pioneer woman’s name is ‘Emily’.
The date of this investigation is: August 8, 2007, Tuesday. Investigative Team included: John Wachter aka Vlawde – Lead Investigator, Alicia Perry – Tech Support, Chris Grissom – Tech Support, Kristen Shelly – Researcher, Shannon McCabe – President, Paul Dale Roberts – Ghostwriter, Mary Casiano – Investigator, Michelle Paykel – Investigator, Cherie Vincent – Scout/Investigator. Kudos to Cherie for scouting this establishment and getting this investigation authorized by the owners!
As the investigative team sought out different locations to investigate under the guidance and direction of Vlawde, I surveyed the establishment with a keen eye. I was an awe at the macabre decorations, such as a mannequin woman that was dressed as a vampire dominatrix that was attached to the ceiling. The place was like a museum filled with artifacts and relics of years gone and dashed with relics of the present. Fascinating eye-candy for party goers!
I went into the basement , it was very dark and quite spooky. It was a very large basement that had nooks and crannies everywhere. Huge potholes that you could fall into and dirt shoved off to the side making a small enbankment or hill. This was the perfect spot for a ghost or ghosts! As Chris Grissom manned the TV monitor, he was capturing all kinds of strange orbs either moving methodically slow or moving at lightning speed.
Shannon picked up an EVP that was an inaudible whisper. As I conclude this article, let’s see what Shannon has for the FINDINGS and CONCLUSION.
As some of the investigative team went into the basement, one of the investigators, Alicia Perry felt a presence touching her. She felt like she was touched 3 times.
I tried to entice the spirit of “Emily” or “Gary” with Cherie Vincent. Cherie started picking up some unusual spikes near us, with her EMF (Electromagnetic Field) meter and it furiously started flashing with a red light. We videoed the area where the spikes happened and with further study we hope to have something to show you.
All in all, this was a very unusual establishment that I would love to visit when I am not ghost hunting and perhaps enjoy a cold beer and listen to a band. Shannon and I, had to leave early, because we both have to work the next day….well John has to work tomorrow too and has to get up at 4am, but since he is the lead investigator, he was going to tough it out for the long haul. Nice work, John!
So let’s see what Shannon has to say….and thanks Shannon for getting me home safely and not in pieces!! Whew! Shannon needs to put a red light on top of her car, you would think it was an emergency vehicle! Maybe her car is an emergency vehicle…just call HPI 911 GOTGHOSTS!
“Sometimes I just want to knock him out” says Shannon McCabe, President, H.P.I.
For more on H.P.I. (Haunted and Paranormal Investigations) of Northern California, stop by the website at: www.HPIparanormal.net
FINDINGS: 3 EVP’s saying “Get Out” in a whisper. “Are we dead” spoken in a male tone. “Help me” in a female tone, and other assorted inaudible whispers. We had lots of Orb video activity in the basement, and need to futher analyze it for dust etc… One of the investigators, Alicia Perry was touched 3 times on the head and back by an unseen force in the basement.
CONCLUSION: “Quite a neat place, lot’s of very interesting art and some really excellent food! I’d say that, yes, out of what we examined in the short time we were there the place is indeed haunted. I’d give it a 6.5 on the spook factor, it’s just too neat of a place and it has such good energy that I can’t give it too spooky of a factor”
Shannon McCabe, President, H.P.I.
Having driven all the way across the country from northern California to South Carolina, it wasn’t until we crossed the border into the state that started the Civil War that I remembered reading about the Orangeburg Massacre in college. Our destination was the town where one of the worst crimes of institutionalized racist violence during the civil rights era had taken place.
Perhaps things had changed in the nearly quarter century since I hoped. But as the saying goes, hope floats like an anchor. Passing through Columbia, the state capital, I saw that the confederate flag still flew over the capitol building.
As I was unloading the moving van into a house we had leased, an older white man walked across the street and sprinkled his southern hospitality with racist remarks. He wanted to see where these new white neighbors from California stood on the central issue.
Showing no simpatico, he said, “There are two kinds of Yankees,” he said, “Yankees and damn Yankees. Which are you?”
Ok, I’ll bite, I replied. (I had never been called a Yankee before, even in Mexico.)
“Yankees come down here to visit. Damn Yankees come down here to live.” A fine welcome.
I ignored the first few uses of the word ‘nigger.’ But realizing that I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I didn’t say something to this bigot, I stopped unloading (he offered no hand I recall) and looked him in the eye.
I take people take as I find them, one at a time, I said.
Needless to say, that wasn’t what he wanted to hear. The atmosphere grew as thick as the humidity in a South Carolina summer as the good ole boy from Orangeburg fell silent.
Wanting to know how deep into American racism we’d driven ourselves, I asked, “Do you know anything about the Orangeburg Massacre?”
“I was there,” came an instantaneous reply with an unmistakable note of pride. “I stood right next to a state cop at the bowling alley the niggers were trying to integrate. He said, ‘you see that big nigger? I’m going to put a bullet right there,’ and he pointed to his forehead. Then he did.”
I felt sick, but wasn’t about to give that racist the satisfaction of seeing me shaken. I shook my head, went inside, and said, ‘We’ve come to hell.’ That turned out to be even truer than I realized.
As was customary in those days, my partner had been flown from California to interview for a professorship at Southern Carolina State University, a nearly all black college in Orangeburg. While there, she was offered the position with a fast track to tenure. I was set to start graduate school at the University of South Carolina.
On arriving, the incoming president of the college, who was engaged in a power struggle with the long-standing chair of my partner’s department, informed her that she did not have the position. Whether reverse racism played a part we didn’t know, but we fought it on the basis of fraud, won a minimal settlement that we turned down, and headed north six weeks after coming to Orangeburg. We were damned Yankees who had come to visit after all.
Too meekly in my view, Charles Blow writes in his latest column: “We must make sure that this is a true change in the American ideology and not an activist-chic, summer street festival for people who have been cooped up for months, not able to go to school or graduate, not able to go to concerts or bars.”
No change in “American ideology” is going to change anything. And if nothing deeper than massive, cause célèbre block parties is going on, the protesters aren’t exhibiting anything but herd mentality. That’s not cynicism; it’s historical reality. Protests and movements are no longer enough.
The voice of the status quo, the New York Times, intoned today: “What’s remarkable to a number of people across the political spectrum is that Mr. Trump seems to be missing what is all but screaming in neon…that an overwhelming number of independents and even about half of Republican voters believe George Floyd’s killing represents a broad problem with policing.”
It goes way beyond “a broad problem with policing.” What is “all but screaming in neon” is that Trump has one card left to play in a nation that venerates its military despite America’s immoral and illegal “wars of choice,” to use Thomas Friedman’s disgusting but truthful phrase.
Trump won’t simply try to steal the election. Since he hasn’t been able to make an enemy of half the American people, he’ll find a foreign enemy. And if he’s down by ten points in the fall, he’ll start a regional or even world war to try to “unite” the American people.
This crisis extends much further than the United States. People who care about the future of humanity have to begin to radically change before this latter-day Mussolini kicks the last strut out from under the international order in his last strut on the world stage.
Deputies have approved strict punishments for street harassment. Someone who shows their genitals in public with sexual intention or follows another person for sexual purposes could be sent to jail for up to a year and a half.
Inthe first date, there were 49 votes in favor and none against the draft Law Against Street Sexual Harassment. It puts the most severe forms of sexual harassment in the Penal Code as crimes.
Photographing or recording people with sexual connotation without their consent in public places or in paid transportation services could be punished with ayear and a half in prison. This could become two years in prison if the material is shown or transmitted to another person. Penalties could also be increased by a third if it involves a repeat offender or if the victim is a minor, senior, or person with a disability.
Conducts such as obscene words or acts, disrespectful propositions, exhibitionism, words, noises, whistles, gasps, moans and gestures with sexual connotation are to be sanctione with a fine of 15 to 30 days.
In addition to imprisonment of fines, accessory penalties can be applied such as addiction treatment and specialized programs for the control of violent behavior.
Banks are restarting the collections that were put on hold because of covid-19. The idea of additional massive adjustments is not being considered at the moment.
Many of the grace period operations started in March. These will start payments again this month. Those who accepted the flexibilities to suspend obligations later than March will have until July to start payments.
There were originally automatic extensions. Once the grace period expires, clients needing further time should contact the financial entity directly as there will not be massive automatic suspensions of payment.
The only exceptions will be those in commerce and tourism. Clients linked to those activities will have an extension for six months to a year.
Debts include credit cards, mortgage loans, and vehicles, for individuals and companies. Millions have been helped by the extension. The main adjustments were in credit cards. Flexibility was granted to 1.7 million credit card users.
After 15 years of intensive philosophical inquiry into the question of how human disorder could evolve out of the natural order, I had a shattering experience that answered the question for me, at literally a gut level.
Ronald Reagan was in office and Mikhail Gorbachev was as yet unknown outside the Soviet Union. The Cold War was at its nadir, and many people justifiably feared a nuclear holocaust. For nearly 40 years an uneasy truce had held, nearly rupturing several times, most notably during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
At the time, I was a returning student completing my undergraduate degree at a small state college in the geographical center of California. Since no river ran through that part of the Central Valley (which is rainless for six months of the year), I established a routine a few times a week of driving 20 minutes outside town to walk and take sittings beside the Merced River, the same river that runs through Yosemite Valley.
My time by the river was always deeply insightful and regenerative. There were many riparian species of birds and other wildlife to observe along the lush banks. Often a profoundly meditative state would ensue from the undirected observation, as the observer fell away and attention gathered and effortlessly quieted the mind.
The inquiry into what used to be called “the riddle of man” intensified to a climactic degree in me during this period. For years I was driven to find out: How did this existential contradiction between the dynamic order of nature, which unfolds in seamless wholeness, and the increasing disorder of man, which ensues from separation and fragmentation, arise?
After all, humans evolved along with all other life on earth, by same basic principles that Darwin had discovered in the mid-19th century. Yet even in my late teens, over 40 years ago, it was clear to me that the human race was moving in the opposite direction of life, destroying the earth and ourselves.
During deeper states of meditation, when thought falls silent and symbols no longer mediate what one is experiencing in the moment, the entire organism becomes tremendously sensitive. Colors are far sharper, and one hears things much further away than during ‘normal,’ mediated consciousness. It was during such a state of greatly heightened sensitivity by the Merced River that one of the most shattering events of my life occurred.
I heard it first as a distant roar. In the next instant I knew exactly what it was—a B-52 taking off from nearby Castle Air Force Base, which is no longer operational. I also knew at that moment that the behemoth was going to fly directly over my head. I had seen and heard them before of course, these monstrosities of the nuclear age, but they always took a flight path away from where I walked and sat in meditation.
Used most recently to rain ‘conventional’ carnage upon America’s enemies in Afghanistan and Iraq, B-52’s were designed to deliver nuclear bombs to Soviet cities in the event of war. At that time, these huge planes carried nuclear weapons on their training runs, ready to be armed in minutes should the evil order come.
It took the plane nearly a minute to reach the place where I was standing. The animalistic flight reaction was strong and I started to run, but there was no escape. Even the car was some distance away. The noise grew incredibly loud, and the ground began to shake.
Suddenly the monstrous thing was on top of me, its engines screaming beyond the range of hearing, roaring not just in my ears but also in my chest and guts. The thing was so close I could read lettering on its underbelly.
After starting to run, defiance rose within me and I stopped, held firm, and gazed into the belly of the beast.
It all came together at that moment, all the years of questioning and probing into the human condition. I wanted to find out, and here it was, as shatteringly clear as the black thing with huge engines pile-driving me into the ground.
Beyond words, in my shaking gut, I saw: This thing is man; I am this thing. The fear was gone, and the horror was gone. There was just the fact—a woefully misguided species possessing the power of suns, exemplified by this machine of pure destruction. I saw a strange beauty in the contradiction, and felt a cosmic sorrow and compassion.
I was a naked human being looking into the darkest core of myself as man. The nuclearized B-52, I saw, was the epitome of nature gone wrong, a culmination of man’s wrong turning, the total misuse of the evolutionary adaptation of ‘higher thought.’
Without self-knowing, disorder inevitably emerges out of order with the evolution of symbolic thought. Insight is the remedy, for it acts on thought, quieting the mind and putting thought in its rightful place.
The answer I was looking for was within me, as it is within all of us. It just took a lot of noise and shaking for me to see it. My prayer is that it doesn’t take that much for you.
Wat Dhammararam Buddhist Temple is located at 3732 Carpenter Road, Stockton, CA HPI Paranormal Investigators Roll Call: Paul Dale Roberts – HPI Co-Owner; Deanna Jaxine Stinson – Psychic Medium – HPI Co-Owner; Story – Canine Paranormal Investigator; Hannah – Canine Paranormal Investigator.
From the paranormal hotline. Received call from Liu Min. Liu once lived in Manteca, CA and now lives in greater Los Angeles. In 2004, Liu visited Wat Dhammararam Buddist Temple in Stockton, Ca. Liu was with her mother and aunt. As she walked around the premises, she came upon a skinny man with bluish skin. This man was wearing a yellow robe and to Liu’s surprise, the man had tree branches for arms and hands. The tree branches even had a few green leaves on them. Liu believes until this day, that she witnessed a Yaksha nature spirit.
The man looked at Liu and darted away behind a statue. When Liu went over to investigate, the nature spirit simply was gone, vanished. Liu wants to know if Deanna can pick up on this nature spirit. Liu also got me in touch with Wang Wei.
Wang Wei says he had his own experience at Wat Dhammararam Buddhist Temple. Wang says that in 2014, he visited the temple with his brother. Wang claims that he saw 3 monks walking down a pathway and then simply vanish.
Deanna sat near one of the statues and instantly felt “cleansed”. Deanna describes it as if someone threw holy water on me. Deanna at this time, did not detect any entities at this beautiful temple.
The Stockton Cambodian Buddhist Temple (Wat Dhammararam) is an active Buddhist temple that features over 90 colorful and larger than life jewel encrusted statues that celebrate the life and story of the Cambodian Buddha. You have to see it to believe it, the temple boasts a 50 foot long recumbent Buddha. Also home to the annual Cambodian New Year Celebration every April. I will describe to you just 5 statues that are located at this beautiful temple.
One statue represents the birth of Buddha, which is celebrated by the Therravada Buddhist in January. Queen Maha Maya gave birth to a prince in Lumbini Park while she was on her way to see her parents. Five days after the Prince’s birth, the king asked five wise men to select a name for his son. They named him Siddhartha. This means “the one whose wishes will be fulfilled.” The seven lily pads represent the seven steps that Buddha took after his birth. After seven days his mother passed away.
Another statue represents the chariot that Siddhartha used when leaving the kingdom to see the poor people outside the castle. He was 28 years old. Seeing the poor people made him very sad and he started to question his privileged life. He began to meditate and understand life. He took several short visits to the nearby towns. These experiences caused him to want to leave his current life as a royal to study with the Braham mystics.
They have a statue that shows Siddhartha leaving the castle and his luxurious life behind him so that he may study with Ascetic monks in order to discover the true meaning of life.
A beautiful statue shows the Prince stopping by at the river some distance from the city where he took off his expensive dress, pulled out a sword and cut of his hair, representing his final renunciation of his previous life. He put on the robes of a monk and began meditating.
And the final statue I will tell you about is showing Siddhartha trying to become an Ascetic. He thought that if he practiced hard enough, he would become enlightened (that is, know the way and be able to overcome suffering.) But after much fasting and meditating, (about six years), Siddhartha realizes he is still suffering. Fasting and meditation has not let Siddhartha to “the true way”.
Now that I described 5 statues at this gorgeous temple, you must see and learn about the other 85 statues that adorn this mystical retreat. If this temple is haunted, it’s haunted by sacred beings of light.
