CEREMONIES OF THE DAMNED
Inside the museums, Infinity goes up on trial
Voices echo this is what salvation must be like after a while
But Mona Lisa musta had the highway blues
You can tell by the way she smiles 1
Ceremonies Of the Damned is a book of poems by Adrian Louis
The world of acclaimed Native American poet Adrian Louis is harsh and full of pain—the blizzard-blasted plains and dusty towns of the northern Midwest, the hopeless barrenness of the Reservation, and a bleak interior world of loss, illness, and despair. Louis’s poems bring us to a place where ghosts hitchhike and the traditional pow-wow becomes an affirmation of bitter survival, where the lives of the young end too often in acts of meaningless self-destruction, and where his own existence becomes a daily battle with his cherished wife’s decline into the dementia of Alzheimer’s disease. Louis is a writer of extraordinary courage and skill, and these powerful, moving poems, wrested from the harsh experience of the Rez and his own lonely struggle with a merciless illness, will awe their readers with their brilliance and desperate humanity.
From Good Reads - on Ceremonies Of the Damned
We have a great deal to learn from Native Americans as they have experienced the greatest brunt of the worst gaslighting and apartheid in the Americas.
In so many ways we are all now - as citizens of this world - Indians.
One thing our culture has become extraordinarily skilled in is the Art & Science of Gaslighting.
The so-called elites have mastered the arts of deception to such a degree that their theft of the rhetoric of populism and the ideas of those who promote human freedom is impressive.
And now that the internet is dying this slow smothering death due to AI it is going to be “interesting” to observe what the desperately-seeking-approval elites will do next to provide themselves with a platform with which to deceive us with.
For make no mistake we are engaged in a spiritual battle for our hearts and minds - which will be fought to the death.
Quite simply the world does not yet come close to comprehending what has the hell has happened here as yet.
Even here on SubStack we see only through a bit of dusty glass - darkly.
The following presentation by The Aspen Institute makes their platform appear to be precisely describing the world we wish to inhabit and the kind of humans we might wish to be.
When we look beneath the hood however we see the real face of this institute and the rich elites who compose the institution.
The Aspen Institute 2 and the World Economic Forum are joined at the hips - the perfect example of a captured organization.3
These professional snake oil saleswomen and men will literally stop at nothing to gain our approval - expert actors playing desperate roles - to come to own our hearts and minds.
The internet continues to die - with AI commandeering a nothing burger - where the chance of colliding with a bit of true information will become less probable than encountering a snow ball in hell.
The internet was sold to us as something which was in fact a military device used to act out a bad cop - good cop routine on an unsuspecting populace.
We were provided with a truly exciting new technology with which we enjoy almost instant communication with the world - but because a culture of delusional techno feudalists trends toward the lowest common denominator - most all of the content on the internet is stunningly stupid.
And this is the good cop part of the routine!
The bad cop is this - while we go online to enjoy the content - increasingly hard to do - some creeps employed by Big Tech pickpocket our data and sell it to the highest bidder.
And in a spectacular spectacle of classic thievery - of good cop and bad cop - we are gaslighted into believing that Big Tech, Big Government and Big holier-than-thou Institutions are the ones to create the utopia they are promising.
But it is the classic bait and switch - one hand offering the carrot and the other the switch.
Essentially it is nothing new - as the plutocrats who have been enticing us into their dens of iniquity we call euphemistically civilizations - have been practicing with us as their more than willing marks - since the very first agricultural civilization millennia ago.
And what would be the way out of this less than favorable future?
First of all by recognizing that we are being gaslit by professionals.
Then by recognizing our own possible agreement - our permission we may be giving in this deal - to be gaslit.
No one can be successfully gaslit if they are not fooled by the gaslighter and refuse to participate in the relationship.
A great example is how so many are successfully gaslit by today’s tyrannically inclined leaders, and by those professionals of gaslighting - the media.
These are backed up by the now well-established gaslighters in chief - the educational system - and by the next most powerful gaslighters in chief - the authoritarian regime ruling over institutionalized religion.
Once we recognize who the gaslighters are - and the finely tuned strategies with which they operate and why - then we must do the following.
First recognize our own role in accepting the gaslighting in the first place.
Then begin to remove ourselves from situations where we might be gaslit.
Removing ourselves from the influence of media, educational and government institutions, and such captured institutions as mainstream religion and such proselytizing gaslighters as the entertainment industry and such things as The Aspen Institute.
And then we basically work to deprogram ourselves from the power gaslighters may have had over us in the past.
Then we must first forgive ourselves for having been at one point so susceptible to gaslighting.
Although the first thing we may want is revenge - revenge will simply dig us in deeper and put us in the role of a victim - a weak bargaining position.
The way is to learn how to stand tall and poised and confident while regarding the desperate enemy - the gaslighters-in-chief - without allowing our emotions to be manipulated into a conflict.
The gaslighters basically all wish to either completely dominate us into compliance or - if that fails - to drag us down to their level - enticing us into a conflict.
If the gaslighters are successful at either dominating us or into enticing us into a conflict - they win.
As long as we stand tall, imperious, in control of how we respond to our own emotions, and stoic - we win.
There are many spiritual practices we may engage in to strengthen our sense of purpose and to increase our ability to have control over how we respond to our emotional turmoil.
And stoicism - and the basic tenets of great religion such as studying and evoking Christ consciousness - and engaging in similar activities such as shamanism - are available as on-the-job training.
Because in the final analysis we - as the descendants of countless gaslit generations - are almost so susceptible to being gaslit that we take it for granted.
And as we know by now, it is all too possible too wish to believe in the dazzling words and ideas of the gaslighters.
Because by this late date in human history we are literally surrounded by either professional gaslighters or by the successfully gaslit.
Even if we wanted to gain revenge against all those gaslighters who have betrayed us - not only would it be against our own personal and spiritual well being - but we would be giving those who have hurt us precisely what they wish.
At this point we must not be so naive as to fail to understand that many of those who lie know they lie, also know we know they lie and yet still they continue to lie.
We may ask why in the face of the truth why these humans still lie.
Because those so very wounded by the very lies which command our civilization can do nothing but continue to lie.
THE SEDUCTION OF GOING ALONG TO GET ALONG
They have simply made the choice that it is far better to go along to get along and to join with those do not have the courage to stand up to.
To such an extent that many of them may be so lost to delusion they cannot even recognize they are liars.
When we successfully lie we can deceive ourselves into believing all kinds of untruths.
And when we have too many of these then we have become a society dominated by pathological liars.
These are damaged human beings - so wounded by the psychologically manipulative that they have no choice but to protect their fragile psyches by lying to themselves.
In psychology this is known by a rather technical term - denial.
Denial is a protective mechanism which allows the individuals to maintain a fragile positive self image rather than accept the emotional turmoil of taking personal responsibility
Because it is very painful and threatening to our ego - or our self concept to be willing to face that we may have been successfully gaslit.
Not all individuals are strong enough to withstand this - and among those who dare to try - some are lost to mental illness when their fragile ego simply breaks under the strain.
I have watched as those I am closest to struggle to comprehend the enormity of the successful gaslighting which has occurred in our culture.
The most vulnerable are those younger generations who grew up as the digital universe took hold.
But now the very youngest begin to question the very validity of their society as they recognize the extent of damage done to their young lives.
Those who did not recognize it from the outset are devastated - crushed at having been so betrayed by those they may have trusted.
Especially if someone close to them has kept a vigil and has watched and waited as they begin to come around to the truth.
We are all very social beings and we are led to go along to get along through much of our lives.
As children and younger people our very survival depends on those we love and trust.
This becomes as we get older a wish to seek out those we can trust in adult life - but growing up in these circumstances where we and all the adults are gaslit all the time by experts - presents a diabolical and ever present possibility that we will be negatively affected.
And we all grow up as dependents in a society of untrustworthy souls - not many of whom are capable of trusting or of being trusted.
So those who cannot trust and who cannot in return trust others become manipulative gaslighters.
And in a society of gaslighters the only cure is to train ourselves both not to gaslight - to understand the many ways we may have deceived even ourselves - and to break free from a world of lies and liars into a world of truth tellers - becoming wise stoics - capable finally of ruling over our own fate by learning to control our response to our emotions.
And when our own parents and those we love and trust who seem to love us in return betray us out of weakness it feels just like it did to Jesus when he faced betrayal by his disciple and as it did to Caesar when Brutus betrayed him.
Betrayal is betrayal and practicing a spiritual path which helps us be strong is the only real defense.
What hangs in the balance now is whether or not we are capable of -as the human species - of actually evolving past the stage of dependency.
For those who have trusted and loved us have been gaslighted and manipulated into a deal with the devil - they are embarrassed as they emerge into recognition of the truth.
As a result of these terrible circumstances we find ourselves surrounded by not one gaslighters but by trained assassins and predatory people.
Our own miserable excuse for a president exists as a predator on whatever good we might hope to do as individuals.
He has informed us in his substantial ignorance of how he himself has become a traitor - that we as citizens will need helicopter gunships and military grade weapons in order to successfully protest the actions of our governments.
And as much as we might wish to take our our anger on those who continue to gaslight us - doing so will come at a cost we may not be capable of paying.
Don’t get me wrong I would love to see these people pay for their sins.
But what I already recognize is that that price is being payed as we watch them struggle with the recognition that trust is broken and that the world has now turned against them.
Can we engage in a legal fight to successfully accuse them and prosecute them?
Yes we may choose this - but as the collective price we are all paying is already very high - we may just need to allow them to slink back into the hell from which they came.
We stand now - because of the accumulation of lies over many civilizations - at the crumbling doorstep of the collapse of world civilization.
This will mean total economic collapse - and total government and institutional collapse - with our very survival at stake.
Only those of us who survive this will be capable of carrying on.
It would be in the best interests of us all to do whatever we can to assist our descendants in knowing how and why to survive.
It is now that we must begin to comprehend how vast the dangers are and how slim the chances are that we will survive to be of an help to anyone at all.
As an avowed apocaloptimist however I refuse to stare infinity in the face with anything less than the knowledge that this is precisely why the creator created us.
The creator created us to stand as stoics - strongest when the chips are all down - and when there seems nothing at all remaining to believe in - to still believe.
That is the best of human courage and personal bravery - to stare infinity and these ceremonies of the damned in the face and to together as cooperative and interdependent humans to prevail despite the long odds.
Inside the museums infinity goes up on trial
And as the best of the gaslighters are still at large stay frosty, stoic and free of gaslighting and manipulation.
https://www.youtube.com/live/9q77mnv0duE?si=B8-Ei5MRPSYIqCi4
AND IN THE MIDST OF PLANETARY GENOCIDE
https://x.com/bambkb/status/1811088901848846429
Let this sink in - we all have little left to lose.
Remember, at a time like this, that the worst are full of passionate intensity and that the best are regarded as conspiracy theorists.
In a world where literally everything beautiful about being human has been weaponized against us seek to recognize that beauty to engage with each other and with the natural world to allow ourselves and others to appreciate where our strength actually lies.
Ain’t it just like the night to play tricks when you’re tryin' to be so quiet?
We sit here stranded, though we’re all doin’ our best to deny it
And Louise holds a handful of rain, temptin’ you to defy it
Lights flicker from the opposite loft
In this room the heat pipes just cough
The country music station plays soft
But there’s nothing, really nothing to turn off
Just Louise and her lover so entwined
And these visions of Johanna that conquer my mind
In the empty lot where the ladies play blindman’s bluff with the key chain
And the all-night girls they whisper of escapades out on the “D” train
We can hear the night watchman click his flashlight
Ask himself if it’s him or them that’s really insane
Louise, she’s all right, she’s just near
She’s delicate and seems like the mirror
But she just makes it all too concise and too clear
That Johanna’s not here
The ghost of ’lectricity howls in the bones of her face
Where these visions of Johanna have now taken my place
Now, little boy lost, he takes himself so seriously
He brags of his misery, he likes to live dangerously
And when bringing her name up
He speaks of a farewell kiss to me
He’s sure got a lotta gall to be so useless and all
Muttering small talk at the wall while I’m in the hall
How can I explain?
Oh, it’s so hard to get on
And these visions of Johanna, they kept me up past the dawn
Inside the museums, Infinity goes up on trial
Voices echo this is what salvation must be like after a while
But Mona Lisa musta had the highway blues
You can tell by the way she smiles
See the primitive wallflower freeze
When the jelly-faced women all sneeze
Hear the one with the mustache say, “Jeeze
I can’t find my knees”
Oh, jewels and binoculars hang from the head of the mule
But these visions of Johanna, they make it all seem so cruel
The peddler now speaks to the countess who’s pretending to care for him
Sayin’, “Name me someone that’s not a parasite and I’ll go out and say a prayer for him”
But like Louise always says
“Ya can’t look at much, can ya man?”
As she, herself, prepares for him
And Madonna, she still has not showed
We see this empty cage now corrode
Where her cape of the stage once had flowed
The fiddler, he now steps to the road
He writes ev’rything’s been returned which was owed
On the back of the fish truck that loads
While my conscience explodes
The harmonicas play the skeleton keys and the rain
And these visions of Johanna are now all that remain
No matter what we do at this point we have lost a great deal and lose more with each passing hour.
The bottom line is we cannot be gaslighted without our permission to be so manipulated.
But BRICS or brickbats we are looking now at being 100% owned and enslaved by those who we have allowed to believe they own the world.
The Emperor’s Of Ice Cream have just begun to continue to gaslight us all.
Aspen Institute investors: The Aspen Institute is largely funded by foundations such as the Carnegie Corporation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Gates Foundation, the Lumina Foundation, and the Ford Foundation, by seminar fees, and by individual donations.
Thank you so much for the restack!
I’m praying we do get through this and God saves America with a real miracle.🙏🇺🇸