It's Been Three Years. Can You Hear Me Now?

This story is about how to get through to the ones who are still under the “COVID spell.” I would also like to poke the most inconvenient elephant in the room, and I would like to do so with love.

“How Do We Get Through to Them?”

In the past three years we have been on a very dramatic roller coaster ride. It is fair to say that we’ve been through hell. And the most traumatizing and maddening part has been seeing our loved ones succumb to the spell of the “COVID response” and behave like their souls have been stolen off.

For that reason, in our circles, it is very common to ask, “How do we get through to the ones who have acted out of character and who are still under the COVID spell?” First, I am going to answer this question in earnest — and then, I am going to go to into the ideological “permafrost” and poke the giant elephant (or a wooly mammoth, rather) hiding there.

Patience Is a Virtue, Alas

There are no magical formulas. We in America are somewhat used to magical formulas, psychological “systems,” and impressive consultants riding in on a white horse with a solution and an invoice.

But perhaps, the past three years showed up to strip us of that delusion and to demonstrate to us in the most visceral way that here we are, human beings between the earth and the sky, with a deep longing in our hearts and a clumsy prayer on our lips. And perhaps, that longing in our heart and that imperfect prayer on our lips are all we have — and it’s a start.

Getting through to ideological addicts is a time-consuming and difficult feat, and we get through by being patient, by not despairing, and by respecting their free will — which I think can only be done if there is a total and massive self-love in us, a massive love for them, and a total spiritual confidence in good things.

It is also important to make honest assessments in real time as to when to talk to them and when to let them be, perhaps for a while. Also, prayer helps, and it doesn’t have to be an institutional prayer. Prayer is prayer. The Creator is intelligent enough to understand our hearts.

Personally, I believe with passion that the lesson of the past three years is not about how to be better at marketing and arm-twisting than the ones on the dark side. In fact, I think it’s not possible to compete in the dark art of bending free will and arm twisting with the ones on the dark side without joining their team.

That’s the end of that story, really. If one does not have one’s eyes and one’s heart on honest healing and free will, and if one is not prepared to do the work but also relax and trust the universe (God, higher powers, however we think about those things) to make things right, one is just merely torturing himself or herself over what he or she cannot very quickly change.

And, if we are on the good side, we really cannot change the disposition of others by applying “just the right psychological trick.” It takes more.

Yes, it is very painful that they are broken and their hearts are closed. It could be the most painful thing that has happened to us, short of actual torture. (And even the alphabets seem to think that psychological disorientation is more effective than physical pain in breaking one’s spine.) However, each of us is just one person, and the bigger picture is called “the bigger picture” for a reason.

It is bigger than us! And if we can convince just one person whom we love, and each of us does at least that, can you imagine the impact on the world? “Local, local, local” is where our success lives, I think.

And it is by remembering that we are a part of the bigger picture that we stay grounded in timeless, confident love — and from that place, we get through to them by trusting our gut, being patient, keeping our faith in the good things even when our loved ones don’t hear, taking our “communication campaign” day by day, genuinely respecting the sovereignty of their soul, and leaving the timing in the hands of the universe.

Language Matters

It is not a big secret that in our polarized world, many words mean very different things in different “camps.” What is an innocent and self-evident statement in one echo chamber, in another echo chamber is an insult. And it is not a super revolutionary discovery that if you want the other person to hear you, it is better to talk in a way that does not scare him off or put him in a defensive spot.

That means choosing a starting point he can subscribe to, skipping the words that are “clear signs of the enemy” in his world, and so on.

For example — and I am being a little theatrical here for a reason — if you go to a very mainstream-minded person and tell him that “he’s been duped, and Fauci is a crook, oh and by the way, there is no virus, there has been no pandemic, his long COVID is vaccine injury, and the entire thing is to commit a genocide,” you are not engaging in a “communication campaign,” you are airing your frustrations — to which you are fully entitled to under the circumstance but it’s a different “genre” of talking, a genre that has zero chance of changing his mind. So it is important for us to do things in full honestly about what we are actually trying to achieve.

“Divide and Conquer”

And by the way, the people with not so good intentions are fully aware of this psychological dynamic — and so they deliberately “milk” our very real trauma and plant hard-to-ignore reminders of unbearable pain into our thinking so as to dampen our ability to grow our souls or our desire to see the souls in the ones who’ve erred. And often, they get paid to do that.

Forgiveness and accountability are a very heated area of ongoing debate that deserves its own conversation. If you are curious, I’ve written about it here, here, and here.

The Rigged Game of “Talking on the Internet”

Here is another trap, the “internet” trap. We can be very subtle in our private conversations but when it comes to public talking, we are half-screwed. Go one step too far in one direction, and you’ve scared away the ones whose ears you want to perk up.

Go one step too far in the other — and the folks in “our camp” who have married their pain (as well as the people with not so good intentions pretending to be “our peeps” in that state) will complain about you being too soft or something along those lines.

But human beings are not supposed to talk to “everyone” at all times, the way it is on the internet today. We are supposed to talk in context, to a specific person, face to face, and use the words that the person we are talking to will understand. The entire genre of “internet speech” has been rigged from day one — on purpose, perhaps.

That is the overarching circumstance we cannot change if we want to stay in the public sphere all. Which is why, there are no universal formulas here either, but the good news is that we are not algorithmic meat bags with linear brains. Human beings are capable — or, let me make the correction, should be capable — of nuance.

And the more I think about it, the more I come to the conclusion that our subjective agency, i.e. our individual choice to act wisely and to use our full sensory ability to navigate the terrain (vs. relying on the communication manual titled, “How to Get Righteously Triggered by Wrong Talking Points”) is where it’s at.

Which is why, it is very important to hold on to our love and our truth on the inside and choose words wisely, with healing in mind. And in my own life, before saying something, I always imagine the impact of my words on others and whether what I say is likely to contribute to healing or to a dead-end argument about “who is right” on the talking point du jour — and I always try to limit my expression for the former kind. Easy? No. Rewarding? Yes.

More on “Trauma Milking”

I’ve made this observation consistently over the years, and I think it’s an important one. Whenever somebody tries to make people focus on their trauma, defend their trauma, marry their trauma, and hold on to their trauma by identifying with it, they are one of two things.

They are either sincerely broken people who are being ridden by their trauma and who then have no business being in positions of leadership until take control of their souls — or they are straight out metaphorical vampires who find people’s suffering yummy and who want it to never end, and so they try to deliberately prolong the pain. On, and they often do so because it’s in their job description to do just that.

Now, this is obviously not to be confused with promoting situational awareness. Having situational awareness is critical. It can save one’s life. However, I believe that when somebody is whole and loves you, they talk about dangers in way that is distinctly different from the tricky way.

Here is a way to talk about situational awareness that I find helpful: “Be aware of this danger. Hone your senses, up your skills, be strong even in the darkness, be grounded in your soul, and do what’s right. There is no fear. Trust in the higher powers. You are not alone.”

And here is the tricky way: “See those people over there? They have hurt you, haven’t they? Oh how they have hurt you. I know, I know. I am on your side against those monsters who are subhuman anyway. I sense that you want to harm them for hurting you, don’t you? What a good, righteous thought,” etc.

On my end, whenever I encounter trauma milking — which is sadly often — I just shake my head and tune them off.

Situational Awareness

Speaking of situational awareness, yes, it is very important to have it. I have written about it in the past in the story called, “The Synthetic Age: Welcome to the Genocide”:

“Yes, there are times and places with many tanks and cannons and nuclear mushrooms and monsters — and there are also green pastures with blue skies and normal clouds. And the humbling and trivial conclusion is that situational awareness is about being as aware as possible of, uhm, the actual situation — and, depending on the actual situation, making good choices.

There is time for carefree sunbathing, and there is time for battle. Both are real and valid. The wise and most practical path is about keeping a cool head and good balance and orienting yourself in each moment, based on what’s around.

And what’s around? The bodies are piling up to the happy soundtrack of confidently misleading media chatter — and I want to emphasize that the body count is owed to many things, including but not limited to COVID injections.

I feel very sad about the carnage. I feel so, so sad about the carnage. I never thought I would living though a time of carnage, and it’s bizarre to even say that yes, the world I was taught to believe as a kid was fiction. All the bright future, being the special generation … all in the trash but instead, I am living through carnage!”

Deep Fiction and the Woolly Mammoth in the Room

Let us zoom in on the topic of fiction. Oftentimes, when we look down on others and assume that, unlike them, we got everything figured out, we are oblivious to the fact that we live in our own version of fiction.

History consists of layers and layers of actual “misinformation.” It is so because the official history is always written by the biggest bully. And truly, how do we know that the stories we’ve imbibed with our mother’s milk were factual stories? How do we know that our own parents and their parents had not been lied to?

How do we know that the history we’ve been taught at school wasn’t propaganda? Easy for me to say, I am an expat from the USSR, and I know the answer to this one since the history I’ve been taught as a kid was clearly propaganda — but I think this tragic condition is universal.

I have found that oftentimes, it takes very rare and special courage to be so in love with intellectual integrity, knowledge of the world, and the truth, that one would be willing to let go of any dogma, however ingrained, and chase that knowledge. And when that happens, love shows up in an unstoppable way. Love and courage go hand in hand.

Power of Honesty

There is something else that happens when we tackle the tricky “ideological addition” monster within ourselves as eagerly as we go after it in others. It creates a mysterious “chemical reaction” in the world. Our honesty with ourselves grows our wings, and it ultimately makes easier for us to get through to the ones we love.

That is not to say that we’ll always see the results right away. That is also not to say that we are going to receive immediate thanks (lol) or that we should aspire to shove our truth down other people’s throats. It is something more subtle and mysterious that happens when we stop clinging to fiction in our own lives.

It is a very long journey, we are not the first people in this world to deal with this — and in the end, there is light and redemption of all our love. I would like to end the story with a very interesting conversation that I had with Igor Chudov, in which we talk about the fictional reality vs. the “real reality,” and all it entails.

Video Link