A Midwest Journal

I imagine by now I’ve offended so many Sedona Method purists that it’s not funny any more.

If you can’t see the humor around you, then you really need to release some more.

Like that joke I use: “You can get anything and everything you want in life if you only KISS BUTT.” Now, this is probably taken seriously by some career government officials who use that particular strategy to get re-elected term after term.

But the code in it is very simple:

• Keep It Simple, Sweetheart. Always apply the simplest release technique possible for any situation.
• Don’t move off your Butt to get what you need/want. Use only releasing to get it to show up in your life.

KISS BUTT – see? Funny, no? Well, at least you’ll remember it – which is the point.

Continue reading ‘The Universe is one big joke – and we are the punchline, not the butt of it.’ »

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Our latest upcoming release, “Freedom Is — (period.)”

Waking early the other day, I was taking the extra time to just consider recent events and resolve my day’s plans before I headed into them.

The oddest thing occurred to me – do we own ourselves, really?

(Warning – standby – rant alert.)

Here’s some points that have come across my lines recently:

• Government seems to be taking a larger run out of our lives (like enforcing healthcare choices), whether we want it to or not.
• Congress and elected officials seem to be listening to lobbyists and party officals more than the voters who elected them.
• Our food has increasingly had to be shipped in from thousands of miles away instead of being grown where we can ask and find out what went into it.
• We are being discouraged from working and being independent, since if we did make a fortune to retire on, we’d have it all taxed away – but people who never earn enough to pay taxes are given money from those who do.
• Various scams abound, from credit card companies and usury-level charges along with extraneous fees, to career politicians with their perks, to interest groups who are taking government money (ours) and being paid to promote some extremist agenda, to “Humane Societies” who aren’t trying to handle excess dogs and cats, but are rather trying to make us all into vegans by driving our farmers out of business with regulations.
• Our state-run, mainstream media won’t report on public demonstrations with more people attending than the President’s inauguration, but will tell us about a flu which is less harmful than the regular one – and that we should all line up and pay for shots to protect ourselves against this fiction.
• While the earth has been growing colder since the late 1990′s, our pollution has been growing greater but the only solutions is to what: raise taxes and cost of living for everyone.

So it seemed to me that we needed to stop and take all this into account and see what we could actually do about it.

Of course, the bulk of the problems above really deal with government issues – we are trusting an unresponsive, lobbyist infected government to handle situations we could and should handle ourselves.

Let’s look at some simple solutions to these:

1. People have stayed healthy for many more years than there have ever been insurance companies. And some of the cheapest health care right now has been started in some states where you pay a monthly fee directly to the doctors’ office in order to keep you well – not just when you are sick. No middleman – no one betting against your survival – no one saying you now can’t get any further treatment. And guess what – it’s cheaper by more than half.

2. Career politicians (and career government workers) are really a self-perpetuating business all by themselves. According to the Golden Rule, you have to give before you can get. But government has to take before it can give. And do you know who is writing all these bills that the Congressmen don’t have time to read? Lobbyists and professional government clerical workers – neither of which are elected, both protected from being fired for incompetence. Politicians only want to be re-elected so they can get the perks they voted in for themselves. They live in a different world and even if convicted still get a posh annual retirement income of hundreds of thousands each year – while they are in prison.

3. While there is all these complaints of Cargill, ADM, and Tyson controlling our food chain – no one is telling the stories about how community gardens have been springing up on empty lots inside our cities, as well as on rooftops. Where people are contributing their own labor and getting – literally – the fruits of their endeavors. There is the movement of locally-grown food, some call it the 100-mile diet, getting your food from within a hundred-mile radius of where you live. That way you could know what was in it and maybe even lend a hand in raising it, if you wanted.

4. Taxes have less and less to do with supporting the common good, and more for supporting the friends of whoever is in power in government. (Look at where those “stimulus” funds are actually going to…) Factually, if you take the recommendations given by the IRS guidelines, the most inexpensive way to work is for yourself as a corporate entity and increasingly resorting to barter of your business goods. That is the least-taxed method of making a viable living these days.

5. It looks like all the biggest scams are government sponsored or sanctioned. Credit card companies used to be regulated by the states and had to keep their interest fees low until the Feds in their “OCC” elected to take this right away from the States – and credit fees doubled, to nearly 1/3rd of the original loan. The Humane Society of the United States is actually anti-pet and anti-breeder and anti-farmer. Anything that has four-legs and reproduces is under their auspice – and is getting laws passed to make it more difficult to have pets or eat meat. Yet is runs no animal shelters – and had closed many down, destroying all their occupants. They are a special interest in Washington and do nothing humane. But government scams abound – since the government has a monopoly, who can stop them?

6. Our media has never been accurate in its whole history. They have always, always written sensationalist stories to sell advertising space. Any idea of “Journalist Ethics” was invented by Academics in order to sell classes for journalist wannabe’s. And when they lose their joint control of the air waves to cable and the Internet, they complain about how these “aren’t really journalists” – thank Gawd – and continue to pander to various government officials for “scoops”. The mainstream media has never, ever reflected the real world. Their soap opera’s actually get the closest, way more than their “reality” shows. (Who eat bugs in the jungle for a living?)

7. Read the actual NASA reports and you’ll see the global warming issue is a hoax. Warmest year on record was about 1998, last two years we have had record snowfalls and cold internationally, this summer was one of the coolest on record in decades for many states. Who started this rumor? A career politician. But is CO2 rising? Yes. Effect on global temperature – nothing. Our problem with CO2 starts with our governments, which expel this by the megaton every year and have nothing to show for it. Meanwhile, we truck our food in from thousands of miles away with all that exhaust and refuse permits to set up windfarms off some politicians’ East Coast homes. (Because they are unsightly?) Solutions to this fictional global warming are to tell polluting companies they have to buy credits from less-polluting companies. But the states with politicians in charge get more credits assigned to those states – instead of states with huge forests and pastures filled with grazing animals. (Oh, finally tracked down that other fiction. Excess cow flatulence is caused by feeding them corn and other grains, not their natural diet of grass – which most cattle are raised on for the bulk of their lives.)

- – - -

OK, take a breath, slow down.

The world isn’t all bad. Nor is it all that bad.

But the question comes back – Who Owns You? Or — Do You Really Own Yourself?

Consider this – if you own property and don’t pay the taxes on it, what happens? Some government employees are able to come in and seize your properties for the back taxes with guns and put you in prison if you resist. If you use a gun to defend your property, they are able to use lethal force (kill you) in their “defense”. And your relatives probably can’t even sue for “wrongful death”.

However, if you don’t make enough money to pay taxes because you don’t work, then you qualify for the government renting a house on your behalf and even giving you all sorts of handouts. Who pays for these? Oh, they tell some people who do work for a living to cough up – or they will come and take it, this all backed by gun-toting government employees, against which you can’t defend yourself.

Now if your property is owned by a corporation that you run, the taxes are much less and if it’s a non-profit, you might not pay taxes at all. Similarly, if you don’t really work for a living on anyone’s paper, and barter for everything you own, your taxes are very low, if not non-existent. But you do work for a living and control your own property – and don’t pay for someone else’s upkeep.

Can you control government? No.

Can you improve the government you have? Yes.

Solutions you can do to own yourself

• Let’s do one thing – make all government employees (including the elected ones) all term limited. States can do this for their own Senators and Representatives, they don’t have to get a Federal law passed (which will never happen).
• Another thing: educate yourself on taxes and learn to avoid high taxes by being smart. Only the dumb rich are taxed. Only dumb governments tax the dumb rich enough to make them move to lower-tax states. (Ask New York and California how this works. Both are failed experiments.)
• Vote your representatives out of office on a regular basis, otherwise. Let someone else have a chance.
  How about sunset provisions in every law, including the ones which have been on the books forever? This would mean government officials have to re-vote in all laws every few years to keep them on the books. (Like the Civil Rights Act, which is now being used to protect White minority voters.)
• Get your food all locally. Help grow it yourself to keep your costs down.
• How about insisting your city start recycling materials (they can actually sell the metal and plastic today, while organic materials can be composted back into – yes – local city gardens, or parks, or local farms. (Why does NYC keep dumping it into the ocean – isn’t that just more pollution?) And so we won’t have to spend all that fuel and CO2 trucking, training, and shipping food from California to NY, or Florida to California, or Arkansas to Alaska…
• Quit watching TV. Period. Rots your brain.
• Cut off your power usage by unplugging anything that doesn’t have to be on (like a refrigerator). See if you can’t get a solar cell to run some devices (like night lights). Figure out how you could have the same quality of living without extra doo-dads that someone sold you during a TV infomercial…

Those are just some of the ideas I’ve had for your to reclaim your life for yourself.

You can own yourself.

It will take some work.

But the more you can limit government and work it out for yourself – or in cooperation with your neighbors – then the saner life we can all have.

Try it.

Go ahead – leave your comments below. Agree? Disagree? Could care less?

Thanks for visiting my blog and reading this entry.
If you’ve found it valuable, please consider donating via PayPal to enable my continuing research.

Our latest upcoming release, “Freedom Is — (period.)”

(For part one, part two – visit those links. Meanwhile, we join our author after he just explained how he figured out how to make more money doing less on his grass fed beef farm…)

Now, this all doesn’t look like much money for having to go out and check our beef cattle twice a day, every day. Certainly wouldn’t pay your expenses if you think you have to make $50K per year to make a living. Practically, the Feds say you are below “poverty level” if you make less than $24K for a family of four (which is something like $16K if you are an individual – but they still take taxes out of almost every paycheck and hold it for you until the end of the year. Such nice folks we have in government.)

Means that most rural families are “poor” according to the government and are so eligible for massive handouts from the rest of the country which are comparatively “rich” and can afford to pay for everything we “need.”

But when you look at a lifestyle where you can raise everything you eat and if you don’t buy the hype that you have to have a color TV and a boat to take to the lake on summer weekends – or a 3,000 square foot house and all the latest gizmo’s which make life easier. When you look at life as a very simple operation (if you leave Madison Avenue and the Government out of the equation), then your actual cost of living is very small.

Once I got my credit card bills paid off and started working as a contracted laborer (freelance web design), I found out that I didn’t have the commuting expense to work and back so many times a week. I quit watching TV and suddenly didn’t feel “compelled” to buy this or that – or even see the latest movies which were coming out.

I started having more time to myself, and felt more at ease and secure and healthier.

No, I don’t “make” anywhere near the $50K slot. But I don’t have to work for someone else except every now and then – and I don’t have to leave home to do it. The quality of my food is completely under my own control. What vegetables and beef and fruit I eat are how industrious and efficient I am with my time and the resources around me.

True, my parents bought and paid for this farm with their own jobs and I am simply reaping this harvest based on their work. But I also keep the farm running and my Mother live a comfortable retired life, not having to fix things or simply rent out the farm because she can’t manage it.

My income is also taken out in non-taxable ways – such as barter and payment in other “currencies” than money. Working for my room and board is one example.

I then spend the bulk of my time on stuff I want to do, and am not taxed for thinking or writing or blogging. I give tons of stuff away that is really useful.

So I don’t really feel I need a lot to live on. My health is excellent and I don’t carry insurance. Don’t really need to. Isn’t insurance something a little counter-productive, since you are hedging a bet against yourself?  The taxes I do pay whenever I buy something or license something – all these go toward supporting the schools and hospitals and roads. Even though I mostly don’t use them.

I don’t need a lot of income, so don’t need to pay tax on it.

The result is that I can say that a farm which makes $16,000 a year from raising beef cattle is sustainable and outrageously profitable. At that rate, I could buy a used tractor every year. Or get a loan for more land and pay it off in a decade or so.  Or simply stockpile some savings instead of giving it away to insurance companies – so if I did have to get medical treatment, I could simply pay the bill that way. (Like I do with my dentist – I was paying more for insurance and the deductible than I was in just paying for the treatment when I needed it.)

That’s the Kool-Aid I make. Look at the incredible prosperity you are already surrounded with. And quit listening to people who say you have to buy this and that. Quit figuring that you need approval from others, or inflated ideas of security, or that you need to be controlled or control others. These three points – approval, control, security – Levenson’s Sedona Method says are the base for all the chronic thinking we have floating around our heads. Get rid of those base considerations and the thought can simply be let go, released. Keep doing that consistently or intensively, and your mind quiets right down. You aren’t habitually thinking so much – and can actually quit having to “think your way” through life.

And you can come up with ideas about how you don’t need to “make a lot of money” to be abundantly prosperous and fulfilled.

There’s also the benefits of going through the pasture, checking your cows, scratching them where they seem to like it – and getting the satisfaction from those simple actions. Raising calves and watching them grow – like any crop, but more mobile.

The point is that all your “pay” for living in this universe isn’t coming to you in a check or through an electronic account somewhere. And it doesn’t need some government approval or license. Take a walk in the early morning or at sunset and see if you are getting paid very amply for the little time you invest.

That’s the meal I cook, the Kool-Aid I drink . Join me.

Thanks for visiting my blog and reading this entry.
If you’ve found it valuable, please consider donating via PayPal to enable my continuing research.

Our latest upcoming release, “Freedom Is — (period.)”