George Floyd was lying face down, handcuffed on a city street.  One officer held his back, one held his legs, and the other kept his knee on the right side of his neck for almost nine minutes.  He yelled “Please”, “I can’t breathe” “mama” and “don’t kill me” before losing consciousness and dying.  What was different about this one man’s death than the death of so many others (most especially the deaths of so many other people of color) that have happened at the hands of authorities?  The answer is, the entire world saw it!  And the entire world saw it at a time when the distrust for authority was already at its peak due to the government actions taken during the Covid-19 pandemic. 

Demonstrations and protests began to take place all across the nation.  They turned from peaceful to violent.  The riots have not stopped. Instead, they are escalating.  Now, the national guard is being called into cities across the nation.  But those who took to the streets to peaceably protest or to vandalize or to loot or to set things on fire, were not all people standing up against the injustice of what a white officer did to a black man.  It is true that some were there for that reason.  Some were there because black lives matter.  But others were there to rise up against the tyranny of a government that they could clearly see was against instead of for the people… With all the restrictive measures taken in the name of Covid-19, these people have been slowly pushed to the boiling point for the last three months.  The death of George Floyd was merely the ‘straw that broke the camel’s back’ so to speak. And still others were there to deliberately cause violent opposition between citizens and government officials.  And it is this reality that should snap people out of the automatic reactivity that they are caught in immediately.    

 If you are like most people in the world right now, you are probably thinking “what the hell is going on right now?”  And you should be thinking that right now.  You are caught in the swarm of the chaos of mixed motives.  We are all on different pages, fighting for our own subjective best interests.  We are inundated with so many conflicting news stories that no one knows what is real or fake.  We are caught in the perfect storm.  And we are caught in that storm, brokenhearted.      

Welcome to controlled opposition.  I want you to imagine that someone wants to make a change that will negatively affect you.  They know that you will react poorly, making you harder to control.  But they want to control your reaction. So they introduce someone who appears to be on your side.  Maybe an advocate, a leader who you will feel has more authority or power than yourself.  Really, this person is already controlled by them.  But you don’t know it.  Controlled opposition is a rat trap designed for those who wish to break free from control.  

Controlled opposition is a chess play that is being played by individuals who (due to their trauma and subsequent need for control) have been playing chess with people as their pawns and knights and bishops and rooks for most of their life.  Controlled opposition is the current chess play that the human race is stuck in.      

I am going to tell you the truth today even though it is a truth that is unsavory.  Your entire bi-partisan political system is a game of controlled opposition.  It doesn’t matter whether you vote red or vote blue. Today, the people with the actual power, the people behind major corporations, employ government officials as puppets.  They use these puppets to play the role of villain or hero to give you the illusion that the game is not rigged and to distract you from what is actually going on; the objective picture.  The freedom you thought you had was not actual freedom.  It is time to break out of the illusion.    

Infiltration by establishment is not paranoia or conspiracy theory.  It is not a rarity.  It is the norm throughout human history.  

Today, controlled opposition is serving as a tool for ‘divide and conquer’.  I don’t want you to make an enemy of all people who own major corporations.  I don’t want you to think that everyone in the government is against you.  I simply want you to open your eyes and see that some people with a lot of power, want you to fight one another.  And so, I ask you to answer the question:  If those people with power are able to use other people in the government (who have more power than the average citizen) as chess pieces and they want you to riot and they want you to get violent… WHY?      

We are in a time where thinking deeply and stepping back to see objectively is an absolute necessity.  It is all there is to do when you find yourself swallowed in an ocean of contradicting information where nothing is adding up and things are never what they seem.  And yes… Things are not what they seem!  They never have been, but now the people of earth are finally seeing it!

If those individuals who want to control you, want conflict, want riots, want violent opposition between citizens, want you separated and want you divided against one another, then the chess move you need to make is to unite.  You must do the opposite that they would have you do.  The heat is being turned up on you and you are being called into radical unification. 

Unification is not easy.  It means taking the villain and the victim both as a part of yourself.  Stop doing what people have always done.  Stop dividing into ‘groups’ that oppose one another.  Start to look at the ‘person’ inside everyone.  The power that people either have or are given, causes us to no longer see them as people.  The soldier who storms into your house with a gun is a person.  The owner of the corporation who is playing a zero-sum game against his own buyers is a person.  The black man who walks into a store with a 20-dollar counterfeit bill is a person.  The person refusing to wear a mask is a person.  The person who insists you wear one, is a person.  Each one is a person with needs, feelings, thoughts, values, vulnerabilities, strengths and preferences, all of which add up to the picture of why they think that what they are doing is ‘good and right’.  If you cut them, they will bleed red. 

You have to look for the person inside the ‘persona’ people wear.  We have got to stop this game of “us and them’.  How are you the same as “them”?  What needs are the same?  What feelings are the same?  What values are the same?  What motives are the same?  Look for commonalities.  Look for ways that you can go in the same direction.  Look for the third option that meets both your needs and theirs and work together towards it.  Put your energy towards what you are for rather than against.          

The human race is being tested right now.  The test is this: Will you choose to end the zero-sum game?  A zero-sum game is essentially when one person’s gain is another person’s loss.  It is an ‘I win and you lose’ scenario.  And though humanity itself is taking that test, you cannot take it for humanity.  You can only take it for yourself as an individual with the person who is in front of you.  Humanity is made up of individuals.  If individuals cannot end the zero-sum game within themselves and with others, it doesn’t matter if they are passive democrats or raging republicans or libertarians or nonpartisan.  Without knowing it, they are all in fact voting for war.  It is not possible to change your world, while you as an individual, remain the same.       

Conflict is the bait being laid out for you and so, I leave you with this:

Here

The space between skin and skin

is torment.

But here

The space between souls

makes the space between skin and skin

a comfort.

The truth is hidden

and yet its murmur reaches us.

In the sweet luxury of a smile

In the brief consumption of embrace

It tells you to look deeper…

To look deeper.

Look beyond the space between us all and

see

that you are that smile.

You are that embrace.

You are the civilian

whose life was lost to hatred.

You are the man

who strapped a bomb

to your own body,

and in the name of hatred,

took those lives.

You are the earth

that held them both

and converted their bodies

into new life. 

Your pain is a congress of tears

called the ocean.

Your joy is a collation of light

called the sun.

The murmur of truth

tells you to look deeper…

To look deeper.

Until the truth is revealed

that there is no space

between skin and skin.

That there is no space

between souls.