Hi, everyone. This is Jim McCarty welcoming you to the L/L Research podcast, In the Now, Episode #53. L/L Research is a nonprofit organization dedicated to freely sharing spiritually oriented information and fostering community. Towards this end, we have two websites: the archive website, LLResearch.org and the community website, Bring4th.org.

During each episode those of us at L/L Research form a panel to consider questions from spiritual seekers. Our panel consists of Gary Bean, Director of L/L Research and Austin Bridges, Assistant Director of L/L Research, along with myself, husband to the late Carla L. Rueckert, scribe for the Ra contact and President of L/L Research. Each of us is a devoted seeker and student of the Law of One. We will be discussing questions that are sent to us from spiritual seekers around the globe.

Our replies to these questions are not final or authoritative. Instead, they are generally subjective interpretations stemming from our own studies and life experiences. We intend this podcast to be a platform of discussion as we consider questions that often challenge us to articulate our own perspective. We always ask each who listens to exercise his own discernment and listen for her own resonance in determining what is true.

If you would like to submit a question for the show, please do so. Our humble podcast relies on your questions. You may either send an email to or go to www.LLResearch.org/podcast for further instructions.

Again, I’m Jim McCarty and we’re embarking on a new episode of L/L Research’s weekly podcast, In the Now. Austin and Gary, are you ready to go?

I am indeed.

And I am as well.

All righty, here we go. This is from Danilo via email. He writes:

“Hola, amigos. Could you please explain why the acceptance is so central in the Ra material? Ra put it at the same level as seeking forgiveness or balance. I would like to understand it better because I haven’t read this aspect in other spiritual material before. What do you think about it? What are your thoughts? Thanks, you guys. Love and Light to all of L/L Research.”

Austin, what do you think about acceptance?

I appreciate this question because it’s caused me to ask myself a type of foundational question that tends to go ignored when one has spent so much time studying a material like this. That question is what exactly is acceptance? It seems like such a fundamental concept that defining it shouldn’t be difficult. But when I was trying to come up with an answer to his question, I found that my own understanding was mostly intuitive rather than intellectual when it comes to how this concept is used in the Law of One. I had a little bit of difficulty figuring out exactly how to describe acceptance so that I could discuss Danilo’s question. The best that I could come up with is that to Ra, acceptance is a simple allowing or consenting to circumstances as they are.

It’s almost easier to think about it in relationship to its opposites, which seem to me to be control, resistance or rejection. I think that this is crucial to the two polarities and how they relate to the world. As Ra says, the positive path is the path of acceptance and the negative path is the path of control. A negative entity looks upon the world and rejects it, feeling as though the entity knows the proper order of how it should be rather than how it is, and then moves to force it to change according to its own perspective. A positive entity looks upon the world with acceptance, not feeling that there is something fundamentally wrong that needs to be changed through control, but rather finding each aspect of the world perfect and deserving of love, no matter the state that it is in. That’s a very simplified take on the polarities. I don’t intend to mean that a positive being can’t seek to change the world, but it is sort of a caricature to describe how I feel the two polarities fundamentally approach their reality.

So, acceptance seems to be what allows one to follow the positive path. Acceptance allows one to love, to understand, to forgive, or to balance. It is fundamental to these things. In my eyes before one can truly love anything, that thing must be accepted within that person’s consciousness. There can’t be a rejection of that thing within that person’s consciousness. Otherwise, it cannot be offered that love.

A true forgiveness cannot be found, in my opinion, without an acceptance of the circumstances and the people involved. Balance cannot happen without an acceptance of the aspects within yourself that you are attempting to balance. There is so much about the positive polarity that just requires an acceptance of the things within one’s self and the things in the world before there’s any more headway that can be made towards these things. I think that it’s truly fundamental to the path.

There’s a lot to debate about the positive path’s ability to work for change in the world, and what activism looks like to a positive seeker. It’s an incredibly deep topic to explore. It might seem like a paradox that one can accept the world, but still want to change it. I do think that a lot of activism, though not all, but a lot, is fueled by catalyst that is yet to be processed—things about ourselves and the world that have not yet been accepted and that we cannot find within ourselves to love. Many of our actions when dealing with society at large tend to come from a place of emotion rather than a place of balanced love, compassion, and acceptance.

But to me, the acceptance should always come first as a precursor to any action for an entity on the positive path. I feel that if I am called to act in a certain way, I will work with the situation and emotions in my mind extensively. I will seek out any aspect of myself that is not in a state of acceptance of the circumstances and the situation of myself or of other people before I take action on whatever it is I am called to take action on. Or, if I’m not afforded the time and it’s something that really needs to happen NOW, I will act and then examine the situation later, seeking acceptance of all aspects.

I don’t think it necessarily has to cripple us in a moment to have to find acceptance before we do anything. If you are at least trying to act out of love and then look later for things that may not have been in acceptance, I think that’s proper for the positive path as well. But essentially, to answer the heart of Danilo’s question, I simply think that acceptance is primary and fundamental to all of the other things that you might find upon the positive path, like love and forgiveness and balance.

Those are my initial thoughts. Back to you, Jim.

Very good, Austin. I enjoyed that. Gary, what have you to say about acceptance?

I want to say first that I’m grateful that we get to do what we get to do, and we get to do it with sunlight coming through the windows during the day. There’s people that perform their vocations or just do what they do to earn money and don’t get to see the sunlight during the day.

So, yeah, like Austin, this is one of those questions that is kind of assumed and not always looked at directly because the mind moves on to more complex-looking problems. But it’s very helpful to look at something like asking one’s self what is acceptance. Why is it so central, as Danilo asks? If I could say only one thing, it would be this: Acceptance is central because you are all things. There is nothing that you encounter that is not ultimately you.

So, I thought of an analogy. Consider that we live in an illusion of separation, fragmentation, and disunity. Now imagine that situation being represented by a mirror that has been shattered into many pieces. The function of love and acceptance might then, in this analogy, be seen to be the “melting influence” that restores all the shards of mirror to their rightful place. Synthesizing, integrating, unifying, and melting the pieces back into a seamless whole so that the full image is revealed for the first time. Then once the mirror is restored, the eyes no longer see the individual pieces themselves, but rather the one true face that is reflected in the image and that face is yours. That face is the Creator’s, but its seeing or recognition necessarily involves the coming back together of all these different shards.

So those things that block acceptance and love—such as judgment, fear, hate, and control—these are ways that you have rejected portions of yourself. Whether it’s sourced as internal to you or outside of you—either way, those energies are literally stopping you from seeing the Creator or rather you’re distorting the Creator. These are ways that you decline or adamantly refuse to recognize, acknowledge and honor the total unity of all things.

If the seeker can transform these energies of judgment, fear, hate, and control into love, acceptance, and forgiveness, then the understanding is restored to a vision of unity that sees, accepts, and integrates all things.

I really liked what Austin had to say about polarity. I hadn’t explored that crucial aspect in my own reply. But just to link acceptance back into the chakra system and its function therein, acceptance is the energy of the green ray. It opens that chakra, and it sustains that energy center. The heart then, as Ra describes it, is the key to the positive polarity, to polarization along that path. It’s the key to working in the higher energy centers of blue, indigo, and violet, and it’s ultimately the springboard to Intelligent Infinity.

Ra even describes the love that is native to the green ray as being the key to sexual energy transfer and the key to protection itself and metaphysical workings. So, acceptance is part of all that and is central for those reasons. But it still feels like there’s something even more fundamental that could be targeted, but that’s as much headway as my mind made into it.

So, back to you, Jim.

Very good, Gary. Enjoyed your answer, too. Well, as you both have said, acceptance is a primary feature of the Ra contact and Ra used acceptance in a number of places to illustrate its importance. One of them was in #26.30 where Don is asking about the mechanism of planetary healing. Ra says:

“Healing is a process of acceptance, forgiveness, and, if possible, restitution.”

So, in order to be able to try to heal our planet, we have to be able to accept where it is right now and begin to fashion another vision that would include forgiveness of all the efforts of humanity that brought it to the point of this degradation that needed to be healed—and hopefully making restitution as well. It begins with acceptance of the way the situation is right now.

And then in #32.5, Don says:

“Could you tell me the difference that occurs between green and blue with the emphasis on blue ray?”

This touches on some of what Gary just said. Ra replied:

“With the green-ray transfer of energy you now come to the great turning point sexually as well as in each other mode of experience. The green ray may then be turned outward, the entity then giving rather than receiving. The first giving beyond green ray is the giving of acceptance, or freedom, thus allowing the recipient of blue-ray energy transfer the opportunity for a feeling of being accepted, thus freeing that other-self to express itself to the giver of this ray.”

So, once we’ve reached the green-ray energy center we have the ability to move further and go up the energy centers to the blue. One of the primary qualities we need is the giving of acceptance. I’ve kind of equal or equate acceptance and love, although I think that if you can love somebody, then the product of that in your behavior is the ability to accept them. So, I think love and acceptance are very, very closely related.

In #32.14, Ra is talking about the indigo ray and how it’s open. Ra says:

“The indigo ray is opened only through considerable discipline and practice largely having to do with acceptance of self, not only as the polarized and balanced self but as the Creator, as an entity of infinite worth. This will begin to activate the indigo ray.”

So, acceptance is used just about everywhere, especially with the self when you’re trying to move to the higher energy centers and be able to express the nature of the Creator in Its Intelligent Energy and Intelligent Infinity.

And then in #34.5, Don’s asking about karma, how to alleviate karma, and how an entity can get to the point of forgiveness, and thus alleviate the karma. Ra says:

“However, both self and any involved other-self may, at any time, through the process of understanding, acceptance, and forgiveness, ameliorate these patterns.”

So, acceptance here is used to help relieve the karma that we can develop when we go too far in one direction with a distortion. It needs to be balanced and acceptance is one of the ways of helping to balance that.

I think overall to be able to accept our life and the world we’re in and the path we’re on, we need to be able to accept and recognize the unity of the creation all around us—or as Gary has said, the power of love, to transform. The fact that the whole Creation is made out of light. It’s helpful to accept the nature of reality if we want to grow spiritually. And I think acceptance is one of the primary features, as Danilo noted.

Acceptance is not fooled by any kind of distortion or illusion. Acceptance is given freely, just as love, to all entities. And as I said, I believe that acceptance pretty much equals love, which equals balance, which eventually equals our harvestability as we’re able to open our heart energy center and welcome and enjoy the creation around us.

Any final thoughts on this question, guys?

Just a brief recommendation of Eckhart Tolle’s work as a supreme exponent of acceptance from a spiritual standpoint and its function in the life.

All right. Austin, anything from you?

Nope, I don’t think so. I appreciate both of your answers very much.

Alrighty, let’s move on then to Vanessa’s question via email. She writes:

“I would like to hear your opinions on the recent false news rumor mongering and I think it would be helpful to discuss how to refine one’s own discernment in regards to distinguishing truth in the news and how to gently assist and support the people around us who are confused.

Please include some practical pointers beyond meditation and radiation of love/light…”

Well, there’s goes my handful of tools I’m going to use here. [laughs]

“…for those people who are not ready to include the spiritual practice of meditation in their daily lives, which is a considerable portion of the population in the U.S. at present.”

So, Gary, minus the two tools of meditation and radiation of love/light, what would you recommend for people to deal with false news mongering?

Damn, that’s all I had – meditation, radiation. [laughs]

Yeah, maybe we should just skip this question. [laughs]

Yeah , I don’t think there’s anything more we can come up with. I took that person’s asking for opinions on recent false news rumor mongering as license to perform some analysis of the situation. So, buckle down because it’s kind of a longish answer. It is indeed a very topical question for our present space/time nexus as Ra would call it and it’s also a topic I would prefer to hear others more informed than me speak to. But because it is my solemn honor/duty to attempt a reply to these questions, I accept Vanessa’s challenge.

I’ve been personally somewhat aware of this, shall we say, problem of fake news for some time, but for this question I did a little bit of research with some reading and listening to a couple of great podcasts, one of which was a Fresh Air episode from December 14th titled, How Fake News Spreads and Why People Believe It. The other one I listened to is an episode titled The Power of Fake News in Personalized Social Media Feeds from November 16th on the NPR program before the great Diane Ream went off air.

I took notes on these podcasts, but then lost half of them. Firstly, I would agree with you, Vanessa, that fake news is a real issue. While all catalyst can be used for spiritual growth and service, I see this particular issue as one which does not decrease, but increases distortion. One needn’t look far to see its repercussions, including erosion of a common ground of mutually understood facts, which complicates communication between groups and further widening of polarized divide.

I learned about studies that have been undertaken on this phenomenon in the past year, tied, of course, to the recent U.S. election. One usually important variable in this equation is social media. A Pugh study found that 44% of Americans were getting most of their news from social media, while 62% reported some of their news. With two billion people on Facebook alone, even the most outrageous lie has a chance of being massively amplified and distributed. And, as the algorithms of social media and the internet in general are designed to do, each person who shares, likes or engages with fake news in some manner is likely to then just receive more of the same in a cycle of reinforcement.

Another study of fake or misleading news material conducted by Buzzfeed and another entity—I forget who it was—discovered that fake news often even outperformed the legitimate fact-based news. It got liked or shared or commented on more.

So, why is that? I don’t have the complete answer, but some answers of the low-hanging fruit variety are within reach, I think. One reason is that trust in traditional media has been eroded for multiple causes, including journalistic bias and corporate interest or control. Media has also become entertainment with the rise of hyper-partisan news outlets, etc. People are increasingly turning elsewhere for their news.

Another reason is that fake news tends to hit what I would call the lower emotional notes really well, especially anger and anxiety, hate, and fear. When it strikes that emotional resonance with readers, the facts of the matter become less important. There is research on the brain’s physiology and functioning—and Austin can probably speak better to this—that describes how certain portions of the brain have the chance to react before the rational portions of the mind. But what if there is a proliferation of false information and what about facts to the contrary?

I think the challenge there is that humans have an emotional resistance to being wrong and generally don’t want their beliefs challenged. So, when offering debunking or contrary info, many people just tend to dig further in to their beliefs and see information that will just confirm their pre-existing conceptions. Oftentimes one’s beliefs are an article of faith almost. So, I think those reasons are part of the equation. But as you examine one cause, it leads to the next and the next until you realize that the entire system is implicated. And as you go deeper, the fake news issue connects directly into the narratives that we tell ourselves about who we are and what reality is, what our relationship to each other is, et cetera. Guiding fake or misleading news are underlying narratives of fear or victimhood, blame, anger, hyperawareness of threats, and so forth. It all really feels like stuck and imbalanced lower chakra energy to me.

But it goes even deeper, and this is where we dovetail into metaphysics. I think it goes to the veil itself that creates the environment where we work, as Ra says, with the candlelight in the darkness. The true nature of reality, the true nature of ourselves, the actual workings of the universe are all hidden from our eyes. And in this darkness, then, any interpretation or conclusion—no matter how seemingly fake—is possible. And moreover, any interpretation or conclusion is potentially justifiable thanks to the repository of competing and conflicting ideas known as the internet.

Man, this is a long answer, but we’re making progress.

So, in trying to determine what course of action may lead to a solution to fake news, I think we have to get down to the disclaimer that I don’t really have that answer. I think we have to get down to the level of cause and change the defining methodologies of society itself. I don’t think people can combat fake news in and of itself, per se. I think, rather, that we can learn to be ambassadors of a new story, one that is inclusive and empathetic to all people; one that sees beyond the surface disagreements over politics and policy and sees the oneness of all people; the Creator in the eyes of your brother and sister, no matter what they believe. A new story that values listening to others, especially those with whom you disagree, with focus on our shared effort to find the highest and best truth.

So, Vanessa, towards that end I would highly recommend the book, The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible, by Charles Eisenstein. In the book, Eisenstein speaks more powerfully to our times than I tend to see anywhere in visionary fashion describing a transition from an old story to a new. I don’t think he mentions fake news specifically as the book was published in 2013, but he understands the conditions that lead to fake news and how, as we open ourselves to, and embody a new story, we eliminate the very conditions that give rise to the old story of separation and the distortions—like fake news—that arise from it.

I don’t know how to help others improve their discernment, though I’m sure there are ways. What is most immediately understandable to me is that as we increase discernment in ourselves, we help the world to discern. As we develop a love of clarity and open our hearts and through reason and faith, lift our perspective above the fragmented energies of blocked lower chakras, so too, do we do the same for the world.

However un-unified, humanity is a collective body. There are no islands in that body. Everybody is interlinked. This means that each cell in that body is able to clear itself, to vibrate a higher frequency of love, and to contribute to the health of the whole, including to the faculty of vision, clarity and clear seeing that the eyes provide.

And I think that I’m just going to sit out the next In the Now after that answer. Back to you, Jim.

Good job, Gary. I think that was pretty comprehensive. Austin, what have you got to say in balance to that?

I would offer higher praise than pretty comprehensive. My prepared answer is now thrown out the window. I can’t really follow that up in any way. I will say that instead of not letting Gary do the next episode, we should give him the entire episode to talk about fake news. That was well-prepared and researched, and I thought it was very insightful. A whole lot of my prepared answer will not be able to add to that, but I will add some thoughts of my own. One of which includes the idea that not everybody necessarily agrees on what fake or false news is.

I saw this coming when the mainstream media first introduced the term “fake news.” I knew that rather quickly it was going to be turned around and thrown back in their face, which it has to a large degree. It has become probably a bigger weapon against them than it has to battle what they would consider fake news.

So, I think Gary’s answer was especially good because it, in most ways, would address that no matter what you thought fake news was—whether you feel like the mainstream media is fake news or whether you feel that the more traditional definition of fake news is—which I think is really what the focus should be.

Fake news essentially is not what you see in the mainstream media, but just sort of a completely one hundred percent fabricated story that you find online that somebody makes up to not necessarily try to report anything in any real way, but rather to just get shares or likes even though it is completely manufactured and has no basis in reality. Whereas, even if you believe that the mainstream media is fake news, there is at least some sort of basis in reality that they are drawing from, in my own opinion on the topic.

Beyond that Gary also had an insightful point about the role of emotion versus rationality, and how people receive information and act. I will add my own recommendation of a book that is not nearly as good as the book that Gary recommended, but it did help me gain a lot of insight into the mind of a political person or somebody who has a lot of charged beliefs. That book is called, The Righteous Mind by John Haidt. I do think that there is a lot of the book to disagree with, but the best part of the book for me was an entire section dedicated to examining how our intuition and our emotions essentially guide our logic, rather than the other way around. From our perspective, it really seems like our logic is the guiding force within our consciousness, but from a scientific point of view it seems it’s the other way around. Haidt referenced both science and philosophy, which I thought was incredibly well put together and very convincing for me.

He basically highlights how the intuition, and our rational minds interact sort of like an elephant and a rider. Our intuition being sort of a massive, lumbering beast that might be somewhat guided by our logic and our rationalizations, but for the most part it is its own animal. And, for the most part, the small rider on top of it does not have a whole lot of control over where it goes. It can cause it to lean in certain directions, but for the most part, emotion and intuition are how we act, how we speak, and how we basically view the world.

This is all relevant because of Vanessa’s part of the question where she asks how to guide people into the discernment of what is fake news. I think that a very important aspect of moving forward in our current climate, political climate, cultural climate, anything, is how we approach people and how we attempt to communicate with them. The fact that logic is not the guiding force in people’s lives becomes very apparent when you look at any time you’ve tried to change somebody’s mind with logic. That’s not to say nobody can have their mind changed by logic. There’s some who have an emotional connection to logic that will allow them to integrate logic in a better way, but for the most part, if somebody has a strong held political belief or cultural belief, you’re probably not going to be able to communicate in a logical way that will make them change their mind. That doesn’t mean that you need to abandon logic in any of your arguments, but it does mean to me that you should make emotion the underlying component of how you communicate. That does not mean to use their emotions to manipulate them to thinking how you do. Rather, I think it’s important to acknowledge and accept the emotions, whether within yourself or within them, and approach that from a compassionate point of view.

I think that a lot of the communication that happens in the political sphere, and just in culture in general, is based on shouting your logical position at people and throwing information at them while saying that if they don’t accept the information you’re sharing, then they are such an idiot because this is the truth. That is just not a good way to change people’s minds. So, I think that to guide people into their discernment of what is truth and what is not truth relies heavily on acknowledging why they believe what they do to begin with. They are going to be drawn to fake news if that fake news is touching upon their emotions. Gary’s answer describes that dynamic very well.

I don’t know if that made any sense at all or how relevant that really was, but it’s what I thought of based on Gary’s answer. Any thoughts from you, Jim?

That was a good answer, Austin. Yeah, I’ll hit it from a little different angle, trying to concentrate on practical pointers beyond meditation and radiation of love/light. Everybody knows the news that you get on the television, or the mass media is sponsored by corporations, large corporations, and these large corporations are not going to sponsor any kind of broadcasted news that goes against their worldwide interests, and they have very wide interests.

They’re involved in a lot of stuff so there’s a lot of self-censoring that goes on just to placate the corporations that provide the money to provide the news. So, I would recommend alternative news sources. One of my favorites of all time is Democracy Now by Amy Goodman. She gets no money from any corporation or business. She only gets the money from public support. Listeners support Amy Goodman, and she has been going at this for about twenty years now.

I’ve got a list of a few books that she’s published over the years to give you an idea of what kind of things she’s into. In 2004 she published, The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers and the Media that Loved Them, co-written with her brother, Mother Jones reporter, David Goodman. In 2006 she published, Static: Government Liars, Media Cheerleaders and the People Who Fight Back. She appeared on the Cold Bear Report and promoted the book. In 2008 She wrote, Standing Up to the Madness: Ordinary Heroes in Extraordinary Times, also with her brother, David Goodman. In 2009 she published, Breaking the Sound Barrier with a preface by journalist, Bill Moyers, An Anthology of Columns Written for the King Features Syndicate.

In her first piece she wrote, “My column will include voices so often excluded; people whose views the media mostly ignore, usually they distort and even ridicule.”

In 2012 she wrote, The Silenced Majority: Stories of Uprisings, Occupations, Resistance and Hope. And in 2016 she wrote, Democracy Now, Twenty Years Covering the Movements Changing America. She’s always got something unusually good to say. She invites any politician that’s involved in the news to come talk to her. Most don’t want to come talk to her because she gets to the truth of things and they’re rather embarrassed by the truth. But she gets people on there that know what’s going on, and she shares it with anybody who’s interested.

So, I would recommend an alternative news source and that would be Democracy Now. Anybody have any final thoughts?

I have a short thought on that note. I agree one hundred percent with everything you say and the people that you cite, but having seen a plurality of perspectives among the Law of One community, I would suspect that some people who might be listening, or at least many people out there, would consider sources like Amy Goodman or others, highly biased, which I wouldn’t myself agree with, but there are people who would say that. So I think the approach to news, whether it is Amy Goodman or CNN or Fox News or whatever you listen to, would pretty much always be the same. I think it’s important to simply ask yourself whenever you’re reading or watching something, whatever it is, what the agenda could be. What are some positive, alternative views to this story? Where is the money coming from in this story? Jim highlighted why a source like Amy Goodman is a good place to go for that question. Also ask what kind of influences are at play here.

So, no matter what your news source, whether you like it or dislike it, I think that you can approach it the same with a certain type of discernment. And that would go for whether you appreciate someone like Any Goodman or Bill O’Reilly.

Good points, Austin. Gary, any final thoughts?

Yeah, I think I do have a couple quick final points. One is that had Austin gone first I think I would have been in the same exact boat. And two, regarding fake news, like Austin had mentioned, that once it became kind of an accusation or a more popular term then it got thrown back to the initiators of the term. I’ve seen that definitely and I’ve seen the term kind of conflated to mean a news source that disagrees with me or has a bias that I don’t share. There’s, of course, a great range of what constitutes fake news, but I think there is a pure end of the spectrum where the news is completely and intentionally fabricated.

Right.

And towards that, there is literally a town in Macedonia, the country north of Greece, where young people in their teens and twenties have found a way to make money fabricating these stories. A lot of the stories that got circulated during the election could be traced back to Macedonia because they, through social media and advertising platforms, found that if they just wrote false headlines they could make money. Not the only source, of course, but the point is that there is stuff that is definitely falsified or false out there. But anyway, great answers, guys.

Okay. Well, I think that does it for our show this week. Looks like we’re out of time.

Yep.

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