Psychological Warfare: A Bag of Tricks

Guest Post by Tessa Luna

Story at-a-glance

• People have dealt with cold-blooded, ambitious predators and tricksters for as long as we have been around
• Predators look for weaknesses in people’s emotional “armor” — and attack where they see holes — whether it’s a lack of situational awareness, anxiety, pride, ideological addition, insecurity, fear, anger, or being attached to pain
• Noticing predators is good situational awareness but it’s important to not be scared
• There is no such thing as something for nothing, and some of the most effective things we can do to protect ourselves from psychological tricks aren’t fancy — but they require work. They are choices like practicing spiritual courage, staying even-headed and patient, letting go of ego, and praying for protection like children, from the heart

This story is about being stronger than any monster’s psychological tricks.

Introduction

In the medical freedom movement, we often discuss psychological trickery in the context of the technocrats and their attempt at the not-so-great reset — but of course, the need for good people to effectively counter dark-hearted liars is as old as the world. In the course of human history, there has been no lack of contenders for the role of super predators.

There has been no lack of dark-hearted, cold-blooded individuals seeking power over others though illegitimate means: taking what doesn’t belong to them, distorting reality (a.k.a. lying), turning people into zombies, tricking people into acting against their own self-interests, etc. We are not the first ones to deal with this kind of shameless scoundrels, and we probably won’t be the last ones!

Watching Out for Tricks Without Fear

Staying vigilant in a spiritually honest way is important because the wicked ones are extremely crafty in their use of psychological tricks. They look for weaknesses in people’s emotional “armor” in real time — and attack where they see holes — whether it’s a lack of situational awareness, ideological addiction, anxiety, pride, insecurity, fear, anger, or being blinded by pain.

And yes, today’s technological tools allow them to lie on an industrial scale — but the core methods are still the same!

“There is a misconception that only “stupid” people get duped. Not true at all! There are methods to dupe highly intelligent people. There are methods to dupe the ones with pure hearts (“prey naivete“). There are methods to dupe people who are vain or insecure.

There are methods to dupe the wounded and the angry. There are methods to dupe the poor, and methods to dupe the rich. Really, the moment we decide that we are some kind of intellectual geniuses or super successful achievers, we make ourselves vulnerable to tricks.”

Types of “Exploits”

Spoiler Alert: Spiritual Clarity Is Work

My experience tells me that no amount of repetition of solemn theological terms and no amount of intellectual knowledge of psychological warfare will protect one from the tricks. This is not how it works. The protection happens in the actual spiritual domain, and it comes from the unglamorous, timeless, totally honest, and largely invisible, often non-verbal spiritual labor, done with love.

The spiritual grounding of this kind requires a willingness to let go of all dogma and all preconceived ideas — and a heartfelt desire to be in a joyful and subjective union with the higher powers — without any claims of domination over others and without putting any loveless words into God’s mouth. I believe that praying like a non-fancy child — as opposed to a self-important intellectual — is key.

A Story of a Pleasing Child

As I was thinking about how we can heal the problem of compliant adults, I thought of this poetic allegory as a way to explore where compliant adults come from. Here is the allegory:

Once upon a time, in a land far away, a child was born. The child had everything in his heart: good and bad, a potential for nurturing love, and a potential for debilitating fear. More than anything, our child — a new traveler in this world — was hungry for being accepted and understood.

Unfortunately, the adults around him were all too stressed, too busy surviving, and too beat down to see his soul. They lived in a place a that for a long time had been controlled by a mob, and they knew that in order to survive, one had to either “hustle strictly within the parameters,” or just keep one’s head down.

Did they love their boy? Oh, they loved him! He was their precious boy! They wanted him to survive in this tough world and be happy, hopefully much happier than they were. But it is hard for beat-down adults to recognize a child’s sovereign soul if they have never taken the opportunity to recognize their own.

And so the parents of our boy taught him early on — with confidence of the people who internalized abuse — that in our world, a child gets approval and validation only when he follows the rules of the mob (in their mind, simply “rules”).

They sprinkled their moral teachings with phrases like “tough life,” “discipline,” “order,” “being a good child.” With pride in their values, they instilled in him the rules of the mob and a habit to stick his neck out for the yoke.

They certainly thought they were being responsible parents, and they didn’t realize that they were acting as unwitting volunteer community managers for the mobsters. In fact, if somebody mentioned that possibility to them, they would be mighty insulted — and understandably so, given the good intention in their hearts and the difficulty of their lives. But none the less …

Meanwhile, the child’s soul craved nourishing love and validation by the people around him, validation of his presence on this Earth. He wanted an ongoing confirmation of the fact that he was “real” and that he was “good.” He was instinctively following all the things that got him soul-warming approval, like a plant that always turns its leaves toward the sunlight.

He didn’t know any fancy words but he knew that when he complied with the “rules,” he was getting a pleasant reaction, and when he — intentionally or unintentionally — did something “bad,” he experienced rejection by the people whose love he craved, and felt pain. He was just a child, after all!

Love or Letdown? Maybe Both?

Was our acceptance-seeking boy in a way let down by his adults? In a way, yes. They didn’t teach him that he was free, and they didn’t teach him the most important emotionally protective skill that adults can teach a child: sourcing love and acceptance from the inside. Was that letdown malicious on their part though? God, no. They were themselves misled! And they loved him, they wanted him to succeed in the “real world” as they knew it, and they meant well.

There we have it. Compliant adults are former good, acceptance-seeking kids who became adults in a nominal sense but who never learned to source love and confidence from the inside. Has anyone counted how many of them are in the world today? Billions, perhaps?

This story has many variations and many endings. Did our boy grow up in a bleak provincial town in a communist country, ruled by the Universal Bulldozer? In a resource-rich land invaded and destroyed by foreigners? In an affluent neighborhood somewhere in the “developed” world where the adults have chosen the path of being high-performing, half-sociopathic zombie drones?

And did our boy stay broken for many years to come — or was the pull of his soul so strong that he cried and screamed and protested the pain but none the less figured it out and found his soul?

The Difference Between a Pleasing Child and a Straight-up Adult

What does it take for a pleasing child to throw off the spiritual yoke and to start walking straight up? I can tell you what it took for me, and I suspect that something of the kind might have happened to many of us. In my own life, it was a series experiences of great suffering that forced me to divorce the pleasing mode, and it was an inner sense of love that made me happy when I made choices from the inside.

“I know conformism! As a kid in Moscow, I was an aspiring conformist. I was in need of love, and I was trying to earn it with obeying the rules and pleasing the adults. It was a lonely time. The adults were broken — but they had the power. Praise for performance was the only currency of love I knew.

Then, as a teenager, I rebelled against everything — which felt amazing — but it seems like my rebellion was making those around me sad. Out of guilt and fear, I tried obedience again … But then life showed me the face of the machine and put me through a very cruel experience that cleared up my head. After that, I couldn’t become compliant even if I wanted to, my thinking just didn’t bend that way.

So my theory is that when aspiring conformists — who look for love in any form — grow up without seeing the face of the machine, they remain compliant. The establishment rewards the act of betraying one’s inner child — and because it promotes self-betrayal through formal education, academics can become messenger viruses of spiritual defeat and blinding pride.”

Most transformations are gradual then sudden: things build up, then build up more, and then one day, the clarity shows up. In my case, the transformation was triggered by great pain. I entered an abusive relationship, was in denial, felt too guilty about leaving it, which led to dramatic consequences that haunted me for years.

Based on that, I learned the hard way to respect my soul and to push back against any bullying. The bad news is that the price was high but the good news is that when 2020 came, I was prepared!

The Power of Fully Respecting One’s Soul

The way I see it, the world is not mechanical at all, and our entire life is a free will-based collaboration with the higher powers. That collaboration is a relationship of love, sincere emotional love — like the love and trust we may feel toward a powerful friend who respects us and wants to help us — not of guilt, or fear, or anxiety-driven mumbling of theological terms.

It is that kind of relationship that heals our armor when the mobsters go after us with poisons and tricks. It is that kind of relationship that helps us push back against the avoidable abuse or sustain any inevitable abuse (like the current push for the not-so-great reset) long enough to overthrow it effectively in due time.

Based on that honest relationship, we can ask to guide us to do what’s right, to untangle a tricky situation that we have no power to untangle on our own, even ask for help with understanding of who we are and what our job in this world is!

The people who seek this kind of child-like, honest relationship with the higher powers are the biggest annoyance to the proverbial vampires because they are hard to trick. The vampires try to isolate such people by confusing their wobblier peers. They hope that the ones with clear heads get dispirited in isolation and lose hope. Don’t lose hope. The feeling of loneliness is a temporary difficulty. Love melts all monsters’ tricks.

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