The candidates and UFOs

I recently got an e-mail asking me what I knew about the positions of the presidential candidates on UFOs, UFO secrecy and possible disclosure. A quick Google search yielded some pretty definitive answers. Here is my response to his question:

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Hi [name withheld],

Thanks for your note and your question. It's an interesting one.

I do not believe that the Sanders campaign has made any serious statements on UFOs, ET contact or disclosure.

Several of the disclosure advocates have posed that question to both the Clinton and the Sanders and Trump campaigns. The Clinton Campaign did respond in a rather hopeful way. I believe the Sanders and Trump campaigns have blown off the question.

Here are a few links on the topic from a quick Google search:

On Bernie:

-         http://www.presidentialufo.com/component/content/article/66-news/567-bernie-sanders-flippant-about-ufos

-        http://www.coasttocoastam.com/article/bernie-sanders-dismisses-ufos   

On Hillary:

-         http://www.idigitaltimes.com/hillary-clinton-pledges-area-51-ufo-disclosure-says-we-may-have-been-visited-aliens-500769

-         http://www.rawstory.com/2015/04/the-vote-is-out-there-ufo-enthusiasts-primed-for-a-hillary-clinton-presidency/

Ranking candidates overall on UFO-friendliness:

-         http://gawker.com/whos-the-most-ufo-friendly-presidential-candidate-1765809368

-         http://exopolitics.org/clinton-pledge-to-release-ufo-files-sanders-vatican-visit-prelude-to-disclosure/

It will be interesting to see what the result is when the candidate gets into office.

Once they have their first national security briefing, the tune might change.

On the other hand, Hillary already is pretty familiar with that, having already been first lady and secretary of state. So she probably has the ability to stick to her promise.

It is vital to note what she actually promised, however.

I don't believe she promised to release info about Area 51, UFOs, etc. All she really said was they needed to get to the bottom of this and if it doesn't affect national security, to get the information out. In that sense, she has a lot of wiggle room.

Thanks again

Regards,

Craig

Craig R. Lang, Certified Hypnotherapist

      Researcher, Writer, Speaker

State Director, MN MUFON

612-888-4976 or 763-257-7334

craig@craigrlang.com

www.craigrlang.com

Notes on GPS app experiment to monitor CE4 Experiencer location

Ever since investigating and conducting hypnotic work on the "Flying Fisherman" close encounter case, I've been intrigued by the possibility of recording an experiencer's location during an abduction event. In this case, occurring in the late 1990s, the experiencer was in his fishing boat, which had a GPS tracker mounted on it. On several occasions, the tracker showed some anomalous readings - very anomalous - at the time the a missing time event occurred. (See case report at

http://www.explorewithhypnosis.com/FlyingFishermanCase.pdf). Unfortunately his GPS did not have an altitude measurement on it so it was never able to establish if or how the boat was taken from the lake surface. Regardless of the final result of this case, the concept of GPS tracking of a possible UFO abduction has intriguing possibilities. 

If experiencers could continuously run an active GPS device on their mobile phone, perhaps we could get similar results to the flying fisherman case but under more controlled conditions. In most phone GPS apps, the altitude is also recorded so we could establish whether an ascent and return took place. With such a tool, perhaps we could capture detailed data during an actual UFO abduction event. At the very least, this possibility now bears deeper exploration.  

Since a person's phone is usually in their proximity during most of their waking hours, it seems likely that it could record at least some unusual movement in the event. Thus I have been experimenting with various GPS tracking apps for the iPhone (and presumably Android). The goal is to determine feasibility of running an app on an experiencer's phone throughout the day.  

I would estimate the constraints on such an app to be as follows:

1) the app would have to run in the background reliably and without intervention. 

2) the app would need to have minimal battery drain on the phone, allowing the phone to run for an entire day without recharging. I would suggest less than 25% drain over a day of use on an iPhone 6s. 

3) the app would have to record latitude, longitude and altitude to tight precision. As a rough estimate it would be best to track the experiencer's location to within approximately 20 feet horizontally and approximately 20 feet altitude, with a measurement on the order of once every minute. 

These would likely be able to catch the events of a UFO abduction with sufficient precision to reliably catch any unexplained movements during the period of missing time. 

Previously, with my iPhone 4s, the battery capacity wasn't sufficient to run a precision GPS tracker app for an entire day. So I needed to wait until I had upgraded my iPhone. Now using the iPhone 6s, along with a battery reserve in the case I can run my phone in normal operation for most of the day with almost negligible effect on the battery. (Not including calls, GPS, music or extensive texting).

With this in mind I have tried several different GPS apps. For this experiment I chose the GPS Tracks app version 2.9.2. For the initial tests I set the app to track in high precision mode with all of the advanced features disabled. This included disabling sleep and auto-pause modes. 

I ran the app throughout the day for approximately 11 hours 45 minutes in the background. I found that after this test period the battery was drained down to below 25% over the test period. The Battery indicators on the iOS settings screen showed GPS Tracker took about 37% of the battery usage during that time. Thus these initial settings are probably still too much of a battery drain. (Note: I also spent considerable time using the music and messenger apps, which made up about 15% and 11% of the battery load throughout the day). 

The phone listed the measurement accuracy to within approximately +/-15 ft and altitude to within approximately +/-10 ft with a measurement every 10 seconds. The app user manual states that this should result in about 4 hours battery life (note: phone model and therefore battery capacity for this spec is not clear).  

My next objective will be to see how we can optimize the settings to provide less of a drain on the battery, yet still afford close enough tracking to catch any anomalous event. 

Medium precision takes a measurement once each 20 seconds, while low precision does so once per minute. In the case of a car traveling 60mph, this would result in  data point once each 1/3 mile and once per mile respectively. Either should be enough to capture the essential elements of an auto-stop UFO abduction.

I plan to update my blog with results of later tests. Stay tuned...

Balance

This is a draft of my March/April 2016 CE4 Corner article.

Please feel free to make any comments, or to sign up for my newsletter News from the Bridge. This article appears on my newsletter and in the Minnesota MUFON Journal. For details, checkout the MN MUFON website.

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Life is a tightrope. Some days are dominated by the right brain, as hypnotherapy clients sit in my studio and pour out their life story. They spend two hours in deep trance seeking the center of some problem in their life. Like a detective, or like a programmer debugging computer software, we track the problem down to the cause. Then we bring healing to that center. It is the ultimate combination of right brain - emotional healing and left brain problem solving, emotional debugging. In addition, other aspects of my life have been filled with mathematics, physics, computers and electronics as I experiment with new technology ideas. They form the balancing act of all balancing acts, a world of spirit and technology.

In the last few weeks, I have been putting together a class for my church on science and religion. How do two of the great pursuits that make us human interact. Do they conflict? Are they simply two ways of seeing the truth? Or do they even have anything to do with each-other. I was again struck by that delicate balance between two apparently-opposing forces.

  

At the last MUFON conference I was struck by just how much UFO studies - and their accompanying healing work - fits into that same balancing act. As I was sitting in a lecture on UFO physics, the speaker (Robert Schroeder) was describing how we could use the mathematics of Maxwell's equations along with Einstein's general relativity and a unifying concept called Kaluza Klein theory, to understand the physics behind UFOs. 

Some time later, I attended a talk on the spiritual aspects of UFO encounters. The dichotomy the between physics/engineering and spirituality continued to drive the question - is the phenomenon physical? Rather, are UFOs and close encounters in some way, spiritual and/or (para)psychological? Whatever the case may be (and they are probably at least a little of all of these), they have a powerful impact on the lives of anyone the phenomenon touches. And as I was sitting in that lecture, the stage was being set for me to once again see just how real that effect was. 

As I sat in that lecture on UFO physics, I got a text from an experiencer in MUFON, a woman who was at the same conference. She had begun to remember events that had apparently occurred the night before. (I described this encounter in the an earlier CE4 Corner, The Mystery Gets Real). I left the lecture hall and went up to the room of the experiencer. It turns out that she and her roommate were talking and both realized something extraordinary had occurred the previous night. She remembered being outside the hotel (on the roof, actually), then in a UFO, and then back in her room. At the same time, she recalled her roommate being “worked on” by - well, by whoever they are. Events escalated and the next few weeks turned out to be devastating to her as her life turned upside down. In that time, I would again see just how far down the rabbit hole the extraordinary encounter phenomenon can take us.

So many other experiencers have had similar turning points in life. As they begin to recall memories of events occurring in the phenomenal realm (aboard the UFO, or wherever they go when they go "there") the impact on their personal reality can be devastating. On a field visit I made to another state, their state director and I visited the remote farm home of one experiencer. He and his family had had a harrowing close encounter experience a few months before. We interviewed the entire family, and then conducted an in-depth hypnotic regression. 

This person was an excellent hypnotic subject and quickly went into deep trance. At one point, he found himself reliving a time when he was the subject of an alien "download" of telepathic visual imagery. As is so often the case in abduction events, this imagery was of disasters, suffering and chaos in the human and natural worlds. He suddenly burst into tears, yelling at the top of his lungs "we're screwed". He emerged abruptly from trance and I could feel the panic in his voice. He had just seen the apocalypse unfold in front of him. We had a lot of healing work to do.

Many experiencers have described being shown similar scenarios of tragedy and apocalypse. This has apparently been going on for many years. In many cases the predicted time has come and gone, We still appear to be here. In addition, the predictions of some experiencers are even mutually exclusive with the predictions of others – for example, one shows the world dying of drought and turning to lifeless desert versus another showing floods innundating everything. So whatever reason "They" have for this apocalyptic video fest, it does not appear to be a literal prediction of effects. Thus, any information on these should be treated with extreme discernment.

As this particular experiencer returned from a between-sessions bio break, I quickly re-induced trance and invited him to observe another time, a time in which he had been told something that was clearly not true. He had had a difficult life and had gained a lot of street wisdom in his years of rough and tumble experience. This included the ability to recognize BS when he saw it. So I invited him to use those same skills to observe the alien apocalypse predictions. He paused for a moment and then said "It's all bull @#$%". 

In his mind, he stared the alien in the face. "I know you. You guys are full of..."

(Note: the reader can use their imagination for the rest of the dialog. I endeavor to keep this column family friendly). He leered at the imaginary alien in front of him, asserting his right to his own life, his own path and his own discernment. While I believe we don't really know what the phenomenon is, in his mind, the aliens (for lack of a better word) now have somewhat less power over him. It was a moment of emotional and psychic healing of pain from a physical event - the spiritual and the concrete working in a delicate interplay. It was that same balancing act that I later came to realize as I sat in that audience hall at the MUFON conference.

This summer, as we hopefully get projects such as UFOTOG2 (a new UFO tracking, photography and analysis initiative by MUFON), and begin to improve our skills in field investigation of physical evidence cases, we will be focusing a lot on the physical aspects of the phenomenon. Similarly, in recent months as I sit at my computer I find myself absorbed in work on my own technology projects. Computer screens of equations, diagrams and code sit in front of me. Yet the next day might find an experiencer or other hypnotherapy client in my studio in deep trance, journeying to the core of his/her personal issue(s). Both are vital elements of healing work, delicately balanced ends of the teeter-totter. 

Right brained and left brained, spirit and science, mind and body, metaphysical and technological. We push the boundaries of knowledge and see that neither can completely provide the answers. Our endeavors are often a mixture of opposites - two ends of the teeter-totter. They form that delicate balance between sometimes-opposing forces in this realm we call life.

UFOs and Life

Life is full of changes, pitfalls and opportunities, and sudden shifts in direction. A door closes, a door opens, a door you thought was open doesn't remain open long enough to pass through. For a long time, an aspect of life may seem to be continuous, reliable and steady. Then all of a sudden everything changes. The last few months have been one of those times.

To begin with, my father passed away a month or two ago. Readers of my blog may recall my writing about him. Raymond Lang was probably the defining influence of my life. While we didn't see eye to eye on many things, more than anyone else in life, he made me the person I am today. His passing was a loss to our entire family. Yet one result of his illness and passing was that our family has come closer together. In all of my adventures with UFOs, close encounters, the phenomenal realm, etc., I realized how vital it was to take time out to enjoy the love of those around you. Life is fragile and temporary.

A few other milestones loom over this writer's life path - one of those being an upcoming 60th birthday. Just like seeing my father laying Ill and then dying, my upcoming entry into the golden years reminds me how temporary and fragile life really Is. As a few people I know have passed away, and as my business, UFO research endeavors and other possible aspects of life shift in subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) ways, I realize again just how vital it is to put things like UFO research into the greater perspective. We need to ask what is truly important in life. 

I have watched peoples' lives change as a result of their interactions with "Them, out there". In many ways, the phenomenon takes you by the scruff of the neck, shakes you up side down, then dumps you into a world different from any you thought you knew before. If you had told me back in 1996 when I first began to get involved in MUFON work, how it would so totally change my life, I would never have believed you. Yet now, twenty years later it has transformed my life completely - for better or for worse.

In the words of a dear friend of mine, "It is what it is". I cannot change the past, nor would I want to. And I certainly could never see the future. My all-consuming interest in UFOs perhaps even derailed a career in corporate America, while sending me on a path of inquiry and adventure leading I know not where. Yet it has led me to launch my hypnosis practice and any number of other ventures. I suspect it has a few other big surprises in store for me down the road. In the end, they will all be positive, but probably with a lot of bumps along the way.

Where is all of this going? I don't know. But in one way or another, God is showing me how, in the midst of a life of dizzying change, we need to hold on to those things and people we hold dear, such as family, friends, beliefs and spirit. If you love someone, hold them and tell them. Whatever is on your bucket list - do it while you can. Don't put it off until tomorrow. In a few cases I've seen recently, life may not be there tomorrow.

The mysteries of UFO research can be all consuming. They turn life upside down and at times we can almost forget nearly every other aspect of life. Yet the events of the last few months have taught me one vital thing. In the midst of the vast unknown, we need to remember to live life. Be here now.

Raymond

My Dad passed away early this morning. I had not been all that close to him in recent years . Now, in the last few days as I sat holding his hand in the nursing home, I realized again how much of my life he was, still is and always will be. He and I had drifted apart over the years. And yet I have always realized how his blood flows through my veins. In so many ways, he and I are one.

An amusing moment happened a number of years ago. At that time, he was heavily into playing clarinet in the Shrine band in Madison, WI. They played in a lot of parades, fairs and other festivities. This apparently included the circus and in those years, he became very interested in the circus world. Like me, when he got interested in something, he took a swan dive into the topic. More than a few times he joked about running away with the circus - at least that's the way Mom would paraphrase it. One time this topic came up in the presence of Gwyn and I. Afterwards, Gwyn looked at me, smiled and said, "now I see where you're coming from..."  

He didn't "run away with the circus" but he did do a great job of making a business run. He played with the shrine band for many years. He was active in the Masons, and he always held that deep interest in the circus - or in something like that. He was a man of dreams and plans and if the dream was the right one, he was one who got it done.

Raymond Lang was a strong, determined man. His stubbornness became my stubbornness. His determination became my determination. His unwillingness to give up became my unwillingness to give up. And his ability to get things done was a life lesson that went far toward making me the person I am today. He inspired me to pursue a career in engineering. Even as he taught me to never give up, he also taught me to look beyond the present - to "join the circus" and pursue your dreams. He taught me to look beyond life's present-day difficulties to what might be in the future.

Ray was a tinkerer and a builder and I shared this with him all my life. That blood flows in my veins now as I work on new business ventures, develop software, healing technology, conduct anomaly research, and many other pursuits. He was by my side all through childhood as I experimented with rockets, telescopes, microscopes, ham radio, and the list goes on. Yet he was always the realistic one. While, as one dear friend of mine stated, I got my 'altitude' from my mother, my father held me to Earth. He kept me anchored as I delved deeply into my interests in science, space, science fiction, and ultimately spirituality, UFOs and ET contact.

I always marveled at how he could lovingly tell me to get my head out of the clouds. Even in later years, he thought my book on alien abduction "was BS". Indeed, he was often critical yet always supporting. Whether he agreed with me or not, he stood by me through all of life's adventures, always behind me, or beside me. He loved and nurtured me in ways that it has taken me a lifetime to appreciate. He was my father, and I was his son.

Raymond H Lang Jr. was the one who taught me to get things done, to carry out the business of life. Later, when my road has gotten tough, in college, in my career and now in my business, his lessons, his savvy and his stubbornness has carried me through. During college, one of my engineering professors uttered words that have rung in my ears ever since, "you'll never make it". That memory has always stuck with me and annoyed me to no end. If I ever thought of quitting something, the voice of professor Greenfield would sound in my ear. Then pure stubbornness would take over. Now as I look back on it, one of the best decisions I ever made was to continue in engineering school. His blood flows in my veins and his stubbornness and determination run through my temperament. It has guided me to success in so many areas of my life

While strong, savvy and stubborn, he was always a gentle, loving man. Many of my earliest childhood memories revolve around sitting on his lap in the evenings as he read to me - probably from the same children's book for the millionth time. I can still smell the shaving lotion he wore. I can still hear his voice as he read something like Dr. Seuss to me, again and again. His deep gentle voice gave me what every child needs, safety, security and wonder - and the absolute certainty that I was deeply and truly loved. This man was my father.

He loved Mom dearly. A few years ago, less than a year before Mom passed away, Gwyn and I saw the two of them walking hand in hand on a summer night. This was a couple who had been completely in love for over fifty years. It was an inspiration to us, a lesson in how to make a marriage work. Even when the going gets rough, it reminds me how love, understanding, and sometimes determination are needed to keep marriage on track. And watching the two of them holding hands on that evening, I realized more than I ever have, what life-long love really was.

He was a savvy business leader, a practical engineer and a loving family man. He was the man whose blood flows in my veins. He is the man who led me to become who I am today. A big part of my life passed away early this morning. His name was Raymond Lang and he was my father.

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A brief conversation with Myrtle

The last few days have been powerful in many ways. They have been trying, emotional and interesting. They have taken my life in a way I wouldn't have imagined even a few days before. The driver of all of this is that my father is extremely ill with heart failure. It is likely that he won't be with us too much longer. As such, I cleared my calendar, put my business and many other aspects of my life on the shelf to join my family, spending time sitting with him in the hospital and nursing home.

This afternoon, I spent quite a bit of time doing just that. But for each of us, hunger calls. So I asked one of the nursing assistants on that floor of the care home where I could find a cafeteria. To my surprise, she not only told me but showed me exactly where it was as she walked with me across the entire rather lengthy senior care complex. Eventually we came to what I expected to be a cafeteria. In actuality it was a sit-down restaurant.

This was late in the afternoon, well between meal times so there were few to no other people in the restaurant. The attendant at the restaurant ushered me to a table and took my order, then headed for the kitchen. A few seconds later another of the staff came out with my coke as I waited. \

While waiting, I was chatting on-line with a couple of friends. It was a change of pace from - well, from sitting there holding my dad's hand. As I was typing a text message on facebook messenger, my thoughts were suddenly interrupted with a question. On the other side of the divider separating the restaurant from the lobby/hallway, a woman's voice asked me, "Is it dinner time already?"

I looked around to see a pleasant looking lady, quite senior, but less so than most of those I had seen here. I asked her what she meant, to which she replied that she wondered if I was there for the dinner hour (mercifully, I don't think she thought I was a resident). I explained that I had just stopped there for a late lunch (it was nearly 3PM). She asked me if I was one of the staff, and I explained that I was visiting my father who was in the recuperative care area of the facility. 

I saw a name tag attached to a rather fine necklace. Her name was Myrtle. Myrtle was probably in her mid 80s. She was well dressed, and was clearly eager to let people know she was still conversational, and was quite ready to talk with anyone she could. She stood comfortably on the other side of the divider and seemed to get around without assistance. She did not have a cane or walker.

She explained that she lived in the independent living apartments attached to the facility. She was from South Dakota but had come here because her family now all lived here. I introduced myself and told her I was from Minneapolis, but that I had grown up in Madison. She also told me she had traveled quite a bit and now she and her husband lived in a place where they no longer needed to keep up their house. Now they could just travel as they pleased, which seemed to be quite a bit.

A short time later, a man I assume to be her husband appeared through the doorway opposite the restaurant. He also looked healthy, and was about her same age. She waved and I said thank you for introducing herself to me. She turned and walked away.

Meeting Myrtle was one of those brief moments that make you think. Her world is so different from mine. Her life is still one of adventure - or at least one of travel. While she lives in a senior care facility, she did not appear to be of declining health herself. Yet she seemed to need someone new with whom she could carry on a conversation, however brief.

Was she lonely? Was she simply a friendly soul? How much else was there to her story? What she told me in our brief conversation was that she was quite well traveled. I wonder how many adventures she held in her memory. I suspect we had merely scratched the surface of her life story. I would bet that she had seen a lot in the years of her life.Were they positive? How much other-than-positive had she experienced? In the little time we had talked, I had gotten the impression that there was far more to this lady. And as she walked away, I wondered how many other seniors in the care home had stories to tell that were just as varied. What a treasure of life experiences must lay in the myriad of beds throughout this - and many other - facilities.

I think of efforts like the "Greatest Generation Project" trying to document as much as possible of the life stories of the generation that fought World War II. I think of the many families that may or may not have captured that history before Grandpa and Grandma passed on. And I think of the stories my dad told my brother and I when Gwyn and I visited Madison at Christmas time. He told me more of how he met my mom. He talked about his experiences during the war (he worked on the home front as a draftsman at a company making rocket fins). What a different life they lived. How different their perspective was from what we know today. There were a zillion unasked questions, all arising in my mind too late to take their place in our conversation.

As this woman walked away, I returned to my on-line chat. Our conversation receded into my memory, not awakening until a few hours later when the ideas for this article began to take shape. A million questions, a zillion imagined scenarios. And they were all sparked by that one moment - that brief conversation with Myrtle.
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Goals, questions and organic realities

Last night, when I attended the Holistic Chamber of MN, I had an interesting experience.

The person speaking was talking about setting goals, where do you want your business to go in 2016. That is quite an exercise for me at the moment, as I'm at somewhat of a crossroads. But even more interesting than that was a comment by one of the people at my table. She indicated that she felt goal setting such as we were doing in this exercise was actually limiting. As we talked, she made some rather interesting points.

The core of her argument was that most of the goal setting exercises are top down. They are traditional general-to-specific stepwise refinements of an overall concept. My friend's comments was that this is quite linear, rationalistic, cause-and-effect, present-to-future reasoning. In her view, instead of expanding your vision, this exercise actually limited it. Rather than coming from the subconscious, these goals come from the rational mind.

My friend observed that that goals set in these top-down exercises don't typically last very long. Furthermore, the Universe has a way of throwing curveballs at us. Call them karma, life lessons, or anything else, but the world is an unpredictable place. Setting goals top down can be less flexible than might be needed in our topsy-turvy life and times.

I have found that this top-level vision tends to be the sticking point with many people I know. In fact many people don't know what they want - at least in the rational mind. There are also influences from family, the boss, last year's business plan, etc. So the top down vision tends to be very skewed by what you 'should' want, instead of what you truly want at your innermost core.

Instead, perhaps we need to envision a future from the bottom up. What if instead, we can grow that future organically, and feel that reality. Then perhaps that future will take its place as a future reality. Perhaps then it will more closely match what our passion is.

In hypnosis, I've done this with a number of clients. Inviting them to be a one or two years into their future, I have asked them to describe their surroundings. Starting with the most primitive, I have asked them questions like are you inside or outside? Are you alone or is there someone with you? Is the location bright, or is it more dark? Are you standing, sitting or lying down. The key here is to establish a deep emotional association to that future reality. Then we can build from there.

Once we have that basic reality established we can begin to look at some more sophisticated  questions. What does your office look like? How often are you in it? What is your relationship with other people, both in and out of the office? 

Then we can ask What is happening now? Just as if we were doing hypnotic regression, I ask the client to continue, allowing the clock to move forward. What is occurring? What is the feeling behind whatever is going on now? (hint, it should be enjoyment or passion for what is occurring, otherwise we are not in that ideal future reality).

Once we have established the details of this future reality, we can ask what the most important aspects of this reality are. What is it about this future place/time is the most wonderful? When do you feel that passion? What helps you feel the most reward? What is it about this reality that is most important?

Once we know that, we can ask what the changes were that helped bring that reality about. What was the road you traveled from the present day into that future reality? What did you have to do to travel that road. What were some of the challenges you had to overcome to reach that reality? And finally, what was the first step you took from the present day to get you down that road? 

This is where I typically team up with a life or business coach. It is important to revisit this vision, and this road on a regular basis. And in that, perhaps the road less traveled can become the road that leads to a future, passionate reality, one grown bottom-up from the fabric of consciousness, rather than prescribed from the top down. 

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