Emotional Management
montalk.net :: (CC) 16 July 04
Have you ever gotten emotionally riled up over events which later turned out to be trivial? Do little things happen around you which “coincidentally” poke at your emotional sore spots? Does it seem like someone “behind the curtain” is pushing your buttons? In many cases, someone or something is.
This article is about emotional defense against an invisible enemy who profits from your overindulgence in negative emotions. As part of the matrix series, this text focuses upon the central issue in the matter, that of loosh economy. “Loosh” is Robert Monroe’s term for a quantifiable spiritual/emotional energy produced by physical beings such as humans, a highly-valued commodity in the eyes of nonphysical beings who feed upon this energy. Although not its only function, the matrix acts as the machinery which extracts loosh from humans by subjecting them to synchronistically arranged emotional melodramas.
Here will be given a practical discussion of the nature of emotion, who manipulates emotion via the matrix, their modes of attack, and suggested methods of defense.
Nature of emotion
Science sees emotion as the perceptual end-product of chemicals and hormones affecting our nervous system, nothing more. In truth, such chemicals in our bodies are just physical components of an overall metaphysical process. The body is synchronistically coupled to the soul, meaning the soul doesn’t actually impress a physical force upon the body’s cells as a magnet would upon iron filings, but rather the soul generates a morphogenic field which tends to make one’s neurons and cells “accidentally” behave in a way that directly mirrors the behavior of the soul. The morphogenic field alters the probability of cellular events in such a way to conform to the will of the soul.
When the soul feels the emotion of love, for example, neurons “accidentally” fire in a specific pattern which any neuropsychologist reading a brainscan will interpret as corresponding to that emotion.
During life in a physical body, the body and soul are strongly coupled. One’s daily consciousness, the ego, resides at the border between physical brain and metaphysical soul, meaning it can experience the illusion of emotion through drugs. Such artificial inductions of emotions are generated through the body rather than the soul. Any generation of emotion via physical methods leads only the generation of false emotions.
The difference between true and false emotions lies in their origin. There is only one true emotion, love, and there is only one source for it, God. “Love” and “God” do not have their usual meanings here; love does not mean physical intimacy between couples and God does not mean a personified deity. Love is defined here as a creator energy, the original will of God that separated the original void into positive and negative space and time, an emotion filled with truth, knowledge, and awareness. God is defined as the original seed of consciousness from which all reality and individual consciousness arose, an infinite supply of true emotional energy to which humans are energetically connected and have access.
Eaters of Emotion
In other articles on this site (www.montalk.net), a classification system of zero order, first order, and second order beings has been utilized to separate the major types of consciousness. God is a zero order being, humans are first order beings, and thoughtforms or entities without a direct energetic link to God are second order beings. Likewise, there are zero, first, and second order emotions. Zero order emotion is the will of God which essentially powered the Big Bang. First order emotion is true love as humans can experience it, that of truth, knowledge, and awareness. Second order emotions consist of everything else, from illusory love to lust, hatred, fear, jealousy, and contempt. These are false emotions, for they stem not from God but from illusion. Loosh is a generic term for emotional energy, and “negative loosh” implies false emotion, while “positive loosh” means true emotion.
Second order beings are the primary beneficiaries of the matrix for they feed upon their corresponding type of loosh, second order emotion. Such beings were not created by God originally, their creators are first order beings who either purposely or accidentally succumbed to illusion and began to feed such illusions by putting emotional energy into things not connected to the physical reality created by God. In other words, instead of focusing entirely upon physical reality and truth in their lives, first order beings (who by definition have Creator-like abilities) began to create a new reality of their own, that within the realm of their imaginations. This imaginary reality is now known as the etheric realm, and energy dumped into this realm was shaped via first order beings’ fears and fantasies into second order beings called thoughtforms. Thoughtforms are etheric robots without an energetic connection to God—a metaphysical form of artificial intelligence. Thoughtforms, generated by illusion, soon resorted to parasitism upon first order beings to feed themselves and maintain their own existence. Over time, thoughtforms have created an entirely new illusory reality overlaying the real reality on earth, and this illusory overlay is the matrix.
The movie The Matrix was a metaphorical representation of this phenomenon. One point of evidence toward this fact is that the metaphor was imperfect; machines turned humans into batteries, sources of electrical energy, and yet they could have much more easily resorted to nuclear power. In reality, the metaphor alluded to the fact that the “machines” or second order beings are after loosh, not electricity, and there is no better generator of loosh than a human. Hence, in the movie, humans had to be the power source despite the obvious flaw in the metaphor.
For emotion to be consumed by second order beings, it must be converted into a palatable frequency or flavor and dumped into a domain over which second order beings have precedence. Physical reality, being a product of God and composed of its love/will condensed into solidity, is not second order beings’ preferential domain. Anything straying from reality, such as fantasies, misconceptions, fears, and illusions miss their mark and flow into second order beings’ etheric reality, if not first tapped directly by the matrix. Therefore, the matrix attempts to induce negative emotions in you (flavoring the loosh with a palatable frequency) and pulls your mindset away from truth so that your emotion becomes available for harvesting.
Dynamics of Emotion
Emotions are somewhat analogous to electricity; there is static electricity (stationary quantity of charge) and dynamic electricity, also known as current (moving quantity of charge). Likewise, emotions can be static or dynamic.
Dynamic emotion is loosh energy that is always being utilized for either constructive physical/spiritual action or else leaking or spurting into the ether. All your genuine emotional energy comes from your connection to God by virtue of you just being human, conscious, and alive. You receive this energy from God to power much of your higher mental and spiritual functions, but you must still consume physical food to run your body. What you do with your supply of loosh is up to you; the matrix would like you to convert it into a negative form and feed the energy into imaginary reality for interception by the matrix.
Static emotion, psychologically speaking, is repressed emotional energy. Emotion, being a quantified substance, can neither be created nor destroyed by anyone except God. This law of conservation is nothing new, many authors and psychologists know of that fact.
While emotion cannot be created or destroyed, it can be tapped from God and converted into various grades, frequencies, and forms. Negative emotion can be converted into positive, and vice versa. Perception is the key that converts one form into the other.
When you experience a negative emotion and do not let it out or convert it into something positive, it becomes a thoughtform parasite, an auric leak, and a spiritual burden. To have become angry in the first place is okay, but to remain so in a non-constructive way must have arisen from some illusory component in your view of the world. In other words, because your perception of a situation was not based entirely on truth, you became angry, stayed angry, and did nothing about it except ignore and repress it. Your illusory perception combined with the resulting negative emotional energy forms, by definition, a thoughtform, except it is one closely attached to your soul. In this article, such an entity will be called an internal thoughtform. It has a conduit leading back to the core of your soul and siphons energy from your emotional reservoir, becoming bloated in the process as long as you continue repressing it.
While God’s supply of emotional energy is infinite, your rate to receive such energy is not. Therefore, any leak in your loosh reservoir such as one caused by an internal thoughtform generated from repressed emotions will take away from your influx of energy. The more repressed emotions you have, the more auric leaks you have, and the less loosh energy you can use for yourself.
Internal thoughtforms severely affect the way you behave. Beside keeping you low of energy, they also tend to pull your own utilization of energy in their direction.
Severely repressed emotions (to the point of amnesia) stem from soul fragmentation, where a piece of your consciousness accompanies the perceptions and emotions splitting off from your main soul during the trauma. Such internal thoughtforms are their own personalities in perpetual suffering. The amnesia results from memories being a function of consciousness, and since that particular component of consciousness has left, the main consciousness has no access to those memories unless the fragment possessing them returns to its source. Ordinary internal thoughtforms are not total fragmentations, but rather distortions; both affect the main soul’s consciousness through some etheric or astral link.
Internal thoughtforms affect your behavior by regurgitating a negative frequency of loosh back into your main energy reservoir which corrupts your general mood in addition to sublimely keeping your world view in accordance with the illusion having generated the internal thoughtform in the first place. It affects both your emotions and perceptions and tends to keep them anchored in illusion.
Static emotions cannot be tapped by the matrix, although they are still detrimental in altering your behavior like a stuck rudder on a ship. One’s emotions remain static only as long as they are out of one’s present conscious focus. Remember that internal thoughtforms are their own loosh reservoirs, feeding off your reservoir which in turn is filled by God. You may think of these thoughtforms as bloated sacks of loosh just waiting to burst. To access these reservoirs, the matrix must open them with a perceptual key so that your consciousness focuses upon them, opening the
floodgates and unleashing an explosion of dynamic emotion which bursts into the ether and is collected by the matrix.
Thus, the matrix can do one of two things: elicit dynamic emotions in you and tap them directly, or else pop your repressed emotions and reap a huge bounty. Often it does both and makes sure dynamic emotion is repressed and allowed to grow for later harvest. How it accomplishes all this is the subject of the next section
Modes of Attack
The matrix and those who operate it attack humans for various reasons including sabotage, experimentation, and loosh harvesting. An attack is defined as a hostile act intended to benefit the perpetrator more than one receiving the attack.
Let’s begin with how the matrix harvests static emotions. As stated before, it must utilize the correct key to unlock stored reservoir of loosh. In practical terms, this key is simply a synchronicity in your environment which triggers an overblown emotional reaction from you. If you have ever gotten angrier at something than warranted because you’ve had enough and it was the last straw, then you have had an internal thoughtform purged of its reservoir. While this may make you feel better in the short run, it will fill up again and continue to influence you unless it is permanently disabled by a change of perceptions. Disabling internal thoughtforms will be discussed later.
A synchronistic trigger is created from precise calculations and data gathering by the matrix; it knows what buttons to push. The source of this trigger may be something you read, a keyword, song, person’s name, dream event, or something someone does or says. In the case of reading something, the synchronicity is mainly created through you…the matrix has imperceptibly altered your actions and the path of your trigger until they intersect and the trigger comes to your attention. In the case of being triggered by something someone does or says, the same basic process occurs except another person is being manipulated as well. (Generation of synchronicities doesn’t happen by the direct calculation and alteration of every single step necessary to produce them, rather a small section of the symbolic “machine code” of reality is altered which automatically restructures the timeline and course of reality-based events).
You may wonder how and when this manipulation occurs, because you cannot remember or feel any real manipulation going on. Well, the manipulation of your actions is synchronistic and occurs most often when you are on “autopilot” or in the alpha state of mind. It is known that one becomes suggestible and receptive during the alpha state, in which brainwaves pulsate between 9 and 14 cycles per second. During this state, your consciousness relaxes its perceptual filters and becomes susceptible to external influences. It is during this autopilot state that the matrix finds it easiest to get you to do something which will play part in a later synchronicity. When it happens, because the synchronicity is not yet fulfilled, the trivial action you just undertook during the alpha state goes generally unnoticed, thought of as insignificant and not even worth remembering. The manipulation is subtle, and only after-the-fact does it become obvious. Most often, however, the manipulation is not a direct influence to do something, but rather a suppression of your memory function…you perform an action while having temporarily forgotten a key piece of information that would have made you act otherwise. Induced temporary forgetfulness resulting in a later synchronicity is the most common way an external or higher force (even a positive one) can bypass the ego and manipulate a person’s actions.
Susceptibility to manipulation is proportional to lack of awareness. Forewarned is forearmed. Remember: If you’re not in control of your actions, something else is.
It could be the matrix, internal thoughtforms, external thoughtforms, subliminals in advertising and music, entity attachments, alien transmissions, and even positive guidance such as your higher self and intuition. Which of those you tend to tune into depends upon your general mood, which is nothing more than the prevalent emotional climate of your being. Emotions are generated from perceptions, and to attract positive guidance in times when you go into autopilot, you must have positive perceptions aligned with truth. The more accurate your perception of reality, the better
your mood, and the less susceptible you become to influence from negative sources.
Of course, if you were a hermit, this advice would be easy to apply. Unfortunately, every person you associate with, be it friend, family, or stranger, is also susceptible to manipulation by various forces. The less aware they are, the more easily manipulated they become. Being aware means being conscious of your actions and taking responsibility to make sure that what you do is really what you want to do, and not some subtle force attempting to manipulate you into playing part in someone else’s emotional triggering. The people you interact with can be manipulated into triggering you, pushing your buttons, sabotaging your plans, and hurting you without them even knowing it. In fact, you have played that part as well, unknowingly performing actions which synchronistically affect others without you being aware of it at the time. It happened to you today and it will happen again tomorrow.
As fellow researchers have learned, the biggest challenge to anyone aware of this manipulation is when someone you love or trust becomes a “conduit of attack,” an unwitting player in the negative forces’ sick game of sabotaging you or harvesting your loosh (inducing suffering in you, and often the others involved). Children, spouses, and partners in personal or business relationships are the most common conduits of attack. Besides performing just minor synchronistic triggers, such people can be fully manipulated into doing anything to stress you, including hurting themselves, misperceiving you, and directly attacking you verbally or physically. By physical harm, it is not meant that some external force picks up their fists and swings them at you, rather that some force manipulates the person’s emotions and perceptions into making them take out their frustrations and misguided anger on you. They believe that they are in control of all their actions, but in reality they are not.
In cases where manipulation of a person goes beyond mere synchronistic acts, there is usually a direct alteration of his/her soul via artificial means. This can include physical means such as electromagnetic mind control signals, physical implants, hypnosis, harmful chemicals and nutritional deficiencies, or metaphysical means such as etheric implants, chakra alterations, entity attachments of negative beings or aliens, or remote psionic influence. Whatever the case may be, the person isn’t truly himself, and the painful part is that he is not even aware of it.
Lack of awareness puts a person into the domain of illusion and misperception. Once there, it is easy for the matrix or its operators to inject false speculation into the minds of the intended targets of sabotage. The less information one has about a particular situation, the more he will tend to speculate. Like a game of Wheel of Fortune, the less letters already chosen by contestants, the greater the possibility that the hidden word could be almost anything. Because there are so many possibilities that would fit the limited facts one has, such possibilities must include a great portion of incorrect guesses, illusions. Because such possibilities are weighted equally until another piece of information comes along to shift favor to one or the other, it is during speculation that the matrix finds an opportune time to nudge a person’s perceptions toward false conclusions. It can do so directly by emotional manipulation and memory suppression, or it can do so with false data introduced to him synchronistically. Not all data you could encounter via synchronicity is false, but be aware that some of it surely is.
Such sabotage typically happens to split apart two people or a network which poses a threat to the matrix’s agenda. This happens best when one or more of the people targetted is much more unaware than the other, and therefore becomes an easy conduit of attack. Whether one is unaware or both are, between them there is usually a lack of full understanding of each other’s personality and circumstances. This may be due either out of social custom not to be nosey, lack of time to become more acquainted, or fear, mistrust, and ignorance. The latter factors make a relationship most vulnerable to sabotage. Fear causes mistrust, leading to ignorance of facts contrary to paranoid speculations, and limits the informational exchange between people involved. With lack of information, speculation arises, and such speculation is manipulated by the matrix toward false conclusions and soon the relationship breaks apart due to misunderstandings on both sides of the cleavage. It is a tactic of divide and conquer. This is why love and trust between two or more aware people is the biggest threat possible to the matrix—it forms an invincible and indivisible unit more powerful than the sum of its parts. The matrix must then resort to treating this unit as a single entity and manipulate other people into attacking it from the outside…but the network or relationship is now stronger than any single person.
Such a network is impossible between individuals who are not collinear. Collinearity is the quality of sharing the same direction of spiritual evolution, even if there are differences in awareness. Two individuals who are collinear but not equally aware can provide for a pleasant teaching/learning experience. But two who are not collinear will be in conflict because each will be resistant to the other and both are going different directions in life. Among collinear individuals, it is merely separations in awareness that allow the matrix to create misperceptions and disruption. So it is important for a collinear couple to be completely honest with each other and on equal ground.
Methods of Defense
As bleak as the previous accounts of matrix attack modes may have been, in truth there are ways out of this mess, methods of defense.
I believe that the Matrix can remain our cage or it can become our chrysalis.
– Neo, original script for The Matrix
The Matrix is the system used by foreign forces operating on this planet, so as to accelerate spiritual choices of each individual on Earth without violating their freewill.
– www.geocities.com/freeyourbrain
In the big picture the matrix is just another, albeit grandiose, learning device much like an obstacle course or puzzle for humanity. All puzzles have solutions, that is their reason for existence: to be solved. Acknowledging that the matrix and humanity’s exploitation has a place in the course of things does not imply that we should just accept it and submit to it. That would be like acknowledging that a puzzle comes disassembled in a box, but going further and arguing that it should therefore be left alone; if putting the puzzle together would no longer make it a puzzle, would “eradicating” it make one guilty of being an anti-puzzle bigot? That is ludicrous. Obstacles exist to be overcome, puzzles exist to be solved, and evil exists to be counterbalanced. If we are to treat the matrix properly in regard to its true universal function, then we must individually overcome it.
To overcome the matrix’s method of emotional triggering via synchronistic keys, it is necessary to discharge, disable, and eliminate negative internal thoughtforms and prevent new ones from forming. While doing this perfectly is close to impossible, steps in that direction can be taken.
There are numerous books discussing ways of healing emotional wounds and getting rid of self-defeating subconscious programming (internal thoughtforms). While methods vary in complexity and efficiency, the basic idea comes down to finding an internal thoughtform, discharging it by consciously replaying the associated false perceptions and emotions, realizing that the perceptions were false, and replacing them with a new realization closer to the truth. Find, discharge, replace. There are other ways as well, check the suggested reading list at the end of this article.
Preventing the creation of new internal thoughtforms is a matter of changing your perceptions through an increase in awareness and immediately transforming any negative emotional energy you do accumulate. For example, if the matrix induces a synchronicity designed to play upon your emotions and arouse futile anger, if your perceptions are in good shape then it will not even affect you; it will pass right through. Recall the following quote from The Matrix:
Neo: What are you trying to tell me, that I can dodge bullets?
Morpheus: No Neo. I’m trying to tell you that when you’re ready, you won’t have to.
If your negative internal thoughtforms are discharged or nonexistent, then even without a perceptual guard your emotional reaction will not be greater than warranted by the trigger. Nevertheless, the perceptual guard is simply an understanding that a particular trigger is actually trivial and warrants no negative emotion. There is no need to dodge bullets if they pass right through you without touching or stop mid-air.
Anger itself is not that negative of an emotion if transformed; only when repressed does it cause problems. Contempt, jealousy, hatred, and guilt however are very negative because they are emotions that are very difficult to employ constructively. All four imply stasis, inaction, or reckless destruction.
“Contempt” implies illusory superiority (superiority based on illusory criteria) and does nothing to help a person constructively…it perpetuates separation, oppression, and exploitation.
“Jealousy” is an emotion of lack, insecurity, obsession, or of having to fantasize to have something imaginarily—an automatic ejection of loosh into the ether.
“Hatred” is rarely acted upon and is a brooding emotion, dynamic, sending oozing negativity into the physical and etheric environment and atrophying the soul. When acted upon, hatred leads to destabilizing destruction.
"Guilt" is a major negative loosh producer. It is a futile attempt by a soul to change the past. As detailed in “Synchronicity and Reality Manipulation,” emotions are the carrier wave upon which information can be sent back into the past of the current timeline to alter the current timeline. This is the linear interpretation of how synchronicities are set up. When feeling guilt, a person is actually attempting to change a regretful past situation via this method…it fails most of the time because his wish to change the past is based upon faulty perceptions (illusions) and it would complicate certain karmic balances that required him to have done as he did. Thus, the emotions go nowhere but into the mouth of the matrix. The proper way to handle guilt is to relieve oneself of the emotion through thoughtform discharge, change in perception, and then to avoid repeating the guilt-inducing mistake in the future. There is a difference between a psychopath without guilt and a free person without guilt; the free person’s actions stem from perceptions which have changed because life’s lessons, while the psychopath’s actions stem from perceptions which exist as they are in spite of life’s lessons.
Negative emotional energy is loosh with a particular vibrational frequency tuned into resonance with negative entities and the matrix. Because this frequency is of a second order nature, it is associated with the quality of illusion. For example, when one is angry and offended, sometimes such emotions trigger revenge fantasies. The angered person’s direction of focus is absorbed in the trigger which is anywhere but in the here and now. Loosh energy is channeled into wherever consciousness is focused, and if one is absorbed in directing anger toward the object of offense, that is
where the energy goes. This is the most common way the matrix collects energy; it merely pushes a button and opens its mouth to feed.
What factors create large responses to triggers? As explained, repressed emotions are one factor. Another already mentioned is lack of understanding or being. Someone with certain lessons yet to learn is yearning to have experiences which teach them those lessons. The matrix very often provides those lesson opportunities in exchange for the negative loosh it harvests. It is fact that the more lessons one learns, the less responsive one becomes to manipulative triggers, i.e., the less dependent one’s internal emotional state becomes to external factors.
Try to remember something that made you cry as a young child. Would it make you cry if it happened to you now? If not, what has changed to make that so? Your perceptions; you have grown in awareness since that young age and something that would give you a tantrum at three would make you laugh at thirty. In fact, any spiritual lesson that you have already learned would no longer affect you the same way if it presented itself to you again. Once you solve a homework math problem that causes you lots of grief, if asked again on a test, you would remember how you did it and
breeze right through.
Not learning a lesson or repressing an emotion are very similar because both lead to no growth of being. Awareness and understanding are necessary to grow one’s level of being, and without conscious processing of emotions and the lessons they teach, growth does not occur. In the case of not yet having learned a lesson, there is no stimulus for growth, and with repressed emotions, growth is artificially squelched. Both of these create demand for and vulnerability against further matrix manipulations in order to provide the opportunity for learning lessons.
Ultimately, it is the Higher Self that allows the matrix to have its way, to create situations which can teach the lower self needed lessons. Unfortunately, negative second order beings and the matrix are interested in maximizing loosh extraction from every targeted individual, not being their teachers—thus, the slower the target learns his lessons, the more energy he will continuously expend to the satisfaction of the matrix. This carrot-before-the-donkey phenomenon can be avoided with simple effort to learn quickly from every experience, and especially to learn preemptively from the experiences of others.
It is possible therefore to learn lessons without negative experience if such lessons are cognized and empathized beforehand. This is gaining knowledge the easy way which requires effort on the part of the learner to see objective truth. If this effort is neglected, physical experience will be created to teach it to him or her the hard way. Such experiences will repeat in various manifestations until the lesson is learned. Once it is learned, a corresponding growth of being occurs which prevents such experiences from necessarily reoccurring. In this way, knowledge protects indirectly because having it kills the broadcasted demand for a matrix-provided experiential learning lesson. Nevertheless, negative entities still have the freewill to attack whomever they can, so a direct application of knowledge in the form of prevention or repulsion will help one defend against these attacks should they occur. As the Cassiopaeans say, “Knowledge protects, ignorance endangers.” The reasons for this should now be clear.
Most of us are imperfect and we still have lessons to learn, we still have wounds and repressed emotions. Therefore, we can expect testing from the people and situations we daily face. Because these are nothing more than learning lessons, an ideal objective would be to learn these lessons as completely, efficiently, and easily as possible.
While possible to observe the mistakes of others and therefore gain their learning lesson for ourselves, unexpected tests attempting to push our buttons or those which we must absolutely experience can arise at any moment. Fact of the matter is that if your level of being is insufficient to remain unaffected by the trigger, if you have yet to learn the lesson potentially provided to you by this negative experience, then you will experience negative emotions. To try and stop cold such emotions leads to repression, which is the problem that many people experience when they force themselves to be nice and happy every moment of every day. Repressed emotions resurface later in a twisted and magnified form and can lead to all kinds of psychological problems, even health problems if repression is lengthy and severe.
The solution to such a situation where negative emotions are bound to arise is not to stop or repress them, but to transform them. This is the first step, with the second step being to act in accordance with what the situation demands.
Recall that the negative quality of emotions are associated with illusion, with anything but the here and now. Essentially, your loosh is being ejected from your own being rather than conserved. Also recall that wherever your consciousness is directed is where your energy is directed. Therefore, to transform your energy and conserve it, you must do two things: direct your consciousness in the here and now to conserve it, and try to gain an immediate objective understanding of the situation to transform it. This method is well known among students of Gurdjieff and Mouravieff, and the explanation I provide here has been simplified to ease understanding for the general reader.
To illustrate this method, consider the case of someone saying something which offends or angers you but causes no harm to anyone or anything except your own ego. This may trigger an upwelling of negative emotional energy which, if you are not careful, could be channeled toward that person if you lose your sense of self and instead become hypnotically enraged at what they said. Rather than focusing upon the the trigger, it is important to immediately focus upon your own internal state in the present moment, to feel your own presence and the emotional energy within you. While staying centered this way, feel the inner part of you that is calm, observant, and understanding, and identify with it—see this situation as ridiculous and funny and try to understand the truth of why it is happening; perhaps it is a matrix manipulation and a lesson for you.
When properly done, this process converts the negative loosh to conserved positive loosh, and should manifest as a genuine flip of your emotional state from anger to joy. This is easier said than done, of course, due to physical stress hormones and adrenaline which linger after the initial trigger, but it becomes easier with practice. What is important here are the concepts of self-awareness and knowledge. The first is what directs your energy toward yourself rather than wasting it “out there”. The second is what allows you to have a proper understanding of the situation. For example, some people just can’t help themselves in their inconsiderate behavior, much like a dog cannot keep from relieving itself in public places, but it is just as ridiculous to be offended by the first as by the latter. With proper understanding of a trigger, you will hopefully find no continued justification for clinging on to a negative emotional response. Be assured that if you hold on to them, you have not yet fully learned the associated lesson.
One common misunderstanding which leads to great offense is revealed by the phrase “But I would never do such a thing, how could they?” The answer is that sometimes, “they” are not like you. They function differently for whatever reason. This phrase reveals an assumption that you are identical with them. It is clear in the case of a dog that there is a great difference, and so it is less offensive for most to see a dog relieve itself in public than a person. But just because someone looks human doesn’t mean that they psychologically and even metaphysically operate in the same manner as you do. There exists a whole sector of the human race that behaves fundamentally differently from the other half, as you may read more about in my article Matrix Agents: Profiles and Analysis. Reading that article and those linked within will save you a lot of grief in dealing with potential button-pushers because it will help you understand who they are and why they might act as they do.
In cases where all else fails and negative emotions cannot be transformed, they must still be released – anything but repressed. Temporary release of any unconverted negative emotion can be as simple as screaming or slamming your fist upon the table, or gentle like writing or exercising, even crying. This is strictly for cases where there is no constructive way of acting upon that emotion—in other words, no external problem to solve. If someone else is violating your freewill and you feel an upsurge of emotion urging you to defend yourself, then that emotion is best employed for that purpose.
When succumbing to an emotional trigger, you must release the negative emotion to prevent it from becoming an internal thoughtform, then later learn from that trigger and understand why it set you off. If it did so because it keyed into an internal thoughtform, then you’ve found one to work on. If it affected you because of some hole in your perception, then contemplate and learn the lesson so that it will not have to be repeated.
Understanding that emotional triggers do happen and are synchronistically introduced into your environment with sometimes malevolent intention is enough to get your guard up. You must understand that the goal of such a trigger is to elicit an overblown emotional response. You must prevent speculation and focus on the undeniable facts. To illustrate one possibility, if a woman indulges in speculation, pretty soon she will be in an emotional meltdown thinking her husband is cheating on her when in truth the perfume on his clothes came from the annoying saleslady spraying samples of the stuff onto people passing through the store he visited.
Focusing on the facts is essential in preventing the matrix from cleaving apart a potentially positive relationship. As explained earlier, two people who refuse to be open and trusting to each other end perceptually isolating themselves. Each person can thereby be manipulated by the twisting of his or her speculations into falsely disliking the other and ending the relationship. Were they to discuss any issues that might crop up, they would discover that their speculations were false. And if they turned out to be true, then the relationship was never really positive to begin with and should be ended. But one cannot be sure of which case it may be unless there is mutual trust and openness to discover the truth of the situation. Truth itself is untouchable by the matrix and its operators which revel in illusion and lies. As long as one remains impeccably within the domain of truth, which means no lying to oneself or others except in situations that demand one’s survival, those attacking such an impeccable person often end up hanging themselves.
Now, it may seem from the foregoing discussion that the point of emotional management is to become unemotional and unresponsive to the world. This is totally false. The goal of emotional management, and any esoteric work for that manner, is to decouple one’s internal state from one’s external behavior. In other words, it is the point of emotional management to make your internal perceptions, thoughts, and especially emotional state independent of your external experiences and behaviors. Where is the division line between internal and external? The line resides between the real you and everything else.
Those familiar with Gurdjieff’s teachings will recognize this as the practice of separating internal considering from external considering. External considering has to do with how you physically interact with the world, what actions you perform, and what things you say to toward the people around you. Internal considering involves your inner thoughts, perceptions, and emotions. These two must be made independent of each other, because that is the only way you can begin freeing yourself from the matrix. As long as the two are linked, your mind can be controlled by your environment, and the environment controlled by the
So in this process of dealing with a conduit of attack, your emotions need not correlate to the seriousness of the situation. In other words, you don’t need to be stressed out of your mind to effectively deal with a partner in distress. What you do does not have to reflect how you feel. To put it another way, separating feeling from doing is an extremely important concept when facing a negative situation. This does not mean repression of emotion or becoming emotionally dead, it just means being emotionally responsible and ideally expanding your awareness to see the situation in a more accurate context.
Once a trigger is neutralized via the process of immediate self-awareness and understanding, the internal battle has been won. The external battle can then commence if necessary. Do not make the mistake of inseparably linking feeling with doing in this case—some people get the impression that if you feel nice, you must therefore act nice. That’s nothing more than a computer algorithm with input “feel nice” and output “act nice” which contains no intermediate contemplation or choice process. This is just another example of total and misguided coupling between internal and external states which can lead to disaster if you are dealing with a predator who counts on you not defending yourself. Coupling implies causal link without room for choice, and thus it’s simply a puppet string tugging your inside from the outside.
If the concepts of internal and external considering are understood and made independent, then what would happen instead is that internally, negative emotions are replaced by cool confidence and joy, but externally actions would take whatever form necessary in order to neutralize or deflect the external threat.
Internal victory must always precede external victory. To do otherwise would most often feed the matrix or aid the agenda of negative forces. It is easier to make mistakes or succumb to further manipulation if you proceed to solve an external conflict while internally enraged. With negative emotions, thinking is skewed. The positive emotions that come with triumph over negative emotions result from understanding, and so is by no means overconfidence. While actions are independent of feelings, having negative feelings can sometimes impair external actions because at our stage of evolution the two aren’t entirely independent.
Make no mistake about it—emotions are vital because they are fuel. They help you accomplish things which your level of being up to that point could not do, therefore causing it to grow. As stated before, the purpose of emotional management is not to become unemotional or unresponsive but rather to make internal states independent of external, and also to help transform negative emotions into positive ones. With increasing growth of being, one’s emotions become increasingly one’s own rather than mechanical responses to external stimuli.
If a lesson has been learned, then no negative emotions are necessary to motivate one into action since the action comes naturally out of understanding and as a consequence of a growth in being. Once a lesson is learned, it can be acted upon out of enthusiasm and understanding.But when a trigger evoking negative emotions genuinely arises, it is the goal of emotional management procedures to transform that negativity into positivity, and then to use that new positive state accompanied by mental clarity to fuel external actions and solve the external problem. Emotions provide the fuel for internal and external growth, and positive emotions provide the quickest and most efficient way of achieving that.
Emotions are necessary to deal with a problem that is happening. But they are not needed as intensely in cases where a problem is yet to occur and can therefore be prevented. Learning from the mistakes of others involves a certain level of empathy, enough to create understanding. Emotions are merely a means to an end of developing one’s understanding and being. Learning things the hard way requires the most amount of emotional expenditure, which is why the matrix prefers that mode. Having foresight and avoiding mistakes by increasing your understanding—and definitely not repeating mistakes—is the least painful way of reaching that end.
Thus, learning the easy way is preferred, but when learning the hard way is unavoidable, emotional management helps make it smoother. The problem with those who choose to be unemotional or in any other way repress their emotions is that they often lack both the being and understanding to support their actions, and hence they remain passive individuals vulnerable as lambs. If negative emotions arise, they indicate that some growth on your part is necessary, and to accelerate that growth use emotional management techniques of self-awareness and understanding.
It should be clear that those earlier on the learning path will have more negative emotional experiences than those more advanced. There is no judgment implied – everyone is where they should be and it is pointless to envy another because judging oneself by another’s standards is illogical (the grass is always greener on the other side). People who pretend to be more advanced by being less emotional suffer from the fact that they are passive, for they lack the being and understanding necessary to otherwise fuel their actions, which translates to an apparent lack of willpower. Hence, it is okay to feel negative emotions, as they first alert you to the presence of a learning opportunity, and can help develop your understanding and fuel your actions as long as you practice being self-aware and try to see the objective truth of the situation.
It must be emphasized that any emotion that is based on truth and applied constructively toward altering or changing something in physical reality is a positive emotion that helps everyone except for the matrix and negative beings. Any emotion applied to fantasy, false speculations, and glut of the ego is negative, for it is based on illusion and becomes food for the matrix and fuel for its agenda.
The preceding paragraphs concerned situations where a trigger was external, perhaps inserted by the matrix, maybe purely accidental. But as Gurdjieff emphasized, daydreaming is a big waste of emotional energies. This is not to say that daydreaming should be curbed, but at least try to avoid negative fantasies of vengeance, hatred, lust, and fear. Fantasizing draining melodramas and getting stressed out about some exaggerated hypothetical situation is almost as damaging as false speculation. These are conscious indulgences in negative emotions which, like the phenomenon of obsession, serve no purpose in expanding one’s understanding. Curbing negative self-talk and useless fantasies is a practical exercise you can start immediately.
Finally, to ensure that the concept of emotional management is not misunderstood or twisted into disinformation, let it be emphasized that emotional management has nothing to do with what's said in some New Age articles glorifying the New Age definition of "positivity," which is more accurately defined as complacency, submissiveness, softness, and passivity. According to the "you create your own reality" paradigm, by not feeling any negative emotions or acknowledging that the dark side exists, your reality will be void of negativity and filled with safety and abundance.
The basic principle of consciousness and emotion affecting reality is true, but it does so imperfectly and only alters the probability of a particular type of event (positive or negative) occurring in your life. It does not eliminate the possibility that an event of either type could happen. The main faults of this particular New Age paradigm are 1) neglect of physical preparation and 2) repression of negative emotions.
Because reality creation is imperfect for most humans, a negative event will happen sooner or later. If the New Ager is under the illusion that nothing bad can ever happen to him because it would violate his freewill, then he will neglect to prepare for the day he encounters such a negative event. It could cost him dearly.
Secondly, being strictly “positive” without a change in perceptions or even a correct definition of what constitutes “positive,” the New Ager out of sheer ignorance will accumulate a large storehouse of internal thoughtforms (repressed emotions). Eventually he will explode and do something he will greatly regret. The “Love and Light” illusion is just another agenda of the dark side, for the dark side does not prefer good or evil, merely an imbalance between them. That which is repressed becomes perverted.
So, although this article does seem to emphasize abstinence from negative thought, be sure to grasp the importance of preparation and expansion of perception. This abstinences comes not from repression, but from transformation of negative into positive emotions. This is possible because loosh is a quantity of energy whose vibrational frequency can be flipped. Physical reparation, a manifestation of external action, results from planning which is mental activity serving reality instead of fantasy. Growth in understanding and being creates a change of perception, which is the key to managing emotions and preventing their repression or future redundant triggering.
Conclusion
Most importantly, keep a lighthearted attitude toward life and constantly seek to increase your awareness by learning lessons the easy way. Remember that negative situations need not be accompanied by negative emotions if your perceptions are accurate, and that a trusting relationship between two or more collinear people forms a powerful network impervious to corruption by the matrix.
Thursday, May 17, 2012
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
The Telegraph, Wife phoned from hijack airliner as it hit Pentagon,
September 12, 2001, The Telegraph, Wife phoned from hijack airliner as it hit Pentagon, by Toby Harnden in Washington, 12:00AM BST, [8:00 p.m. EDT, Sept. 11]
THE wife of the US solicitor general was on board the Boeing 757 that crashed into the Pentagon and phoned her husband seconds before it crashed.
Barbara Olson, 46, was locked in the toilet when the passengers and crew were ordered to the back of the airliner. A spokesman for Mr Olson said: "She called and said she was locked in the toilet and the plane had been hijacked.
"She said they had knives. They had rounded up the passengers at the back of the plane. She referred to them as more than one. There was nothing she could do. She said to her husband: 'What do I do?'" The call ended seconds before the crash.
Police did not believe that anybody on board had survived the crash and Mrs Olson had not originally planned to be on the flight, which had just taken off from Dulles Airport bound for San Francisco.
She had delayed her flight so that she could share breakfast with her husband to celebrate his birthday, which fell yesterday.
Mrs Olson had placed two calls from the plane - the first to the Justice Department, where her husband worked, to inform the authorities of the hijacking.
The fact that the crew were ordered to join the passengers indicated that the hijackers included trained pilots capable of aiming the aircraft at their targets.
Mrs Olson then phoned her husband, who is known primarily for having argued the case for President Bush before the US Supreme Court last year during his election recount contest with Al Gore.
She asked her husband what she should tell the pilot to do. "It was typical of her," one friend said. "She was always the type to try to take charge."
A witness to the crash, Mike Walter, said: "It was like a Cruise missile with wings.
"I saw parts of the plane. The debris was on the overpass. I saw these military units run out with stretchers and set up a triage. It was just sheer terror. The only thing that I kept uttering over and over was 'Oh my God, I can't believe this'.
"I was sitting listening on the radio to the accounts of what had happened and to the President but I didn't put together two and two."
Mrs Olson, a former congressional aide and US prosecutor, was a biographer of Hillary Clinton. She had recently completed a book about the scandals of the final weeks of Mr Clinton's presidency and was a frequent "talking head" during the Monica Lewinsky and Chandra Levy scandals.
The Olsons were among the most prominent couples in Washington conservative social circles.
THE wife of the US solicitor general was on board the Boeing 757 that crashed into the Pentagon and phoned her husband seconds before it crashed.
Barbara Olson, 46, was locked in the toilet when the passengers and crew were ordered to the back of the airliner. A spokesman for Mr Olson said: "She called and said she was locked in the toilet and the plane had been hijacked.
"She said they had knives. They had rounded up the passengers at the back of the plane. She referred to them as more than one. There was nothing she could do. She said to her husband: 'What do I do?'" The call ended seconds before the crash.
Police did not believe that anybody on board had survived the crash and Mrs Olson had not originally planned to be on the flight, which had just taken off from Dulles Airport bound for San Francisco.
She had delayed her flight so that she could share breakfast with her husband to celebrate his birthday, which fell yesterday.
Mrs Olson had placed two calls from the plane - the first to the Justice Department, where her husband worked, to inform the authorities of the hijacking.
The fact that the crew were ordered to join the passengers indicated that the hijackers included trained pilots capable of aiming the aircraft at their targets.
Mrs Olson then phoned her husband, who is known primarily for having argued the case for President Bush before the US Supreme Court last year during his election recount contest with Al Gore.
She asked her husband what she should tell the pilot to do. "It was typical of her," one friend said. "She was always the type to try to take charge."
A witness to the crash, Mike Walter, said: "It was like a Cruise missile with wings.
"I saw parts of the plane. The debris was on the overpass. I saw these military units run out with stretchers and set up a triage. It was just sheer terror. The only thing that I kept uttering over and over was 'Oh my God, I can't believe this'.
"I was sitting listening on the radio to the accounts of what had happened and to the President but I didn't put together two and two."
Mrs Olson, a former congressional aide and US prosecutor, was a biographer of Hillary Clinton. She had recently completed a book about the scandals of the final weeks of Mr Clinton's presidency and was a frequent "talking head" during the Monica Lewinsky and Chandra Levy scandals.
The Olsons were among the most prominent couples in Washington conservative social circles.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 'None of us will ever forget',
September 11, 2001, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 'None of us will ever forget',
Updated 10:00 p.m., Tuesday, September 11, 2001
NEW YORK -- In the most devastating terrorist onslaught ever waged against the United States, knife-wielding hijackers crashed two airliners into the World Trade Center yesterday, toppling its twin 110-story towers. The deadly calamity was witnessed on televisions across the world as another plane slammed into the Pentagon, and a fourth crashed outside Pittsburgh.
"Today, our nation saw evil," a grim-faced President Bush said last night in a televised address to the nation. He said thousands of lives were "suddenly ended by evil, despicable acts of terror." With the country on a war footing, the nation's aviation system was shut down, government buildings around the country were closed, along with major skyscrapers and a variety of other sites, ranging from Disney theme parks to the Golden Gate Bridge and U.N. headquarters in New York.
In his first prime-time Oval Office address, Bush asked the nation to find comfort in Scripture as he mourned the deaths and vowed to avenge their killings. He said the United States would find and punish "those behind these evil acts," and any country that harbors them.
Establishing the U.S. death toll could take weeks. The four airliners alone had 266 people aboard and there were no known survivors. Officials put the number of dead and wounded at the Pentagon at about 100 or more, with some news reports suggesting it could rise to 800.
In addition, a union official said he feared 300 New York firefighters had died in rescue efforts at the trade center and dozens of police officers were missing.
"The number of casualties will be more than most of us can bear," a visibly distraught Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said.
An army of 10,000 workers brought in dogs and lights last night as they began heading into ground zero to search for survivors and recover bodies.
All that remained of the twin towers by then was a pile of rubble and twisted steel that stood barely five stories high, leaving a huge gap in the New York City skyline and making the Empire State Building once again the city's tallest structure.
No one took responsibility for the attacks. But federal authorities identified Osama bin Laden, who has been given asylum by Afghanistan's hard-line Taliban rulers, as the prime suspect. The Taliban denied such suggestions.
Investigators descended on Logan International Airport in Boston yesterday, trying to determine how terrorists commandeered two nearly identical jets that took off moments apart and then crashed them into the trade center.
"Everything seemed normal when they left Logan," said Joseph Lawless, public safety director of the Massachusetts Port Authority. "We don't know how the hijackers accomplished what they did." The Boston Herald, quoting a source it did not identify, reported that authorities had seized a car at Logan that contained Arabic-language flight training manuals. The source said five Arab men had been identified as suspects, including a trained pilot. At least two of those men flew to Logan yesterday from Portland, Maine, the Herald said.
The luggage of one of the men who flew to the airport yesterday didn't make his scheduled connection. The Boston Globe reported the luggage contained a copy of the Koran, an instructional video on flying commercial airliners and a fuel consumption calculator.
The FBI refused to comment on the reports.
A senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, cited "strong information" implicating bin Laden. The official said Bush is considering a wide range of military options targeting bin Laden and, perhaps, Afghanistan.
Authorities also were focusing some of their efforts on possible bin Laden supporters in Florida based on the identification of a suspected hijacker on one of the manifests of the four jets that crashed, law enforcement sources told The Associated Press.
The sources said the FBI was preparing to search locations in central Florida that had links to the suspected bin Laden supporter on a jet manifest, the officials said. U.S. intelligence intercepted communications between bin Laden supporters discussing the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon, according to Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Also aided by harrowing cell phone calls from at least one flight attendant and two passengers aboard the jetliners before they crashed, U.S. officials began assembling a case linking bin Laden to the devastation.
The people aboard planes who managed to make cell phone calls each described similar circumstances: The hijackers were armed with knives, in some cases stabbing flight attendants. The hijackers then took control of the planes.
Among the victims was Barbara Olson, the wife of Solicitor General Ted Olson. She had telephoned her husband twice during the hijacking, telling him that the terror-stricken passengers had been herded to the back of the aircraft. "What do I do?" she reportedly asked her husband.
"She called from the plane while it was being hijacked. I wish it wasn't so, but it is," her husband said.
At the World Trade Center, the dead and the doomed plummeted from the skyscrapers, among them a man and woman holding hands.
"People were jumping out of the windows from all the way at the top," said John Fay, a window washer at the World Trade Center. "I must have seen 15 people jump out of the windows. It was horrific."
"Freedom itself was attacked this morning and I assure you freedom will be defended," said Bush, who was in Sarasota, Fla. A speech on education was scrapped, and Bush headed to Louisiana's Barksdale Air Force Base and, in midflight, authorized Vice President Dick Cheney to put the U.S. military on high alert worldwide.
Bush said the government offices deserted after the bombings yesterday would open today.
More than nine hours after the U.S. attacks began, explosions could be heard north of the Afghan capital of Kabul, but American officials said the United States was not responsible. "It isn't us. I don't know who's doing it," Pentagon spokesman Craig Quigley said.
Congressional leaders of both parties, joined by most members, made a joint evening appearance on the steps of the Capitol as a demonstration of American resolve above political alliances. This is how yesterday's mayhem unfolded:
At about 8:45 a.m., a hijacked airliner crashed into the north tower of the trade center, the 25-year-old, glass-and-steel complex that was once the world's tallest.
Clyde Ebanks, an insurance company vice president, was at a meeting on the 103rd floor of the south tower when his boss said, "Look at that!" He turned to see a plane slam into the other tower. The enormity of the disaster was just sinking in when 18 minutes later, the south tower also was hit by a plane.
"All this stuff started falling and all this smoke was coming through. People were screaming, falling, and jumping out of the windows," said Jennifer Brickhouse, 34, Union, N.J.
The chaos was just beginning. Workers stumbled down scores of flights, their clothing torn and their lungs filled with smoke and dust.
Donald Burns, 34, was being evacuated from the 82nd floor when he saw four people in the stairwell. "I tried to help them but they didn't want anyone to touch them. The fire had melted their skin. Their clothes were tattered," he said.
Worse was to come. At 9:50, one tower collapsed, sending debris and dust cascading to the ground. At 10:30, the other tower crumbled.
Mayor Giuliani advised people to leave the lower part of the city and an exodus on foot ensued, sometimes by people covered in blood who had lost their shoes in the carpet of ash.
"If you are south of Canal Street, get out. Walk slowly and carefully," Giuliani said. "If you can't figure out what else to do, just walk north."
The attack at the World Trade Center shut down vast stretches of New York, stranding millions of people in their homes, offices and on the streets. Many could not get home or reach loved ones by phone.
New York City's primary election, to select candidates for mayor and other city offices, was called off.
The cause of the collapse of the twin towers was most likely the intense fire fed by thousands of gallons of jet fuel on board the two jetliners that crashed into the buildings, experts on skyscraper design said.
The high temperatures, in the thousands of degrees, probably weakened the steel supports, these experts said, causing the tower walls to buckle and allowing the floors above the crash sites to fall almost straight downward. That led to failures of the rest of the buildings.
In Washington, D.C., at about 9:30 a.m., a hijacked passenger plane sliced into the Pentagon, triggering a thunderous explosion and fierce fires in the five-sided headquarters of the American military.
The surprise assault, the first in the history of the 58-year-old building, came within an hour of the attack on New York and set off a state of emergency in the nation's capital that swiftly shut down the government.
American Airlines Flight 77, a Boeing 757 carrying 58 passengers and six crew members, was on a flight from Dulles International Airport west of Washington to Los Angeles when it flew low and slammed into the concrete-walled structure.
A half-hour after the Pentagon attack, United Airlines Flight 93, a Boeing 757 en route from Newark, N.J., to San Francisco, crashed about 80 miles southeast of Pittsburgh.
All that remained after the Boeing 757 crashed into an open field were a crater about eight to 10 feet deep, and 30 to 50 feet wide, pieces of debris no larger than a phone book, said Capt. Frank Monaco of the Pennsylvania State Police.
Today, authorities will begin trying to recover the flight's voice data recorder, debris and victims' remains. There were 35 passengers and seven crew members aboard.
NEW YORK -- In the most devastating terrorist onslaught ever waged against the United States, knife-wielding hijackers crashed two airliners into the World Trade Center yesterday, toppling its twin 110-story towers. The deadly calamity was witnessed on televisions across the world as another plane slammed into the Pentagon, and a fourth crashed outside Pittsburgh.
"Today, our nation saw evil," a grim-faced President Bush said last night in a televised address to the nation. He said thousands of lives were "suddenly ended by evil, despicable acts of terror." With the country on a war footing, the nation's aviation system was shut down, government buildings around the country were closed, along with major skyscrapers and a variety of other sites, ranging from Disney theme parks to the Golden Gate Bridge and U.N. headquarters in New York.
In his first prime-time Oval Office address, Bush asked the nation to find comfort in Scripture as he mourned the deaths and vowed to avenge their killings. He said the United States would find and punish "those behind these evil acts," and any country that harbors them.
Establishing the U.S. death toll could take weeks. The four airliners alone had 266 people aboard and there were no known survivors. Officials put the number of dead and wounded at the Pentagon at about 100 or more, with some news reports suggesting it could rise to 800.
In addition, a union official said he feared 300 New York firefighters had died in rescue efforts at the trade center and dozens of police officers were missing.
"The number of casualties will be more than most of us can bear," a visibly distraught Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said.
An army of 10,000 workers brought in dogs and lights last night as they began heading into ground zero to search for survivors and recover bodies.
All that remained of the twin towers by then was a pile of rubble and twisted steel that stood barely five stories high, leaving a huge gap in the New York City skyline and making the Empire State Building once again the city's tallest structure.
No one took responsibility for the attacks. But federal authorities identified Osama bin Laden, who has been given asylum by Afghanistan's hard-line Taliban rulers, as the prime suspect. The Taliban denied such suggestions.
Investigators descended on Logan International Airport in Boston yesterday, trying to determine how terrorists commandeered two nearly identical jets that took off moments apart and then crashed them into the trade center.
"Everything seemed normal when they left Logan," said Joseph Lawless, public safety director of the Massachusetts Port Authority. "We don't know how the hijackers accomplished what they did." The Boston Herald, quoting a source it did not identify, reported that authorities had seized a car at Logan that contained Arabic-language flight training manuals. The source said five Arab men had been identified as suspects, including a trained pilot. At least two of those men flew to Logan yesterday from Portland, Maine, the Herald said.
The luggage of one of the men who flew to the airport yesterday didn't make his scheduled connection. The Boston Globe reported the luggage contained a copy of the Koran, an instructional video on flying commercial airliners and a fuel consumption calculator.
The FBI refused to comment on the reports.
A senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, cited "strong information" implicating bin Laden. The official said Bush is considering a wide range of military options targeting bin Laden and, perhaps, Afghanistan.
Authorities also were focusing some of their efforts on possible bin Laden supporters in Florida based on the identification of a suspected hijacker on one of the manifests of the four jets that crashed, law enforcement sources told The Associated Press.
The sources said the FBI was preparing to search locations in central Florida that had links to the suspected bin Laden supporter on a jet manifest, the officials said. U.S. intelligence intercepted communications between bin Laden supporters discussing the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon, according to Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Also aided by harrowing cell phone calls from at least one flight attendant and two passengers aboard the jetliners before they crashed, U.S. officials began assembling a case linking bin Laden to the devastation.
The people aboard planes who managed to make cell phone calls each described similar circumstances: The hijackers were armed with knives, in some cases stabbing flight attendants. The hijackers then took control of the planes.
Among the victims was Barbara Olson, the wife of Solicitor General Ted Olson. She had telephoned her husband twice during the hijacking, telling him that the terror-stricken passengers had been herded to the back of the aircraft. "What do I do?" she reportedly asked her husband.
"She called from the plane while it was being hijacked. I wish it wasn't so, but it is," her husband said.
At the World Trade Center, the dead and the doomed plummeted from the skyscrapers, among them a man and woman holding hands.
"People were jumping out of the windows from all the way at the top," said John Fay, a window washer at the World Trade Center. "I must have seen 15 people jump out of the windows. It was horrific."
"Freedom itself was attacked this morning and I assure you freedom will be defended," said Bush, who was in Sarasota, Fla. A speech on education was scrapped, and Bush headed to Louisiana's Barksdale Air Force Base and, in midflight, authorized Vice President Dick Cheney to put the U.S. military on high alert worldwide.
Bush said the government offices deserted after the bombings yesterday would open today.
More than nine hours after the U.S. attacks began, explosions could be heard north of the Afghan capital of Kabul, but American officials said the United States was not responsible. "It isn't us. I don't know who's doing it," Pentagon spokesman Craig Quigley said.
Congressional leaders of both parties, joined by most members, made a joint evening appearance on the steps of the Capitol as a demonstration of American resolve above political alliances. This is how yesterday's mayhem unfolded:
At about 8:45 a.m., a hijacked airliner crashed into the north tower of the trade center, the 25-year-old, glass-and-steel complex that was once the world's tallest.
Clyde Ebanks, an insurance company vice president, was at a meeting on the 103rd floor of the south tower when his boss said, "Look at that!" He turned to see a plane slam into the other tower. The enormity of the disaster was just sinking in when 18 minutes later, the south tower also was hit by a plane.
"All this stuff started falling and all this smoke was coming through. People were screaming, falling, and jumping out of the windows," said Jennifer Brickhouse, 34, Union, N.J.
The chaos was just beginning. Workers stumbled down scores of flights, their clothing torn and their lungs filled with smoke and dust.
Donald Burns, 34, was being evacuated from the 82nd floor when he saw four people in the stairwell. "I tried to help them but they didn't want anyone to touch them. The fire had melted their skin. Their clothes were tattered," he said.
Worse was to come. At 9:50, one tower collapsed, sending debris and dust cascading to the ground. At 10:30, the other tower crumbled.
Mayor Giuliani advised people to leave the lower part of the city and an exodus on foot ensued, sometimes by people covered in blood who had lost their shoes in the carpet of ash.
"If you are south of Canal Street, get out. Walk slowly and carefully," Giuliani said. "If you can't figure out what else to do, just walk north."
The attack at the World Trade Center shut down vast stretches of New York, stranding millions of people in their homes, offices and on the streets. Many could not get home or reach loved ones by phone.
New York City's primary election, to select candidates for mayor and other city offices, was called off.
The cause of the collapse of the twin towers was most likely the intense fire fed by thousands of gallons of jet fuel on board the two jetliners that crashed into the buildings, experts on skyscraper design said.
The high temperatures, in the thousands of degrees, probably weakened the steel supports, these experts said, causing the tower walls to buckle and allowing the floors above the crash sites to fall almost straight downward. That led to failures of the rest of the buildings.
In Washington, D.C., at about 9:30 a.m., a hijacked passenger plane sliced into the Pentagon, triggering a thunderous explosion and fierce fires in the five-sided headquarters of the American military.
The surprise assault, the first in the history of the 58-year-old building, came within an hour of the attack on New York and set off a state of emergency in the nation's capital that swiftly shut down the government.
American Airlines Flight 77, a Boeing 757 carrying 58 passengers and six crew members, was on a flight from Dulles International Airport west of Washington to Los Angeles when it flew low and slammed into the concrete-walled structure.
A half-hour after the Pentagon attack, United Airlines Flight 93, a Boeing 757 en route from Newark, N.J., to San Francisco, crashed about 80 miles southeast of Pittsburgh.
All that remained after the Boeing 757 crashed into an open field were a crater about eight to 10 feet deep, and 30 to 50 feet wide, pieces of debris no larger than a phone book, said Capt. Frank Monaco of the Pennsylvania State Police.
Today, authorities will begin trying to recover the flight's voice data recorder, debris and victims' remains. There were 35 passengers and seven crew members aboard.
Saturday, May 12, 2012
November 4, 2001, Federal Computer Week, DOD to build virtual Pentagon,
November 4, 2001, Federal Computer Week, DOD to build virtual Pentagon, by Christopher Dorobek, Dan Caterinicchia, Diane Frank,
The Defense Department is developing plans for a "virtual Pentagon" that would enable its officials to continue to work even in the event of a large-scale attack on the Pentagon similar to the one Sept. 11, senior military information technology officials said last week.
The plans, also referred to as the "distributed Pentagon," are a significant redesign of DOD's IT contingency plans, which proved to be inadequate when terrorists crashed a commercial aircraft into the building. The attacks on the Pentagon and on the World Trade Center have given other agencies pause as well, as the once unthinkable has made them rethink plans they may never have expected to use.
Sept. 11 "was a wake-up call [where people said], 'Oh, that could happen to my data,' " said Margaret Myers, DOD's acting deputy chief information officer.
Among other problems, DOD realized its computing environment had numerous single points of failure — applications or databases that, if taken out, could not be recovered, and critical network links that, if down, could not be worked around.
The Army lost a significant amount of budget data, Myers said. The Navy, which lost about 70 percent of its Pentagon office space in the attack, lost some data, but had its backup data stored off-site.
DOD's contingency plans made before the Year 2000 date change provided some valuable information, but did not go far enough, Myers said.
"It helped in knowing where the critical paths were, and that was useful information," she said. But it did not address the issue of contingencies if the paths were destroyed altogether, she said.
The virtual Pentagon would create redundancies, with backup sites located away from the Pentagon. The primary and redundant systems would share a network, so critical information could be continually backed up.
But the redundant systems would have their own network connections. If the primary network were destroyed, Pentagon officials could bring up this shadow network and continue working without disruption.
The virtual Pentagon fits into DOD's larger plans to develop a network-centric environment, in which personnel have rapid access to the information they need, wherever they are.
There will be few, if any, single points of vulnerability in a network-centric environment, DOD Chief Information Officer John Stenbit said in an Oct. 29 presentation at the Milcom conference in Vienna, Va.
DOD was sensitive to contingency planning and the need for a virtual Pentagon before Sept. 11, but "unfortunately sometimes you need a catastrophic event" to get the proper funding and other requirements through, said Robert Nabors, senior vice president for enterprise solutions at Electronic Data Systems Corp.
Nabors, who was head of the Army's Communications-Electronics Command at Fort Monmouth, N.J., until he retired last month, was involved in the design of the Pentagon's IT modernization in 1994 and its deployment four years later.
The effort will be costly because there are "big servers and big databases in the Pentagon that need to be replicated somewhere else [along with] the transmission lines to link them together.... But we're willing to pay now," he said.
Lt. Gen. Harry Raduege Jr., director of the Defense Information Systems Agency, said DISA already had backup emergency centers outside the Pentagon, through which "we were able to continue with operations." Raduege said his agency will continue to maintain and evolve its backup systems and is working closely with the Army, which is responsible for rebuilding the Pentagon.
But DISA was better prepared than other agencies.
The Secret Service lost its New York City office in the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, but it was not the agency's first lesson in terrorism and backup and recovery — it also lost an office in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, said Stephen Colo, deputy assistant director and CIO.
What Sept. 11 taught the agency is that risk mitigation is essential. Without funding to implement the contingency plans, they are useless. "You have to expend the funds to reduce the risk," Colo said.
But the Secret Service hadn't received the money to back up its New York City office computers, so when the World Trade Center towers collapsed, the files and information that were stored there disappeared. This let an unknown number of criminals being tracked by the Secret Service go free, because the files for the investigations were completely lost.
Timothy Atkin, vice president and director of SRA International Inc.'s critical infrastructure protection program, said civilian and defense agencies are paying closer attention to their contingency plans following Sept. 11.
But that's only part of the solution. Since the attacks, many agencies have realized that their IT contingency plans, generally developed by the CIO's office, are separate from the agency's continuity of operations plans, which focus on people and mission-essential functions.
"One of the things they discovered is the importance of these things being integrated," Atkin said.
The Sept. 11 attacks were a learning experience for most agencies, even if they were not directly affected, according to officials speaking at a breakfast hosted last week by the Northern Virginia Technology Council.
The Treasury Department learned that it needs more than one backup-and-recovery plan, especially for large departments. After the attacks, everyone was calling into the same backup site, and that location could not adequately handle the requests, said Deputy CIO Mayi Canales.
At the Department of Health and Human Services, telecommunications is a prime concern. On Sept. 11, with wireless networks in the Washington, D.C., area virtually gridlocked, HHS found that the only way to communicate was through Research in Motion Ltd.'s BlackBerry and Palm Inc. handheld computing devices, said Deputy CIO Brian Burns.
HHS is now making sure the redundancy and tools are in place to make communication possible everywhere, including via wireless devices, he said.
The Commerce Department, meanwhile, is focusing more on the survivability of the services it provides, said Karen Hogan, acting deputy CIO. The department was making a push to centralize and consolidate its IT systems, but is now rethinking that strategy. Commerce also may add an immediate backup for the National Weather Service.
Christopher J. Dorobek is the co-anchor of Federal News Radio’s afternoon drive program, The Daily Debrief with Chris Dorobek and Amy Morris, and the founder, publisher and editor of the DorobekInsider.com, a leading blog for the Federal IT community.
Dorobek joined Federal News Radio in 2008 with 16 years of experience covering government issues with an emphasis on government information technology. Prior to joining Federal News Radio, Dorobek was editor-in-chief of Federal Computer Week, the leading news magazine for government IT decision-makers and the flagship of the 1105 Government Information Group portfolio of publications. As editor-in-chief, Dorobek served as a member of the senior leadership team at 1105 Government Information Group, providing daily editorial direction and management for FCW magazine, FCW.com, Government Health IT and its other editorial products.
Dorobek joined FCW in 2001 as a senior reporter and assumed increasing responsibilities, becoming managing editor and executive editor before being named editor-in-chief in 2006. Prior to joining FCW, Dorobek was a technology reporter at PlanetGov.com, one of the first online community centers for current and former government employees. He also spent five years at Government Computer News, another leading industry publication, covering a variety of federal IT-related issues.
Dorobek is a frequent speaker on issues involving the government IT industry, and has appeared as a frequent contributor to NewsChannel 8’s Federal News Today program. He began his career as a reporter at the Foster’s Daily Democrat, a daily newspaper in Dover, N.H. He is a graduate of the University of Southern California. He lives in Washington, DC.
The Defense Department is developing plans for a "virtual Pentagon" that would enable its officials to continue to work even in the event of a large-scale attack on the Pentagon similar to the one Sept. 11, senior military information technology officials said last week.
The plans, also referred to as the "distributed Pentagon," are a significant redesign of DOD's IT contingency plans, which proved to be inadequate when terrorists crashed a commercial aircraft into the building. The attacks on the Pentagon and on the World Trade Center have given other agencies pause as well, as the once unthinkable has made them rethink plans they may never have expected to use.
Sept. 11 "was a wake-up call [where people said], 'Oh, that could happen to my data,' " said Margaret Myers, DOD's acting deputy chief information officer.
Among other problems, DOD realized its computing environment had numerous single points of failure — applications or databases that, if taken out, could not be recovered, and critical network links that, if down, could not be worked around.
The Army lost a significant amount of budget data, Myers said. The Navy, which lost about 70 percent of its Pentagon office space in the attack, lost some data, but had its backup data stored off-site.
DOD's contingency plans made before the Year 2000 date change provided some valuable information, but did not go far enough, Myers said.
"It helped in knowing where the critical paths were, and that was useful information," she said. But it did not address the issue of contingencies if the paths were destroyed altogether, she said.
The virtual Pentagon would create redundancies, with backup sites located away from the Pentagon. The primary and redundant systems would share a network, so critical information could be continually backed up.
But the redundant systems would have their own network connections. If the primary network were destroyed, Pentagon officials could bring up this shadow network and continue working without disruption.
The virtual Pentagon fits into DOD's larger plans to develop a network-centric environment, in which personnel have rapid access to the information they need, wherever they are.
There will be few, if any, single points of vulnerability in a network-centric environment, DOD Chief Information Officer John Stenbit said in an Oct. 29 presentation at the Milcom conference in Vienna, Va.
DOD was sensitive to contingency planning and the need for a virtual Pentagon before Sept. 11, but "unfortunately sometimes you need a catastrophic event" to get the proper funding and other requirements through, said Robert Nabors, senior vice president for enterprise solutions at Electronic Data Systems Corp.
Nabors, who was head of the Army's Communications-Electronics Command at Fort Monmouth, N.J., until he retired last month, was involved in the design of the Pentagon's IT modernization in 1994 and its deployment four years later.
The effort will be costly because there are "big servers and big databases in the Pentagon that need to be replicated somewhere else [along with] the transmission lines to link them together.... But we're willing to pay now," he said.
Lt. Gen. Harry Raduege Jr., director of the Defense Information Systems Agency, said DISA already had backup emergency centers outside the Pentagon, through which "we were able to continue with operations." Raduege said his agency will continue to maintain and evolve its backup systems and is working closely with the Army, which is responsible for rebuilding the Pentagon.
But DISA was better prepared than other agencies.
The Secret Service lost its New York City office in the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, but it was not the agency's first lesson in terrorism and backup and recovery — it also lost an office in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, said Stephen Colo, deputy assistant director and CIO.
What Sept. 11 taught the agency is that risk mitigation is essential. Without funding to implement the contingency plans, they are useless. "You have to expend the funds to reduce the risk," Colo said.
But the Secret Service hadn't received the money to back up its New York City office computers, so when the World Trade Center towers collapsed, the files and information that were stored there disappeared. This let an unknown number of criminals being tracked by the Secret Service go free, because the files for the investigations were completely lost.
Timothy Atkin, vice president and director of SRA International Inc.'s critical infrastructure protection program, said civilian and defense agencies are paying closer attention to their contingency plans following Sept. 11.
But that's only part of the solution. Since the attacks, many agencies have realized that their IT contingency plans, generally developed by the CIO's office, are separate from the agency's continuity of operations plans, which focus on people and mission-essential functions.
"One of the things they discovered is the importance of these things being integrated," Atkin said.
The Sept. 11 attacks were a learning experience for most agencies, even if they were not directly affected, according to officials speaking at a breakfast hosted last week by the Northern Virginia Technology Council.
The Treasury Department learned that it needs more than one backup-and-recovery plan, especially for large departments. After the attacks, everyone was calling into the same backup site, and that location could not adequately handle the requests, said Deputy CIO Mayi Canales.
At the Department of Health and Human Services, telecommunications is a prime concern. On Sept. 11, with wireless networks in the Washington, D.C., area virtually gridlocked, HHS found that the only way to communicate was through Research in Motion Ltd.'s BlackBerry and Palm Inc. handheld computing devices, said Deputy CIO Brian Burns.
HHS is now making sure the redundancy and tools are in place to make communication possible everywhere, including via wireless devices, he said.
The Commerce Department, meanwhile, is focusing more on the survivability of the services it provides, said Karen Hogan, acting deputy CIO. The department was making a push to centralize and consolidate its IT systems, but is now rethinking that strategy. Commerce also may add an immediate backup for the National Weather Service.
Christopher J. Dorobek is the co-anchor of Federal News Radio’s afternoon drive program, The Daily Debrief with Chris Dorobek and Amy Morris, and the founder, publisher and editor of the DorobekInsider.com, a leading blog for the Federal IT community.
Dorobek joined Federal News Radio in 2008 with 16 years of experience covering government issues with an emphasis on government information technology. Prior to joining Federal News Radio, Dorobek was editor-in-chief of Federal Computer Week, the leading news magazine for government IT decision-makers and the flagship of the 1105 Government Information Group portfolio of publications. As editor-in-chief, Dorobek served as a member of the senior leadership team at 1105 Government Information Group, providing daily editorial direction and management for FCW magazine, FCW.com, Government Health IT and its other editorial products.
Dorobek joined FCW in 2001 as a senior reporter and assumed increasing responsibilities, becoming managing editor and executive editor before being named editor-in-chief in 2006. Prior to joining FCW, Dorobek was a technology reporter at PlanetGov.com, one of the first online community centers for current and former government employees. He also spent five years at Government Computer News, another leading industry publication, covering a variety of federal IT-related issues.
Dorobek is a frequent speaker on issues involving the government IT industry, and has appeared as a frequent contributor to NewsChannel 8’s Federal News Today program. He began his career as a reporter at the Foster’s Daily Democrat, a daily newspaper in Dover, N.H. He is a graduate of the University of Southern California. He lives in Washington, DC.
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