Francis Berger

Brief Blogging Break

6/28/2022

Regular readers have probably noticed that I have been blogging rather sporadically over the past few weeks.

I can't pinpoint the exact reason for my recent inconsistency and have consoled myself with the notion that a blogging break might be in order.

With that in mind, I plan to take a week or so off to disconnect and recharge. I expect to be back here in early July.

Until then . . .

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The Hills Are Alive With Confirmed System Manipulation and Coercion

6/24/2022

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Back in November of last year, I wrote a post in which I outlined the peck mandate that Austria planned to enforce at the beginning of this year. The mandate went into effect in February and was suspended a month later in March. The suspension was extended in May.

Now, the Austrian government has announced that it will scrap mandatory pecks altogether in August when the current suspension expires. The reason? The peck mandates are not motivating the unpecked to become pecked and are instead causing "social divisiveness" during a time when national solidarity is crucial.

When the Austrian government first suspended its peck mandate -- a mandate it never technically enforced despite the coercive propaganda campaigns warning of fines, prison sentences, and perpetual lockdown conditions for the unpecked -- I wrote a post in which I noted that the whole peck mandate was little more than a massive exercise in coercion and manipulation that was meant to pressure people into making a voluntary, personal choice in favor of the peck.

But wait a minute! The Austrian government had painted the unpecked into a corner with its threats and ultimatums. It presented the unpecked with a vision of the future in which the unpecked would be punished and stigmatized forever. Jobs, livelihoods, children's futures, education, personal ambitions, dreams, pastimes, travel, vacations, state healthcare, basic services for the unpecked would all be in jeopardy. No unpecked Austrian could ever hope to "return to normal" ever again!

The only way the unpecked could hope to escape from this ominous, ghastly future was to voluntary submit to the peck. As a sweetener, the government even ran a peck lottery that guaranteed the unpecked a one-in-three chance of winning money if they would just roll up the contagious sleeves of their biologically dangerous arms and agree to get pecked.

Under such conditions, what real choice did the unpecked have?

Well, it turns out the unpecked had a lot more choice than many imagined because technically speaking, no one, not even the Austrian government, held a peck to anyone's head.

Of course, this current bit of communication from the Austrian government about abolishing peck mandates also falls under the banner of manipulation, so you are advised to take it all with a grain of salt . . .

In the meantime, keep the Austrian peck mandate events in mind the next time you encounter System communication, especially concerning the next "current thing", whatever that ends up being.

Remember, all System communication is manipulation. Nearly every bit of it is lies, coercion, misrepresentation, fraud, and undue influence, and it is all geared toward your destruction and damnation.

They want you to willingly, unapologetically, and unrepentantly submit to the lies, coercion, misrepresentation, fraud, and undue influence. They want you to consent and submit to satanic totalitarianism.

That way they can say it was ultimately your choice. And guess what?

It was.

Note added: Consenting or submitting to satanic coercion does not instantly disqualify an individual from being a "good" Christian. Refusing to repent for the consent or submission does.

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The Birdemic is Dead; Long Live the Birdemic

6/23/2022

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If I didn't know better, I would be positively convinced that the birdemic is dead.

After all, so much of "normal" has returned since the spring. In my neck of the woods, people can leave and enter the country without any sort of intense questioning or testing.

Huge pop music festivals and other cultural events are drawing boisterous throngs from around Europe and the world.

Refugees continue to pour in from the country to the east, and as far as I know, none are required to show any proof of being pecked.

Furthermore, the media has more or less fallen silent on the birdemic. Instead of running seemingly endless pieces on the pecks, masks, social distancing, peck passports, and all the rest of it, the media is now content to focus on pressing issues like where Hungarians plan to spend their summer vacations.

Against the backdrop of what I was experiencing a mere three or four months ago, it is all a rather surreal.

Be that as it may, the birdemic continues to linger. Like the stench of a rotting corpse hidden somewhere beneath the floorboards, the birdemic refuses to go away. I sense it is just a matter of time before we are back to what has become a sort of customary fear program, augmented this time around by other factors like climate change, war, high prices, supply shortages, or whatever.

Every now and then a ripple rolls across the placid surface of the media's birdemic coverage. Short articles about some minister somewhere prophesying a return to masking; a blurb or two about the infant peck program initiated in America; or the odd mention of the WHO's global birdemic treaty. Other than that, a person could easily be persuaded that the birdemic is not only over, but that it will never return.

In all honesty, I wish I could persuade myself that the birdemic is over, but I can't for the simple reason that so much of it is still ongoing. And come September or October, I suspect we'll be right back in the thick of it.

Contrary some opinions, the masses will not reject the fear and manipulation this time around. No, no -- they will likely be on board with whatever program the System serves them . . . yet again.

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Heaven as Creativity

6/19/2022

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Yesterday I described heaven as fulfillment, but the essence of that fulfillment stems from creativity, and when I imagine heaven, I envision it as being free to create with God.

In mortal life, I believe we experience freedom with God only through moments of creativity -- those moments in life when we are able to tap into something immeasurably deep within us and bring forth an upsurge of being that transcends the entropy, evil, and necessity inherent in the world process.

The fulfillment of tasks is a certain kind of "need to do"; creativity is another class of "need to do" altogether.

Creativity is the appearance of something that is new and original to our unique selves -- that deepest, innermost aspect of ourselves.

It is the free movement of this deep inner self attuning itself with Creation and introducing into Creation something Creation alone could not have introduced.

Once the creative movement is introduced, God takes notice and consents to freely work and co-operate with the creative impulse being introduced into Creation. In that moment, we are "free with" God. The impulse is added to Creation, becomes a part of Creation, expands and deepens Creation.

When I think of heaven, I envision it as this sort of eternal co-creation, working creatively with God and with other beings who have also chosen to freely align themselves with God in love.

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Heaven as Fulfillment

6/18/2022

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Whenever I think about heaven, the first thing that comes to mind is the fulfillment of Christ's promise of eternal life for those who choose to believe on Him and follow Him.

Beyond that, I imagine heaven to be fulfilling. Not in the tranquil, static sense of kicking back after having achieved a great aim of objective, but fulfilling in the sense of always being involved in creative and productive thoughts, actions, and tasks that lead to ever greater growth, understanding, and development -- of constantly working toward challenging and engaging goals that expand into larger goals or merge with the goals of others to create co-operative goals.

When I imagine heaven, I inevitably picture it as one of my near perfect days at home with my family. On those near perfect days I spend much of the day outside in the yard working in the garden with my wife and son or hammering away at small home improvement projects like installing ceramic tile or finishing up that outbuilding I began renovating last summer.

I don't think about the world too much on those days. Instead, I think about what heaven must be like. I also think about the butterflies fluttering around the lavender my wife planted next to the well, the village storks and their four (!) chicks, the charming puppet show my son and some of his classmates recently performed, the hens pecking away at the plastic bucket I accidentally left in the run, and what kind of post I should write for the blog that day.

These thoughts run through my mind as I weed the garden or paint the interior walls of the outbuilding. Blackbird song and cuckoo calls come and go with the breeze. A neighbor pops by and asks me to help him pack some furniture into his van. As we walk to his house, my son joins us and meets up with the neighbor's kids to go for a bike ride.

After I return home, my wife asks me to install some ceramic tile in the laundry room. When the job is done a few hours later, she smiles, kisses me, and compliments my work. Back in the yard, I sit down near the well and watch the butterflies for a bit and then join my wife at the raspberry bushes where we silently pick the first of this year's crop.

Later, I cut the grass and watch the setting sun flood the landscape in deep orange and yellow. My son returns from his outing just before the sun dips below the horizon and together we round up the hens and put them away for the night. As we are doing so, my son informs me that his bicycle sear is is wobbly, and I promise to have a look at it first thing in the morning.

Going into the house, I reflect back on everything I did and then look forward to all the tasks I will do the on following near perfect day.

Demonic poison floods the world, but I can honestly say that I live a fulfilling life, and when I think of heaven, I picture as being even more fulfilling than one of my near perfect days.

Fulfill. From the Old English fullfyllan. It's an interesting word when you consider it for a moment. On the one hand, it represents the state of "making full" or of "being full" marking some sort of completion. On the other hand, you could also interpret it as filling that needs to be completed to reach the state of being full.

When I imagine heaven, I picture it as a state of fullness that is eternally being filled without ever being completed. The fullness keeps expanding as it is forever being filled.

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What Keeps Me Occupied These Days . . .

6/16/2022

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The weeds got the better of me last year. They haven't overrun my garden (yet) this year, but man are they ever on the attack!

In the Garden - János Vaszary - 1893

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Rejecting is Not Overcoming

6/15/2022

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It's all fine and well to reject some things because -- let's face it -- some things in life simply must be rejected outright. At the same time, we should not confuse rejecting with overcoming.

Rejecting involves rebuffing, repudiating, repulsing, repelling, and refusing. When we reject, we dismiss, deny, or disavow something because it is inadequate, faulty, wrong, unacceptable, or just plain evil.

Some things require little work and can be dismissed out of hand. However, for other things, rejection is inadequate. More is required.

Things that cannot be rejected must be overcome -- meaning that they must be dealt with and gotten the better of.

Our primary purpose is not to reject the world but to learn from it and strive to overcome it.

And that makes all the difference in the world.

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Christians Should Not Lower Themselves to Pick Up System Power; They Must Be Powerful Outwith the System

6/13/2022

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The following is from my response to an incisive point Dr. Charlton made in connection with this post (I have modified the text somewhat):

Yes, we certainly agree that pursuing worldly, conventional power within the framework of our current demonic, totalitarian system is not conducive to being a Christian.

Furthermore, recognition of this must trump all "good" motivations to "do good" at the societal/political/economic level. No matter which way you slice it, there's really not much a Christian can do or should do within current power structures because all are blatantly calibrated for destruction and damnation. Christians who aim to assume positions of worldly power within the current milieu will likely end up unintentionally exacerbating and amplifying the coercion, manipulation, lies, violence, etc.

When Christians think about power -- and I think they should because to consider oneself powerless is a self-defeating and despairing position -- they should do so primarily at the (inner) spiritual level within a personal context that is outwith the System, which is exactly where authentic power exists.

We should focus on connecting to God, reality, and others in a manner that recognizes that true power resides in these connections -- in these kinds of participation (to borrow your phrase from Barfield) -- and that these connections influence the world and eternity in ways coercive worldly power cannot.

To return to a point I meade in an earlier post about power -- we really need to wrap our heads around the reality that Jesus IS more powerful than the worldly powers that crucified him otherwise we can never hope to understand that we ARE more powerful than the worldly powers that harass, coerce, and manipulate us.

However, as you stated in the excellent comment you left on that post, this "requires that we consider the spiritual as well as material, and eternity as well as the duration of this mortal life."

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Berdyaev's Concept of Personality is Another Way of Understanding the Divine Self

6/12/2022

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Personality is a key concept in Nikolai Berdyaev's Christian philosophy, and he describes personality as that unique essence in each individual that correlates to God. The more an individual moves toward God, the more pronounced and defined his personality becomes.

Above all else, this movement of man toward God is not based on coercion, force, or violence, but on a free decision grounded in love. The correlation requires man to take the first step because God will not violate human freedom, but once that first step is taken, God will begin to aid the individual in revealing personality.

Berdyaev's concept of personality extends far beyond psychological and drills down into the spiritual, which makes it simultaneously easy to comprehend but difficult to nail down. For example, Berdyaev dedicates more than thirty pages in Slavery and Freedom to delineating what personality is. He begins by declaring the importance of personality:

The entire world is nothing in comparison with human personality, the unique person of a man, with his unique fate.

And immediately follows this up with:

Personality is like nothing else in the world, there is nothing with which it can be compared, nothing which can be placed on a level with it.

To my understanding, Berdyaev's concept of personality does not address the conscious, superficial, ego "personality self" but the the true self, real self, or divine self -- that true, individual part of us that is divine and active within us.

Later in Slavery and Freedom, Berdyaev states:

Personality is the absolute existential center. Personality determines itself from within, outside the whole object world, and only determination from within and arising out of freedom, is personality.

He then outlines personality as the conduit for divine-human connection and correlation:

The image of the human personality is not only a human image, it is also the image of God. In that fact lie hidden all the enigmas and mysteries of man. It is the mystery of divine-humanity, which is the paradox that cannot be expressed in rational terms.

And what, exactly, is personality meant to do to tackle these enigmas and mysteries?

Personality is bound up with the consciousness of vocation. Every man ought to be conscious of that vocation, which is independent of the extent of his gifts. It is a vocation in an individually unrepeatable form to give an answer to the call of God and put one's gifts to creative use.

Which leads to the matter of how Berdyaev believes an individual can answer the call of God:

Personality is conscious of itself, listens to the inward voice, and obeys that only. It is not submissive to outside voices. The greatest among men have always listened exclusively to the inward voice and have refused to conform so far as the world is concerned.

So what happens after an individual has answered the call the God? According to Berdyaev:

. . . personality is defined above all not by its relation to society and the cosmos, not by its relation to the world which is enslaved by objectivization, but by its relation to God, and from this hidden and cherished inward relation it draws strength for its free relation to the world and to man.

Ironically enough, becoming attuned to Berdyaev's conceptualization of the divine self as "personality" requires overcoming what we consciously perceive as personality -- those surface-level, socialized, rationalized, and civilized aspects of ourselves that we believe comprise our true selves.

Throughout Slavery and Freedom, Berdyaev refers to personality as "activity, opposition, and victory over the dragging burden of the world, the triumph of freedom over the world's slavery . . . personality is effort and conflict, the conquest of the self and of the world, victory over slavery . . . "

And what must personality do to achieve this triumph of freedom over the world's slavery?

Personality must perform its self-existent, original, creative acts, and this alone makes it personality and constitutes its unique value.

But all of the above requires the movement of an individual toward God. The correlation begins in personality, but it requires us to take the first step toward Christ, who is the living, breathing "personification" of personality as Berdyaev defines it.

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Authentic Power Does Not Require You to Lower Yourself

6/10/2022

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Power is always dangerous. It attracts the worst and corrupts the best. Power is only given to those who are prepared to lower themselves to pick it up.

The lines above appear in Michael Hirst's six-season saga Vikings -- a sprawling and somewhat curious blend of mythology, legend, fiction, and history that depicts the lives of the legendary Viking hero Ragnar Lothbrok and his five sons during the tumultuous and violent backdrop of the ninth century.

The Ragnar Lothbrok character employs the lines as a warning to his son, Björn Ironside, who reveals his future ambition of securing power; more specifically the power of a king.

Ragnar’s warning pertains specifically to worldly political power, the struggles over which end up consuming three-fourths of the plotlines within the six season series encompassing the halls and courts of Norway, Wessex, Northhumbria, Frankia, Kiev, and beyond.

On one level, the entire series amounts to little more than a damning epic against the danger inherent in worldly political power; a danger that manifests in the seemingly never-ending betrayals, lies, scheming, assassinations, plots, and coups that permeate each episode of the show.

Suffice to say, like the Ragnar Lothbrok character, Vikings – as a series – presents power as a negative concept and value – a dangerous and corruptive force that attracts the worst of people, who are driven by intense ambition and self-interest.

Unfortunately, the worldly political power portrayed in Vikings can barely hold a candle to the political machinations of our modern world. Power may have always been dangerous, but it has rarely, if ever, been as dangerous as it is now. Worldly political power has always been a "necessary evil", but it has never been the pure evil it is now.

The monolithic satanic global System that consolidated its power in 2020 is openly and vehemently opposed to God and Creation. Though it still corrupts whatever little good remains within its mechanisms, it does not need to expend too much energy on corruption anymore.

The worldly power the System wields only attracts the worst now. It also bars anyone but the worst from gaining access to it. Those who seek power today must indeed lower themselves, all the way to the depths of hell, which is exactly what the overwhelming majority of those in power have done.

The current state of worldly power presents a major challenge for all Christians. What, if any, accommodations should Christians make? Willingly cooperating with the System is a recipe for damnation. Challenging the System’s power in any meaningful material sense is virtually impossible. Reforming the System is even more impossible. Disconnecting from the System entirely is literally impossible.

Given such circumstances, what options do Christians motivated by the desire to function within this power structure or gain power to “do good” have?

To put it bluntly – not many. The System will not allow a sincere Christian anywhere near real external power unless it can thoroughly corrupt or destroy the sincere Christian in the process. And let’s face it, the System has done a stellar job corrupting and destroying Christians. Any Christian seeking external, worldly power today will have to stoop to pick it up.

Does this mean that Christians should turn their backs on all semblances of worldly power and simply accept a state of powerlessness?

No. Powerlessness is not a good thing. One thing Christians should do is re-examine their attitudes towards power. Like everything else in Creation, power – even manifestations of external, material power – possesses an undeniable spiritual dimension. Exclusively external material power does not exist. Everything we perceive and experience as external and worldly power emanates from an inward spiritual force.

The Ragnar Lothbrok character presents power as a negative concept and value. His views on power echo conventional views, views that are often promulgated by the “powerful” to deter others from seeking power. But is power really a negative concept and value? If all power is rooted in the spiritual, then shouldn’t power be a positive concept and value instead? And if it is indeed a positive concept and value, why do we only experience its negative variety in the external world, especially today?

In his essay Power and Coercive Violence, Nikolai Berdyaev argues that Christians must begin working on “a radical and spiritual transformation of their attitude towards power, in awareness and in action” to overcome the servility and slave-like humility that mars Christian thinking and leads to nothing beyond inability and dependence. As Dr. Charlton noted in a comment the other day, this sort of transformation would have to involve consideration of “the spiritual as well as the material, and eternity as well as the duration of mortal life.” Suffice to say, this is no small task.

Berdyaev wades into the radical and spiritual transformation by dividing power into two broad categories – coercive force and authentic power. Power that stems from the spirit but is ultimately directed against God and Creation, either intentionally or unintentionally, is a diabolical form of power. Contrary to appearances, diabolical power is not real power, but the illusion of power because it relies on the instillation of fear and danger and upon the implementation of what Berdyaev refers to as coercive violence, which is a wholly external and negative force.

Coercive violence manifests entirely as external power. All contact with coercive violence is external contact. Those in “power” resort to coercive violence because they lack spiritual persuasiveness and appeal. They cannot touch or move the spirit. They cannot drill down into the depths. They cannot positively motivate or inspire. They seek to break down rather than build up. They abhor freedom and work to control, restrain, and restrict. Coercive violence is an oppositional form of power that presents itself as being over us or against us. It happens upon us, forces itself upon us, threatens us, terrifies us, and violates us even when – or especially when – it claims to be aiding or protecting us.

On the other hand, authentic power stems from freedom and the spirit. Authentic power aligns with God and Creation, is always personal, and it presents itself as being with us, for us. Authentic power invites us and entices us. It seeks to establish inner contact with our souls and spiritually moves us. It never forces itself upon us, nor does it threaten us. It works upon us only after it has received freely provided affirmation.

Authentic power is internal contact. It appeals to what is realest about us and seeks to expand us and build us up. It instills freedom and leaves the control, restraint, and restriction of that freedom in care of our discipline. It motivates us to align ourselves with God and Creation.

Authentic power speaks to the deepest, innermost part of us – the divine self. When we encounter authentic power, we feel as if we have encountered something familiar, something we have always longed to encounter. We feel delight.

The radical and spiritual transformation of our attitude towards power lies not in humility, non-resistance, servility, or a refusal to participate but in empowerment – in the cultivation of spiritual strength. Only authentic spiritual power can overcome the inauthentic, diabolical power of coercive violence. Yet the cultivation of spiritual power depends upon a positive concept of power, a positive concept Berdyaev describes in the following manner:

Power -- is of God. God first of all is power. In every great man, genius or saint, is power. In every great deed in the world there is power. In a great value -- is power. In great creativity -- is power. In life itself is power. Powerlessness, an insufficiency of power is something very negative, bad a thing.

I would add that God is power because God is love, and God’s love is the greatest power of all.

Diabolical power in the form coercive violence can push around our bodies and cause a great deal of physical discomfort and pain. It can even go as far as to kill us, seemingly at will, but it cannot push around our souls – unless we let it.

Diabolical power always involves lowering. One really does have to stoop to pick it up.
System power relies exclusively on coercive violence – on lies, manipulations, harassment, pressure, oppression, intimidation, etc. – all of which is aimed exclusively at our false selves. Those who respond willingly and positively to coercive violence or see it as the only authentic power available to men lack the spiritual resources needed to recognize and understand authentic power.

The only way to overcome diabolical power and its coercive violence is by rising and stretching toward a higher power while simultaneously withdrawing toward an inner power, both of which exist outwith the System.

Authentic power is inner power. Only those wielding coercive violence consider it dangerous.

Authentic power fortifies the best and draws the worst towards repentance.

Authentic power is created, not given, but it is only created by those who raise themselves up toward God after they have discovered the source of God’s power within themselves.

Authentic power is the “power” to be in the world but not of the world. Put another way, authentic power is in the world and overcomes the world.

Those who wish to gain power to "do good" in the world should focus first on overcoming the world -- at least a little.

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