How Do You Know When You've Entered the Matrix?

There is a great scene in the 1999 classic sci-fi movie "The Matrix" in which Keanu Reeves, who plays the protagonist, Neo, who has taken the "red pill," now sees the world for what it really is and not the artificial "Matrix" or computer-constructed dreamland designed to keep human beings from realizing they are nothing more than bio-batteries used to fuel the needs of the artificial intelligence and robots.

There is a very short sequence in the movie when Neo is on a secret mission with several of his revolutionary colleagues trying to disrupt the operation inside the artificial world of the Matrix without getting caught.  As their small group runs through the streets and back alleys, Neo is the only one to notice a small black cat that runs across the pathway.  He notices that the same black cat appears to have done the same action twice.  This would be a physical impossibility - running to the right side but reappearing again on the left side.

In the film, this sequence happens very quickly.  It is like a very subtle glitch.  It happens so imperceptibly that most people wouldn't notice it.

I am finding in the last several weeks that there have been several such repetitive-seeming glitches in my life.  This has led me to the sci-fi - but perhaps rational physics - explanation that something is being weirdly "adjusted" to our time line.  This has resulted in some odd glitches that should be there.

The first glitch occurred about two weeks ago.  I decided to take my normal walk outdoors and around the neighborhood.  It is a very suburban area and since everyone here in New Jersey is under orders to Shelter in Place since March 19, 2020, most of us don't have much to do in the way of physical exercise except to go outside and walk or bike.  Lots of people were out walking on that sunny day.  A thin gentleman with white hair passed me going the opposite direction on a bicycle with rather thick tires - kind of like a mountain bike.  I didn't know him but we both waved a friendly hello as we passed each other.  I continued walking and approximately one minute later, it appeared that the same gentleman with white hair on the bicycle passed me again - from the same direction!  This would have been an impossibility unless he had turned around, cycled past me from behind me, then turned around again and came towards me a second time.  Clearly, there hadn't been enough time for that and I would have noticed a bike coming from behind me - and there hadn't been any at all!  I

It disturbed my sense of reality so much after the second seemingly identical white-haired man rode past me on his bicycle, also with thick tires, and also waved at me and smiled, that I made a mental note in my head that he looked just like the (now deceased)character actor James Rebhorn who played roles in movies like "Meet the Parents."

Unless this neighbor (?) of mine had a twin, I don't know what could have explained this curious sensation that time had suddenly glitched in my reality!  As a weird synchronicity, the movie "Meet the Parents" played on TV that night and I saw the actor I had imagined as looking like the man on the bicycle.

So, what to make of this strangeness?  

For four days, I noticed there was an ant in the second floor bathroom.  Nothing particularly unusual for springtime in a house in the suburbs.  I felt oddly sorry the ant that seemed to be aimlessly wandering around in circles in the center of the room.  Unlike most other ants I have observed, it did not seem to have picked up on the scent of other ant trails and had no obvious sense of purpose.  I picked it up on a piece of paper and put it outside.  There were no other ants visible in the room.  The next day, there was another ant in exactly the same location with the same behavior.  And again, the next day.  And next day.  There was one additional ant.  They both walked aimlessly on the same tile as the first one.  I wondered if I had actually dreamed taking the first ant outside!  These ants were not behaving normally and simply seemed to "replace" the first one.

There have been other instances somewhat like these recently that have made me wonder if - while we are all safely out of the way and without prying eyes and isolated - that someone or some entity has, in fact, been playing with our spacetime fabric.  The telltale signs may be nothing more than a mundane black cat, a man bicycling, or an ant wandering around on the same tile in my bathroom for days.

I just don't know.

Emerging Global Need to Understand Time Travel

The global COVID-19 pandemic has brought into very sharp focus the need for all people to become far more away of time and how it works.  Most people treat time as if it is a product of their immediate sensory environment - as if time were like the air you breathe in your lungs or the light you see in the sky.  Time is treated as an immediate, sensory element.  This horrible pandemic has caught most of the world by surprise.  However, in retrospect, looking at various statistical models and graphs, you can literally watch the planet as it slowly starts to catch on fire with this disease.  The disease moves in a sequential, linear fashion through time as country by country has succumbed to its grip.

Most people think starfish are essentially inanimate creatures, like barnacles, that live at the bottom of the ocean.  True, you may occasionally catch one ever-so-slowly moving the tip of one of its arms, but its movements are rare.  They look like mere objects - inflexible exoskeletons.  I once watched a video of a group of starfish in the ocean that had been dramatically sped up in terms of time.  The film is astonishing.  Suddenly the true character of starfish comes to light.  They create homes, fight for territory, mate, hang around in pairs and groups, and move around with great speed.  They interact like living creatures that we know and understand - WITHIN OUR OWN CONCEPTION OF TIME.

COVID-19 needs to be viewed like these starfish.  

If we stop regarding time like an element of our immediate environment, and we begin to view it as a mutable perception of our environment, then we begin to be able to make valid predictions AHEAD of the immediate environmental sensations.  I have been making public predictions on my website, www.theskepticalpsychic.com, for over a decade.  I then try to match them up with real-time events to see if they were accurate or not.  I gather these predictions from various personal sources like visions, dreams, trends, intuition and shreds of logic and reality.  

Ultimately, the practice of making predictions allows you to voluntarily SPEED UP TIME.  It allows the person making the prediction to see beyond the immediate reality.  Why does humanity insist on only reacting at the very last minute to threats within its immediate zone of sensory perception?  We, as a global species, have responded in this very poor fashion to the COVID-19 pandemic.  It is not merely a question of ignoring issues in favor of making quicker profits or poor government oversight, it is a problem of trusting our innate ability to perceive beyond the normal boundaries of time.

To make my point a bit more clear, allow me to explain how I personally responded to this crisis.  

In late November and early December, 2019, I remember I began tidying up all the loose ends in my life.  I didn't know why.  I've never done that before.  I didn't question my desire to do so.  It was just intuitive.  I made all my necessary doctors appointments, both regular and also for all the various surgeries and dental procedures I could anticipate as being necessary within a year.  

Starting in October, 2019, I told my husband we should sell our house. Nothing urgent.  Just a feeling it was time to move.  So we spent November, December, and January preparing to put the house on the market.  We packed our stuff, reorganized our storage rooms, eliminated clutter, painted rooms, repaired plumbing and electrical issues, sold unwanted stuff, and so on.  

I spoke, for the first time, with my grown children, at the Christmas dinner table on December 25, 2019, about my mortality and death.  We shared lots of much deeper thoughts and emotions as a family than we had ever done before. I knew I would be turning 65 in March, 2020, so perhaps there was some underlying anxiety about officially becoming a senior citizen, but why focus on death?

On December 31, China confirmed it was treating dozens of cases of a new virus. The news unsettled me.  Less than two weeks later, China announced the first known death associated with this new virus. On January 21, the first known case of COVID-19 was identified in a man in the State of Washington upon returning from China.  Two days later, on January 23, China quickly initiated the large national quarantine in history.  

I immediately started making several trips to the local grocery stores, office supply stores, home repair stores, and pharmacies, and began slowly stocking up on supplies.  I was not hoarding.  I did not grab more than my fair share of anything.  But I began buying extra toilet paper (now a precious commodity only a couple of months later that no one can find), paper towels, laundry detergent, bleach, disinfectants, acetaminophen, dry foods like grains, and frozen foods.  Every week I stocked up more.  I anticipated needing a minimum of a two month supply of everything.  I sent a "care package" to my son, a college student in Washington, DC, giving him a list of things to stock up on, and included a new thermometer, nut snacks, nitrile gloves, and a mask, since he is immunologically-challenged and was planning on flying for spring break to Miami in the first week of March - refusing to heed my advice and cancel it.  I called my daughter in New York City, and told her stock up on supplies.  

My point is - that by the third week in January I was preparing for what I KNEW would be a catastrophic pandemic in the United States within a month or so.  It boggles my mind that few if any Americans seem to have figured out the impending disaster at the same time I, an ordinary citizen, figured it out.  Today, I am living in the epicenter of the world's worst COVID-19 disaster area - New Jersey, just a half hour outside New York City.  Everyone in New Jersey, with its population of 8.9 million people and the most densely populated of all of the 50 American states, was given a "Shelter-in-Place" mandate on March 21.  I had been staying "sheltered" in my home and not going outside except three times for groceries FOR TWO MONTHS prior to this! 

So, how did I know this?

First, logically-speaking, I had never seen a country - particularly one as large as China - quarantine a massive and economically valuable territory such as the Wuhan territory.  To me, that was an instantaneous clue that something had gone horribly and secretly wrong.  I am quite certain COVID-19 is a biological warfare weapon that was either experimentally or accidentally deployed.  That seemed clear and obvious at that time.

Second, why quarantine unless the virus is so massively contagious that travel restrictions were the only possible way to contain it.  That gave more clues: 1) there is no current treatment and 2) it will easily escape territorial boundaries and migrate around the world in very little time.

Three, our politicians encouraged Americans not to worry about the few isolated cases in Washington State.  I knew this was the beginning of the American epidemic.  It was obvious.

These "logical" clues were made by trending out what is obvious.  They further cemented my purely "intuitive" sense of impending doom and disaster based on nothing rational at all but which was altering my decision-making.

My job is to see the future.  My job is to "play" with time.  I don't live 100 percent in the Present.  My consciousness is always "trending" out and extending into the Future all realities of the Present Time.  It is a little bit like having glasses to correct near-sightedness.  What appears either non-existent or unidentifiable to others, appears to me with great certainty and clarity.  It is a combination of intuition and logic.  Trust is essential.  

I was very moved when Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease and top adviser to President Trump, told people in March, that the Shelter-in-Place rules were essential because - I wish I had his exact words here - we are not dealing in normal Time.  In other words, what we see today, in terms of the spread of the disease, is actually two weeks in the Past.  Why?  Because the COVID-19 virus has a 14 day lag time before symptoms begin to manifest.  That means we can be walking around without any symptoms, infecting lots of other people and spreading the disease, without any consequences until two weeks later.  

Essentially, Dr. Fauci was the first public official I have ever heard in my life, try to tell the American public about Time Travel.

I knew he was 100 percent correct.  He had explained the time issue correctly.  Our Present reality is actually our Past reality.  We need to learn how to get nimble and quick when reacting to certain small clues in our Present which indicate we may be existing in a different time zone.  Let this be an important lesson to all of us.

Alien "Miracle" Gift During Coronavirus Pandemic

On Wednesday, February 19, 2020, I awoke from my sleep with my heart pounding.  This was unusual since I don't generally get nightmares anymore and almost never wake up with my heart pounding.  Furthermore, the dream fragment that I could remember was not frightening at all - merely "unusual."

It was a very, very short dream fragment - or let's call it a "dream" for the time being.  It was more vivid than my usual lucid dreams.  Most of my dreams these days are lucid - I remember them, they have a sense of being more "real" than a normal dream, and I am able to control them and am aware that I am dreaming.  This one was different.

I was standing in my kitchen in front of my sink and looking out the window facing the front of the house.  I think I was talking to a friend.  I noticed that a red helicopter was landing in my front yard. I was very surprised.  I said to my friend, "Don't they know they can't land a helicopter in my front yard?"

But the helicopter landed and a tall, very plain-looking, brown-haired man got out and walked to my front door.  I went to the door, opened it, and said, "Yes, can I help you?"

He didn't say a word but handed me a small package wrapped in brown paper.  It was about 5 inches long, 4 inches wide and an inch thick.  It was as heavy as lead - like a slab of heavy metal.  

I said, "What's this?"

He said, "You're going to need it."

I couldn't imagine why he was saying this.  I didn't "need" anything!  I have everything I could need.  The only thing, perhaps, would be a solution to my back problem.  In real life, I returned home from two weeks in August, 2019, at a Russian training in psychokinesis with a broken back.  We did boot-camp types of exercises every day for about 6 hours a day or longer.  They weren't rigorous, but I was in extreme pain from the first day.  Given the fact that the people training us had military backgrounds and the Russians have been known to have been leaders in developing psychotronic weapons, I was also concerned something may have been done to me.  We were treated like prisoners and when I returned home in severe pain I learned from three orthopedic and neurosurgeons that the bone in my back was indeed broken, the disk gone, the nerve impinged, and my spine completely unstable and almost detached!  I was told I would need major back surgery to fix the problem.  I was particularly reluctant to do this kind of surgery.  Anyway, that was the only thing I could think of in my dream that I might possibly "need."

As soon as he said this, I looked at him and in a moment of insight said, "You're not from here, are you?"

As soon as I said this, his entire body began to take on a slightly bluish hue of light and he became transparent.  His body began to glitch like a hologram.  Suddenly, his human form completely disappeared.  What was left in its place was virtually indescribable.  It was not human or anything I could recognize.  It was like a cluster of large blue orbs with some stringy things hanging down and simply floating in the air.  I knew immediately that this was some kind of light being alien.

Dream ends and I wake up with my heart pounding.

That day, February 20, I called a dear psychic friend of mine and told her about the dream.  

"What do you think was in that package?" she asked.

"I don't know.  The only thing I know is that it was 'heavy like lead' which means, in my interpretation, that it was definitely not lead but could be some sort of heavy metal."

"What about bismuth?" she asked.  "That's a heavy metal like lead."

I knew I had seen bismuth before - I studied a lot of geology and always loved rocks and crystals since I was a kid - but couldn't recall what it looked like.  So I quickly googled it and discovered that bismuth is a brittle, silver-colored metal which can actually form lovely "drawer-like" crystals and becomes pink, blue and iridescent when oxidized.  So, had this alien given me a package containing bismuth, I wondered?  

It occurred to me that some of the crystals I saw online looked amazingly like miniature spines with vertebrae - square crystals growing together.  What if you could regrow your spine?  

On February 21, I decided to do something extraordinary illogical - to buy 5 lbs of bismuth.  I somehow "knew" that I needed exactly 5 lbs.  I had no idea what I was going to do with it.

On February 26, it arrived in a small box.  I looked at the metal chunks - in three pieces - and simply left the box in my bedroom.

On February 27, I went downstairs to get my usual cup of coffee in the morning.  As I poured my coffee, I suddenly realized something extraordinary.  I was not experiencing pain.  For seven months, I had been in chronic pain, 24/7, regardless of whether I was walking, standing, sitting, lying down or sleeping.  I hurt my back to simply carry a cup of coffee and I would have to lie down and rest for at least a half hour after making my bed. I had literally forgotten the sensation of being pain-free.  It was beyond extraordinary!  As great as this was, I figured maybe it was a fluke.  Back pain tends to fluctuate.  There are good days and bad days.  I figured I would enjoy this good day as long as it lasted.


Today is March 19 - one month after my dream - and (miraculously) I am still not in pain!  I don't understand why.  Suddenly, I am able to walk two miles a day and I can carry heavy items - carefully, yes, but without repercussions.  It literally feels like my lower spine somehow "snapped" back into place.  Previous X-rays and scans showed that my spine was literally 50 percent disconnected - without the bone or disk to hold it in place - and so was highly unstable.  Little did I know when the alien told me that I would "need this" - whatever it was - that within days the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic would begin sweeping through the United States.  


Recall that back on February 19, when I had this dream, CNN was reporting on the coronavirus that was almost exclusively limited to Wuhan, China. We weren't worried about it in the US.  On that day, CNN reported:

"The global death toll from coronavirus has risen to at least 2,120, with eight deaths reported outside of mainland China. Hong Kong and Iran have each reported two deaths from coronavirus. Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines and France have each reported one death."

The first case of coronavirus in the United States occurred on January 19 on the other side of the country in Washington State.  I live a half hour outside New York City in New Jersey.  Everyone was, at that time, hopeful that American medicine and technology would quickly dispose of it the way we did with Ebola and SARS.  

As late as February 29, there were only three reported cases in the United States and the first death that day.  

Today, March 19, reports say there have been more than 11,000 cases reported in the United States, 168 deaths, and New York City is now ablaze with the virus with roughly a third of the nation's reported cases.  Quarantines, nightly curfews and mandatory "shelter-in-place" rules have been implemented in a majority of states.  All restaurants, bars, nightclubs, sports events, theatre events,concerts and gatherings of 10 or more people have been banned.  Schools and universities are closed indefinitely.  The CDC and President Trump have issued dire warnings about the lack of supplies, masks, gloves, oxygen equipment and vital technology to protect the vulnerable US public.  Reports now indicate that between 10 to 14 percent of people in my age bracket will die of this virus.

Thankfully, and knowing that I needed to stock up on supplies in the event of such quarantines, I did a massive amount of grocery shopping over the last three weeks.  Because my back has been suddenly and miraculously "healed," I was able to carry 10 big  bottles of bleach, detergent, and cleaners, and probably about 50 heavy bags of groceries.  I was able to clear the dishwasher, wash dishes, and other previously painful work without any problem.  A miracle.

The alien handed me whatever this gift of a heavy metal saying I was going to need it.  It was a lifesaver, in fact.  My angel.

Triple Threat Mind Reader

As an attorney, I am required to take Continuing Legal Education (CLE) every couple of years in order to maintain my licenses in New York and New Jersey.  This year I realized very late that I had to fulfill all my requirements before 2020 rolled around.  So I loaded up on all my courses and took them at the last minute in between Christmas shopping, cooking holiday meals, and picking up my kids at bus stations.  

It requires a ridiculous amount of juggling between the staggered years and different credit requirements n order to fulfill the requirements of these two states.  It is like trying to figure out a jigsaw puzzle.  Long story short, I managed to find five CLE courses - in webinar format - that satisfied all requirements for both states in terms of legal credits and ethical credits.  

Over the decades of doing this, I have learned that most of these courses - usually led by local attorneys and local bar association committee leaders - are informative but phenomenally boring.  It seems that even litigators and trial attorneys seem to have a problem making law "fun" to learn.  These classes are mostly loaded with endless citations to local, state and federal statutes, and court decisions, with which all of the non-specialists in those fields are presumed to be intimately familiar.  There is a lot of pretentious droning on and on about the legal impact of various decisions ranging from landmark to unpublished court decisions.  I have come to tolerate this as some kind of legal racket for the bar associations to make money.

This time around I fulfilled my last requirement (a 7-hour long class taught by only one lawyer and not a panel of lawyers) called "Successfully Deposing the Vague or Emphatically Certain Witness: Getting What You Need Out of 'I Don't Know,' 'I Do Know' and 'I Don't Remember.'"  The basic concept was to teach how to recognize and neutralize witness deception during pre-trial depositions as well as cross-examination of a witness at trial.  It was a fascinating topic.  The lawyer teaching the course, Robert Musante, turned out to be a self-proclaimed teacher more than a practicing lawyer.  He was absolutely riveting and despite having a nasty flu, he managed to talk for seven straight hours and hold everyone's attention.

Basically, he was demonstrating - using a lot of examples from Clinton and Nixon impeachment depositions and Bush and Trump press statements - how to understand the internal - let's call it "squirming around" - to give a theoretically "honest" response without lying but also without revealing the "truth."  With the benefit of history and hindsight, it was very insightful to watch these deceptive maneuvers in action.  

A lot of this witness deception exists around the unbelievably ambiguous use of the words "to know" or "to recall" which are used to get around a lawyer's attempt to lock in the witness with a "yes" or "no" response.  For example, "How many times did you meet Monica in the hallway outside the Oval Office?"  A response of "I don't know" could refer to not knowing the number of times ever in the history of Clinton's presidency, whether such meetings were in the hallway or elsewhere, or whether such encounters constituted a 'meeting.'  The weasel-word of "know" allows a witness to later go back and correct the response by stating his interpretation of the precise "knowledge" to which he was referring.  Cool stuff.  Clinton was an expert at this in his impeachment depositions.  Trump is an expert at this in his conversational style of ambiguous statements.  It avoids ever getting pinned down to one interpretation.

At one point during this class, Musante cleverly stated that he could "read Clinton's mind" prior to giving one of these ambiguous "I don't know" responses.  Musante then laid out the entire thought process - Clinton's concerns, what was true and what wasn't, and a strategy to be "honest" without being "truthful."  I thought to myself: "How interesting!  A lawyer announcing he can read minds - just like a psychic!"  And, more interestingly, how does this break down in terms of logical deduction, intuitive reasoning, and inexplicable psychic insight?

How does a lawyer read a witnesses mind, I wondered?  And how does that differ from what I do, as psychic and intuitive, when I read someone's mind?  It occurred to me that I am actually the equivalent of a "Triple Threat" to borrow a term from the performing arts (i.e.g someone who is talented in all three major skills of acting, dancing and singing).  I am a Triple Threat because I am 1) a litigator, 2) trained in psychotherapy and 3) a trained psychic. 

• LAW: I practiced securities litigation in New York for nearly a decade.  
• PSYCHOTHERAPY: I trained in Intuitive Gestalt Psychotherapy in New York for more than 20 years.  
• PSYCHIC:  I trained as a psychic detective for a decade, as a spiritual medium for several years, and also for several years as a remote viewer in military-style remote viewing techniques.  

So, with my Triple Threat background, I wondered: how do these mind-reading techniques differ with each profession?  Or are they the same basic techniques?

I believe they are based on intuitive and logical understandings of different aspects of the human psyche.  

I believe that a litigator can read a witnesses' mind because a litigator can "smell fear" from far away.  When you know how to recognize the "pressure points" then you can track the witnesses convoluted attempts to escape from the trap created by the lawyer.  It is like understanding how a mouse tries to steal cheese from a mousetrap without getting caught.  It involves a thinking process and a strategy.  Litigators can read minds this way.  

A psychotherapist can read a client's mind because they can "feel" their way into the choices made by a person to address their emotions and how they distract themselves, empower themselves or believe their own deceptions.  A therapist can understand the history of a person's emotional empowerment no matter how illogical.

A psychic can read a client's mind because they can "mind-meld" with the energy of the person and, in some sense, become that person in order to understand the outcomes of the person's existence and choices.  A psychic can "see" the emotional imprint of a person and their decisions as it extends forwards and backwards in time.

Briefly, a litigator is trained in fear motivation.  A psychotherapist is trained in empathy.  A psychic is trained in energy.  

This is the true Triple Threat for mind reading almost anyone...  

Images From the Sky

Roughly three weeks ago, I was able to remember just a tiny fragment of one of my dreams.  I remember the distinctive image of a massive horse coming out of the clouds in the sky.  The horse seemed to be surrounded by a glow of purplish color.  I can't remember the rest of the dream.  

Of course, I have heard and read about the Four Horsemen in the Bible.  I am certainly no expert on the Bible.  I didn't know much about the Four Horsemen except that they are somehow associated with something vaguely apocalyptic.  

In fact, the Four Horsemen, described in detail in Revelations 6:1-8, written by John of Patmos. 

The scene is set when the author describes what he has seen.  He saw God on his throne in Heaven, surrounded by thousands of angels and strange winged creatures, holding a scroll held firmly closed with seven (wax) seals in his right hand.  The "Lamb" (Jesus) is considered the only one heavenly entity worthy enough to open the scroll to read its contents.  As each seal is broken, a new catastrophic event or series of events is unleashed on mankind.  The first four of these seven seals are symbolized by each of the Four Horsemen.

The First Horse is a white horse.  Its rider holds an archer's bow and he wears a crown.  "He rode out as a conqueror bent on conquest." (Rev. 6:2).  Unlike the other three horses, the symbolism of the white horse is very ambiguous.  The actual language of Revelations suggests that this represents the Spirit of Conquest.  It has also been suggested that the white horse could represent Christ, the antichrist and the false promise of peace.  I would interpret it as follows: The white horse represents the promise of purity to conquer and vanquish the evils of mankind.  The ambiguity lies in whether this white "purity" will fulfill its promise.  There seems to be a hidden threat in the lack of clarity.  How will humanity respond?  Will mankind be able to maintain a global peace if it harbors ill-will and deception underneath the stated intentions?  Or will the lies of humans create a "false peace"? The White Horse represents conquest by deception. 

For me, there is an element reminiscent of the Trojan Horse in the Biblical White Horse.  The famous Trojan Horse wooden statue created a curiosity and deception that allowed the Greek warriors, hidden inside the strange horse, to create a diversion and then conquer the independent city of Troy.  Did you ever wonder why the best-known brand name for condoms - "Trojans" - allows the man the enter deceptively into the independent domain of the woman?  No one ever taught me this juicy thought.

The Second Horse is a "fiery red" horse (Rev. 6:3).  This Red Horse has a rider who "was given power to take peace from the earth and to make men slay each other."  This rider carries a very large sword.  The Red Horse is universally regarded as representing war and death - presumably the creator of some kind of civil war or war among nations where "men slay each other."  In other words, the Red Horseman provokes war - but does not kill humanity himself.  Like the White Horseman, he is a catalyst, instigator or provocateur of bad behavior.  His job is to wreak havoc and fear, causing men to kill each other.  The Red Horseman doesn't do the actual killing.  The Red Horseman doesn't get his hands dirty.

The Third Horse is the Black Horse (Rev. 6:5-6).  The rider carries a "pair of scales" in his hand. The scales, similar to the "scales of justice" held in the hand of the Statue of Liberty, are considered to refer to market food scales with small stones representing the counter-weights.  The Black Horseman is interpreted to represent famine.  A celestial voice is heard to say: "A quart of wheat for a day's wages, and three quarts of barley for a day's wages, and do not damage the oil and the wine."  Biblical scholars have suggested that one quart of wheat would be enough for only one person and three quarts of the less nutritious barley would barely be enough for small family.  Famine would drive the prices up to ten times their normal level.   Many scholars have interpreted this horseman as also being the cause or harbinger of droughts that cause the famines.

As I see it, the Black Horseman doesn't overtly cause the famine.  The famine is caused, once again, by mankind - and only indirectly by the Horseman.  Humans hike up the price of food and cause people who cannot afford to pay, to starve to death. 

The Fourth Horse is very different from the other horses (Rev. 6:7-8).  The Fourth Horse is a Pale Horse.  Of course, as we know, "pale" is just a description of a color, but not a color itself!  It evokes the image of a ghost, not a living being.  The word "pale" is described in the dictionary as being "almost colorless" - in other words, without living vitality.  The rider of the Pale Horse is the only one given a name.  The rider's name is "Death" and he is followed closely behind by "Hades," the Greek god of the underworld.  Strange, it seems to me, that the Christian prophet would evoke the name of a (pagen) Greek god!  Perhaps this was to underline the hopelessness of the termination of life for people who would not be redeemed by their Savior, the Lamb, Jesus Christ.  

At any rate, the Pale Horseman is given  "power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth."  From my perspective, the Pale Horseman is the only one of the Four Horsemen who has the actual power and authority to inflict direct pain, suffering and death upon mankind.  It is almost as if the other three Horsemen have the power of persuasion, temptation and influence to wreak havoc, but the Pale Horseman takes all of their powers and can use them directly to kill off a quarter of the human race!

After the four seals are broken and the Four Horsemen revealed, the fifth seal is broken and reveals that the souls of those slain in the name of God seek vengeance in the form of the Final Judgment against mankind (Rev. 6:9-11).  The sixth seal is broken and terrible global catastrophes are unleashed (Rev. 6:12-17) including earthquakes, a blood red moon, a black sun, stars crashing into the earth, and mountains and islands destroyed.  While the world leaders and populations tried to hide in caves.  The angels called out to stop the destruction long enough to save 144,000 humans who received the "seal of the Living God" on their foreheads.  Then the mystical seventh seal is broken and all hell breaks loose on the planet. Locusts, looking oddly like "horses prepared for battle," are released to kill off mankind.  Then an army of angels are released to kill mankind, then a plague of fire, smoke and sulfur, then earthquakes killing seven thousand people.  Jesus is then seen standing on Mount Zion with the 144,000 saved individuals who sing a song that only those who were redeemed were capable of learning.  And so on.  

The impure are murdered by paranormal events, and the pure are saved.  Jesus returns and the spiritual aspect of the planet has been swept clean of impurities.  A fresh start. 

And so, to return to my dream in which a galloping horse appeared coming out of the clouds surrounded by a strange, purple glow, I am left to wonder if this is not perhaps a prophetic dream of the coming of the Pale Horse.  

What is interesting is that the author of Revelations (who wrote in the first century A.D.) was influenced by the horse imagery, according to scholars, of another earlier prophet, a 6th century BC Babylonian priest and prophet, Zechariah. In Zechariah's vision, he looked up and saw four horse-drawn chariots coming out from between two mountains.

"The first chariot had red horses, the second black, the third white, and the fourth dappled - all of them powerful.  I asked the angel who was speaking to me, 'What are these, my lord?'  The angel answered me, 'These are the four spirits of heaven, going out from standing in the presence of the Lord of the whole world.  The one with the black horses is going toward the north country, the one with the white horses toward the west, and the one with the dappled horses toward the south." (Zec 6:1-8). (Strangely, the angel forgets to mention the red horses which, obviously, are going toward the east!)

Zechariah's equating the differently colored horses to the four different directions (east, west, south, north) reminds me of the traditional Native American Medicine Wheel or Sacred Hoop.  The number "4" (which also features prominently in these Biblical writings) is considered a sacred number by Native Americans (seasons, earth elements, human races, compass directions, stages of life).  

The Medicine Wheel typically features four colors: black, yellow, red and white. Red/south, black/west, white/north and yellow/east.  The correlation between colors and compass directions is not the same.  However, the notion of four spiritual colors is the same for the Native Americans, Zechariah and Revelations. 

Most interesting of all, is that the only color that varies in all three accounts is that of the Pale Horse. It is described in Zechariah as "dappled" and in Native American culture as "yellow."   These are variations on the color white. It is almost as if this "spirit" of nature, this aspect of power, this force of Heaven, cannot accurately be described or envisioned.  We all have trouble imagining death.  We only see it as a kind of "disappearance" from life.  It is as if a shade of one of life's colors begins to fade away from us.  That is why "pale" and "dappled" only describe the shade but not the color.

My horse in the clouds was, I believe, a repetition of a warning for mankind.  A kind of modern-day prophecy.  In a world where we have become increasingly "impure" in mind, body and spirit, and our desires have become aggressive and intolerant, we are clearly approaching the wars and climate destruction that causes droughts, earthquakes, fires and famines, without any need for direct intervention from the "angels."  It is all indirect - just like three of the Four Horsemen.  The Four Horsemen have merely been unleashed from the heavens to prod us further into our own self-destruction that will surely result in mass extinctions of the human race as the Pale Horse finally enters the spiritual arena.  

The Death of Private Thoughts

Once upon a time, when I was a little girl, we lived in a world where we could hide things - both truth and lies.  The "inside" of our mind was our secret garden.  Our thoughts could be kept alive there like a secret zoo where unicorns and centaurs roamed freely with zebras, horses and rattlesnakes.  You could separate your thoughts from your deeds, and your words from your emotions. Your outer protective layer, your skin, was like a territorial boundary.  No one was allowed entrance into this private world without all the proper papers and pedigrees.  Good and bad thoughts, reactions, emotions, feelings, attitudes, fantasies, perspectives, strategies, insults, compliments, calculations and deviations, could all be kept silent and under wraps.  A private domain. Under private ownership. This was my world growing up.

I have been able to watch the slow death of human privacy over the decades.  It is like watching someone die slowly by being smothered.  Slowly the struggle to breathe life-giving air gives way to surrender, the eyes roll back, and the entity relaxes into the new reality without air or breath.  Is there life after death?  Or do we cease to exist?  Can we live happily ever after if our lives are now an open book for everyone to read,?  Can we exist as individuals when our thoughts have become nothing more than "products" to be sold on the open market?  Human consciousness fetches a high price and can be translated almost immediately into cash. We are all becoming slaves to each other.

Privacy, in my opinion, ranks up there with the basic human rights outlined in the Declaration of Independence along with life, liberty and happiness.  And yet, our passion for absolute democracy - well, let's call it equal opportunity to rape and pillage in the name of freedom - and our militaristic drive for supremacy over the thoughts of everyone else, has led us to this point of no return.  Ultimately, of course, we are headed toward a world where we will all be controlled - our thoughts, feelings and ambitions - by hidden technologies.  We will be, in effect, genetically modified without genes.  We are headed toward marching in lockstep and thinking in unified hive mentality.  The human race is not far from becoming a single entity - one massive uni-dimensional slave - controlled by???  We won't know because we won't be privy to that information.

This is no longer science fiction.  

We made the critical mistake of believing that we could become "interconnected" through technology (television, radio, telephones, computers, internet, smart phones, apps, AI, robots, smart homes, etc.) without having to sacrifice anything at all.  We thought if we paid our monthly fees that was the end of it.  Obviously, the price of being "interconnected" is that we have become the living entities that feed the system.  

Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, wrote an enlightening book ("Blitzscaling" (2018)) about how successful modern corporations are purposely designed to seduce, entice and feed off of personal profiles and private thoughts.  He doesn't say it that way because he is a predator of human privacy, not a victim.  

The obvious technologies involved are companies like Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, WhatsApp, Twitter and so on, that sift through vast amounts of personal data and then tailor their advertising and promotions to each person.  This is a very personal rape.  But there are also many other movements that are looming on our horizon that also threaten to dissolve our mental territories.  

We are all familiar with cyber-hacking and data collection designed by every government on earth.  Recall:

• the Chinese heist of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management in 2015 of the personal records of 22.1 million people, mostly the private data, including clearances, government employees.  
• the 2011 hack of Sony's PlayStation Network gathering and compromising the personal records of more than 77 million of its customers.  
• the 2014 cyber attack on Sony Pictures by the North Korean government that resulted in stealing the private social security numbers of 47,000 people.  
• the Russian hacking of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton's emails in 2016
• the most recent allegations that the Chinese hacked her private server and were sent duplicate copies of all her emails while she was still Secretary of State.

This type of digging into cyber records containing our personal data has been weaponized.  It is a military incursion into cyber "territory" of another entity.

But even our own government has "weaponized" private data to be used - ostensibly - for our own good!  Really?  Why does my government need to know who we call and what we say on the telephone or our computers?  We are told this is for our national security.  No one can forget when, in 2013, Edward Snowdon leaked valuable information about the US National Security Agency and their metadata collection program on the American public.  Kind of strange twist - hacking to prevent hacking.

Slowly, our technologies are all - thanks to our clever and amoral scientists - leading us down the road to the total loss of our privacy in the future.  This is more direct than cyber hacking.  It is literally hacking your brain!  We now have the ability to hack into your dreams - and your dreams can be displayed visually on a computer monitor!  We can cause you to have a false memory of an event simply by recreating a specific memory pathway in your brain's neurons.  Of course, memories can also be erased.  Behavior can be modified.  This is all a form of hacking into your personal privacy in the name of glorious scientific achievements.

More recently, there are ominous political movements that are developing - notably in China and the early signs in the United States - which create cyber "credit systems" for every citizen.  Good behavior (like praising the government or not driving too fast or jay-walking) result in automatic higher "credit" ratings and discounts on purchases like real estate, groceries or cars, the ability to travel by being granted a passport or leave one's home.  It is very ominous indeed.

We are living in the early days of an evil trend.  Just as very few people actually foresaw the ultimate evil destination of Hitler's Nazi Germany because it was accomplished in slow, manageable and non-threatening stages- so very few people saw it coming.  It started out innocently enough by requiring all Jews to register, then to wear arm bands with Jewish stars on them, then requiring them to relocate to Jewish neighborhoods, then shipping them off to "labor" camps, and ultimately to their extinction.  Notice - the entire process started with the seemingly innocent requirement of registration of their personal information.  Do you start to see a similarity to cyber registration?

Let me give you another example of the new movement toward political intrusion of our private thoughts.  Just a few days ago, after the second mass shooting in Texas this summer.  The Washington Post reported that the Trump administration is considering a proposal that would use Google, Amazon and Apple to collect data on all users who exhibit characteristics of mental illness that could lead to violent behavior.  This, of course, is intended to preserve gun rights and appease gun rights advocates, while trying to find a means to stop insane people from purchasing guns and killing people - to appease gun control advocates.  Sounds like a reasonable compromise, right?  Think twice.  According to the article, HARPA would be in charge of developing "breakthrough technologies with high specificity and sensitivity for early diagnosis of neuropsychiatric violence."  Individuals thus identified would be presumably arrested and "dealt with" appropriately (imprisoned?  drugged involuntarily?) having had their privacy rights extinguished in order to identify them.  

When you realize that the psychiatrists' "bible" - The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders" - today the DSM-5 - was originally developed by our military to identify certain psychiatric issues - it gives great pause for thought.  Psychiatric "disorders" are redefined and reevaluated with every new addition.  Most recently, people who are "creative" were tossed into a new "disorder" type.  Does that frighten you?  It should.

Once you hand over the keys to the palace - the palace of personal privacy - you are no longer in control of your life.  There is a barbarian in your mind.

The Vibrations of American Conflict

I have avoided discussing politics on social media for several years because I watched as my friends, both Republicans and Democrats, got into some of the most brutal, verbally-violent, abusive "screaming" matches I have ever witnessed in my lifetime, and lost scores of Facebook acquaintances as well as close friends and family members.  It was pitiful and - most sadly - completely avoidable.

I say "avoidable" because - speaking as an "old" person with the wisdom of more years than 85 percent of the American population - I know that today's political climate has been a direct result of our collective American psychology.  I have watched it happen slowly over the last 50 years.  

"Younger" people today have grown up with a different psychological climate than I did.  

First, they grew up with television.  I didn't.  This created instant history, instant opinions, and a need for speed in making snap judgments with little underlying knowledge or basis.  Everyone is writing a book these days - but no one actually reads books anymore.  Well - I exaggerate - the average American today reads 4 books a year and 83 percent fall into the youthful and school age population of 16-29 years old when you would expect them to be reading for school!  More than a million books are published in the United States every year now, half of which are self-published, and on average sell fewer than 250 copies per year.  Consequently, publishing experts suggest that, given the grossly overcrowded market, authors front load their main ideas at the beginning of their books, keep books short, and write them at an 8th grade level vocabulary.  

This is part and parcel of the overall "dumbing down" of America.  

And make no mistake about this - there is nothing more frightening than a stupid population.  They are too lazy to take the initiative to learn and want to be spoon fed their moral positions.  People in power have been only too happy to accommodate this need by feeding the population with "sound bytes" of propaganda - easily gobbled up by those who are too lazy to investigate truth on their own.  A stupid population can be led like a flock of oblivious sheep to their own destruction.

This is all the more reason why people should learn how to respect the differing opinions of others.  They need to approach this kind of "conflict" as an opportunity to learn from someone else's experience or knowledge - and not as a "threat" to their own identity.

Second, they grew up with advertisements.  I didn't.  This created seemingly socially acceptable lies and deception in the name of the "good guys" - money, greed and power.  As publicity-manipulated capitalists we have been taught to believe these are virtues of "hard work" not deception.  But this has also created a weird schizophrenic spin on our reality.  For example, your typical pharmaceutical ads play happy music, showing happy people doing happy things, while a soft voice briskly announces - only because it is mandated by law - that the use of the drug could result in permanent nerve damage, loss of hearing, liver infections, kidney malfunction, life-threatening asthma, skin infections, nausea, vomiting and death!  The result is a feeling that one is living in a schizophrenic nightmare reality - like happy clowns with painted smiles that frighten people to death!.  

Third, they grew up with social media.  I didn't.  I don't need to restate all the negative side effects of social media - they have been rehashed many times - except to say that people have now found a way to have "virtual" (not real) "friends"; to manifest and shape shift themselves as nasty "trolls" without ever suffering consequences of their rudeness; and have lost a sense of true interpersonal connection and friendship with live human beings.  People now seem to feel free to rip others to shreds like a blood sport.  No consequences!  True friendship requires one to be kind, often diplomatic, and recognize that the friendship is more important than "being right" all the time.

Fourth, they grew up with technology like cell phones, Skype, WhatsApp, texting, and internet connection.  I didn't.  This generation assumes that communication is best done through an electronic medium.  Hanging up is easy.  Ending a difficult conversation is easy.  Cutting someone off is easy.  And you don't ever have to see them live and in person again!

Fifth, they have grown up with no distinction between "entertainment" and "news."  I didn't.  I remember the first time I heard a TV news show play "rock and roll" as part of its intro music instead of teletype news wire sound!  I was shocked because it appeared to cross the line between pop music entertainment and what had always been "serious" news.

With Trump's bold new pronouncement that all journalism in the United States (except Fox News) is "Fake News" - he has unfortunately (and perhaps intentionally) caused a national psychological crisis.  No one feels safe in terms of what they can trust.  There is no Walter Cronkite father-figure any more.  There is no "legitimate" or "non-rag" newspaper any more.  There is no one to respect any more.  So no one knows where to turn for the "voice of reason."  Toss in planted "fake" advertising by large companies and "fake" Facebook stories and political groups planted by the Russians and presumably others - then you cannot trust anything.  Of course, all newspapers and media commentators have an editorial perspective.  That has always been true.  But despite planted stories by government sources and leftist/rightist leanings, the "legitimate" media - at least 50 years ago - was primarily an "editorial" choice.  They were still held to a higher standard of fact-checking and sources.  Facts have disappeared from our landscape.  We live in a sea of unfounded and vicious opinions.  

"Opinion news shows" now dominate what was once "the news."  The new generations of Americans don't know the difference any more.  This has given rise to "newscasters" yelling their flagrant personal opinions and abusing guests on their shows by snarky comments, dismissive conclusions, failure to ask true questions, and abusive treatment.  The sad truth is that the new generation of Americans now equates "loud" nasty opinions as "good."  Why?  Because they are assumed to be truthful because they are loud and so nasty!. Emotion is confused with honesty.  Unfortunately, loudness has nothing to do with honesty or truth.  It is pure theater.  Entertainment.  Increases the ratings.  Higher ratings bring in more money.  Money creates more power.  Power creates more control over the media.  The media controls the mind of the American population.  And that's how we roll.

Furthermore, people who feel a need to yell their opinions are almost always people who are trying to overcompensate for their uncertainty, lack of facts, or shortcomings.  They are the opposite of truthful.  

Of course, much of this "loudness" and "nastiness" has come as a direct backlash to a perception that the country's media "intelligentsia" is dishonest.  Why?  Because they use big vocabulary words and seem to hide behind a false facade of polite commentary and political correctness. To some degree, that is a valid point.  But this has all contributed to our psychological demise.  It has resulted in Americans feeling free and justifiable in beating up anyone who disagrees with them.  It is a dangerously toxic and poisonous environment.

All of these factors have contributed to a public and political "screaming" match that - as I have already predicted years ago - is leading us down the road to a civil war unless we address the underlying psychological issue.  What is it?  It is the issue that we learn how not to be mortally threatened by someone else's different opinion and different solution to a problem.  In fact, while visiting the other side of the country recently, I was told by a guns-rights supporter that liberals should fear the coming uprising because they won't have the firearms to protect themselves!  Yikes!  

This can and will only be solved by people willing to take a personal courageous step of sincerely trying to understand why other human beings - who are good people - would believe something so different from them.  This requires kindness, courage and a genuine unbiased belief that we are not infallible in our own beliefs.  It also requires a return to facts - if we can still find them anywhere.

Are you up for the challenge?  Our country depends on it.