While most of us retain a thinking mind we are faced everyday with propaganda so insidious that it invades our consciousness before we even have a chance to think. It frames the argument before we have realised it and blocks off trackways of thought without us even knowing. This is a big problem but fortunately we now have a test for the presence of propaganda….

Brainwashing obviously occurs in politics, but it is done by the right and the left, and the far right and the far left, as well as the centre. Brainwashing is done by activist groups as well as special interests, by charities and by the media. And if you don’t think that your favourite brand, party or organisation has been brainwashing you? Well, that proves they’ve been successful.

So here is the test. Begin with a popular old school advertising strapline ‘Guinness is good for you’. Flip this to its opposite and say, ‘Guinness is bad for you’. Now try another, the recent slogan of the British Labour Party ‘For the many not the few’. Flip this to its opposite and say, ‘For the few not the many’. With me so far?

Now try it with simple statements. Start with the generalisation that ‘people who believe in God are dangerous’ then flip it to its opposite and say ‘atheists are dangerous people’. Do the same with the notion that the ‘Corona Virus is bringing people together’. Flip it to the ‘Corona Virus is driving people apart’.

Once you have a selection of statements and their opposites (let’s call those anti-statements), then the fun begins. Look hard at your anti-statement, the opposite of what you started with. If the anti-statement seems absurd, unbelievable or just doesn’t make sense then it’s bad news I’m afraid. You have tested positive for propaganda and have almost certainly been brainwashed.

Go back to the first example ‘Guinness is good for you’. If you cannot get your head around the anti-statement that ‘Guinness is bad for you’ then it’s because you have been so exposed to pro-Guinness advertising that your thought process has been subverted to the extent that you can no longer consider any alternative. If we are honest there is no way of knowing whether Guinness is good for you or not. It might in fact be really bad for you, we just don’t know, but if you cannot even imagine that the anti-statement might be true then it is because you have been brainwashed to think that way.

Take the political example of the British Labour Party ‘For the many not the few’. How does the anti-statement ‘For the few not the many’ sound? Could this be what the British Labour Party really stands for? I don’t know. But if you dismiss this possibility entirely then it is because you have been brainwashed, unable to see or accept anything to the contrary. The stronger the reaction to the anti-statement the deeper the brainwashing.

In order to discover the truth, we must first free ourselves from the lie.

Do this with absurd slogans like Make America Great Again and Take Back Control, but don’t make the mistake of believing that it’s just the shady white guys who are strong in the propaganda game. The #MeToo movement used a wonderful slogan ‘Believe Women’ which has had a profound effect on society. Except it turns out that they really only meant certain women. Propaganda at its finest…

Propaganda is dangerous because it eats away at the Soul and turns people into zombies. The antidote however comes from a wise man who once said

“The truth of anything can be found in its opposite.”

Examine this closely. I am not saying that the truth of something is its opposite, but that by examining its opposite you can come to find truth. Thus, the statement ‘people who believe in God are dangerous’ becomes the anti-statement ‘atheists are dangerous people’ which initially generates confusion and uncertainty. But, if you stick with it the confusion gives way to a new insight – one that the propagandists always intended to conceal  - which is that it is people who are dangerous, whether they believe in God or not.

This isn’t about inverting reality. You don’t, for example, have to believe that Donald Trump is the greatest President in American history (I certainly don’t), but you do have to be able to see how others might believe it in good faith and in good conscience, without you feeling either disgust toward them or moral superiority over them. If you cannot do this, then you’ve almost certainly been brainwashed.

These are just a few examples of the real pandemic in our society, where scarcely a single news report, speech, advertisement, comedy, tragedy or drama whether written, spoken or performed, arrives at our eyes and ears without first being framed or distorted to suit a power agenda. This is a hard fact to swallow but we are being brainwashed, and breaking free of this mental prison is part of the process of spiritual awakening…

It is commonly believed that only stupid people can be brainwashed. Well, as a former member of Mensa The High IQ Society I can confirm that clever people, especially those who believe themselves well-informed, can be the most easily brainwashed. Such people will argue forever about the trees in the forest but never question why they are in the forest in the first place…

All this matters, from a spiritual perspective, because resonance will not save you. You cannot overcome propaganda by going with what resonates or what feels right, because the whole point of brainwashing is to limit your choices before you have a chance to notice. You can navigate your way through life quite happily, relying only on feelings and intuition, without ever knowing that the pathways you navigate through have been pre-determined by others…

It’s too late for a lot of people, and too much work for others, but if you wish your mind to be free then you have to make the effort to examine everything which comes at you from the media, government, celebrities, corporations and the entertainment industry. They are all pushing a narrative and you should question it, while you still can. Do this by flipping their words around, take the statements they preach and turn them into their opposite. If that opposite seems completely impossible then you have tested positive for propaganda. They have convinced you that their way of thinking is the only way of thinking. You’ve been done over….

Repeat this exercise at every available opportunity and you will begin to see a different kind of world. If you do it enough you will have freed your mind, which means that, in the words of the great philosophers En Vogue, the rest will follow…