Recently, a listener to my podcast, has contacted me several times to leave some very heartfelt comments in regards to previous essays. He very proactively and professionally corrected a date which I got wrong and also left some other nice insights on his pro and con thoughts in regards to cryptocurrencies as well as the potential for hemp to continue to re-loop back around as a major engine of economic growth as it has always been for thousands of years. Hemp is more American than apple pie, the declaration of independence is written on it, and it has always been known by wiser cultures than our current unconscious unwinnable war on some drug Nixon backwards political landscape of the last 50+ years. Hemp is able to supply food, fuel, and medicine. William Randolph Hearst, The dark sorcerer, American newspaper magnate, monster castle builder, and the man the quasi-biographical film character Charles Foster Kane, from the film Citizen Kane was based off of, had hemp outlawed so he could cut down massive swaths of American forest, which take the better part of 100 years to grow back to maturity, vs the three months it takes hemp to grow and provide even better quality paper, so he could sell his propaganda newspapers. Beautiful hemp can heavily treat and or fully heal around 700 health ailments especially in the form of cannabis oil. Which is one of numerous secret cancer cures the pharmaceutical industry has long surpassed so they can continue their sick care system of endless dollar sign generation from not healing but treating. A future essay on that later. Not to mention the many possibilities hempcrete can do, a crop of which can yield structures in those mere months. So take everything i say with a bit of a grain of salt, because its shooting for 90%+ accuracy and is perhaps 10% off kilter, off the mark. We accept that. But at least it was put out there in their first place. As a learning, and teaching, but really more learning process. Because we shouldn't ever let that hold us up from sharing what we do know. As sharing is caring and we really learn the most from teaching, even if that teaching is slightly imperfect at times. Always a student.
A former guest on the podcast, and I won't say directly who it is because she's a bit neurotic, use to have her father beat her when she was little and she got something wrong - IE not to the liking of his skewed reality tunnel. That is tragic and sad and she, of course, didn't deserve that. Like the majority of child abuse does, it carried into her adult life with a continued imprint of being afraid to be wrong at times. So much to the point that she let all the little details of potential imperfection prevent her from sharing her deep knowledge base, thinking that same resonance of somehow being punished would re-occur. But don't give into fear the mind killer. Fear of having others correct some part of what you said. If they do it reactionarily then ignore and move on but the proactive and non-condescending way this listener Ben corrected me was excellent because he learned something from listening to me, I learned something from listening to him, and I could tell he was contributing because he cared.
I am glad he has added to this conversation, and you can too dear listener. This podcast URL is aninfinitepath.com which just auto-forwards to my website at nilesheckman.com/podcast and it is nice to get feedback on these episodes. So if you have some proactive comments to share, feel free to drop them into the comments section at the episodes there, because I usually hear fuck all, and that would be nice to adjust into more interactions with you who have ears to hear.
We are all many things. Being a documentary photographer and filmmaker are two main focuses which are partially my hobbies and partially my professions. However, before either of those things, I am a student of life. Anyone who's curious about the nature of existence is one as well. All of those who are inquisitive, introspective, and curious are students and will always be students, no matter what level of mastery in a specific area is achieved, they will always be students when it comes to this thing call life because in reality, next to no one knows what life is really all about. The ancients studied this in the past just like those inquisitive ones do now, and this study of the student is not only passed on by occasional and rare wise elders but is self-taught by the autodidact. The most important thing to emphasize though is that whether your teacher is someone else or yourself or both, by you always being inquisitive, you never stop learning, hence never stop being that student who's constantly asking questions of those around them, not conforming to the old patterns of old ways of doing and being, but most importantly always asking inside yourself why?
Many of the things I share, I do because they help me learn. They act as both a journal as to what I've put out and a barometer to look back on and know where I’ve been. But I know next to nothing like the rest of us because I doubt to ever claim to be a wise spiritual philosopher or expert occultist or esotericist but more a student of life. It's very healthy to never think you've reached the mountaintop. To stay humble and to always continue to look up and out for the mystery that lies ahead. So anything I say in the future can be looked back on as being mostly on the ball but perhaps some small percentage of what was conveyed at the time maybe missed the mark a bit. Hence why I sometimes will give a disclaimer that everything shared is “at my current level of understanding”. Which is okay because I'm not a guru nor a scholar either, but a student.
So things don't have to be perfect, none of these essays are perfect, they are always in motion, in development, any praise or criticism received is fair enough and is being sent from neophyte to adept and there are always more rungs to the ladder of learning. That ladder of education, not schooling but education.
Life is a beautiful thing and to have 100 good years in corporal form may be there to be a gift give to each of us for that learning. Because learning is growing and mistakes and "failures" are also learning. So don’t be afraid to take on a task knowing it won’t be perfect, everything is in motion and is a work in progress. And mistakes are those bumps in the road which must be gone over to continue that motion because you either win or you learn.