Written and published on 19 July 2021

Image: “Apokalipse,” by Albert Goodwin, 1903, in Wikimedia Commons … https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Apocalypse-Albert_Goodwin.jpg … public domain

Dear Ones,

I skimmed through the movie ‘Take Shelter’ the other day …

Link: “Take Shelter,” IMDb … https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1675192/ ..

I find the movie interesting because the recurring images experienced by the male protagonist seem like what I term ‘image words’ from the gut brain (the subconscious mind’s vocabulary). It is good how the ending shows that a family can stand together and shelter in faith in each other, and love of each other, even if the subconscious mind is creating what the Ascensioneers call ‘vivid waking dreams’, in the case of the movie, more like vivid waking nightmares.

The movie also shows how one person’s fearful ‘mental filter’ (that of the husband in the movie) can influence another person (in this case the wife) to take on the same ‘mental filter’.

As a phenomenon, the tendency of the human mind to broadcast mental filters can be either good or bad. The difference has to do with the tenor of the emotional portion of the images that are broadcast. Is the emotion negative or positive? That is the key to the effect that broadcasting of one’s own mental filters has on other people.

For instance, in the movie ‘Take Shelter’ one of the visually striking images that recur in the mind of the male protagonist is a ‘murmuration’ of birds, perhaps starlings or sparrows. This is an aerial phenomenon rather like the simultaneous turning and wheeling motion of schools of fish in the water …

Video: “School of Fish,” by Earth Rangers, 25 July 2012 … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=su1en9Vxpog ..

In the movie ‘Take Shelter’, the male protagonist feels a recurring anxious feeling, a feeling of  foreboding. It is, I feel, because of the negative tenor of his emotion that he takes his recurring image of a murmuration of dark-colored birds to be an omen of impending apocalypse.

Yet many people see a murmuration of birds, and feel joy or wonderment when they see it. Such is the case with the young women in this video …

Video: “Murmuration (Official Video) by Sophie Windsor Clive & Liberty Smith,” by IslandsAndRivers 2 December 2011 … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRNqhi2ka9k ..

It is clear, then, that it is the feeling that accompanies visualization of an image that causes its perception as a good image or a bad image.

When a person has recurring images popping up from the subconscious mind, and when these images are accompanied by a strongly negative emotion … one that is hard to deal with without ‘acting out’ … then psychologists might term that condition Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (as with COVID stress). Or they might term it ‘generalized anxiety’; or if the emotions get out of hand, they might term it ‘panic attack’. There is also the psychological term ‘paranoid schizophrenia’, which I gather might be a label for recurring ‘panic attacks’ as in the movie.

Broadcasting of mental filters has a good effect in cases where a person’s mental filters allow him to send forth uplifting images from the subconscious mind. In these instances, families or groups such as social circles and church congregations can stand together with courage against adversity.

Broadcasting of mental filters has a bad effect in cases such as that in the movie, where the protagonist’s fearful mental images cause his wife to become fearful, and cause his Ohio small town community to turn against him and label him mentally imbalanced. Broadcasting of negatively aspected mental filters can, I feel, cause what is termed ‘folie à deux’, ‘folie à famille’, ‘folie à coterie’ (that is, a delusion shared by two people, by a family, or by a small group); or in the case of crowds of people, ‘mass hysteria’. The latter may take place across a town, or across a nation, or even … due to the near-instantaneous nature of global communication … worldwide, as is the case with COVID fears.

Please do not misunderstand: It is not that we ought not take proper precautions regarding COVID; it is just that negatively aspected images to do with COVID can cause inappropriate actions … or no action at all, when action is in fact needed so as to preserve life. For instance, it may well be that COVID vaccines are a ‘hard sell’ worldwide because people are experiencing ‘fawn’, ‘freeze’, or ‘flop’ types of threat responses after taking in too much in the way of online images that cause them to feel the emotion of fear regarding COVID.

In cases where a person is affected by other people’s broadcasting of negatively aspected mental filters (such as with the relentless COVID newscasts last year), the person must learn to view negatively aspected mental images with a neutral mind, as does the male protagonist in the movie ‘Take Shelter’. Through cutting down on visual intake of negative images … for instance, by limiting one’s viewing of negative images online … anxiety about the future can be dealt with nonreactively. Or one may simply stand strong and still, while the image is visualized, until the negative feeling ebbs away.

That means to me that the true ‘shelter’ for one’s mind is a strong, still, neutral stance of mind despite the ups and downs of daily life.

In love, light and joy,
I Am of the Stars

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