Prison of One

              Thurston’s Thoughts

Solitary Confinement

Prison of One

Wanted to relay a perspective about bad experiences, mistakes, and failures. Life’s challenges and disappointments will hit a fork in the road and a decision of which road to take must be made. A prisoner in a cell was asked “what you in for and how much time you done’? The prisoner replied, “guilty of memories which I refuse to shake and it has been so long I stopped counting”. The first prisoner replied, “me too, memories, but I’m just passing through”. The prisoner facing hard time then asked, “how did you get out so soon”? He replied “it is not a life sentence just an indefinite one. You can leave whenever you like.”

Many times we keep ourselves prisoners to our thoughts, memories, and circumstances beyond the pain of hopes delayed, uselessness, or a lesson learned. Our cell is a construct of our mind built with fear, anger, and regrets of what was lost or never realized. Rest assured it will be compounded by the loss of what cannot be gained while locked in a psychological and emotional cell of our incarceration. Ask yourself, what is stopping your freedom, if not you? It is a solitary confinement heavily guarded by our ego, shame, and other’s opinions. But, that’s on us player. Whatever has imprisoned us either is no longer an option or could care less that we are not or never were.

In many ways we are self-healing by our thoughts and emotions. The difference is our thoughts and emotions can be prevented from healing by our choices, influences, and insecure shadows in our mind. Family, it is nothing more than memories and hormonal reactions that we control if we choose. So, things didn’t work out today may be because it was making us available for a better outcome tomorrow. I have learned the wisdom of not fluctuating according to events or emotions. But, instead accept it and look beyond the occurrence to practice the patience of anticipating the reward beyond my wisdom or vision. Life is strange that way, perseverance will expand our limit when we feel we have reached it or to further distance us from it.

Very few things in life we are unable to hop back from. It is just an adversary waiting to be conquered, out maneuvered, or disregarded. For example, ever want someone back and encounter them only to see they are not the memory of what you were missing. That seeing them gives closure to the foolishness of missing them. Now you are relieved and lucky you dodged that bullet.

But what if as a result of it you stepped your game up and now the shine is much brighter than it was before due to their absence. But all you can do is thank them for the inspiration that molded you through the adversity they left you in. Realize it is not pain or failure it is fuel, turbo fuel. So, the solitary confinement can be short and beneficially used more as a temporary detention for improvement or indefinite hard time in a prison of one confined by memories. Which road have you taken, memories or freedom from their limitations? The choice is entirely yours.

Thurston K Atlas

Creating a Buzz

Elephant restrained by a peg



 Unparalleled Strength.

The elephant is majestic and revered across many lands, cultures, and over time. The elephant is the largest land mammal globally, with species that grow up to 13,000 pounds in weight. It symbolizes wisdom, loyalty, reliability, power, and good luck with an incredible memory and observable traits and behavior that contradicts its colossal size and raw strength.

The elephant knows no bounds in the wild, but it is taught limitations that ensure its control and ignorance of self in captivity. It is controlled by the only means capable, itself, by being subjected to psychological conditioning to ensure its own psychological bondage. That is why a small cord or twine can tether a fully grown 13,000-pound elephant to a small peg knocked only inches into the ground.

It is imprisoned not by physical force but by confinement of its mind. It is manipulated into complicity by limiting the processes of the mind that would enable it to recognize and use its great strength against the bondage of a feeble restraint. It is conditioned to remain restricted and accept a power other than itself, believing it is hopelessly outside its grasp to attempt resistance.

The initiation is started much like kindergarten, where this must be embedded before a level of confident resistance can be exhibited; it must be extinguished early. The elephant must be trained at an early age to accept tethering calmly. This is done by tying one front leg to a peg and then the opposite diagonal rear leg to a different peg, thereby restraining the “baby beast.

This technique alone cannot restrain a baby elephant, so the deterrent or restraint must be stronger than the elephant’s young strength at that time to reinforce that there is no escape or resistance against the force that binds it against its will. Chains will do just fine for this. It will continuously and repeatedly test the chains imposed upon it until it learns that its size and strength are futile against the constraints that hold it physically.

No matter how hard or how long its effort to resist is, it becomes useless. Once its determination is broken, and the elephant “realizes” this uselessness, it gives up any further or future attempts believing that it is powerless against that which controls it for its entire life. The physical chains then become the psychological chains that bind the beast even into adulthood.

Confinement of the mind once achieved will be self-imposed in most instances, with only minimal reminders needed. The elephant’s determination is then replaced by calm compliance. It becomes no longer necessary for strong restraints that surpass the elephant’s young strength or its two legs to be restrained because now it is adequately conditioned. Sounds familiar?

The limitations of the mind work on all animals (even human animals too) when once conditioned and with the supporting reminders as constant behavioral reinforcement to maintain a reality that is believed by most to really be your actual limitations. It is a clever and sinister trick long used before Pavlov Theory.

Using the opposite of Pavlov, a penalty can be avoided by compliance. The absence of stimulus to elicit a response instead of anticipating a reward. The old go along to get along or else is still in full effect.

Even with elephants, peer pressure is used as a continuous reminder of how to behave, like crabs in a barrel to keep you confined with them. However, older conditioned elephants demonstrate their compliance instilling a level of acceptance that soothes the young elephants into accepting that’s just how it is, no questions about it.

The use of that which is most impressionable to someone is a highly effective tool of implementing behavior and beliefs because it comes from a trusted and relied upon source. So once the “baby beast” becomes fully grown and the chains and diagonal leg restraints are no match for their tremendous strength, they are still chained psychologically to their old circumstances.

The old circumstances were when much younger their resistance was useless had in reality long ago changed, but their mind had not changed, making it indeed their current reality with no longer a good reason why. Their size and strength had long ago multiplied to overcome their constraints, but their desire and mentality remained confined conditioned by a small rope and a faulty belief.

The young elephant knew no different but was taught this with no examples or allowances to suggest otherwise. Captivity of a generational herd mentality naïve of self and the unquestioned acceptance that clings to a vastly different fate from the reality of its true power and destiny. This is the taming of spirit and dousing of determination where no right to do so existed. Justified by the need and ability to do so but to no benefit to the elephant, only its exploitation.

Let’s change the subject name from elephants to people, human beings, not races. The name changes, but the game stays the same if you choose to stare at the truth and not flinch. Maybe you have been made into the very thing you despise the most by being trusting and naïve. Unaware of the reality thrust upon you that is not at all what you believe it to be, much like the elephant.

What peg restrains and controls your mind? Regrettably, you got it the same way the elephant did, unknowingly and without an understanding of your strength or how. As the elephant grew, it still held onto outdated beliefs embedded early on when it could have easily freed itself from captivity. If only it realized that it had the power not only to resist its restraints but to overpower it and choose its fate.

The will is what sustains you when the road gets tough but only when you prevent it from being compromised and allow it to expand untethered by the limitations of others regulating influences. Those who poorly regulate themselves would seek to regulate others by their word but not by their deed, indicating if you are clever, what is good for the goose may not be so good for the gander.

By what right is this recognized as being above your sovereignty, only for the comfort and amusement of another? Consider another’s gain you contribute to without fair compensation? Is it a reflection of your true importance to their elevation and accumulation? This power is not negotiated but given away and, in many cases, squandered or, much worst, not recognized or exercised.

Absent of lies and deceptions, power over oneself is the only authority a person has that does not involve consent and cooperation. If you want to lead, then be an example and possess that which others would be willing to follow that does not demand a subordination of them to your will against their good.

Time brings about a change one way or another, so everything must change and will change constantly, but the idea for change is the catalyst. We see as the captive elephant’s circumstances changed over time, he remained stagnant. As time passes, we should evolve to not invade others’ personal boundaries and human rights to conform to foreign beliefs that are not of their choosing or benefit. Persuasion is the proper tool, not suppression. Mutual benefit, not exploitation.

The techniques used to control the masses are driven down in your mind like a peg tethered by faulty socialization, now using more advanced processes than physical abuse. This may be shocking, but it is just not the “undesirables” of color that are the victims.

Like piranhas, the elite feeding frenzy has turned on their very own as if cannibals to ensure their elite survival. The middle class is eaten along with the lower class regardless of color. Fear, scarcity, and divisiveness are frequently employed to generate the ignorance of crash dummies to camouflage how you, too, have been programmed with lies and social engineering. They then conceal their influence and have you turn on each other in a futile attempt chasing your tails while they prosper.

Like Pavlov’s theory, when the bell rings, you salivate on cue without substance, having been socially conditioned but never realizing the basis for your slobbering. Petty distractions abound, motivations fabricated, and conditioning regulated by design to keep us preoccupied against each other instead of the pegs that bind us.

The elite has always tipped the scales for themselves since antiquity. Advancing the lies and flat-out misrepresentation of facts and history in America about America. It has created a narrative to bolster the image and perception of the accomplishments of a colonial populist Anglo-Saxon protestant society. It has concealed the degenerate deeds and wealth heist greater than the war criminals of ill repute held in the highest contempt.

This cannot persist as an elitist entitled privilege in this day and age where knowledge cannot be hidden so easily. For example, the likes of a homicidal genocidal Christopher Columbus are widely celebrated with a holiday.

Likewise, a scientific fraud and racist such as Charles Darwin is not exposed for his detrimental impact on society, honoring his absurd debunked biases of sexism and eugenics. These are two of many things that tether the masses to traditional nonsense.

This is not to expose matters of racism that are obviously practiced today due to this nonsense but the tethering of minds on both sides of the equation, whether beneficial or detrimental to your existence.

This goes on around the world where an endless number of people and circumstances can be substituted or exposed for the propaganda of nonsense presented to tether, condition, and control their people against the people’s greater good while exploiting this brand of social engineering for their own gain.

The general public or we the people have always been subject to exploitation going back to the beginning of time. Now worldwide, the realization and the awakening of oppressed people everywhere are challenging the status quo. Power only exists when recognized as such, but fear and cajolery can only control the masses for so long.

I almost forgot, the tethered elephant routinely breaks its binds when suddenly aroused by fear or agitation despite its psychological conditioning displaying the power to uproot large trees or remove obstructions.

Fear evoking action and resistance. A child has the strength to rip one piece of paper, but enough paper bound together even a strong man cannot tear apart. The strength of unity is a strength not to be disputed or squandered.

Limitations are, on average, learned and reinforced behaviors systematically imposed for the good of a hierarchy. Mental control is the most effective manner of control when it is voluntary. You think and feel it is your choice or, even worst, that you have no choice. You always have a choice but are you willing to pay the price for that choice. The conditioning kicks in as fear of reprisal instead of the satisfaction of a reward, contrary to Pavlov.

This was engineered in you to feel better about yourself if you can hold someone else down beneath you. So, instead of restricting someone, release yourself from this mindset of tethering whether it is others or yourself. Square yourself away first from the social programming that you believe to be a reality, and that will make at least one less purveyor of ignorance in the world based on these deceptions.

Supersede your constraints and promote honesty, knowledge, and compassion to strive for the vastness of your possibilities while recognizing and enhancing the radius of your understanding. Escaping the psychological bondage, we the people individually and collectively untethered expanding beyond limitations and conflict. That is why there is a need for tethering deceptions and division as a peg to control our minds. The size and strength of the elephant are unparalleled but the mind of a person is without bounds. Free your mind from the voluntary bondage that confines and restricts it as only you can.

Thurston K. Atlas

Creating A Buzz