When a friend went to get her jab, she was given a medical consent form to sign, which had a box she had to tick saying she understood that the vaccine was an experimental medical procedure and if there are any adverse effects, neither the people administering the jab, nor anyone else will be held liable for any damage caused.  

So basically, if one does have an adverse reaction, which many people have (check out the data on the yellow card scheme), one is on their own, with no compensation and no-one who can be held accountable for any injury caused by the vaccine. 

So I think people are well within their rights to refuse these experimental COVID vaccines and shouldn't be made to feel bad for declining. All this mass pressure and coercion to get vaxxed is wrong. 

The new COVID variant: Omicron, which sounds like a transformer, (maybe it's a decepticon). The scientist credited with discovering it Dr. Angelique Coetzeep was speaking to Julia Hartley-Brewer on Talk Radio about omicron, and said:

“Patients I’ve seen with it had mild symptoms and recovered. None were admitted and no oxygen was needed. The hype makes no sense to me at all.”

So why are the media and government hyping it up?

Is there something fishy going on? If I question it, I just get labelled a conspiracy theorist, ridiculed or made to feel bad for practising some critical thinking. 

Bad governments like to have a war on something, it is a classic way to distract the people, used throughout history.

 By choosing to be unvaccinated I am harming noone. And if I do get seriously ill from catching COVID I will accept it, I won't put any pressure on the NHS and won't go to the hospital for treatment. And if I die I won't feel any regret for declining the jab, I have done nothing wrong, it is my choice. I am not a bad person for doing this.

 I am no threat at all. 

The vaccine does not stop a person catching or transmitting the virus. These vaccines only protect the person who has been vaccinated not anybody else. The viral load for a vaccinated person is pretty much the same as the viral load for someone who is unvaccinated. Being vaccinated does not stop the spread of the virus or protect those who are vulnerable, (other people can still catch COVID off you, even if you're triple-vaxxed). There is absolutely no need to vaccinate everyone, especially young people who get COVID mild. In fact children are at greater risk of harm from the vaccine than from the virus. It makes no sense to me, it is very strange and illogical, and the media is full of double-speak and misinformation at the moment. 

I also heard on the radio that many people in care homes have died, something that isn't been talked about much. They didn't say what the cause of death was but hinted it could be due to lack of staff.

Maybe there's not much use to writing my thoughts on this. I have no power to change what is happening in the world, it is outside my control. And I certainly don't want to divide people with my words, just merely offer my thoughts for whatever they're worth. The only control I have really is the choices I make for myself. We will all have to wait and see how this plays out in the end - time will tell.

 All my Buddhist friends have been fully-vaccinated, and they don't agree with my stance but they also don't judge me. 

It can be lonely being someone who stands on the edge and doesn't follow the herd. But sometimes I think people like that are necessary.

Buddhism can be summed up as overcoming the three poisons of Greed, Hatred and Delusion. (These three can also be phrased as worldly-desire, aversion, and ignorance).

Delusion is composed of three things:

1. Lack of information

2. Misinformation

3. and Disinformation

This creates wrong ideas about ourselves and others, about the world and the nature of reality, which gives rise to greed and hatred.

If we allow greed and hatred to flow through us it will increase our delusions. And vice versa, our delusions will increase greed and hatred. Which is why greed, hatred and delusion is often portrayed as three animals chasing each other's tails (see the famous image below), who in their ignorance are perpetually creating the unsatisfactory and painful samsaric existence.

But if we can spot and become aware of greed and hatred as it manifests within us and prevent it from arising, or abandon it ASAP if it does, our fundamental perceptions and attitudes about the world and reality will change. And eventually once one no longer has a trace of greed, hatred or delusion in them that person is then a fully awakened/enlightened being who is no longer generating a samsaric experience; but instead has gone beyond samsara into a state of perpetual freedom known as nibanna, a liberated state of mind that cannot be reversed.

In a nutshell, nibbanna is what the mind becomes when it is no longer fuelled by greed, hatred and delusion. And practising the noble eight-fold path is the training one undertakes to accomplish this goal.

                                            The Wheel of Life.

The image is a famous depiction of samsara called BhavaChakra in Buddhism.
The monster at the top is Yama, the God of death and represents impermanence.
The Buddha on the outside shows that liberation is possible and points to the centre to show the root of the problem.
In the centre, greed is depicted as a rooster, hatred as a snake, and delusion as a pig - they perpetually chase one another's tails and generate karma (represented by the second circle), which in turn generates the six realms of samsara (the third circle).
The outer circle represents the twelve links of dependent origination.

Had this vivid dream of being in possession of a magical pebble.

I skimmed it across the water and each time it skipped it grew larger and larger until it became an island with ancient Aztec-style ruins on it. Me and some companions went to explore the island. We found an entrance to an underground tunnel and entered it. Whilst down there we accidently activated a secret entrance that held a sarcophagus, with horror we watched it  open and a female zombie with glowing eyes emerge. She was immensely powerful and terrifying to behold. She butchered all my companions but for some reason spared me and when I was the last person standing, she changed from the form of a zombie to a beautiful self-assured Goddess. She led me out of the underground tunnels to the top of the island, where she stood by the entrance to a cave. She did not seem to want to harm me, in fact she seemed quite protective and motherly towards me. And she had a strong sense of the wild about her, reminded me of the feeling of connection and kinship I feel with nature and other species of life.

Anyway I had no idea what any of that could mean, but it left a strong impression on me. I researched ancient goddesess, from all cultures. And found out some amazing stuff about how humans used to live in a matriarchal society. And it was women who invented agriculture and were leaders during the Neolithic times. The garden of eden story symbolises this, the move away from being hunter-gatherers to farmers.

 Women would often die in childbirth, and those that did would be venerated as fallen heroes. The neolithic peoples worshipped the Goddess. Silbury hill for example took 400 years to build and has stood for over 4000 years. A symbol of the ancient Goddess in the shape of a breast. 

 Things changed roughly around the time of ancient Greece, things became more and more patriarchal, and women became suppressed and demeaned; at the same time the natural world also started to become oppressed. Nature became seen as something to be dominant over, something to exploit and control. The idea of ownership developed, not just of the land, but also of people. Something which still continues to this day.

 Anyway, after much digging I finally found the Goddess from my dream. She was an Aztec goddess. Portrayed sometimes in their art as a frightening zombie-like figure. It is all symbolic though, she was actually quite benevolent, the frightening zombie side to her nature symbolises her consuming our misdeeds/impurities, so we can become pure enough to travel onward. The companions in my dream must have symbolised my impurities. The cave she stood beside, I think symbolised the womb. Ancient caves almost always symbolised the womb. And perhaps I am meant to enter it to become reborn, or maybe it means the world is about to be reborn. Perhaps the cave is the safest place to be in these turbulent times, a place to change, develop and grow into something new.

I dunno, I am maybe reading too much into this dream,  left a strong impression on me though and was odd that I would dream of a Goddess I had never heard of before and find out she was based on an actual ancient mythology. Cool dream anyway... but perhaps I am reading too much into it.