Graduating Life With Honours  
Conscious Self-Governance in God's Kingdom
__________________  

My Spirit name is White Walking Feather
My vessels name is rob in the pagé family 

Copyleft 2015, 2017 

This book is free and to be shared with my brothers and sisters, no matter how rich or poor they may be. I do grant to every spiritual being the right and permission to distribute this work freely with the condition that any copies or adaptations are also bound by a copyleft agreement and will not be sold or commercialized in any way   and remain unaltered. If you are not familiar with copyleft, you can read more about it at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyleft  

Donations
If the Spirit moves you to support my work, I will accept gifts of energy so that I may continue to write, explore, create and share along my journey. Donations can be made through White dot Walking  dot  Feather at gmail.com or I also accept steem as well.    

Revisions
February 6, 2015 – Prerelease   
April 12, 2015 – Final Release Version 1.0
October 12, 2017 - Updated Release on Steemit.com Version 1.1    

Chapter Seven 

Independence   

If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability. - Henry Ford
  

As mere children in God's eyes, it is our job to grow up to be conscious self-governing spiritual adults. As with most children, there comes a time where the parent must stand aside and let the child take their first flight. Independence comes from building self-confidence, knowledge, wisdom and experience. Sure it is a painful process to watch. As a parent myself, I found that there is a fine line between helping too much and not helping enough. It was all the skinned knees, cuts and scrapes that taught many lessons along with all the laughter, fun and joy. The balance required to raise a child is immense and extremely rewarding. I am very proud of my two boys and all that they have accomplished so far in their lives. They are so much wiser than I was at their age.    

This generation seems to have something extra that I've not seen in my own youth. For me though, the hardest part is letting go and letting them live their own lives rather than what I think their lives should be like. I struggle with that even to this day. I must find it within myself to trust that I've done all I can and it is now up to them to make the best of what they have learned so far. We worked very hard to teach them how to think and learn rather than what to think and learn. I trust that those skills will serve them well as they start to explore the greater world around them. I know that they have all the skills they need to make their way through the world. It is all up to them now.  

We decided to home school our kids when they hit grades four and six. We found that the public school system did not reflect the values and beliefs we hold and that the boys spirit was being crushed by rules, policies, procedures and a level of expectations that everyone must conform to the standard. My boys would literally cry each morning because they did not like school. So we pulled them out and found a fantastic home schooling school board to help us. Their first recommendation: Do no schooling for at least 6 months. We were a bit shocked, but given the benefit of hindsight, we were very glad. The reason was that it would take at least that long to deprogram our boys. There is so much programming and behaviour modification taking place in our schools today, that I was forced to conclude that our schools are no longer there for higher learning but rather slave training. Our kids are taught how to follow instructions, obey authority and learn the skills necessary to run the machine. Our kids are not given an education but rather are taught instruction. Life is how we get a real education.    

Part of our purpose for leaving the city, building earthships, chicken coops, raising livestock, etc was to remove our dependencies from the corporate grid. But it also gave us an opportunity to give our boys a wider range and scope of skills and experiences. My boys know how to build a house and do what it takes to provide for themselves. They also recognize that the important things in life take a lot of work and time. Sure they succumb to a few bouts of instant gratification, but for the most part, they have done extremely well in this regard. I know for a fact that when they are ready, they will have the skills to provide all the basic necessities of life – directly. They know how to grow food, look after live stock, build houses, harvest water, treat waste, heat their homes and all that is necessary to provide for their families. The level of skills necessary to accomplish all of that is staggering. The learning curve that my wife and I went through just to establish our domain was immense. About a year ago I came to a very comforting realization that should anything happen, I have what it takes to redo all of this if necessary. That knowledge and experience cannot be taken away from me, except perhaps with a bullet. But I'm not going to worry about that.    

Our relationship with the state prior to all of these changes can be compared to that between a child and parent. The only difference is that the state has absolutely no interest in teaching it's children how to become independent. It is not in their best interests as that would severely impact their ability to harvest energy from the people. I found over the last few years that people are now starting to feel the pinch and are starting to protest. I found that protesting is a very important stage in the growth development of people. Protesting can be equated to the teenager rebelling against the parent. It is an important step to realize and a healthy one too. The teenagers out there, who are protesting, are at a critical stage and should they be aware that their protesting may change a few peoples behaviours but it does not change the foundational structures of the parent. Once they realize that, then they will either succumb to the authority of the parent or venture off on their own and do it themselves. I pray that the protesting people realize the choices that they face and they choose to pick up the duty to govern themselves in order to grow up to be responsible, accountable adults instead of giving up and going back to being children.    

Those who hide behind the mask of the state have used subtle tricks to keep us enslaved to their system. They have gone to great lengths to convince us that we are persons (masks) rather than physical and spiritual beings. They have torn the essence of who we are into pieces so that they can gain jurisdiction over one part while ignoring the others or the whole. They hope that we don't figure this out. Should we figure it out, we will then realize that we are not a fiction at all but much more than that. Religion is designed to keep us from pushing through that next barrier by convincing us that we are sinful and that we must pay for any redemption. The whole goal is to keep us from contemplating that we are indeed divine in nature once we realize that we were indeed created in the image of God and our Spirit is that which is divine. The fact that we have merged it with a human body does not diminish who we are but rather speaks to the courage and dedication involved in taking on such a challenging task in order to learn and grow. It is a lot of hard work for a divine spirit to join with a human body that has so many challenges to overcome. But we do it because there is great spiritual meaning behind doing all that work.  

As children, I believe it is time to take the risk, fly the coop and venture out on a journey of maturity. What makes this particularly challenging is that the parents (those in government and corporations) do not want us to do that. Having billions of people learning how to look after themselves and others would completely destroy the fictional empires that they have spend so long building.    

People though, are so conditioned to fear authority and follow the commands of authority, that the biggest challenge is not the authority but their own perceptions and feelings when it comes to authority. I've been on this path for many years and I still go through a bit of a panic attack when I see a police car. Why is that? Are we so afraid of going to jail or getting into trouble that we literally have a panic attack just at the sight of a mere symbol?    

I am reminded of my boys when they were about two years old. They loved saying no. I recently learned that during that period of time in their development, they were starting to explore their individuality. For a two year old child, because they are not emotionally or mentally mature, this period of time can seem a bit self-destructive. As a parent it was my job to ensure they don't get into trouble and end up hurting themselves. I will admit that my approach was to assert my force over them mainly because I was much bigger and stronger. Very much the same way the current state controls its children. As a result, the word 'no' was suppressed and the will of the child to explore his individuality was suppressed.    

I believe most of us went through this same process when we grew up as well. So now we were taught from our parents that there is no use to apposing authority because they are always bigger and stronger than we are. So there is no sense in even trying. This was true when we were two years old, but this assumption is completely false when we are older. The truth of the matter is that when we get to a point where we have the mental and emotional maturity to assert our individuality, most of us refuse to take that step. We as full grown mature adults, have what it takes and all we need now is that same desire and determination that we had when we were two years old. Matthew 18:3 states:  

Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.    

For me, what this passage is saying is that we need to get back in touch with our youth, our desire to learn, explore and share. We had no bias or discrimination. What is required now is the burning desire to express our individuality, stand up and say 'no'. We have it within ourselves to govern the self. We currently lack the skills to accomplish this, but as spiritual children, it is time that we as a people venture out and learn how this is going to be done. My wife and I have done that here since 2007. We made a LOT of mistakes along the way, but I believe we are getting better and better at accomplishing the end result; self-sufficiency and self-governance. We have had a lot of help from our close friends and family. The community of people that have stepped up and provided assistance through our journey has been absolutely humbling. Without that guidance, support and assistance, I don't think we would have accomplished all that we have.    

I hear of lots of people talking about communes, communities, etc, but I think for us, we found some valuable lessons when we considered these types of relationships. We came out here and tried working and living with two other families, at different times. Experience has taught us that if those families are not already independent, then there is a strong tendency to fall back into a dependent relationship with those who are fully dedicated to being independent. That had a huge strain on the relationship and it ended up not working out. So I now tell people that if they want to participate within our community, then get out there, find some land, build and become as independent as possible. Then we can start building inter-independent relationships that will last the test of time or at least stand a way better chance of surviving. I would be more than happy to help out, but not at the expense of those individuals learning through the experience. It is the struggle and experiences that teach the most and I don't want to rob them of that. However, it is also in my best interests to ensure they are successful as well, so I will do what I can to ensure success. I have a very close group of people around me.    

Very good friends who believe in what we do and some of them are well into the process of becoming independent themselves. I call this group my clan, because that is how important they are to me. They don't live near me, in fact most of them live 1 – 2 hours away. It is not the distance that created the community. It is the relationships and the time we spend together that created that community. I also have a much larger group of people who are watching what we do very closely. They have donated building materials and labour to help us get things built, like the earthship and the greenhouse. Given our limited cash flow, these people have been instrumental in the progress we have made as well. They have also demonstrated the prosperity model that we can experience if we see past the scarcity of commodities.    

I raise all of these points because the last few years of work to become truly independent from the corporate and government grids has been very much like what I experienced when I first moved away from home when I was 18 year old. I had very little to live on, so parents, family friends, etc all provided a little bit to get me started. It was then completely up to me to make it all work and figure it all out. If I fell down, there were people there to help me, but for the most part, I wanted to do it myself. It was a rite of passage for me. It was important that I make it work.    

Our experiences on our domain over the last few years is the most important step we could make to truly be independent and free. It may seem like 10 steps backwards for most as we have rejected many luxuries and it appears we have lowered our standard of living by considerable amounts. But for us, we value all that we have accomplished and proven to ourselves that we can do this without the state or most corporations. The knowledge we have learned doing this cannot be learned through books or videos but only through action, getting dirty and doing the work. To do this completely by ourselves would have been 100 times more difficult but with our community, clan and family, we proved that this is not only possible, but also extremely rewarding at the same time.    

These struggles have built strength, determination, faith and confidence. All the qualities that I hope we instilled in our two boys. These are areas of self-development that I find are completely devoid in the Fictional Realm's education system. To sell everything and venture out into the countryside to accomplish this took an absolute leap of faith and a level of willingness to take risks because of the valuable learning that would come from it. I have lost count of how many people come out to visit us, see the earthship and all that we build and comment on how great it all looks and feels. They then admit to themselves that they could not do what we have done. The main reason is that they are unwilling to let go of the benefits or privileges they currently enjoy within the system or put in the hard work. They admit that it is okay for them. In order to make the shifts necessary, we must be willing to let go of those benefits so that we can rebuild a new paradigm that is built on completely different constructs.    

Teenagers exhibit this quality beautifully as they usually have a strong desire to move away from home to do things differently and to explore their independence. They take that leap all in an attempt to improve upon what they learned from their parents. If we were to learn from our teenagers, we would be faced with the truth that if we are unhappy with our current situation, then what is required is a large shift in how we view and interact with others in this world. We cannot continue to interact with one another using antiquated systems that were designed for control and power. The human race is growing up and outgrowing the strict confines of the parent that governed the earth for thousands of years.    

The teenagers are ready to break free for the first time in human history and explore what it is going to be like to live as independent sovereign beings. What will those relationships look like? How will this work? How will we interact with one another? Those questions I cannot answer and will not even attempt to answer. I have faith that when we work through the transition period, which will be very chaotic for some, scary for others, we will end up on the side of peace and what we create on the other side will be more beautiful and peaceful that any of us can imagine. It will be the combined creative capacity of all that survive the transition and it will rival anything ever created on this earth or in the universe. We all know what it is going to take as we have all been through it before on a much smaller level. We all experienced it on a personal level when we grew up and moved away from home. The only difference is that instead of running into the arms of yet another parent, we have an opportunity to break the cycle and stand on our own power, authority and governance as true adults with the capacity to control and manage the power from within. The creative power that God has given each and every one of us.    

What will be required to accomplish this goal is the drive and tenacity of a two year old. To stand up and say no, no matter the consequences. To explore and question everything. Drive the corporate parent nuts by asking 'why?' over and over. Not yielding until we are satisfied our thirst for curiosity has been quenched. We now have the mental and emotional maturity to do this without destroying ourselves. If we can find the same courage and drive that we had as teenagers, then we too can venture out and leave the government and corporate parents behind in order to explore our capacity to live on our own and figure out what we are capable of accomplishing. We can explore our relationship with ourselves and all those around us. The experience will be challenging and at times we may have little food on the table. Learning how to be fully independent is one of the most challenging experiences we will face in our lifetime. Our fictional parents will pout and pull all kinds of temper tantrums. They will do anything to try to sabotage our efforts for independence. They are bullies and very abusive. They no longer deserve our loyalty or cooperation. It is time to walk away and be all that we were meant to be: free, prosperous, loving, compassionate, peaceful, individual, independent spiritual beings. Then and only then will we be able to form interdependent relationships and build a social structure where we work together for the prosperity of all, through the spirit of cooperation.