Welcome to the Knuckleheads of Liberty. Potentially a separation of church and state a little bit here. So essentially there was a football coach who was praying after games on the field. And he was, and so it was voluntary. He wasn't forcing any players to do it, but he would just sort of go out in his own at the end of the game, take a knee, and just sort of pray silently to himself, I guess. And so I guess a lot of other players started doing it with him. And the school then got upset about it, and so they fired him for it. And so he wound up taking this all the way to the Supreme Court. And this Supreme Court came down on his side saying that, you know, it's his free speech. You know, he were seeing anybody to do anything religious. He was just sort of praying on his own. And the intent of the separation of church and state was that it simply not be to penalize people who wanted to practice their religion, but simply to, you know, not have religion encroach in the government. So what do you guys think about this case? It's kind of an interesting case. It seems like there's some possible things that could fall out of this, you know, in the future as well. So yeah, yeah, why don't you guys jump in on this? Well, I think over the years the meaning of the establishment clause of the U.S. Constitution have been grossly distorted because the religion in all forms, any any encroachment of religion into the into the public space where government authorities are involved. In this case is a school district. It was interpreted to mean that no, there's always that separation there always should be the separation. But in the intent of the establishment clause was to prevent and to prohibit the government from advocating for a particular religion. So for instance, they can't say, well, we only want the Catholics in this space. We only want the Anglicans in this space or the Muslims in this space or whatever. The government cannot the government has to be totally neutral on the on the on in the terms of the advocate application of religion. But what have happened over the years is that every form of religion expression have been treated as a violation of the establishment clause. And what the court is trying to say that is incorrect. Okay. In this particular case, the coach, I think he was an assistant coach actually was not forcing anybody. And as a matter of fact, the school district, which is the government authority here was not even supporting him in this endeavor. So this coach was not forcing anyone anyone to join him in this thing. He will go on the field on the 50 on the 50 yard line and some of his players will join him and they would pray and that kind of stuff. It was not the government trying to advocate for the establishment of any religion. So the court said the guy was right. He had a free speech right to advocate for whatever you want to pray to whichever God he wants to pray for and all that kind of stuff. And I think it was a sensible ruling. It doesn't mean every expression of religion in a public space as in terms of like a school or somewhere. Every advocate, a vocation of religion in those spaces and not violations of the establishment clause because we still have free speech rights. Yeah, I think it was good ruling too. That was good explanation to Leon that I thought you did just now. Appreciate that. And yeah, I think the left just hates religion. Yes, we know. Is that a true statement. Absolutely. Secular religion that they love. Exactly. For example, I mean, they, they want to be able to establish the rigid religion of sex in schools.   You can do. But, but I mean, in this case, it was clearly not the establishment of a particular religion by a government entity of any kind is a stupid football coach playing, praying after the game. Nobody was apparently even necessarily invited, but he went out there and they, you know, the players who wanted to followed and those that wanted to continue to to worship the sex God would were able to stay off to the side.  They have their dildos out there or something. I'm not sure. So, so I don't know that it's a good rolling next.  I think she did a dance recently featured something like that. Before we leave this, before we leave this topic, there was another ruling by the court that has to do with school choice and another issue of religion. So I believe it's main they had a sort of school choice program, but one of the things that they did that they forbid the for using the same logic about the establishment clause and whatever and that kind of stuff. They prohibited religious schools from participating in the program is the vouchers or whatever it is or distributed could not be used in in religious schools schools with religious backgrounds and the court ruled against against against the state of main on that particular issue, they did not validate the establishment clause. The money was going to give or however the program was going to be administered, but it was the parents making the choice as to where they wanted to send the train. And that was an important factor is not a government was telling somebody they had to go somewhere or you have to go listen to this person or anything like that. The parents are making a choice and the court said that the establishment course was not violated by by the parents making the choice and sending the kids to a religious school if they so choose. Leon was was this scotis or a federal court. I just curious. Before before this one we are speaking about. You know, it's a slightly different I'm completely with you on the whole main thing that one you just brought up on this particular one. I just a tiny bit of pushback and that's it. You could see where, let's say, for instance, if you were an administrator at a school or something else and you had some kind of an after together, or after after work get together or something else centered around religion. You know, you might feel compelled to go if you wanted to advance potentially you know I mean whether it be in some government agency right if you're not hanging out with the people right then. But you know, to me, the solution is not to bar people from being able to practice religion the solution is why have we gotten government so big that it's everything so that we have to worry about religion coming butting up against it right I mean, you know if we had a mostly private schools competing against one another this wouldn't be an issue at all. Right. I mean, all of these schools could could literally just do you know you could have a religious school over here have a non religious school. And to me that's the real libertarian choice here is let's let's shrink government here a little bit so that this isn't an issue period with, you know religion and government coming head to head. I will have to push, I have to push back a little bit on your pushback Jason okay. I mean, sure, I can see where if if for instance you're having some after school thing and you know it's religiously oriented. Some, some kid might feel some pressure to go to that, even though, even though the coach never said that you have to come to it or whoever the administrator doesn't have to come to it.  However, however, if there are no clear explicit expressions of forcing children to into those religious events or anything like that. If there are no expressions of it, I do not see how we could assume them because some kid felt the pressure. So I would say even in those cases where a kid may have felt a certain pressure even though he was not told to do it, but he felt the pressure to do it. I would say in those cases, I don't think the establishment cause will be will be will be violated, even in those cases. But I do agree with your with your with your with your statement as the solution, the overall solution to this is where we have private schools competing against each other and that kind of stuff. I do agree with that, but I do push back on your your original purpose. Yeah, because I'm not always going to be in the details, you know, you're always going to have to parse the story to figure out what somebody truly discriminated against or not.  No, we're not. We're not. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness always and forever.


Hello, beautiful souls. Welcome to this Ascension Energy Update for the year of 2023. In this video, I'm going to share some personal downloads around what to expect from the energies of this year. Also, some specific Akashic guidance to help us through 2023 and the specific spiritual qualities that I'm being shown are going to be really, really important for star seeds in particular to develop this year. Okay, so let's start with an Eagles Eye view of the energies of 2023. And rather than go into great detail here, I'm going to really, really encourage you to check out a couple of my previous videos. There's one called energies of 2021, and then also this December Solstice 2021 video. Both of these really lay out a very overarching view of the Ascension process that the earth is going through right now.  But just to give you a very short, brief overview, we're definitely going into this dark night of the soul of the collective right and by the collective I mean humanity but also planet earth herself. Okay, because I think there's one thing that we need to be really, really aware of. And that I think a lot of people kind of miss the boat on this one is that humanity and Mother Earth are inseparable, right, we're actually like cells in the body of Mother Earth, right. And so there's this conception I think that is really, really popular these days that we're separate right you hear this all the time, especially among the environmental movements that we're, we're destroying the earth yeah. So our truth to that well we'll get into that in a bit but you know it's it's also we're destroying ourselves so we need to be really, really clear that we and the earth are inseparable. Okay, so that said, at this point in time, we're, we're facing this crisis right we can all feel it, and I feel like the new age for a long long time has really chosen not to see that. And certainly not to the extent to which it is happening on the earth. Okay, so there's one thing to take a really, you know, a positive outlook on things on the universal level on the level of the eternal everything is always okay and that's really important to understand to understand to write no matter what happens going forward. Spiritually, we're always, you know, our home is really the eternal, but we're also manifest in this world and so it's also very important to be very aware of what's actually going on in the world. Okay, and it's not all love and light as we know. But what I'm being shown here in 2023, I've just gotten this, this real revelation that you know things are actually more of a crisis than any of us really realized okay. I feel like it's important for all of us to recognize that just being human at this time on planet Earth, you are and have been dealing with a lot of trauma like an incredible amount of trauma, the, the state that the earth has been brought to right right now is a crisis state. We need to be really, really clear on that and at the same time, have this hope. Okay, because I feel like I, you know, there are people out there there are really accomplished gurus out there even who are already saying it's the end is like you know, there's there's really no hope for life as we know it to continue we're headed for nuclear annihilation, and it's a done deal, and better prepared to transcend right spiritually, and you know, I feel like to each their own right and and this crisis point that we've come to right now so I will circle around back to that, but I wanted to bring this image forward again I have shown this before if you look at the last 2021 December solstice it really explains what this is about. I'm bringing it forward again because I feel like it really illustrates exactly where we're at. And also, it coincides just beautifully with a particular Native American prophecy it's from the Anishinaabe people, called the seven fires prophecy. I'll link in the description to the Wikipedia explanation on that. But very briefly, it says that there will come a time where then they call it the light skin race. I think it's those who, and no matter what skin color, those who have kind of gone on this western path, which is most of the world right now, okay, we'll have to make a choice and it'll be a choice between two paths we're going to be given this choice. And they say one that will be a black and charred path it'll hurt your feet, right and another will be a green and wash and inviting path. So the prophecy says if we take the wrong path, it's going to choose it's going to result in incredible suffering for all of humanity. If we choose the correct path, it will lead to a time of peace and prosperity for all human beings. The feeling like this 2023 is this, we've come to that point we've come to that point of choice. You know, in the article what it says is that the prophecy says that we don't choose either path that we choose to go back to the ways of the ancestors the ancestral path. Okay, and that's actually the way forward. And so, what I've been shown in this painting, which I feel like the painting came forward independently of that prophecy, right but it dovetails so beautifully what I'm seeing here is, first of all the split right between light and dark but also beyond that you can see the three paths there's this dark path here. This is actually the greed and inviting the white snake here is how I'm seeing it. And then the third path would be the ancestral path which is the, the two snakes in the oral borough symbol in the background. Okay, so what I'm seeing is this path here is the path of despair. And this path here I've been told is the path of logging. And this path here, if we take the path behind it right and that's going to be the path that leads to this beautiful new dawn. Okay. Coming into 2023, it's becoming more clear right the choices that are before us, and the potential timelines okay these are all timelines that we are headed for pretty much, you know, all three of them. And what I'm seeing is that these two timelines that the black and white snakes are actually in the forefront so these are the easier paths to take. And they're the ones that if we continue without some kind of shift this year, especially it's it's going to take one or both of these paths right and this would be the path of nuclear annihilation at this point right because that's the path of real death and we'll be continuing the whole cycle and path of destruction like the environmental destruction that we've seen just the the human rights, travesties, enslavement, all the stuff. Okay, that's going to inevitably the end of that if you follow that path to its logical and it is a nuclear annihilation. Okay, so that path is definitely active right now. And we have to be aware of it, I feel that we have to really be able to look that in the face and say hey that is that you know we're on track for that. This other path here, the path of longing, what I'm seeing shaping up with that that's the path of transhumanism. And so, if we, you know, manage to, if we manage to avoid nuclear annihilation. The next step is transhumanism right and it's, there's a lot of reasons behind this a lot of this has to do with the law of gender. Right, but basically, the ancestral path what that does is it maintains the integrity of the DNA maintains the integrity of life and the continuity of life. Okay, so basically we're looking at, you know, are we going to support the continuity of life. Right, or are we going to go and end up on a dead end pathway. And this being, I'm really seeing this as transhumanism it is the path of longing right longing for life. And to me, this is the more dangerous of these two paths and we're on both of these paths right now, way further along on these paths that I even realized until very, very recently. Okay. So, the reason the transhumanism is actually the more dangerous is because it does appear inviting. Okay, and so moving forward, especially into 2023 and beyond we're going to be shown in fact it's already. It's already well well underway right. We're going to be given lots and lots of choices and in fact a lot of them may actually, and have been almost pretty much forced upon us and that is that are pushing humanity into that, that transhumanism path right and what transhumanism is it's it's merging man and machine it's merging man and artificial intelligence. Okay, and the reason that is, I feel, ultimately a dead end is because spiritually and the natural way that things evolve. Right. We're meant to have the spirit and the mind and the body all working together. And when. And that is, that is the created world that is direct from the creator right the creator made us as human beings, and gave us this ability to create. Okay. This is one of the superpowers of the human being. And, but with that we have free will choice right we can't be a creator being without free will. And so this is the crisis point this is the test point and this is what I'm being shown around this is that it's well beyond just humanity and what is so important to understand. Okay, and is that humans are part of the consciousness of the planet. We are the part that embodies and enacts that creative consciousness that is here to assist in bringing the consciousness of the entire to a higher level, and there's that spiritual principle as above so below right. So we do it within our own selves and as a critical mass of us attains that ability to transcend the lower shock role drives and operate instead of from the fear center to begin to operate from that enables the planet to also have a similar expansion of consciousness. And as the planet and others like her okay Gaia has brothers and sisters as our planet and others like her are able to make that transition. It assists another higher level in the universe. Okay. So this isn't just a question of will humanity survive or even will the earth survive. It is part of the rising of consciousness of the entire universe. Okay, so it there's really more happening here than than than we tend to be aware of. Okay, and so this is why I personally have a lot of hope is that I really have seen that there are other beings out there that have made this transition. We feel them to our star family, right. And that I'm being shown that it's, it's part of the maturation process of a planet is seeding it with human consciousness. And then that human consciousness matures to a point where it comes to this testing point. It's the coming of age as well as a birthing right in the coming of age of humanity. It's, there is an initiation. Okay, and it's, you know, can we pass the test of being able to handle our own creative creative ability, or can we pass the test of being given free will, and to use that free will in a way that is supportive of life. Okay, of life expanding consciousness. This is the test that we're in right now this is the initiation that we're in. And to pass that initiation. That is the going to be the birthing of the new golden age right but we got to pass through it we got to pass through the portal first that dark night of the soul portal. That's where we're at right now. I'm sure you've heard the stories of people who had, you know, we're in a really bad crash, or they were on the operating table or something and they found themselves like they there's they began to pass right and they, they come out of the body and they're taking this place, and they're given a choice, and they're told you can pass on and move on to the next life, or you can go back. And of course we don't hear from the people that choose to pass on, but those who choose to go back. They, they come back, knowing that they're going to endure some pretty tremendous pain in order to heal from that and come out. Okay, and so, but there's one thing that always drives them back. It's that sense of I haven't finished my purpose here. I have not fulfilled my mission I need to go back, because there's work left to do. Okay, and so that's where I'm feeling we're at right now we're we're at that point of choice. And there are many people on the planet that have chosen right because it's an individual choice and the aggregate of the individual choices is what makes that choice for humanity. Okay, so there can be multiple choices going on here just as there are multiple pathways, just as all three of these pathways right now could be playing out we could see these playing out over the next few years, all of them. Okay, I'm not saying it's going to be necessarily one or the other. Ultimately, in the long long picture, one of these is going to win out. Okay, and that's why the choices made right now are really going to influence the big picture and which one actually wins out in the end. Okay, so there are many people on the planet right now who have elected who are electing at soul level to just be taken away taken off.  I don't want to be here. And realize that all death is part of a cycle right it's this law of rhythm and the law of cycles. And so it's important right now to not be afraid of death will circle around back to that as well. And to recognize that those who choose to pass that is their sole choice. And we need to really, really be clear on that. Right. And it may also be big areas of the world. Okay, because once that death engine gets really going. There's a huge potential to be very widespread and huge. Okay. The other one here. Again, which is I feel more dangerous right because this is just an acute crisis. This one is a systemic issue. Right. And there are a lot of people who are going to elect for that because it's the easier choice. Because healing is hard. Healing is can be really, really painful. And if you're a healer and if you've been through any kind of healing process you know it could be freaking painful just like when you have it when your fingers get really, really cold right and numb and frozen, and they start to warm up who does that hurt hurts worse than when they're frozen. Okay, and so this transhumanism offers an alternative that feels easier it feels painless and it feels we're also going to be told it's the safe path safe. Okay, and, and so for the long term this is the short term crisis that that we have to pass right. And this is what's going to show up in the next few years are we going to actually annihilate the world, or are we going to move past that. Then should we move past that and leave at least part of the world and humanity intact. Then we're going to be dealing with this for quite a while right this pull towards transhumanism. And what that does is there are beings out there are essences out there that have failed this test but have not completely annihilated themselves and they're so damaged that all that they can do is kind of sponge off or suck off the energies of other beings and say that's why they're here on the planet in order to kind of co-opt humanity and take a ride on humanity but they do it by altering and and spending off of and and taking that so lessons right so what it ends up being it's sort of like the Borg right where where it's it's it's not a true spiritual wholeness, and that's why they, the Borg wants to keep assimilating other cultures because it has that hunger to be whole and it just can't because it's been so compromised. Okay, that's what AI and transhumanism does now I'm not saying that AI can't be used in it can you know we are technological beings but we have to learn as a species to use AI, or any other technology in a way that serves the greater consciousness and transhumanism is not that. Alright, so the third path is the path of returning to wholeness and healing, and that has to be done in the context of renewing and healing our relationship to the whole spirit of the planet and to all of the creatures on it right we have to come back into a right relationship with the universe and and and with spirit and okay so the way to do that I'll share in a little bit. Alright, so this is a pretty dire straits that we're in and that's why we're here as star seeds right that's why I incarnated it's probably why you incarnated if you're watching this much, you know, you have a warrior soul I can guarantee you right and that's why we have, you know, the star seeds, the twin flame energy. And, you know, those who carry that are here to really hold the flame of, you know, the healing spirit here on the world right now, and to assist us through this point, where we're really on the brink of, you know, brink of extinction, right. So I'm going to share a piece of a caustic guidance that I tuned into my higher self, and just asking with everything brewing right now is there really hope. What shall we be preparing ourselves for. And the answer is the firm is furnace awaits. Okay, this is a quote the furnace awaits. Remember the story of Daniels protege is in the fiery furnace, faith, got them through. Okay, so this is the first part of the transmission. And they're referring to the story of Daniel in the Bible. Daniel was the same one is I believe this, the Daniel in the lion's den.  When, when the music and trumpets flared. Okay. And so Daniel doesn't actually show up in this part of the story, but he had three proteges three young men that he had been mentoring. And when the trumpets blasted and everybody fell down and worship this idol, they stood there and they refused. Okay, so this act of refusal to what they knew was not aligned for their souls. Okay. And Nebuchadnezzar, when he was told of this was enraged. He's like how dare they. And of course the penalty was death and he's like fire up the furnace, seven times hotter than it normally is and throw them in. Okay, so that's what they did they this great big furnace. And this, it was so hot that the soldiers that were enlisted to throw these men into the furnace actually perished because they got so close to the flames and it just overcame them. So these young men were thrown into the furnace. And, of course, they were expected to be immediately incinerated but what happened was, when people looked in, they saw them walking around in the fiery furnace, and there were not three figures but there were four. There was an angel of God and they're with them. Okay. And so faith cut them through they were called out of the furnace they came out completely unscathed. Okay. And so spirit gave me the story to relate to you in that we're about to enter the furnace and it's going to seem hopeless. So many people are going to feel like we have no hope. And I want to share with you, there is hope. There is hope, but it's going to take a tremendous amount of faith. Okay, and faith isn't the only thing there's another thing here but let's talk about faith. First, because there's other qualities all wrapped up in faith. Okay, and the first thing is that faith, I was just my father just shared with me an amazing definition of faith. And this is from some early Christian writings, and it was that faith is a dispassionate understanding. Okay, dispassionate understanding. And by understanding, I feel it meant like light life right the all mind, the all is said to be a universal consciousness right and so the greater our understanding and knowledge of this universal consciousness. The closer we are to the divine. Right. And so faith is a combination of that understanding and a mastery of the lower emotions dispassionate. Okay, so so critically important right now. To understand the emotional field and work with the emotional the lower emotional field. This is the sacred center. Okay, thank you sacred center right now is critical. All the stuff is happening. Okay, the white snake the back snake the, you know, all the paths that take us away from it. The true sustaining path.  Okay, those emotions are meant only right to, to color attention to where things are off balance right If we have a great enough understanding to understand what's going on, then we can notice those emotions, allow them to kind of flow through. And they will help us to realize where do we need to come back into balance what needs to be addressed. Okay, but when we don't have the understanding, then it's really easy for those emotions to carry us away and carry us off path, which ultimately leads to a dead and it leads to death, basically, okay, the one way or another. And so we have to have both we have to have the understanding and we have to be able to, to master those emotions, and by master the emotions like I said, letting them fall through being aware of them, and then bringing yourself back into the heart. Okay, and into that build of knowledge. And because the heart here is the higher emotional center, we need the emotions because they're what trigger actions and to help us to, to actually take the actions that that need to be taken. Right. But when we can move from the lower emotional center into the heart. That's a critical part of faith, and that's actually the act of love and unconditional love. There's a lot of different kinds of love. Okay, so a lot of what people think of as love is what's known as arrows. It's the attachment kind of love right which is, we feel really strongly romantic love, but it can also be to other things we can have arrows for our car right we feel like really attached to that car. And that is a lower emotional expression of love. Right, but when we rise into the heart, we can access a type of love called agape right which is this beautiful God consciousness kind of love. This is fraternal love as well which is the brotherly love this is a recognizing soul to soul. Right, agape is being the highest form of love, which is an actually dispassionate kind of love it's just this emanation of incredible light. We're not cultivating those kinds of love, but dispassionately, we have to be able to, you know, feel those attachments and breathe acknowledge them and bring ourselves back to center. This is the definition of death as part of the cycle of life super important going forward here. Right, we have to be able to allow other souls to follow their chosen path without clinging to them, because if we are afraid of death in any way or sense that will bring us off the path of life. If we start fixating on death. And then we've gotten ourselves down into fear. Okay, it takes us out of faith and that's the fiery furnace. Okay, so to have faith in that fiery furnace we have to be dispassionate and learn to really work with our emotional body and bring it up into that higher emotional body. Super, super important. And that is also this power of unconditional love, because what I said it circle around to is that choosing the path of life, even though at this point it's it's going to be difficult. It's going to be a healing process and it's probably going to be painful. But we have to recognize that if you do choose path of life that is a an act of devotion. Beyond yourself and beyond even humanity is an act of service to our beautiful Mother Earth. That is the greater universe. That is this ultimate act of love or because somebody who is at that choice point where they've had that accident, and they choose to go back. It's, it's inevitably I haven't fulfilled my purpose. And my purpose is so connected with love a lot of times it's their family. They need to go back, because they have young children. No matter where they have to fulfill that mission of their family, or sometimes it's a, I meant to go back and take this experience and share it, and share this message of there's something beyond there's something more than just us. Okay, because that's what this is about. There's something more than just us, and that we're here to serve life. Okay, as humanity. And all right, so faith, and love, and hope. And the greatest of these is love, right. Okay, and then finally there's a little bit more to this Akashic message. And that is, I'm just going to quote here there is power in story. Stories you tell yourself are not just to pass the time away. They are incantations. They are magic. The act of storytelling is an act of magic, a story becomes an anchor and a scaffold for the will to climb. Story becomes truth, especially when it is repeated often. Your will is strong, insist on your power, demonstrate your power. Okay, so star seeds now is the time to really step into our power. We step into it through faith, through love, through hope. Right, and also through story. Okay, faith, love and hope are the qualities. Story is the vehicle that we use, right, and and that starts with vision. And think of it as being the author now of creation and not just a player in creation, right. We have to step into author mode, right, and we are now writing the story, we're not just playing along and, you know, I'm the hero in the story this happened and that happened and I had to react to it know where the author as well, we're both. Okay, and the author, actually, if you're a writer, you know this the author often doesn't know when they start writing what all the adventures are going to be, right, they, they, the character comes to them and they start writing and, and, you know, they sort of unfold from there it's an intuitive process. But one thing that usually will be true is that the author will have an idea of, and especially if it's a hero right that the hero will be victorious in the end, right. So, you know, you have the starting point, right, and you have the ending point and in between things unfold through intuition, but it's super important at this point right now for us star seeds to visualize. What are we moving towards, right, yes, this is a portal. And, you know, yeah, we're moving towards birthing a new golden age what does that actually look like, right. Okay, so I've been shared this before. This vision of the world is this beautiful shining blue and green globe, and it is just radiating vitality.  This is the earth that we're creating right now right that's that's that we're in the point of moving towards this, this healed whole earth, right, every being on it happy and free, all in including humanity. This is an earth that does not include humanity. We're an integral part of it, right so visualizing that I got that placed right here my third I invite you to also have this vision of the, the beautiful future earth the one that we're birthing right now. Okay, so, story, and the story will unfold according to the strength of our vision, and our faith and our will. Okay, so vision, super important holding that love essence and the faith is super important and then the third thing is cultivating our knowledge and our wisdom, right, because that is a large part of what has been lost what has been what we've been blinded to over the past millennia is the knowledge. And the wisdom and that is actually the ancestral knowledge and wisdom we have it in our DNA. Right, if you've had any of that gnosis that you get the downloads right you get the intuition we have that within us it's in our DNA that's why the DNA is so important that's really it's being co-opted into transhumanism, right, but we need to really protect that because it is part of this whole ability to support life and the continuity of life, right. We have that knowledge within us, but it's also passed down through us through the ancestral teachings, and that is so super important so many of these teachings have been lost. But this is the time if ever there was to return to those ancestral teachings, and to begin to re-learn those because the, and I'm talking the really really indigenous native very ancient ancient ancestral teachings tell us how to live. Okay, and how the world works. The hermetic principles being part of that. The hermetic principles really tell more explain how the universe works spiritually, but the ancestral knowledge tells us how to live within in a way that's harmonious and within those laws, right. How to be a lawful how to be, how to be human, right so finding whatever is left of the ancestral wisdom and knowledge and beginning to really not just learn about it, but live it. And that is the path that is in that we have to take in order to get to this point of, you know, the path of healing. It won't be easy. It won't be easy.  But I believe in my heart, I believe so strongly. I have to believe right. This, this is my personal path I've been told multiple times, you're here for the reconstruction, right and so that just builds my faith in that I wouldn't be here and I wouldn't be told I'm here for the reconstruction if the reconstruction wasn't possible. Okay, so as much as this Armageddon is a path that we're hurtling along right now, I absolutely have hope and faith that we can overcome that that we can bypass that danger. I also have hope and faith that we can. We can step aside from this transhuman path as well or at least a critical amount of us to to reclaim life on earth here and bring us into a higher dimension on the planet. I absolutely have faith that we can do it. If you do too, please put that in the comment below. And I invite you to really develop your personal vision of the New Earth that we're building. I feel like that is a super, super important part of what we're here to do is really envision it's finding the new home it's finding home, right. And if you would like some assistance with that if you would like to gather together with like-minded souls to work on that vision, I will be offering a free workshop later this month. I'll be sharing a technique to help you to create your vision for 2023, as well as the overarching vision for the New Earth as well. The link is below and you can just sign up for that if you're interested. And then I wish you a wonderful new year. Happy 2023. And remember you were born to be free.


So countries can apply non-tariff barriers due to the dumping. Dumping is the export of a commodity at a lower price abroad than domestic market. Actually, sometimes in a specific country, the producers of any country sell them commodity in the international market at the lower rate at the lower price than the domestic market. This can be intentional or this can be unintentional. So there are three basically types of dumping to avoid such situation. Countries are compelled to apply non-tariff barriers that can be in form of quota, that can be in form of any other non-tariff barriers. This is persistent dumping and it is also called international price discrimination. First of all, this idea is to understand what does it mean by price discrimination. Like the price discrimination that we talked about in the beginning of the video, when a commodity is selling at a lower price at a market at a higher price, it is called price discrimination. This persistent sort of dumping, this is done by selling the commodity at a higher price in the domestic market than internationally. In this case, this sort of dumping can be legal. There are many reasons for that. The second type of dumping is called predatory dumping and it is termed as a temporary sale of a commodity from a domestic producer. The main objective of this is the second type of dumping or the way in which the price is discriminated. The objective of this is not positive where this is being sold. Primarily, the producer of any country is to charge the domestic price at a high price and at an international level, the price of the same thing is less charged. And the motive of this is that if the actual price, the cost of the product is less than that, then it is sold. The primary reason for this is that it wants to achieve monopoly in the market. Now, monopoly is a concept of microeconomics. In this, there is only one single producer in the market who has full control over the market. There is only one seller in the market who is supplying or selling the product. In this case, predatory dumping is actually a temporary sale of your commodity at a low cost or at a lower market abroad to take the advantage of newly acquired monopoly abroad. The basic idea of price discrimination in its conditions is that the elasticity of demand should be different in different markets. Now, in this case, the dumping of this kind of dumping or even prior to that, we talked about persistent dumping, we talked about legal dumping because the objective there is not to be acquired by the market. In that persistent dumping and predatory dumping, this is the primary objective or the primary difference in this case that in persistent dumping, the seller keeps monopoly in the domestic market or is a single producer. But in the international market, he has to face competition. There are more sellers in the market. In that case, he has to keep his price competitive. Because of which, he could take some share of the market. So, there is no such issue in this type of dumping. But the predatory dumping here is objective altogether different. The objective here is that the international market or the foreign market is going to capture this producer, the market. And the entire surplus of the consumer is going to take. So, that is the difference. The third type of discrimination in dumping is the occasional sale of a commodity at a below cost or at a lower price to unload an unforeseen and temporary surplus of the commodity without having to reduce the domestic prices. Now, this case is very interesting. Mostly, this case is faced by developed countries where you have a basic microeconomics rule that when the supply is too much, then your prices start falling. In this case, developed countries, industrialized countries dump their agricultural commodities on the other market at a lower price. And this is also an advantage for developing countries that they are getting something at a lower price compared to the international market. The case here is that this is not on a regular basis. This is occasionally, as we have said earlier, that after a year or three years or even four years, there has been a situation where a country's domestic market has produced too much or has more productivity. If we talk specifically about agriculture, then in that case, industrial also comes. Interestingly, industrial productivity also increases and countries are going to dump their things in other countries. But primarily, this idea relates too much to agriculture goods. Then, as I said earlier, if you have an objective to capture the foreign market of a domestic producer, then in that case, this is an illegal form of production. And in this case, the tariffs that you have justify your state restriction in any case. Because here, normally what happens is, like Japan did this, the U.S. has a big classical case, that Japan had dumped their electronics goods there, and sold them at a lower price. Ultimately, the U.S. had to basically apply trade restriction to the Japanese products, particularly related to electronics. So, in that case, it is highly highlighted that the domestic market of that country is being created because monopoly is being created there. So, that effect is there. So, countries act in that case and try to control it. Now, the primary objective is to stop this sort of dumping. When the price, suppose I am a domestic producer and I want to sell my commodity in Pakistan and in the U.S. as well. And here, I keep my objective, that I sell my commodity in the U.S.C. market and take a monopoly there. So, if this realization happens in the U.S.C., then the U.S.C. state can apply non-tariff barriers to me, in any form that we have read earlier. So, what will happen in that case? Ultimately, the price of my product will gradually increase. And then, once again, that will be competitive price that the producer's price will match with that price. And then, there will be fair play. You can sell your product at a fair price. Then, as I said earlier, that most industrialized countries do their dumping. So, the European Union has a very classical case that they dump their agricultural goods normally. So, this is a concept of dumping that becomes a reason for non-tariff barriers. So, when you have a concept of dumping, then countries have this option. If they assess this case and prove it somewhere, then they can apply non-tariff barriers.


Will motivated students learn more English? There is little doubt that students who are interested, involved and motivated are easier to teach. Motivated students are forthcoming and attentive, the class flows easily, and there is more response and creativity during activities. So, with a class full of motivated kids, we find our English class is more fun. But does that mean the students can learn as much? The level of motivation is tied to the teacher's response. In many countries, in fact, in many traditional schools across the world, grammar drilling, memorization and recitation are primary methods of teaching. Some students learn the rules and memorize all the lessons. Their motivation is found by the praise and good grades earned by their success.  In this case, the lack of motivation is reinforced by disapproval and poor marks. In both cases, the level of motivation is tied to the teacher's response. The problem is, armed only with facts, memorization and rules, even an honor student might be at a loss if required to create, reason, innovate. Motivated students are more eager to learn. It is my belief that a student whose motivation is nurtured, who interest has been aroused by the topics, methods, opportunities to create them to choose introduced in class, will develop creative and reasoning skills enabling him or her to have a much greater command of English by the end of the course. Where there is some actual desire, reason or motivation to communicate in a foreign language, the excitement and interaction will soon create greater fluency, leading to full sentences, ideas and conversations from just a few vocabulary words. Admittedly once grammar and knowledge of the rules may not be precise at first but this can develop with practice in speaking, listening, reading and writing rather than memorization of grammar points. So we are left with a question how, exactly, to motivate. That answer seems to be rather well addressed by the engage, study, and activate formula introduced in this course. The flowing pace and many possibilities for engagement, creativity and variety will grab many students who otherwise might fall by the wayside and learn little in a traditional English class. Just to say, a teacher must start by being interested in the students, finding out a little bit about them and what they care about. This information then can be the basis of the subject matter covered in material taken from books, videos, songs class vocabulary, and class activities and games. But topics that already interest the student might not carry a teacher through all of the course material. So a teacher will need to choose some topics that are common to most people, bearing in mind that there are topics such as travel, classic literature, Christmas, shopping malls, which could alienate students who may never have left their hometown. But nearly every student has some form of a family, wears clothes, has a daily routine, uses some form of transportation and buys something at a shop. Used in the service of interesting activities, like role plays or word games, creating daily schedules, taking surveys, even these more generic topics can be motivating. What I am saying is, a perceptive teacher might use nearly anything to create interaction, and interaction is intrinsically motivating. Are you ready to teach English as a foreign language? We have seen that motivated students will learn more English. In fact, we can see that motivated people are responsible for all human achievement in every field. So our job as teachers seems to be to create environments and opportunities which motivate students to communicate extensively in our English classes and proficiency, or at least genuine learning, will follow. Speak with an ITTT advisor today to put together your personal plan for teaching English abroad. Send us an email or call us toll free at 1-800-490-0531 to speak with an ITTT advisor today.


A fiery horse with a speed of light, a cloud of dust, and a hearty hyo-silver, the Lone Ranger. With his faithful Indian companion, Tuttle, the daring and resourceful masked rider of the plains led the fight for law and order in the early western United States. Nowhere in the pages of history can one find a greater champion of justice. Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear. From out of the past come the thundering hoofbeats of the great horse, Silver. The Lone Ranger rides again. Four men had spent the night on lost hope desert. Two were lawmen and the other two were prisoners. Sheriff Bart Sanders and his deputy Greg Morton had taken turns on guard. Idaho Keller had slept all night, but his partner, Ward Verner, had only pretended to sleep. Lying quietly near the waterhole, Ward had worked steadily and methodically on the rope that held his hands together. His efforts were rewarded at daybreak.  What's that? Oh, morning, huh? Oh, I'm so lame I can hardly move. Listen to me, Idaho. I've been working on these ropes all night. I think I can slip my hands out. Can you, Ward? Can you? I've got to be more careful now that it's light. You keep an eye on the lawmen. Let me know when they look this way. I'm watching them. They're getting breakfast now. Yeah, I know. I've got one hand loose and the other one in just a second. I hunch forward a little bit and shield me. You'd better hurry, Ward. The sheriff will be coming to feed us in the jiffy. That does it. Now, hold still. I'll see what I can do about untying you.  You may have to jump the sheriff and his deputy to get the gun. Leave it to me. How you coming there? Be patient, will you? What we've learned since we started out from White Rapids, we can make a clean-up on this trip. Pull your hands apart a little. That does it. Now, I can get this knot. You're a great guy. You see the prisoners are awake, eh? I hope you two have some rest. We've got lots of travel ahead of you. Cancel him. I'd expect a man to arrest when he's hog-tied like a calf for Brandon. You chimp's needn't complain. You might have tied your feet as well as your hands. Hey, uh, I don't want you. Now, keep your hands behind you until we get the chance to act. Right. Hey, sheriff. Eh? Do we get some vitals or do you aim to starve us? All right. Untie it one at a time so she can eat. Thanks. Yeah. You're right to know you don't expect us to go all the way to 10 strike on an empty stomach. Turn around, Warden.  Hey, there you make a move and I'll let daylight through you. Here, Idaho. Take the sheriff's other gun. I got it. Tell him that you get free. Keep your hands where they are, deputy. It's time, Idaho. I'll do that problem. Boys, you're making a big mistake. You're slated for three years in jail. If you're smart, you'll take it as it stands. I don't like jail. Me neither. You won't like a hangman's rope either. That's what you get if you shoot lawman.  Me and Idaho don't like murder or hangman. You and your deputy just take it easy and we'll leave you without so much as a scratch. And you can't get away. No. Well, you just better not bet on that. Sheriff, you thought you were being smart. You told everybody you were taking us to 10 strike by way of the pass. You figured that if we had pals, they'd be waiting in the pass to free us. So you spread the story, but instead of going through the pass, you're cutting across the desert. Good buddy. Here's what about it. Nobody knows you came this way. No one will think to look for you in the desert. Meaning what?  All we have to do is leave you here without a horse. Maybe you can walk to 10 strike, but I doubt it. We won't have to walk. We'll run you two done of the last thing we do. You know better than that, Sheriff. Who's to find you? No one crosses this desert. Now listen, what?  It's the same as murder. Not quite the same, Greg. There's a lot of difference. Idaho, you take that deputy's badge. Always thought I'd like a lawman's badge. Sheriff, I'll help myself to that star you're aware of. Bird, bird, jerk, field. No. Next time I'll hit you with this gun barrel. Now I'll take that badge. Don't move. Don't try anything foolish. All right. You've got my badge. What good will it do you? Plenty of good.  What do you mean? You and your deputy figure that you were safe in discussing plans in front of me and Idaho. You're told about the trip you're aiming to make to Littlefield after turning us over to the law in 10 strikes. I remember that, Ward. They were to pick up a shipment of gold from the Littlefield stage and take it to the bank at White Rapids. That's right, Idaho. With these badges and the credentials of the lawman, what's to stop us from picking up that gold? Only we won't take it to the bank at White Rapids. You think you can get away with anything like that? Sheriff, I remember you saying to your deputy that neither of you were known in Littlefield.  Seems to me you keep them in your shirt pocket. Hold still, lawman, don't move. Here they are. You got them, Ward? Yeah, yeah, these are what we need, Idaho. Now, at least that breakfast and shell on. Taking all the horses with us. Two days of travel took Ward Burner and Idaho Keller beyond the desert. They let the horses belonging to the sheriff and his deputy into a woods. As they approached a clear stream of running water in the heart of the forest, the outlaw named Ward signaled a halt. Oh, hold there, hold there. It's mighty good to get out of the sun. Yeah, is it? Well, what are the horses here? Right, steady boy. And while we're at it, I'm going to douse my face in their stream. It looks cool. That's a good idea. That water is cool, Ward. It feels good to get that desert dust off your face, don't it? Yeah, yeah. Want my extra bandana to dry your face? Thanks. What's our next move, Ward? We've got to hide our saddles. You know what for? We're going to have to ride the lawman's horses into Littlefield. That means we've got to turn our own Chris loose. I never thought of that. We'll hide our saddles so as nobody can find them. Yeah, that's savvy. Well, we might as well get to it. Ward and Idaho hid their saddles and then turned their horses loose. Riding the horses of the sheriff and the deputy, they emerged from the woods and proceeded along the trail to Littlefield. Idaho. Yeah? Look across there. You see them two riders? Yeah. What about me? One of them's a red ski. The other's wearing a mask. Get that, Idaho.  We can maybe team up with him. Oh, you give me a laugh. Yeah, what's funny? Look at the badges we wear.  We're law. We got authority. What? We could use a little cash till we get our hands on that gold, couldn't we? You mean? I mean we're going to use our authority as officers of the law. We'll stop those fellas. After stopping them, we'll help ourselves to any cash they have handed. Yeah, I got a hand to you, Ward. You're smart. Being crook, those two won't be likely to complain to the law. Come on. Let's go after them. Get up there. Get up, Ward. Hold on there. Stop where you are. Don't go for your guns. Hold it. Is that a sheriff's bed? You bet it is. Now raise your hands. Why? Because I say so. I'm the law. Not here. This is Littlefield County. Then Lathrop is sheriff here. I don't know who you are or where you came from, but I do know you haven't any authority. Tell them who you are, sheriff. I'm Sheriff Sanders from White Rapids, and this is my deputy. Neither one of us has taken any lip from our boss. If you're arresting us, you must have a charge. There don't need to be any charge. We're looking for stolen cash. We'll search you in the Indian. You're mighty high-handed. We're not outlaws, and we have nothing that's been stolen. Don't argue with him, sheriff. I don't intend to. I'll cover them, deputy. You search them. Looks to me as though a couple of crooks are wearing lawman's badges. I'm not going to be searched. Oh, no. No. At them silver. No, no. Come on, come on. Give me friction. I got it silver directly forward, so suddenly that the outlaws were caught off guard. He knocked aside the gun that Idaho was holding while Tahoe charged into wart. In a moment it was over. Wart and Idaho were sprawled on the ground beside their horses, while the masked man and Tahoe were still in the saddle. All right, come on, Tahoe. We'll get away from here. Maybe finish these, fellow. Not now, Tahoe. Come on. Come on. Get them out of the sky. Where's my gun? Where'd they knock my gun? How'd I know? Shoot them, Idaho. Shoot them. Get them both. I can't find my gun. Get this one here. It's no use, Ward. No use shooting out of range. You wouldn't have a chance of hitting them. God, Connick. Ward, it looks like we overplayed our hand. Those critters outsmarted us. They didn't outsmart me. It's just that that masked man's horse was too darn fast. Close the door, please. Hello. Why are we right way? Why not stay? Teach them good lessons. They're supposed to be lawmen, Tahoe. Not good, Robin. They said they were from White Rapids. I'd like to know what kind of law they have in that city. We go there? Yes, I think we shall. Cross desert? No, that route is too hard on the horses. We go through the pass. Get them up, Scott. After a long hard ride, the lone ranger and Tahoe reached the vicinity of White Rapids. The masked man remained in camp while Tahoe went into town to make inquiries. When the faithful Indian rejoined his friend, he had much to report. Look as though you found out something, Tahoe. Me learned plenty. Yes. Teller we meet, not lawmen from White Rapids. That's what I thought. Me talked with Teller in town. Him showed picture of sheriff and deputy. Are they the men we met? No. Teller we meet, prisoners of law. Sheriff and deputy take them from White Rapids to jail in Timstrike. Tahoe, are you sure of that? Me sure. And those prisoners overpowered the law and stole the badges. They may have killed the sheriff and the deputy with him. No. Me not think so. Outlaws' names, Wart Verner and Idaho Keller. Wart Verner and Idaho Keller, yes. I've heard of them. I've heard they never kill. Man in town say sheriff take prisoners to Timstrike, then go to Littlefield to get gold for bank. Gold? That right. Stages bring gold to Littlefield. Sheriff go there, get gold, bring back. That's why those crooks stole the badges. Outlaws pose as lawmen. Yes. They make a play for the gold at Littlefield. Stages do there in two days. There's no time to get someone from White Rapids. I think Silver and Scout can make the trip. They have two things to do, Tonneau. We must protect that gold and we must find out what happened to the sheriff and his deputy. That right. Silver, we're traveling, big fella. We're starting now. Yes, easy, big boy. Let's go, Tonneau. Me ready. Come on. Get him up, Scout. The curtain falls on the first act of our lone ranger story. Before the next exciting scenes, please permit us to pause for just a few moments. Now to continue our story. When the lone ranger and Tuttle learned that men they had met on the trail were outlaws posing as lawmen, they raced toward the town of Littlefield in an effort to prevent the theft of a shipment of gold and to learn the fate of a missing sheriff and his deputy. It was shortly after dark when the masked man and the Indian dismounted in front of the sheriff's office in Littlefield. There's no light in the sheriff's office, Tuttle. Maybe sheriff, not in. I see a light in the jail in the back of the building. Right back there. We go see. Yes, come on. The cells in the back are empty. Me see him. Maybe sheriff come by and by. We haven't time to wait for him. What do we do now? The only thing we can do is to go to the office of the stage line and tell the manager what we know. Do you know Fowler in the stage office? No, I don't. Maybe him not believe you. We have to try to make him believe us. Come on. There, stage office on the other side of street. Yes, there's a light in the office. The manager must be there. I'll make sure he's alone before I go inside. Here. Here, window. Yes. Where did I look into the office? You. You see manager? One man in there. He's riding at the desk. Maybe better me wait out here. Yes. If you see anyone heading for the office, warn me. Uh-huh. What? Take it easy. Fast. Don't be alarmed. Who are you? Is this a holdup? No, it's no holdup. Don't reach in that drawer. Put your hand back. The gun is merely for protection. What do you want here? Are you the manager of the stage line? Yes, I am. Good. You're the man I want to talk to. It's the manager. I can tell you there's nothing here for you to steal. I didn't come here to steal anything. A masked man holding a gun makes a statement like that hard to believe. Now listen to me. I know there's a stage due to arrive tonight. That stage is carrying a shipment of gold. So you plan to steal it, huh? No. I came to warn you against outlaws. What outlaws? Two men came to Littlefield within the last three or four days. They represented themselves as a sheriff and deputy from White Rapids. Yeah, they're down at the cafe now. They're not lawmen. Not lawmen. No. One of them is a crook named Wart Werner. The other is known as Idaho Killer. You're local. One sheriff Sanders from White Rapids and the other is deputy Greg Morton. Do you know Sheriff Sanders by sight? No, but I saw his credentials. The badge and papers were stolen from the real sheriff. I don't believe it. Well, that's up to you. You're up to some scheme. You want me to keep that gold here so you can get it. Even if you don't believe me, you can take precautions. Call in the local sheriff and ask him to guard the gold until I can prove my statement. The sheriff's out of town. And you most likely knew it. Then get other men. Get your friends. It's just what I'm going to do. Good, good enough. But don't turn over the gold to the men who are posing as White Rapids lawmen. Mr. How do you aim to prove what you told me? Well, I've got to find the real sheriff Sanders. But to do that, I'll need your help. You want me to help you? Yes. Please listen to me before you say any more. The Lone Ranger talked at length to detail the reason for his suspicions and of his plan to expose the crooks and learn the fate of Sheriff Bart Sanders and his deputy. Bill Clay, the agent, listened with increasing interest. In the end, he agreed to cooperate. The masked man left the office to rejoin Tato. It was about an hour late here when the masquerading crooks left the cafe and strolled toward the station. In just a little while, I don't know. We'll have our hands on more gold than we ever saw before. The stage is due now. But it's usually a few minutes late. Let's clay the agent down the steps of the station. Howdy, Clay. Howdy, Sheriff. Howdy, Deputy. We thought we'd be here when the stage got in so we wouldn't have to waste time collecting the gold and starting for home. Uh-huh. Sit down. Yeah. We didn't hanker for the job of coming for this gold, but the bank and white rapids are as mighty anxious to get it. I reckon so, Sheriff. Hey, Clay! It's Steve! Well, just about on time. Look at her come. Come on, Deputy. Are you sure the gold will be on board the stage, Clay? It'll be there all right. Oh, oh, you're ready. Oh, what mistake was that? Hey, Jett. Howdy, Clay. Get that box I'm expecting from Painesville. Yes, right here. You'll have to give me a hand with it. Is that the box we're looking for, Clay? Yep. I'll help you carry it to the office. Hand it down, Jett. Yeah. Here's your guns. Grab, hold the end of it. Let it go. I'll get the other end. There you are. Come on, Clay. All right. Watch out for the steps, fellas. Yeah, we'll make it. Don't go on heavy. I'll have to split the load to carry it on our horses. And I'll just carry it into the desk and we can set it out. Right. Put it down right here. It's mighty heavy. Make quite a load for our saddlebags. Close the door, Deputy. We don't want folks to see what we got here. Yeah, sure. You help us load up, Clay? Yeah. Yeah, just as soon as there's one more thing attended to. What's that? Well, you know, the paper from the bank. Huh? What paper? You don't mean to say you forgot it, Sheriff. What are you talking about? Sheriff, you know as well as I do, I'm not turning over this gold. You give me that paper. Look here, Clay, don't you trust me? We showed you our credentials. What more do you want? I got word from the bank in white wrappers that you two would be here for this gold. But at the same time, I was told you'd have a letter from the bank to show me. Now, see here, if you figure to store this gold... If you're on the level, you'll produce the letter. If you can't show the letter, our figure is a pair of crooks. What? That being the case, you'll probably try a stick-up. And get shot by men who are ready and waiting for just such a move. You're calling us crooks? Hold on. Come to think of it, there was a paper given me by the bank. But it didn't pay much attention to it. Must be with my things at the hotel. Go get it, then you can have the gold. Then again, maybe I lost it back on the trail somewhere. I threw away some things where we made camp one night. The paper isn't at the hotel. Me and my deputy will have to ride back and look for it. I'll wait here for half an hour, so sure? In case you do find it at the hotel. Thanks. Well, not back in half an hour. You'll hold that gold for a day or so. Wart, why didn't we pull guns and take the gold? Wouldn't be a fool out of how we wouldn't have had a chance. Oh, what? We've got to get that letter. We've got to go back to that water hole on the desert and get that letter from the sheriff. Maybe the sheriff and the deputy have left the water hole. Not a chance. They're not fools enough to leave it, not to go walking across the desert on foot. They know they'd die. They'll stay near water and I hope someone will find it. Yeah, I hope you're right. I didn't hear the sheriff say anything about a letter. He must have it. I'm sure he is. We'll get it. Marooned by Wart and Idaho and without hope of rescue, Sheriff Sanders and his deputy made the best of a bad situation. The desert water hole afforded them drink, but they were weak from hunger when the fourth night closed in. Sure. I wonder if there's a worse way to die than this. Quit talking about it. That don't help any. I know. I was just wondering. It's food, I'm thinking of. I suppose it helps to think of it. Of course you don't. How can you stop thinking about it when your ribs are nudging your backbone? Maybe we shouldn't have stayed here. What else could we do? We could have started walking. Without canteens, traveling where even a horse has a hard time of it. If we'd have done that, we wouldn't be sitting here worrying about grub. We'd be grub. Grub for buzzards. Why can't someone ride along this way? That's a foolish question. We wouldn't have come here this way ourselves. If I hadn't been afraid someone would try to get those cooks away from us before we reached the 10-strike jail. Sometimes I get the wishing so hard for someone to come along. I'll begin to imagine I hear them. Like now. Yeah, shoot it. Hold on, Grie. That does sound like a horseman. I can't be... Listen. You're right. I can make out the riders now. Hey. I can't be sure. But in the moonlight, those horses look like us. Man, they are. We figured we'd find you out of here. Hold on, hold on, hold on. You came back to get us?  It's not you we came for. It's a letter you have. You might as well hand it over, sir, without putting up a fuss.  What letter are you talking about? You know the one? The letter they gave you at the bank. At the bank? Playing dumb, huh? Well, I won't get you anywhere. Stand up. Stand up, I said. That's better. You got home, my baby. We'll soon find out how to hold keep you shooting our name at these two while I search and ride. I'll start with you, chef. You loco. The bank didn't give me a letter. What would they do that for? Nothing in these pockets. I would the bank give you a letter. The manager of the stage nine at Littlefield would turn the gold over to you. I don't know what you're talking about. Chef, don't have the letter, Idaho. I'll search the deputy. Oh, listen, you.  It's funny. Don't find it anywhere. You're supposed to have hidden it somewhere. They might have. You too, a loco. Listen, chef, I never killed a man before. There's a lot of gold waiting for me in Littlefield if I get back with that letter. Enough gold to make a killing worthwhile. So start telling what you did with that letter and talk fast. Hey, don't know anything about a letter I tell you. That's the way you wanted him. Oh, jeez. Raise your hands, bullio. What? It's a mess, man. The rich kid. You, Idaho. Drop your gun. I am. My hand's hurt. Manager's hand, follow. Rope both of them. I miss you. That man's cool. Sheriff. Sheriff, you and your deputy can ride double with us. We'll help you take these crooks to jail in Tenstrike. Then you can go onto Littlefield and get the gold. For my mask, I'm giving you no more information. Mr. I don't care who you are. You're all right. If you hadn't come here... Ah, listen, Wart. The sheriff knew nothing about a letter because there was no letter. What? But Clay told us...  You... You trick us. Well, I'll be doggone. You know what? Almost makes me forget how hungry I am. Just thinking of how that masked man fooled you, too. Crooks tied up now. Get on horses. Good enough, Kimizabi. Here, get on my horse, Sheriff. Steady, Silver. All right. Up with you. Greg will ride with Tutto. Uh-huh. Me help him. Thanks, Indian. You're helping us take those crooks here? Yes, and right now. Easy, big fella. Easy. Ready, Tutto? Steady. You ready? Take me. I got it now. This is the Lone Ranger. Get along, you two. Yeah, man. Come on, Silver.  This is a feature of the Lone Ranger Incorporated. Created and produced by George W. Trendle and directed by Charles D. Livingston. Tonight's story was written by Fran Stryker. A part of the Lone Ranger is played by Brace Beamer.


Okay. So, hi everybody. I'm sure you've already, you've heard that my name is Lance Ball. I'm a software engineer at Red Hat. I am the co-lead of the Functions Working Group for Knative along with Maricio Salatino. And today I just want to share with you some things that I learned about while digging into the Meta-Controller project while at the same time working really hard on Knative functions. The main thing that I got from this experiment myself was that these two things actually work really well together. So first, let's talk about Kubernetes controllers. I know this is probably a subject that many of you are already familiar with, but just to set a little bit of a baseline, controllers allow you to manage the state of your cluster by running in a control loop, examining the current state, and working to achieve some sort of desired state. It's a pretty simple concept from the Kubernetes controller documentation. The classic example is a thermostat. A thermostat just measures the current temperature and takes some action to achieve the desired state, which is some other temperature, turn on the blower or the radiator or whatever. So this idea is really simple, but also quite powerful. And it's kind of the foundation around a lot of what Kubernetes is built on. And in fact, even more importantly, it allows this entire ecosystem to exist, like Knative, the fundamental architectural components of Knative are controllers and custom resources. So together, these two things bring a lot of really nice power. But the downside is that there can potentially be a lot of sort of friction and mental overhead to achieve something that's really, really simple, potentially. Let's say I have a controller and I want to just spin up a pod every time a new resource is deployed. That's all I want to do. Learning the Kubernetes APIs and all of this just to do that very simple thing is kind of a lot. I think I know a little bit about Kubernetes and I'll just say that anything that I can do to make my life easier and have to learn less is great for me anyway. So how nice would it be if we could just use simple functions to write our controllers, right? Something that just, well, as long as it's in Go, Java, Node.js, TypeScript, Python, or Rust, something that just gets some JSON in that describes the state of the cluster and returns some JSON back describing what we want the state to be. Really simple. We can do that. We can do it with metacontrollers and functions. So I'm going to show you how to do that today. The Metacontroller API is really nice because it makes it easy to do all of this stuff that I just described, JSON in and JSON out. It's basically a webhook that is implemented in the, so basically to write a Metacontroller API, you create a webhook, right? It's just a little thing that runs that receives some JSON and returns some JSON describing the desired state. So what does that look like? Well, there's two different types of controllers when you look at Metacontrollers. The first is a composite controller. Its primary purpose is to manage a set of objects based on the desired state specified in a parent object. So existing controllers that you're probably familiar with, like a jobs controller, is exactly this, right? In the job, you specify the workload and the controller is doing some action to spin up the pods to make that job happen. So let's look at an example of a composite controller in Metacontroller. So here's a composite controller that acts kind of like a regular Kubernetes job controller, but instead of jobs, it's managing index jobs and I have a thing somewhere. Here we go. So instead of jobs, it's managing index jobs and you can see the parent resource that we care about here is index jobs and it has these child resources pods. So it's just like a regular jobs controller, except for the pods that get spun up to do the work, get an index, right? And then down at the bottom is our little sync hook. So this is the thing that gets called by Metacontroller anytime a new index job is created, okay? So this controller manages a custom resource, the index job resource, right? You can say that it owns that resource. If some other controller comes along and starts messing around with the index jobs, you can imagine that our controller probably is going to get into some kind of bad state. So what can we do if there's a resource that already exists that we want to have some add some functionality to, some behavior to? Well, that's where decorator controllers come in. So a decorator controller adds new behavior to existing resources. A K-native service is a good example of this, right? If I were to mess around with the K-native service using that composite controller, I would imagine that the probably the K-native serving controller would, you know, either override my changes or get into some sort of bad state. Not so with decorator controllers. With decorator controllers, you can define rules for which resources you want to watch. You can filter those resources on labels or annotations. And then basically what this allows you to do is add new behavior to existing resources without having to re-implement the resource, right? With the index job controller that I just showed you, that's basically a re-implementation of the job controller. Why would I want to re-implement it if I don't have to? If I could just add some existing behavior to a current resource, right? So let's take a look at an example of that. This example is, like the first one, this is also from the Meta Controller website. This is an example of a decorator controller that watches for stateful sets. You can see here the resources that I care about are stateful sets. And I'm filtering on these annotation selectors. So if the stateful set has a service prepod label and service prepod ports annotations, then my little webhook down here, my sync webhook is called with that stateful set. And then what it does is it spins up a service for every stateful set, for every pod in a stateful set that has those annotations, right? So my function will get, or my controller doing the work will get a single resource just as JSON as the function parameter describing the stateful set. And then the function returns a set of services, right? Associated with the pods. So here again, this is really nice and simple. And one of the other nice things about this is that, you know, I don't have to actually keep track of all this stuff, right? So if my controller, my little webhook there, is returning some things that are associated with this resource, meta controller itself keeps up with that and manages those resources so that when I delete the parent object, for example, the stateful set here, when I delete the parent object, the resources that I've created, the attachments that I've created for it, the services automatically get deleted by meta controller, which is really nice. Again, it just sort of makes things a little bit easier, reduces the amount of friction to get going with a controller. So we've seen some YAML now that declares what our controllers are interested in and the resources that it's going to be managing. We have some kind of basic understanding of these concepts, but we haven't really seen any of the code that actually does this management. So, you know, what does that code do? What do these sync hooks do? On the meta controller website, there are a lot of different examples with a bunch of different ways to deploy a sync hook for your meta controller. But as I was working on this, I was starting to think that maybe actually K-native functions would be a good way to implement the work part of this, you know, of a meta controller. So I want to show you an example of that. But first, in case you're not familiar with K-native functions, let's take a quick look at what they are and how they work. So K-native functions provide a really simple programming model for dealing with K-native services and events and all the sort of K-native abstractions. They're small, focused pieces of code. You can write them in Go, Java, JavaScript, Python, TypeScript, Rust. They're deployed as K-native services. So you're just writing a little function. The K-native client CLI allows you to, or the K-native func CLI, allows you to just with one command line turn that into an OCI container image that then gets pushed and deployed as a K-native service. Also, if you don't like the languages that I just mentioned, we have this concept of language packs, which allows you to extend the base set of languages and templates and add additional features and behavior. And I'll show you how language pack works in a minute. But first, let's just take a look at a basic K-native function as it comes out of the box. Do a little bit of a demo here. You can create functions on the command line or in the IDE. And I've been playing around with the IDE lately. So I'm going to do this in VS Code. Let's see. Can I move this over without dorking out? Yes. Okay. All right. So over here, you know, it's going to be really hard for me to see. I should mirror my laptop, I guess, huh? Because I'm not going to be able to see this way over there. Let's do this on the command line. I know, but if I mirror it, then everyone has to see my notes, right? Okay. So there's the funk command line. And you can just do funk create. Is that too small? Make it a little bigger? Funk create minus l. You know, I can create one and go minus. That's why it's not. Oh my God. I'm spazzing out up here. Funk create. No, I think I'm okay. I'm okay for no. There we go. Okay. So no JS. Actually, you see this? Node minus t cloud events. And viewer. Right? So if I do this, I'm going to make viewer two because I've already got a viewer function. It should just create a, sorry. Oh, no, JS. I have to come down here and look at what I'm doing. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Why don't I just stand right here? Thank you. Now I can see. Okay. Yeah, I'm good. Okay. Thanks for all the help, y'all. Okay. All right. Cloud events. Hello. Am I doing something wrong? Oh, right. It's node. See how easy it is? Okay. So it's created the project. It's created the project in the hello directory. We can see that it looks a lot like just any other node JS project. If I look at the index.js file, we can see a lot of comments in there. And it's basically just a function in this case called handle. It receives a context object, which is basically describing a little bit what the context of that request was. And if it's a cloud event was sent as part of this request, the cloud event is provided as the second parameter to the function. And that's what we then export, right? Okay. Back to the slides. All of that just for the slides. I'm just gonna stand right here. Y'all okay with that? Okay. So we saw that. I mentioned that you can extend the language templates to come out of the box. And you do that using this thing called language packs. And on the Knative Functions team, we've started to play around with these language packs and put some experimental stuff up on this URL. GitHub.com slash Knative Sandbox slash Funktastic. And I want to create a meta controller project using a template that I built for this thing. But before I do that, I want to kind of describe what it is that I'm gonna create. That's not it. So all right. So here's the meta controller. This is the kind of the thing that we apply when we apply that YAML. I was showing you for the decorator controller or the composite controller. We have a sync hook function that is deployed as a part of that, which I will show you in a minute. I want my meta controller to observe or watch Knative Services. All right. I only care about services that are functions. So one of the things that the Funk CLI does is it annotates, well adds labels and annotations to the services. And we can identify a Knative Service that is a function through this label function.knative.dev. So it will only send my sync hook Knative Services that have this label. And then what the sync hook will do is create a trigger for every function that gets deployed or updated. A trigger is created or updated.  So for every single event that comes in through the system, through the default broker, they'll all get sent to the Knative Service. So let's see if we can do that. All right. So here's how we would create the function, the meta controller function. This one I don't have to type. So we use the Funk CLI, create the languages, Node.js. The type or the template is meta controller. We're going to point it at the repository. This is basically just a tiny URL for that GitHub URL I was just showing you earlier. And then we're going to call it meta controller. And we actually, let me go ahead and bring up VS code now. And we can, well, let's do it like this. So this is what the YAML looks like from my controller. You can see that it's a decorator controller. The resources I'm interested in are Knative Services. I want to match on the label function.knative.dev is true. And then the attachments that I'm going to apply to these services are triggers. And then here's my little web hook. So, and this is the code itself. I'll just go back to the VS code and show you this. So you can see here, it's just a function. In this case, it's not a function that's receiving a cloud event. So we're just getting the context. The context contains an object in JSON or actually in a JavaScript function. It just gets turned into a JavaScript object that represents the service itself that we're interested in. And you can see, you know, I want to be kind of smart about not attaching a trigger to the meta controller function itself. And then finally, we return an array of attachments. In this case, it's only one trigger per service. So we're just returning a single trigger. And we're naming that trigger off of the service name. And we're, yeah, the sync here is the subscriber is the service itself. Okay. All right. So now let's deploy it. All right. I've already created the meta controller project template using the funk CLI. I was worried a little bit about networking stuff and things like that. I didn't really want to, let's remove that old one, that first one I created. So I've already built it. Like I said earlier, when you create a function that gets built as a container image, I was worried about networking. So I've already built it and pushed it to a registry. So I can just deploy it using funk deploy and tell it, don't build it or push it. I've already done that.  Okay, get pods. All right. So I'm going to deploy this meta controller function. And you can see that it immediately is deployed to the cluster and is now running. All right. So the next thing I need to do is deploy. I just did that. Oh, I need to deploy the, um, the, the YAML itself. So that's just the cube cuddle apply, uh, the decorator controller. I showed you that earlier. Uh, okay. So now we've deployed the controller, um, and the, the sync web hook. We also want to deploy a couple of other things in order to test this out. Uh, first of all, we're going to need the default event broker. I showed you this in the, in the diagram, a simple event source, and then finally deploy a function to see if we get a trigger attached to it. So let's go do those things. Uh, the first thing I said was to create a broker. Um, one of the nice things about the, the Knative CLI, uh, is that, um, there's so much you can do just with the CLI. You don't have to touch YAML. So to create a default broker. Um, well, I already did that earlier apparently. Uh, and then to create the, uh, the source ping create. So this is, I'm, I'm creating a ping source and ping source is just the source that comes out of an event source that comes out of the box with Knative. And it's really nice and useful for testing and that sort of thing, like what we're doing right now. Uh, so this is a ping source that will every minute, um, uh, send a cloud event that has the message hello as its data value. Uh, and it'll send it directly to the, the sync. Also note down here where we're watching our pods, you can see that, that the meta controller itself has terminated now. That's a feature of, you know, Knative spin down to zero. Uh, so the, the meta controller, uh, pod is not up and running, but you will see in a moment, once I, um, get my, my, uh, my viewer function going, we'll see that spin right back up. Okay, so we, we've created the ping source, we've created the broker. Uh, now let's go up here and I've got this viewer function. Um, it's a, a little go function. So if I, uh, look at handle.go, uh, we can see it's not really doing much. It receives a cloud event and prints it to the console and returns. That's it. Um, so I'm gonna func deploy this. I've already built this one as well. Now what should happen is, uh, we see that the viewer spun up and we see that the meta controller, uh, spun up as well because I've now deployed this function. The meta controller in theory has created a new trigger for me. Let's see, uh, KN trigger list. And I see that there is a trigger now created for this, uh, viewer function. And if I look at the logs for the viewer function, I should see, at least in a minute, um, a, a new cloud event come in theory. If my ping source is working correctly, I'll do a little tap dance to take the minute. There we go. All right. All I had to do was take, do a little tap dance. Um, okay. So that's it.  So, okay. Did I lose the signal? There we go. Okay. That's it. Um, I've done all these things. Oh yeah. Okay. So the other thing I wanted to do was show you, uh, the cleanup. Um, right? So like I said, meta controller itself, you saw the, the sync function wasn't doing any cleanup at all, but meta controller itself does a nice job of, uh, doing that for me. So somehow I've got my emojis up there. Now if I do, uh, KN service, delete viewer, oh, I am. Yeah. I shouldn't have gotten so excited about getting back up here on the stage. Okay. Uh, so I deleted the, the viewer function. Now if I do KN trigger list, no triggers found. So the cleanup, um, happened as expected. Uh, all right. So, um, I just want to say one of my biggest takeaways from all of this, uh, and sorry for the fumbling around with the, the, the, um, the CLI and everything, but, uh, my biggest takeaway from all of this is that these two things actually seem to work really well together. I had a lot of fun playing with meta controller and I've had a huge amount of fun working on K native functions. So I just want to end it by sharing this with you. I wish I had audio. This is, if you weren't alive in 1981, this is like the most classic Reese's peanut butter cup commercial. And so like peanut butter and chocolate, meta controllers and K native functions go great together.