TED Talk, Table for Two

Apparently, the things that have set me free are difficult to explain sufficiently over dinner.

A friend from the U.S. visited me here in San Miguel recently. We were having a lovely meal when she brought up Trump — the outrage, the resistance, the urgency of it all. I tried, as kindly and succinctly as I could, to explain that I don't participate in that energy anymore. That it has nothing to do with my day-to-day life. That "what you resist persists."

She looked at me with a combination of incredulity, disappointment, and even a little disgust. Sigh.

I'll try again here, with more space to lay it out properly, and an unlikely starting point.

America's Funniest Programming

My guilty pleasure may seem incongruous: I love watching AFV (America's Funniest Home Videos). I put it on as I eat dinner every night, and laugh out loud with gut-busting laughs. My absolute favorites are "stumblebum" falls that last forever, usually off a porch, and end in a bush or shrub. Laughter, by the way, is one of the highest frequencies a human can emit— so on that level, AFV is doing something right.

But as I have gained more insight into humanity's current plight, I watch it now from a 30,000-foot view… with more discerning eyes. Because if you step back and look at what AFV is showing us — the relentless parade of gender reveals, women bizarrely "overwhelmed' and screaming with joy and gratitude when a man proposes to them, ungrateful children tearing open boxes of plastic junk at Christmas — you realize you are watching a highlight reel of American programming. The cookie-cutter existences celebrated, rewarded with cash prizes, laughed along with week after week, generation after generation. It's a microcosm of humans maintaining the status quo through conditioned behaviors.

Of course, most people never view this content in aggregate, with awareness. They just laugh at the falls and direct hits to the lugnuts — and honestly, in this chaotic collapse of the old paradigms we're currently moving through, that is beautiful.

Meet the Egregore

AFV's parade of programmed fools is a good warm-up for what I want to talk about — a word you may not have heard before, but may recognize in your own environment: the egregore - a collective consciousness so powerful it can run entire civilizations — without a single person ever consciously agreeing to join it.

You already know The Matrix. Neo, red pill, blue pill, unplug from the simulation. What the Wachowskis gave us in 1999 was a perfect pop culture exposé on something that philosophers, occultists, and fringe dwellers have understood for centuries. If the matrix is the building, the egregore is the electrical system that keeps the whole simulation powered up and humming. And like any electrical system, it needs a continuous power source.

We are that power source.

An egregore is a living energetic field — a collective frequency that exists and sustains itself as long as enough people feed it their energy, fear, belief, and participation. It's not a metaphor. It's not a conspiracy theory. It is a description of something that functions as predictably as any other autarkic system. Think of it as a fire. A fire doesn't need anyone to consciously agree to keep it burning. It just needs fuel. And we, humanity collectively, are the fuel.

Egregores feed on fear. They feed on outrage. They feed on the energy we spend trying to navigate systems we never agreed to but somehow can't escape. They feed on our self-doubt, our self-policing, our exhausted compliance, our well-meaning participation in arguments designed to keep us divided and distracted. The more emotional energy we pour into the system — even in opposition to it — the stronger it gets.

The defining characteristic of every egregore is this: you cannot see it from the inside. You are the fish. The egregore is the water.

Patriarchy is an egregore. Consumerism is an egregore. American political outrage is one of the most efficiently fed egregores on the planet right now. And the moment you stop feeding any one of them — not by fighting it, not by screaming at it or marching with protest sign in hand, but by simply withdrawing your energy and attention — it begins to weaken.

The Eye Roll Is Data

I see you there, you with the eye-roll and snort of dismissal.

My reaction was the same when I first encountered these ideas. But that reaction is not yours. It was installed. The most important thing to understand about any control system is that it builds its own defense mechanism directly into you, and the truly genius part is that it doesn't stop there. It then uses you to enforce itself on everyone around you. You become the system's unpaid security guard, ridiculing, dismissing, and shutting down anyone who dares to question what you yourself have never questioned. No hired muscle required.

If everything around you — your school, your coworkers, your family, your friends, your movies, your news, your social media algorithms — all confirm the same "reality", questioning it becomes not just difficult but socially dangerous. That same message is being reinforced by people with unsanctioned control over the direction of your life - people who were indoctrinated into the system before you: your parents, your teachers, your bosses, your institutions. People you didn't choose and can't easily escape — who hold real power over your grades, your paycheck, your housing, your healthcare, your future. Everyone collectively agreeing, without ever having a meeting about it, that this is simply the way things are.

But what if you were never supposed to notice? That is the red pill question. And the control systems are specifically designed to ensure you never question them. So next time that knee-jerk rejection fires — at this article or anything else — try asking one thing first: who benefits from me not questioning this?

Received, Ignored, Filed Under Fiction

I believe some creators aren't inventing their ideas at all — they're receiving them. The field has been trying to wake us up for decades, using the only frequency we reliably tune into: entertainment. The transmissions are coming through perfectly. The programming is making sure we dismiss it.

I love to connect pop culture when digging into these concepts. They Live is John Carpenter's 1988 cult masterpiece. Except for the fashion and cars, it could have been made last week. Rewatching it for this article with a deeper understanding of our world today, it's continued relevance is absolutely stunning. A drifter finds a pair of sunglasses that enables him to see the world as it actually is. Billboards that secretly read OBEY. MARRY & REPRODUCE. CONSUME. Money that reads THIS IS YOUR GOD. The ruling class - the old white elites in suits - are revealed to be rapacious evil hiding in plain sight. Near the end of the movie, one of the overlords gives a speech, "By the year 2025, not only America, but the entire planet will be under the protection and dominion of this power alliance. The gains have been substantial for ourselves and for you, the human power elite." Utterly chilling.

The guerrilla street artist Shepard Fairey was deeply affected by the film and spent years plastering walls, doors, and any available surface with OBEY posters and stickers. I had no idea what they meant when I first saw them all over NYC in the early 90s, but I remember very clearly being drawn to them, unsettled by them. That was entirely the point. Fairey wasn't delivering a message so much as planting a splinter — a single provocative word designed to make you stop and ask: Obey what, or who, exactly?

Traveling Beyond the Signal

In my first column I described moving to San Miguel as unplugging from the Matrix. What I didn't fully explain was what actually unplugged — and it wasn't what I expected.

What I seemed unable to convey to my dinner companion was that my values didn't change when I moved to Mexico. My sense of right and wrong didn't change. What dissolved — slowly, almost without my noticing — was the rage. The visceral, consuming, full-body anger that had been running like a fever for decades. It was only after living in this new frequency for many months, thousands of miles away, that I could finally perceive the egregores clearly: outrage needs a villain, a tribe, and an audience that never leaves the theater. I walked out mid-show. The fever broke.

That's not apathy. That's reception loss.

Back when I began visiting Mexico regularly (before I moved here) I would well up with tears and sadness on the plane back to the United States. I thought it was simply because I "loved Mexico so much." Now I think it was something else entirely — some deep part of me knew exactly what I was flying back into. Some part of me felt the weight of the egregore before I had a name for it, and grieved having to go back inside it for however many more months or years.

And if you tell someone in the U.S. that you are thinking about going to Mexico, watch what happens. The self-policing programming activates immediately, reliably, like clockwork…In 3…2…1:
"But isn't it scary?"
"Oh my God, are you nuts?! I would never go there."
"I saw on the news…"
"What about the cartels? Aren't you afraid you'll get your head chopped off?"

This is one of the most basic and efficient programs running in the American cultural operating system. Fear of "them." Fear of elsewhere. Fear of whatever frequency exists beyond the one that has been constructed for you.

It takes real strength to push that fear away and tune out your friends and family. Even for me, after returning to the US for months or years, when I would begin planning my next Mexico trip, I was nearly deterred! Those thoughts intruded immediately on my reverie. They forced their way into my own psyche, even when I knew from experience they were not true.

But once you step outside the system and look back at it from any distance at all — you become what the system fears most: someone who can see it clearly and has decided they no longer wish to participate.

A recent episode of the podcast Holy Koolaid, discussed how Americans who grew up from cradle to grave inside it don't recognize the insanity of U.S. propaganda and programming. One idea from that episode seemed appropriate to include here: "In most healthy democracies, critique is understood as a form of patriotism. Questioning what you've been taught, immersing yourself in other cultures and countries, exposing yourself to perspectives that challenge your own assumptions — these aren't acts of disloyalty. They are civic duties. Challenging your country to live up to its own ideals isn't betrayal. It is the highest form of engagement with it."

The egregore, of course, would prefer you stay home and keep scrolling.

Are there egregores operating in Mexico? I suppose so, of course. But here's the thing: since I did not grow up inside this culture, since I don't yet fully speak the language or carry the cultural coding, those systems cannot reach me. I now walk in a liminal space between two cultures — not fully belonging to either one — and in that in-between space I have found a freedom my U.S.-born soul has never previously felt. Because I was never indoctrinated into Mexico's education system, political parties, or social classes, I don't perceive those divisions. I am literally unable to judge anyone according to those parameters. And it feels wonderful.

What You Resist Persists

Back to my dinner companion, aghast that I refused to engage in Trump resistance. "Marni! All we have left is to fight against him — we must fight!" she insisted.

I understand the impulse completely. I had it myself for years. But here is what I have come to understand, and what I was so badly failing to articulate over dinner: the egregore wants the population fighting each other. Divided, outraged, exhausted, pointing fingers across a manufactured fault line. The resistance movements, the protests, the perpetual culture war — all of it is energy being fed directly back into the machine. What you resist, you energize. What you fight, you sustain.

The No Kings rallies, the town halls, the social posts — they absolutely feel necessary and righteous. But as George Costanza once wisely observed: "A George, divided against itself, cannot stand." A population at war with itself is a population that never looks up long enough to see who is pulling the strings.

The way out is not through louder opposition. It is through withdrawing your energy entirely and redirecting it toward something at a completely different (positive) frequency. This is not passivity. This is not privilege. This is not being "un-American." This is understanding how the system actually operates at its most fundamental energetic level.

Kill The Power

You cannot solve a problem using the same frequency that created it. You cannot see the water you are swimming in until you get out of it. And you cannot starve an egregore while you are still feeding it three meals a day.

The moment you withdraw your energy — not in protest, not in rage, just quietly, undramatically, decisively stop — you become a "bad inmate' of the prison. Ungovernable. Not through rebellion but through simple, radical indifference. Every person who pulls out of the fear cycle and focuses instead on creating their own coherent frequency changes the field around them. I would rather be one of those people than one who is amplifying the panic and fear.

Fortunately, there is one fatal flaw in these systems: they cannot generate their own power. Every volt comes from people. Their fear, outrage, compliance… the belief that things cannot be any other way, that there is nothing to do about it. But the moment you stop, the machine goes dark. No one can rule if no one OBEYS.

Climb out of the water. Starve the egregore. Find your ideal frequency. And most importantly, don't let fear define the borders of your world. The frequency shift is available to everyone, everywhere. You are not the audience, you are the projector. You can change the reel anytime you want.

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Marni Hills is a QHHT Regression Hypnosis Practitioner, writer, photographer, and lover of all things weird and unusual. She is an ancient astronaut theorist, dog foster, DJ, and is obsessed with travel, fashion, the Gaia Channel, never-before-seen footage, and mountaineering disasters. She made San Miguel her home in early 2022.

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