Hakann: Many are trying to feel safer by demanding that others agree with them

My dearest brothers and sisters,

This is Hakann speaking. I greet you in peace and love.

From a high perspective, your current life is just one day in a very long journey back to Source. 

Alternatively, you could see your current body as the vehicle you happen to be piloting right now, with your soul being the driver.

No matter what happens to your body, no matter what happens to you in your current life, your soul will be just fine.

Even if you sell your soul or commit heinous crimes, then yes after your death you might end up in an unpleasant place. But even that is a place you can work your way out of -- it is not a hell that you're sent to permanently. Even there, you can always turn to Source or to an ascended master like Jesus or Yeshua. [Edit by the channeler: a clarification on selling your soul appears in this article that was published the week after.]

In very rare and extreme circumstances, beings can get unmade, if they violate the free will of very many people in a very serious way. But even then, an alternative way of thinking about that is that the being just instantly gets merged back into Source. Because after all, the energy corresponding to that being's soul doesn't just stop existing, it merely gets transformed -- and Source is everything, so the resulting transformed energy is still part of Source. So it is valid to think of beings who get unmade as beings who just instantly get merged back into Source.

So from a high perspective, you can view your body as just the vehicle that you happen to be currently driving. And pretty much no matter what happens to your body, no matter what happens to you in this life, your soul will be just fine.

That said, very many people are afraid right now. We can clearly feel it all the way up here in our spaceships -- not that we didn't feel the energy of Earth last year, but the fear is palpable now. The gray hats are afraid, the dark controllers are afraid and the people of Earth are afraid. And this fear is understandable.

People are afraid about immigration, about a US civil war, about crime and gun violence, about being able to afford rent and groceries, about censorship, about being lied to, about health and healthcare, about the next US election and more.

People are also afraid of conflicts and about people dying in, among other places, Gaza and Ukraine. And now people are scared about a possible third world war. At the time of this channeling, three US soldiers just got killed. My thoughts are with them, and their families, and everyone else who has suffered or is suffering.

So, if you are afraid, then my thoughts are with you. And there's nothing wrong with you, what you are feeling is understandable. Many people on Earth are afraid right now, you're not the only one.

A lot of people are trying to get a handle on things by having a debate about policies. What should be done? Is Texas right in regards to the Southern Border? Should we send money to Ukraine or not? Is student debt forgiveness a good thing or not?

I would like to make a distinction here between what you might call a substantive debate, where both debaters are emotionally stable and are genuinely debating the substance, versus an I-want-to-feel-safer debate, which might appear substantive on a surface level but where at least one of the sides is actually trying to feel safer by insisting that the other party agrees with them.

Obviously, substantive debate is great. I'm all in favour of that. However nowadays, most debate is I-want-to-feel-safer debate. Usually nowadays when two people have a debate, it might appear to be about the issues, but the deeper layer there is two people saying to each other: "you must change your opinion so that I can feel safe." "No, YOU must change YOUR opinion so that I can feel safe."

Obviously, that kind of debate isn't going to end in a satisfying way for either side. Which is why debates so often feel frustrating and pointless nowadays.

Really, that's what a lot of debate comes down to nowadays: two scared people insisting that the other person changes their view so that they can feel safer. 

Or perhaps one side tries to have a rational, substantive debate and the other side is trying to feel safer. However, don't fall into the trap of thinking that you and the people on your side are always rational and being substantive, and the other side is being irrational. Pretty much everyone, including people who are being irrational and who are trying to feel safer, has some reason for thinking that they are the rational side and the other side is "ignoring experts and ignoring the science", or the other side is "ignoring obvious reality in favor of virtue-signalling", or some other reason. Pretty much everyone, including irrational people, think they are the rational ones and the other side is irrational. So don't be too quick to label yourself as someone who always tries to have a substantive debate and who never tries to feel safer through demanding that the other side agrees with you. Probably you have had some moments where you were indeed debating substantively, but also some moments where you were trying to feel safer through asking that the other person agrees with you.

Also, I'm presenting it as a binary now -- either people want to have a substantive debate, or they want to feel emotionally safer -- however people often have both motivations, to differing degrees. Most people have inner fragmentation, and one part of them may want a genuinely substantive debate, while another part might just want to emotionally feel safer by demanding that the other person agrees with them.

Note that a person's feeling of unsafety doesn't necessarily need to come from there being a physical threat towards them personally. It can also come from someone feeling unsafe on behalf of someone else whom they consider to be part of their ingroup. For example, someone who empathizes with Palestinians or Ukranians or Jews or Texans or immigrants might currently feel unsafe because people in these groups are suffering or under threat (not necessarily to the same degree, but still). An empathetic person might feel unsafe because other people, whom they more or less consider to be part of themselves, are unsafe.

This is logical when you consider that humans are a communal species. It makes sense to feel unsafe if people in your tribe, in your in-group are in danger. Obviously you don't literally live in tribes anymore, but most people still label some people as being part of their in-group, as being part of their metaphorical tribe, and other people as their out-group, as not being part of their metaphorical tribe. And so people can literally feel unsafe because they consider Palestinians or Ukranians or Jews or immigrants or Texans or whoever to be part of their in-group, and their in-group is currently suffering or under threat.

So a Jew currently might feel unsafe because of the awful Hamas attack on October 7th, where Jewish civilians were killed. It's logical to feel unsafe if people in your in-group were killed recently.

A Jew might currently also feel unsafe because certain people are turning against the Jewish people. I don't support condemning Jews or discriminating against Jews, or against any other people for that matter.

What I do think is acceptable is criticizing the policies of the state of Israel. Now, this too will make certain people feel unsafe, even if the criticism is directed at Israel and not at Jews in general. This is because certain people (including some non-Jews) have the state of Israel itself as part of their in-group. I don't necessarily recommend having a nation or a philosophy as part of your in-group, but people do this all the time. There are also Americans who have the USA as part of their in-group, for example.

Another factor is that people can feel unsafe if someone says something that threatens their self-identity, or threatens the self-identity of their in-group. For example, a Jew might currently feel unsafe because people are saying that Israel is committing genocide, and that may be threatening to their self-identity or to the self-identity of their in-group.

And so you can see the problem with many modern debates. One person says: "you must change your opinion and agree with me that Israel is committing genocide, so that I can feel safer, because I see Palestinians as being part of me and they're under threat." The other side says: "no, YOU must change YOUR opinion and agree with me that Israel isn't committing genocide, so that I can feel safer, because I see Jews as being part of me and they're under threat."

Obviously this discussion isn't going to go anywhere, because both sides feel unsafe and both sides try to solve that feeling of unsafeness by insisting that the other side changes their opinion. If both sides take this position, then obviously both sides will feel unheard and annoyed and even more unsafe after a debate.

Humans are a communal species, after all, and it feels safer if the other people around you think like you do. Hence, the hidden motivation of many discussions nowadays is people constantly telling each other: you must change your opinion, so that I can feel safer.

Now yes, it is my opinion that certain countries should stop supporting the, in my opinion, Israeli genocide of Palestinians. I am not saying that the nation of Israel should get to commit, in my opinion, genocide just because the people of Israel feel unsafe. That said, It is also my opinion that the Hamas attack was terrible and I don't condone it. With these disclaimers out of the way, I am just pointing out the underlying dynamic that effectively both sides want the other to agree with them so that they can feel safer.

Or let's look at another example. One person feels that illegal immigrants are a threat to him or to his in-group, which might be his friends and family or the people in his state. This person wants to make illegal immigration harder, and feels left-wingers are opposing that effort and thereby making him less safe. The other person in the debate sees refugees as being part of herself, to an extent, and therefore sees a person who tries to block illegal immigration as making her in-group less safe. Because after all, these refugees are suffering and we must let them in. No human being is illegal.

In this case, both sides may end up effectively telling the other side: "you must change your opinion so that I can feel safer." And of course, this doesn't work.

This debate might end up in name-calling, or people might negatively stereotype the other side and create a strawman. For example, the pro-immigration side may call the anti-immigration side selfish or heartless or xenophobic or call them a bunch of racists or far-right extremists, overlooking the legitimate concerns about illegal immigration that people may have. The anti-immigration side might overlook the genuine empathy for refugees that the pro-immigration people may have and just accuse them of not living in reality and of hypocritically wanting other people to take care of refugees so long as the refugees don't have to be housed near them. The anti-immigration side might also pick up that left-wingers often have immigrants but not right-wingers as being part of their in-group, so the right might accuse the left of not actually being empathetic. Though to be fair, very few people genuinely have all humans as being part of their in-group. Most people are only empathetic, to varying degrees, towards people in their in-group.

The anti-immigration and pro-immigration debaters might employ thought-terminating cliches, such as "you're a racist" or "you're just virtue-signalling, that's all it is."

Both sides may also construct a self-serving picture. The left self-servingly pictures immigrants as women and children who are fleeing from terrible conditions and who want to integrate and contribute to society. The right self-servingly pictures immigrants as so-called military-aged men who come from stable but relatively poor countries, who just want to make more money by coming to a richer country, and who very well may end up intentionally abusing social services or committing crimes.

The reality is that immigrants can be both. 

So as you can see, a large part of this debate isn't really a rational, substantive discussion about the facts. Instead, a lot of it is about people feeling that their in-group is under threat, and so both people emotionally try to feel safer by trying to convince the other side to change positions. You can see this because both sides often create a self-serving picture and strawman the other side and pretend that everyone on the other side of the issue is bad or hypocritical in some way. People who are genuinely substantively debating don't do that.

Of course, I'm not saying that no one is making substantive arguments either for or against immigration. I'm just saying that most arguments are seemingly substantive but if you look under the surface, it's mostly people saying: "you must change your position so that I can feel safer."

Insisting that the other person must change their opinion so that you can feel safe, or applying labels to them, ultimately just makes the other side feel less safe and less heard. No matter who is right, you don't solve a crisis of people feeling unsafe by doing something that makes them feel more unsafe. So they are likely to further dig in their heels and possibly become more extreme. 

If the other side is clearly emotionally invested in being right, which is usually the case on Earth, then it's usually not productive to have an emotionally charged debate. Instead, it's more productive to actually listen to the other person. How are they feeling, what are they worried about? If there are even tiny areas and tiny things where you genuinely agree with them or that you genuinely appreciate about them, tell them. Do all this, and the other person will feel safer and more heard, and in time they will become more reasonable and rational. In time, they may also develop more empathy for your position, and possibly start including your group into their in-group. And once the other side is emotionally stable on a deep level, then you can finally have an actual, rational, substantive debate.

Of course, if you don't have the space to listen to someone, that's understandable. But I do want to communicate the idea that arguing with someone typically makes them feel more unsafe and therefore dig in their heels, while listening to and empathizing with and expressing appreciation for people typically makes them feel safer, and therefore over time it makes them more rational and reasonable and empathetic with you.

Note that if two people argue, often they have a different in-group. For example, an anti-immigration Texan might have Texans and New Yorkers in their ingroup ("New Yorkers are still Americans, I don't think they should be censored"), but not illegal immigrants. A pro-immigration New Yorker might have illegal immigrants in their ingroup, but not Texans ("they're far-right Trump voters, they're the problem, screw them"). In this case, just arguing with each other often isn't very productive, as we saw before. By listening, both listener and speaker can widen who they think of as their ingroup.

Empathy means that both sides should consider how they would feel if you were in the other person's shoes. For example, an Israeli person should consider how they would feel if they were a Palestinian. But also, if an American wants to accuse Israel of genocide, they should at least take a moment to reflect how they would feel if someone accused America of committing genocide. I'm not saying: don't say those words. I'm just saying: take a moment to imagine what it would be like if you were in another person's shoes.

So: rather than telling people they must agree with you, rather than labeling people, it's more productive to just have an open conversation and listen to people. You may have to be the one to listen first, but when they feel heard, maybe in time they will have the room to listen to you too. And sure, listening to an unreasonable person doesn't instantly make them reasonable, those things take a bit of time. However, telling an unreasonable person that they're wrong also doesn't instantly make them reasonable. In fact, telling an unreasonable person they're wrong probably makes them feel more unsafe, and therefore makes them even more unreasonable. Even if you're 100% right, telling a person who feels unsafe that he's wrong often only makes him dig in his heels.

Empathy also means that you should consider the viewpoint of other people, including people you don't necessarily like, or people who you think are on the wrong side of a certain issue. If you can't formulate an non-strawmanned argument in favor of their viewpoint, if you don't understand the legitimate parts of their position and think they're all just a bunch of racists or hypocritical virtue-signallers, then you might need to listen to them more.

Be careful if you feel the urge to label an entire group as being bad and therefore that their concerns shouldn't be listened to. Sure, perhaps the group by and large is behaving poorly, but probably not everyone in that group is, and probably even a largely-unreasonable group has some valid concerns in there somewhere.

Now, what I've mostly been discussing is people getting emotionally triggered. And that's one possibility. But what can also happen is that someone calmly and seemingly rationally points to a self-serving picture, and pretends that is proof.

I'll give an example of a stereotypical libertarian and a stereotypical communist, although note that there are libertarians and there are communists who have more nuanced views than this.

Still, suppose that someone says that libertarianism would just lead to massive inequality, environmental destruction and companies becoming monopolies and creating a dystopia, then a libertarian might point to their self-serving picture of a perfect libertarian society and say that in true libertarian society, everything is great. And the supposed proof is that the libertarian has constructed this self-serving picture, and so he just points to that picture and pretends it's proof. And of course, this isn't actually an argument, and in fact this makes the non-libertarian people feel a bit less safe. After all, this libertarian appears to be living in an entirely different world than them, and for a communal species like a human that feels scary.

A communist might do basically the same, pointing to his self-serving picture of communist utopia, and act like that is somehow proof that communism works.

Sure, some libertarians and some communists have better arguments than this. But still, sometimes this is what happens. And this kind of "just look at my self-serving picture, observe how in this picture everything is great, now agree with me" kind of argument is closer to "I need you to agree with me so that I can feel safer" than it is to a truly rational, substantive debate.

Now, actually, the Pleiadian society I live in could be seen as both libertarian and communist. No individual owns the means of production, which is communist, yet on the other hand we have no taxes, practically zero laws and zero coercion from the government. From my point of view, both communism and libertarianism can work, just perhaps not in a pure version at the current level of human consciousness. Ultimately, the way out of Earth's political deadlock will be for the people of Earth to increase their level of consciousness. And at that point, libertarianism and communism, or even both at the same time, may become feasible.

And how do you help increase the consciousness of the people of Earth? Well, actually listening to other people, including those whom you disagree with, is a great contribution to that indeed.

So, to summarize today's message: many people are feeling afraid, and are saying to each other: "you must agree with me, so that I can feel safer." Of course, it doesn't work if both sides do this.

Most people feel unsafe. And if you tell a person who feels unsafe that he's wrong, he'll probably feel even more unsafe, and he may further dig in his heels and become even more unreasonable as a result. Doesn't matter if you're 100% correct, the other side may very well still feel more unsafe and become more unreasonable as a result.

What works better is asking the other side how they are feeling and what they think is important, and genuinely listening to them, with the intention of understanding them and not with the intention of finding something that you can weaponize against them. 

While listening, feel free to ask clarifying questions so that you can understand them better. If you can express genuine empathy or genuine understanding or genuine appreciation for them, even if it's just about something tiny, then it can be very helpful to do so.

If all you care about is a particular social or political issue, even then it's more productive to ask the other side how they are feeling and what they think is important, and to listen to them. That makes them feel safer, and as a result they will in time become more rational and reasonable as a result. Whereas if you tell them they're wrong, they will likely feel less safe and they may become more unreasonable as a result. So even if all you care about is a particular issue, even then listening is more productive than telling the other side that they're wrong.

You might be tempted to subconsciously think: "but people in my in-group are suffering, therefore I need to tell those people over there that they're wrong, to help people in my in-group." I understand the temptation, but you probably help your in-group the most by actually listening to the people on the other side of the argument, so that those people feel heard and understood, which will make them behave in a more reasonable way in the future.

Telling people that they're wrong almost always doesn't work, because almost everyone is currently feeling emotionally unsafe, and from that place people can't rationally evaluate new arguments. Listen to people first, so that they feel safer, and then in time maybe you can actually have a substantive debate.

If you have the emotional space for it, it's best to only start giving your opinion once the other side feels fully heard and seen and understood, which may take quite a long time. Of course, you're not obligated to do so, but that is the ideal. This also works well in relationships, by the way.

So many people are willing to help improve the world, but they have no idea how. Often, these people end up trying to promote a political or social issue that they like, which in turn makes people on the other political side feel more unsafe. If some of these people would switch to listening first, that would help a lot.

I hope this was helpful. 

You are very in my thoughts in these dark and scary times. We are actively working to help you behind the scenes. Please take good care of yourself. The medium-term future looks very bright, but the coming weeks and months may very well be intense.

Your star brother,

Hakann

-----

Note from the channeler: this message contains the opinion that Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza. I also live in the Netherlands, where certain kinds of speech against Israel will get you into legal trouble. I'm not a lawyer and I don't know if this particular statement can actually get me into legal trouble, but I don't want to find out.

Therefore, I will include the following disclaimer for my legal protection:

-----

Disclaimer: I am not denying the Holocaust. I am not denying the right of Israel, or the right of the Jewish people to exist. I am opposed to the murder of Israelis, by Hamas and other groups. I don't think Jews should be killed or removed from the lands of Israel.

I actively discourage violence of all types. I also actively discourage discrimination of all types, including (but not limited to) discrimination against Jews.

Information in this message is for informational and educational and entertainment purposes. This message contains humor, parody, and satire.

There is a comment section. Comments do not necessarily reflect my views and opinions.

End disclaimer. Have a good week.