After hearing about the recent truck attack in Stockholm, I started looking for further information.
As I mentioned in the card reading for today “Watch Your Thoughts”, I rely on my angels and guides to let me know when there is something that I need to know happening in the world, as I don’t watch the news any longer. The truck attack in Stockholm was brought to my attention a couple of times.
I started looking for any mention of a Muslim point of view of this attack. I didn’t find any.
What I did find, however, was a recent story about an Islamic school in Sweden where boys and girls were segregated on a bus, but, according to the school, not because of gender, but because of their behaviour. I also found mention of a right wing group which later visited this school to put up propaganda stickers, causing a number of students to become fearful enough to miss school.
I wondered if this had influenced the perpetrator of the truck attack.
I also found a number of stories suggesting that an increasing number of Swedish women have been gang-raped by Muslim youth because these youth consider any unveiled women to be equal to prostitutes. I started to get angry, insisting that, if this is true, then Muslim women must be all forced to go unveiled as well.
But then I started to ask myself if this was a true story or was it put forward by someone with an ulterior motive of ridding their country of all Muslims. But then I asked myself if such an ulterior motive wasn’t understandable, if such stories are true.
Government reports seemed to suggest that such stories were certainly biased and inaccurate.
What I realised was that we never know what to believe anymore. We might be shown pictures of an event, but the words attached to the pictures certainly can change our view of the situation.
I recall one such picture which was brought to my attention during the US presidential elections. Two editions of the same newspaper with the same photo but with different headlines were given as evidence of manipulation of the news by the media. However, it later turned out that the story of manipulation was really the fake news story.
There has been a lot of talk of fake news lately. I first heard the term during the US presidential elections. Many of us who began avoiding mainstream media news began putting more weight on news stories we were presented with on social media. Although it had become normal practice to verify unusual information before sharing it, often we weren’t so particular when it came to stories that we didn’t find unusual – in other words, when they supported our own beliefs.
As is mentioned by FactCheck.Org, “Confirmation bias leads people to put more stock in information that confirms their beliefs and discount information that doesn’t.”
Whilst we are exposed to so much more information today than, say, 50 years ago, we have difficulty now knowing how much of the information we receive can be relied upon as truth. Whether it was valid at the time or not, 50 years ago we had a certain trust in our news media sources. We believed that true facts were presented in an unbiased fashion, and a journalist always presented both sides of any story where conflicting views were possible. In this age of sound bites, this no longer seems to be the case.
We have lost confidence in both mainstream news sources, and in alternative sources.
We do have other sources, however, whom we can trust implicitly. These sources are our spiritual sources – our internal guidance system.
Sometimes our egos and our higher consciousness have different views on news stories. However, we just need to quiet our egos during meditation, to find out the truth on any issue. If we ask a question prior to meditating, then quiet our ego minds, the answer will come to us during meditation.
Could it be that all of the issues of fake news, whilst confusing and troubling to us at the time, are really a way to bring us all closer to our true source of truth?
I should point out that I have no doubt that Muslims have been responsible for a number of troubling attacks on innocent people, and I deplore any such actions.
My truth, however, tells me that love is the answer to all questions. Whilst I have insufficient information to propose a solution to the problems which have occurred in some European countries, I am convinced that hate will only multiply the problems. I have no doubt that a solution will be found using love as a guide.
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