 Hi everyone, this is Gio. As always, welcome to my channel. Now what I wanted to do is give you guys a little heads up that I'm going to be taking a short break for a couple of weeks. We're in mid-February right now and I'll probably be back at the beginning of March. And basically what I do, if you've been following my work online for a while, you'll know that I refer to these breaks. They may be short, they may be long. This is sort of a shorter one. I refer to these breaks as Bill Hicks breaks because what I end up doing is sort of, I end up watching a lot of Bill Hicks and reading some of the stuff that he's done. I sort of organize things from my end, take a look at what I need to get done and go about sort of grounding myself or preparing myself for my next phase of whatever project it is that I'm working on and this is one of the projects that I'm working on, right? So we'll definitely be back in a couple of weeks beginning of March. As for who Bill Hicks is, just in case you don't know who he is, his profession was basically a stand-up comedian but he was, people consider him to be much more than that and I'm one of those people. He was, I consider him to be one of my greatest teachers that I've ever come across in my life, right? And basically just through his writings and through his stand-up, you know, I never interacted with him. He passed away in 1994, I believe, and he was active for a long time. He was in David Letterman like 11 times and the 12th time they censored him or the 11th time they censored him because corporate media and stuff like this. But basically let me give you sort of a lowdown on who Bill Hicks is and I'll link to an article I put together because every now and then throughout my presence online I do end up taking Bill Hicks breaks and every time I do this I sort of make a little post on my site mentioning that, you know, announcing that I'm taking a Bill Hicks break so I'll provide a link to the last Bill Hicks break that I took and I believe that was in 2013 or so, okay? And there's, you know, a couple of videos, two or three videos on that post and, you know, I have a little write-up introducing who Bill Hicks is and what I want to do is sort of read you a couple of things that I posted on that post on my site, okay, on my blog and on that post there's also a really good article that I came across from the Irish Times that was written in 1997 and I've linked to archive. I think it's not online on the original site anymore but there's a link to it to the archive.org and I've, you know, cut and pasted it on that blog as well so you can read up that write-up, okay? But basically, let me read you the title and the first two intro paragraphs that I wrote on that post and I'm going to read you some quotes from Bill Hicks which should give you an idea of who Bill Hicks is, okay? So the last post I made, I titled it taking a Bill Hicks break, what it means to be free, okay? Every now and then I take a little Bill Hicks break to remind myself of what it means to be free. It's that time again. Just to give you an introduction, one of my personal enlightening moments from Hicks came when I first heard him ask why there was never any positive drug stories on the news. If the news were truly impartial then there would be, there would have to be positive stories but there never is. This took me weeks to digest, okay? And really when I first heard that, I sort of brushed it off and this was years ago, right? Years ago before it became prevalent how information is controlled. And it was obvious back then to those who really looked into it and this is a time before the age of the internet, right? So our sources of information were very limited, okay? So it took me a while to digest this when I first heard that. And let me read you the quote that got me thinking about this, okay? Expose me to this. This is from Bill Hicks, a sane man that he did in 1989. Okay, quote. You know what's wild? You never see a positive drug story on the news, do you? Have you ever seen one? Isn't that weird? Don't you think that's strange? I mean, the news is supposed to be objective. Isn't it supposed to be the news? But every drug story is negative. Well, hold it. I've had some killer times on drugs. I'm not promoting it, but I'm not denying it. Let's hear, and let's hear the whole fucking story. That's from Bill Hicks, sane man, 1989. Now, anybody that's looked into this, you'll know that much of our civilization, our culture, technology, biology, much of who we are can be accredited to people experimenting with consciousness, I guess, okay? From Carl Sagan to Francis Crick to Steve Jobs to much of recent history and all of human history, okay? And Bill Hicks usually, with that little routine that he does, questioning the news, why it's not impartial, why there aren't any positive drug stories on the news. He usually follows that up with a little short little blip about what a positive news story could be. Now, coding again, Bill Hicks. Today, a young man on acid realized that all matters, merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. There is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are all the imaginations of ourselves. Here's Tom with the weather. Now, Bill Hicks has a lot of content online, and if you've never been exposed to him, I highly recommend you check him out, really. He would have been, he would have thrived in this age of information, age of technology, right? What I like to do is end with the sort of routine that Bill Hicks usually ended his act with, okay? And if you're a Bill Hicks follower, you'll know what this is, and if you're not, and if you've never seen Bill Hicks, you probably want to hear these words from him, okay? But I'll read them to you as well, and then I'll see you guys in the next video. Quote, The world is like a ride in an amusement park, and when you choose to go on it, you think it's real because that's how powerful our minds are. The ride goes up and down, around and around, and it has thrills and chills, and it's very brightly colored, and it's very loud, and it's fun for a while. Many people have been on the ride a long time, and they begin to wonder, hey, is this real, or is this just a ride? And other people have remembered it, and they come back to us and say, hey, don't worry, don't be afraid, ever, because this is just a ride, and we kill those people. Shut him up. I've got a lot invested in this ride. Shut him up. Look at my frozen worry. Look at my big bank account and my family. This has to be real. It's just a ride, but we always kill the good guys we try and tell us that. Have you ever noticed that? And let the demons run amok. But it doesn't matter because it's just a ride, and we can change it any time we want. It's only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings on money. Just a simple choice right now between fear and love. The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your doors, buy guns, close yourself off. The eyes of love instead see all of us as one. Here's what we can do to change the world right now to a better ride. Take all that money we spend on weapons and defense each year and instead spend it feeding and clothing and educating the poor of the world, which we would pay for many times over, not one human being excluded. And we could explore space together, both inner and outer, forever in peace.