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badasscrossstitch · 6 years

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Channeling My Rage...

Good Morning Friends:

I am going to channel my outrage into what I hope will become a positive public discussion around copyright in the social media and digital age. Let me start by saying, in most cases I believe people either don’t know or just don’t think about their use of other people’s art, images, words when it comes to “sharing” on social networks or online. I never assume malintentions. I do my best to gently educate folks on copyright and crediting when I see my work used without a shout out or some acknowledgement that I created it.

In this new era, I believe we need to be having conversations about how to respect the creative work of others while also uplifting it and honoring it – through sharing. Plagiarism is an important thing we teach in school. You can be kicked out of college for plagiarizing someone. I believe we should be deeply considering and having meaningful discourse about “sharing” on social networks. What does “citing a source” look like today in terms of social media?

These insidious little moments of sharing without citing the source might seem silly to some, but I argue they lay the groundwork for much more egregious plagiarism or just straight up theft. Let’s explore a case study that is happening right now and has led me to want to write this article.

LASULA boutique is an online clothing store that seems to cater to both the UK and US markets. It is “home to the latest fashion flashes from across the globe.”

Based on my research, they appear to make what I call “disposable clothing” that is modeled after whatever some celebrity wore that week. I call it “disposable clothing” because it’s made cheap and fast in developing nations in order to create clothing that is “in fashion” for a moment. It’s not meant to last as it is usually “out of fashion” in a few weeks and you dispose of the items and have to buy more.

Their online reviews, depending on where you look, range from 5.8/10 starts to 1.7/5 stars; most reviewers speaking to the shoddy quality of their products. But hey I’ve never bought anything from them so who knows.

What I do know, is that they took my design and stitched it onto jeans, used my name in the product description, and sold them for 22GBP (roughly $30 USD) on their website.

I also know that they posted a photo of said jeans on their Instagram, which has 723,000 followers, which earned them 3,329 likes, without crediting or tagging me (gee I wonder why). That doesn’t even include the posts by their paid brand ambassadors. I spoke with one and she had no idea the design was stole and then graciously archived her post.

To be clear: I DID NOT know about this. I DID NOT give them permission to use my design or my name. I DID NOT sign a licensing agreement. I DID reach out to them via Instagram yesterday and have not heard back from them.*update: I heard from them...more on that in a few days*

Perhaps now you can see why I want discourse around this.

The piece of art I made that is now “famous” I guess, was created when our shitbag president said “grab ‘em by the pussy” on film AND STILL GOT ELECTED PRESIDENT. But that is not when that piece got famous. That happened when celebrities shared it when fuckbag Harvey Weinstein got called out and taken down.

I got over 1,000 requests via Etsy and Instagram from folks who asked me to stitch them one and/or “put it on a shirt” so they could wear the message around. That led me to: create a FREE embroidery pattern so that those thousands of people could stitch their own to wear or gift to others. I also created a RedBubble shop with some products with the design/expression on it so folks could wear it loud and proud – I have always clearly stated that I make NO PROFIT off of this. I donate all of the proceeds (which is like $2 an item because I chose to keep the price point as low as possible for buyers) to the nonprofit Advancing Justice | Chicago. To date, we have raised just over $1,000 for the organization through the sales.

Profiting off of this message and this moment is NOT something I am willing to do. I have been very clear about that. So the fact that LASULA (and many others as you will see below) are stealing my work to attempt to profit off of is UTTER BULLSHIT. They are slapping MY ART onto jeans and are selling them to you as a “fashion flash”… whatever the fuck that means.

They used MY NAME in their product description without my permission…no doubt thinking that was them being “thoughtful” or “citing their source”.

Here’s the deal, I teach classes at Columbia College on how to protect creative works, write licensing agreements and contracts, and how to protect your name, brand, and art. I would be a really shitty teacher if I didn’t use this moment to bring this to light.

I am angry that my art and my name have been coopted to make this company money.

I am angry that they are selling women the idea that a piece of my art that represents the women’s movement should be stitched onto the butt of skinny jeans and paired with “a bodysuit and some boots for the ultimate babe vibe.”

The part that I am grateful for is that I know my rights and I have a digital community that regularly has my back. So many artists do not have that. They are making incredible art and are REGULARLY being ripped off and their work exploited by fashion companies who apparently can’t seem to afford to hire artists.

I MUST stand up; not just for me but for every other creator whose work is being bit-for-profit and their objections aren’t being heard or listened to.

My website states:

What does that mean?

It means that I created this art for you to use to make your own art. If you share your art with the world all you have to do is credit my art too. If you post it on Instagram for example, you would say something like: Pattern by: @BadassCrossStitch – it’s like citing your sources. And you know I’m going to double tap that and share the love! (win/win)

It also means that you can’t sell the work without my permission. Here’s the deal, if you are an independent artist or crafter and you want to stitch a piece or two to sell at a craft fair or on Etsy – you have my permission so long as you clearly state the pattern is mine. I extra approve if you give a portion of your profits to a nonprofit doing great work for women.

No one has my permission to use my work on a large scale (making more than 3 pieces to sell, or any advertising, or commercial applications – you know billboards, t-shirts, jeans, mugs, and shit like that) without my written permission. Businesses, brands, ad agencies, and the like (should know better) and should definitely not be biting my work. That said, I’m totally down to talk about all sorts of applications but it will require a contract, licensing agreement, and dollar bills y’all.

Cool? Cool. Thank you for supporting and respecting the work of artists! You are badass.

I am not an unreasonable human. I create art to inspire other people to create art. I do NOT create art so companies can exploit my work and profit from it.

Think I’m exaggerating? Check this out:

That is just from a simple google search that took me 3 seconds. I still have $40,000 in student loan debt. You think I couldn’t use the money? OF COURSE I COULD!

*takes deep breath*

My friends, thank you for reading this. The only call to action I have for you right now is to please have an IRL conversation with someone today about this idea. Talk about how you share things on social media. Talk about what you think crediting a creator looks like. Talk about plagiarism in the digital age – what does that even mean? Let’s have conversations around this NOW. Let’s work together to define what we believe is just and equitable.

Thank you. I love you.

Shannon

#lasula #fashion #boys will be boys #art #plagiarism #stealing art #stealing design #capitalism #greed

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bombbush6 · 2 years

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Creating A Model New Wikipedia Article

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#seo

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cicadacreativemag · 3 years

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That time Andy Warhol plagiarized Yayoi Kusama

Jay Serrano, Editorial Director

If you asked a stranger to list any 5 artists off the top of their head, odds are good that Andy Warhol would be one of them. A soup can homage even sits in front of CSU’s Center for the Arts (to honor a visit from Warhol in 1981). There is no doubt that his contributions altered the trajectory of American art. He also copied part of one of Yayoi Kusama’s exhibitions.

Yayoi Kusama is another famous artist, albeit less of a household name than Warhol. She’s a Japanese artist who immigrated to New York in 1958 and she helped carve out the pop art scene of the 60s. As a child, she suffered from hallucinations and trauma, something that she has spent her entire career exploring through art. Her work is extremely personal to her--she has been open about this since her arrival to the art scene.

Kusama’s very first solo exhibition, “Aggregation: One Thousands Boats Show,” showcased a rowboat sculpture made of phallic shapes, complete with two similarly adorned oars. The structure was photographed then replicated 999 times on the walls and ceilings. Warhol visited the exhibit and complimented Kusama on it, specifically commenting on the wallpaper and floor

Years later, Warhol would debut his “Cow Wallpaper” installation in his April 1966 exhibition at Leo Castelli Gallery, featuring one of his most recognizable and famous designs. The similarity wasn’t lost on the art community. The Museum of Modern Art even mentions it in their interactive display about Kusama’s show, remarking that Kusama’s exhibit appeared 3 years before Warhol’s. However, Warhol credited an art dealer for the idea and did not mention Kusama.

Kusama would go on to have more ideas stolen from her by her peers, namely Claes Oldenberg and Lucas Samaras. When Kusama visited Claes Oldenberg’s exhibit and saw he’d taken her idea of soft sculpture, his wife approached her and apologized. Then, Kusama watched these ideas--her ideas--manifest in wealth and success that she could not herself achieve. She became paranoid and isolated herself, hiding her art. Her mental health deteriorated. This culminated in a suicide attempt.

After a bout of depressive episodes compounded by the rejection she faced upon returning to Japan, she checked herself into a mental health facility and has not checked out since. She still makes intimate art that addresses her trauma, psychosis, and other aspects of her life. She still says art saved her life. She is one of the most famous contemporary artists and her work has affected millions. But it took much longer for her to ascend to these heights than her white male peers who copied her ideas and we must examine why.

The line for plagiarism can be blurry; originality is harder to define in creative contexts. Some artists flirt with this line and some brazenly cross it. Yayaoi Kusama’s story demonstrates why even “minor” plagiarism is so insidious, even in ways that the plagiarizer may not have been aware of. These artists “drew inspiration” from her work and got fame and acclaim while she struggled to eat. The reason as to why it was easier for these men to achieve fame is clear: the art scene was heavily male dominated and almost entirely white.

Currently, the anti-Asian racism in the USA is at a fever pitch. Hate crimes have been on the rise since COVID-19 first began to spread in the USA, something many (including former President Trump) attributed to China, dubbing it “China virus.” I touched on this uptick in violence against Asians in 2020 on a separate blog post, but it has only gotten worse.

Then, 8 women were murdered in Atlanta on March 16, 6 of them Asian. I don’t want to derail the primary topic of this post and this event warrants a post all on its own, but it has become clearer and clearer that Asian women are not valued as much as their white counterparts, especially when those counterparts are men. This is true for all Asian people living in the USA. The pattern of devaluing the work of women of color is one that we can address within our own communities--racism and misogyny are systemic.

In the meantime, maybe we could let go of Andy Warhol a bit.

Sources:

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20180925-yayoi-kusamas-extraordinary-survival-story?

https://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/1998/kusama/kusama_11.html

https://www.artspace.com/magazine/art_101/close_look/pop-art-ripoffs-the-3-yayoi-kusama-artworks-that-warhol-oldenburg-and-samaras-copied-in-the-60s-55636

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/16/us/atlanta-shootings-massage-parlor.html

#cicada creative magazine #jay #ccm #andy warhol #yayoi kusama

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porthavenhq · 4 years

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Welcome to Porthaven, Mads! We can’t wait to meet Madden Hatter!

Please look over the acceptance checklist and submit your blog within the next 24 hours. If there is a problem or a prior obligation and you need more time than provided, just message the main and we will gladly extend!

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* 　OUT OF CHARACTER　 *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

Name: Hello again! It’s me, your friendly neighborhood Mads. Pronouns: She/Her/Herself. Age: I’m 24, and turning 25 on October 30th! Timezone: PST. Activity Level: Activity trend hasn’t’ really changed, tbh – I (thankfully) have a part-time job that has me working at least three days a week, but I’m always around to answer things live and queue things up for next-day posting if it gets too late. I’m a solid 8 on activity, if I were to give it a number. Triggers: Any depiction of self-harm through cutting and any depiction of cancer. Anything Else: As always, thank you for taking the time to read through my application and let me participate and write here!

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* 　CHARACTER INFORMATION　 *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

Name: Madden Hatter ( formerly known as Terrance Hightop ). Age: April 2nd, 1988. Gender: Genderfluid; comfortable with he/him/his pronouns. FC: Robert Sheenan.

Character Biography

There’s nothing about Madden Hatter that one could call conventional. From his outward appearance to what’s buried deep beneath his fast-talking and clever façade, it’s more often than not that he’s described as absolutely maddening. With different accents from around the world pressed into his cadence, riddles and philosophical questions his way of breaking the ice, not even going by his given name anymore – he’s a mystery wrapped in a nightmare dressed like a daydream.

Some could blame it on his family, of course. An uptight Irish upbringing with more money than one could think of to do with, three generations of Hightopp men had a plan in mind for their one and only son that included a private boarding school to be sent off to for twelve years and a multi-million dollar business to inherit. If one were to deviate from that plan in any way, everything would fall apart and it would leave the entire Hightopp clan in ruin, buried under insidious gossip and ruined reputation. Madden - who was born and raised as Terrance - knew this very well, having seen this sort of devastation in other wealthy families that his parents even had a hand in tearing down. It was all up to him.

Or maybe it was just the pressure that got to him, causing a break in his mental state in his early teenhood that changed his entire demeanor. Once formal and charming, around fourteen he did a full one-eighty, turning reckless and loud yet never losing that unbridled confidence he inherited from his father. There was only one of him to take on all the weight of his family name, and maybe he crumbled. The boarding school that he was sent to sent him home just a year after his arrival, refusing to take him back after a party of very loud and alcoholic proportions left a costly amount of damage in the dorm room. This process was repeated for several more years, until his family gave him one final warning: cut the drugs, the alcohol, and the partying out and act like a Hightopp, or don’t consider yourself a Hightopp at all. This was told to him at seventeen, the pressure mounting to one final, fiery crescendo.

This lit a fire in him, but not the one his parents were hoping for.

Their words left a profound and lasting effect on their child, who - the moment he was given him official diploma at nineteen - packed up and headed for the United Kingdom, changing his name and taking his inheritance with him. He would no longer be a Hightopp, restricted to business and numbers and social constructs, never again taking orders from anyone. There, completely alone and without the pressure of his legacy on his back, he began anew. It was in the United Kingdom that he learned the arts in a deeper way than he ever did growing up, finding his heart in the fashion industry. His working of fabric and jewels were something like magic; the same with his growing of tea plants and the brewing of their leaves. Both of these things were hobbies, things to pass the time and keep his mind out of Ireland, peppered in-between his long nights out on the town with friends and lovers and his extensive self-care early-afternoon routine.

He always did find it quite curious, how just one phone call could have altered his life so. Just a phone call, and he was packing up one more time and heading off to the States to help a friend out with his struggling teashop.

The reason as to why he was so ready and willing to jump on a plane and settle down in Porthaven for the time being is one of mystery and rumor as well; the story changes every time someone asks. Whispers of him reuniting with a long-lost love from his childhood, running from a mafia don who he got on the bad side of when he plagiarized the design of the don’s daughter’s dress, doing it simply to spite his parents, because he loves tea so much - no one really knows Madden as well as they think.

And, for now, he’d much rather keep it that way.

Headcanons

Has several degrees, in a variety of subjects. Even though he did leave the Hightopp name behind, thanks to his family’s money, Madden got to explore more than just his identity and preferences growing up. He is extremely well-educated and has been to several universities and through numerous college programs, with the degrees and certificates to prove it. From fashion design to astronomy, there’s almost nothing he doesn’t know a little about.

Grows, blends, and brews his own tea. Since he was a preteen looking for a hobby, he’s always found his heart in plants. Learning about each type of flora and their specific growing requirements was fun science, and tea was introduced to him shortly thereafter. That was a science all on it’s own, to him, and where his mind really took off - he loves getting to experiment with different leaves and flowers, different water volumes, different additions to the brew. It’s a little like the witches in his old storybooks brewing potions.

Is a published author. A not-so-secret secret that Madden keeps near and dear to his heart is that he is a published author under his chosen name. It isn’t anything fancy and spectacular - simply a book of poetry that he’s been working on since his late teens - but there’s a few copies of it on the shelves in the tea shop that are always being read by someone there, and a few more around town that have been nabbed off the very same shelves. All of the poems come from his life experiences, and while he is always coy about just what the poems allude to, he reads and looks back on those memories in fondness.

#phqacceptance #disney rp #disney rpg #disney roleplay #new rp #animated rp #cartoon rp #multifandom rp #magic rp #city rp #town rp #skeleton rp

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ladystylestores · 4 years

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Researchers propose AI for detecting fraudulent crowdfunding campaigns

Crowdfunding has become the de facto way to support peoples’ ventures and philanthropic efforts. But as crowdfunding platforms have risen to prominence, they’ve also attracted malicious actors seeking to take advantage of unsuspecting donors. Last August, a report from the Verge investigated the Dragonfly Futurefön, a decade-long fraud operation that cost victims nearly $6 million and caught the attention of the FBI. Two years ago, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission announced it was looking into a campaign for a Wi-Fi-enabled, battery-powered backpack that disappeared with more than $700,000.

GoFundMe previously said fraudulent campaigns make up less than 0.1% of all those on its platform, but with millions of new projects launching each year, bad actors are bound to avoid detection. To help catch them, researchers at the University College London, Telefonica Research, and the London School of economics devised an AI system that takes into account textual and image-based features to classify fraudulent crowdfunding behavior at the moment of publication. They claim it’s up to 90.14% accurate at distinguishing between fraudulent and legitimate crowdfunding behavior even without any user or donation activity.

While two of the largest crowdfunding platforms on the web — GoFundMe and Kickstarter — employ forms of automation to spot potential fraud, neither claims to take the AI-driven approach advocated by the study coauthors. A spokesperson for GoFundMe told VentureBeat the company relies on the “dedicated experts” in its trust and safety team who use technology “on par with the financial industry” and community reports to spot fraudulent campaigns. To do this, they look at things like:

Whether the campaign abides by the terms of service

Whether it provides enough information for donors

Whether it’s plagiarized

Who started the campaign

Who’s withdrawing funds

Who should be receiving funds

Kickstarter says it doesn’t use AI or machine learning tools to prevent fraud, excepting proprietary automated tools, and that the majority of its investigative work is performed manually by looking at what signals surface and analyzing them to guide any action taken. A spokesperson told VentureBeat that in 2018 Kickstarter’s team suspended 354 projects and 509,487 accounts and banned 5,397 users for violating the company’s rules and guidelines — 8 times as many as it suspended in 2017.

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The researchers would argue those efforts don’t go far enough. “We find that fraud is a small percentage of the crowdfunding ecosystem, but an insidious problem. It corrodes the trust ecosystem on which these platforms operate, endangering the support that thousands of people receive year on year,” they wrote. “[Crowdfunding platforms aren’t properly] incentivized to combat fraud among users and the campaigns they launch: On the one hand, a platform’s revenue is directly proportional to the number of transactions performed (since the platform charges a fixed amount per donation); on the other hand, if a platform is transparent with respect to how much fraud it has, it may discourage potential donors from participating.”

To build a corpus that could be used to “teach” the above-mentioned system to pick out fraudulent campaigns, the researchers sourced entries from GoFraudMe, a resource that aims to catalog fraudulent cases on the platform. They then created two manually annotated data sets focusing on the health domain, where the monetary and emotional stakes tend to be high. One set contained 191 campaigns from GoFundMe’s medical category, while the other contained 350 campaigns from different crowdfunding platforms (Indiegogo, GoFundMe, MightyCause, Fundrazr, and Fundly) directly related to organ transplants.

Human annotators labeled each of the roughly 700 campaigns in the corpora as “fraud” or “not-fraud” according to guidelines that took into consideration factors like evidence of contradictory information, a lack of engagement on the part of donors, and the participation of the creator in other campaigns. Next, the researchers examined different textual and visual cues that might inform the system’s analysis:

Sentiment analysis: The team extracted the sentiments and tones expressed in campaign descriptions using IBM’s Watson natural language processing service. They computed the sentiment as a probability across five emotions (sadness, joy, fear, disgust, and anger) before analyzing confidence scores for seven possible tones (frustration, satisfaction, excitement, politeness, impoliteness, sadness, and sympathy).

Complexity and language choice: Operating on the assumption that fraudsters prefer simpler language and shorter sentences, the researchers checked language complexity and word choice in the campaign descriptions. They looked at both a series of readability scores and language features like function words, personal pronouns, and average syllables per word, as well as the total number of characters.

Form of the text: The coauthors examined the visual structure of campaign text, looking at things like whether the letters were all lower-case or all upper-case and the number of emojis in the text.

Word importance and named-entity recognition: The team computed word importance on the text in the campaign description, revealing similarities (and dissimilarities) among campaigns. They also identified proper nouns, numeric entities, and currencies in the text and assigned them to a finite set of categories.

Emotion representation: The researchers repurposed a pretrained AI model to classify campaign images as evoking one of eight emotions (amusement, anger, awe, contentment, disgust, excitement, fear, and sadness) by fine-tuning it on 23,000 emotion-labeled images from Flickr and Instagram.

Appearance and semantic representation: Using another AI model, the researchers extracted image appearance representations that provided a description of each image, like dominant colors, the textures of the edges of segments, and the presence of certain objects. They also used a face detector algorithm to estimate the number of faces present in each image.

After boiling many thousands of possible features down to 71 textual and 501 visual variables, the researchers used them to train a machine learning model to automatically detect fraudulent campaigns. Arriving at this model — an ensemble model — required building sub-models to classify images and text as fraudulent or not fraudulent and combining the results into a single score for each campaign.

The coauthors claim their approach revealed peculiar trends, like the fact that legitimate campaigns are more likely to have images with at least one face compared with fraudulent campaigns. On the other hand, fraudulent campaigns are generally more desperate in their appeals, in contrast with legitimate campaign’s descriptiveness and openness about circumstances.

“In recent years, crowdfunding has emerged as a means of making personal appeals for financial support to members of the public … The community trusts that the individual who requests support, whatever the task, is doing so without malicious intent,” the researchers wrote. ” However, time and again, fraudulent cases come to light, ranging from fake objectives to embezzlement. Fraudsters often fly under the radar and defraud people of what adds up to tens of millions, under the guise of crowdfunding support, enabled by small individual donations. Detecting and preventing fraud is thus an adversarial problem. Inevitably, perpetrators adapt and attempt to bypass whatever system is deployed to prevent their malicious schemes.”

It’s possible, of course, that the system might be latching onto certain features in making its predictions, exhibiting a sort of bias that’s not obvious at first glance. That’s why the coauthors plan to improve it by taking into account sources of labeling bias and to test its robustness against unlabeled medically related campaigns across crowdfunding platforms.

“This is a significant step in building a system that is preemptive (e.g., a browser plugin) as opposed to reactive,” they wrote. “We believe our method could help build trust in this ecosystem by allowing potential donors to vet campaigns before contributing.”

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trishgibsontx · 7 years

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throw out the labels (“friend”, “family”): it is OK to go “no contact” with anyone who can’t stop abusing you – overtly or covertly

photo by Nelson N. Castillo

it is OK to go “no contact” with anyone who can’t stop abusing you – overtly or covertly.

this might sound like an obvious one. a no-brainer. but…due to our social conditioning, it is not obvious. at least not to the mind. perhaps obvious to the heart, though. the heart never lies to us. it is our brain that creates the bullshit logic while our heart bleeds out and we suffer in all kinds of ways for not listening to it.

the biggest theme I see in my work (which is, 99% cognitive behavior talk, by the way – please note my fancy disclaimer, too, which allows me to be as free as I can be in this way with my work!) is people who are stuck in their tracks due to “obligatory” relationships in their life. many of these people have been trapped, prisoner, even developing medical conditions by way of these relationships that they think they don’t have permission or courage to cut ties with. the true destruction of these relationships is the meaning that we give to them, and that they give to us…words like “family” and “blood is thicker than water” and themes like “I’ve known this person for 20 years, our history is so strong” can literally kill us.

some of my most miraculous and “unexplainable” (by standard medicine or science) cases of mystery illness — and I’m talking debilitating conditions that were present for 20 years — “vanished” once I helped someone to understand their unconscious connection to a sick relationship in their life that they were not letting go of (for reasons referenced above). do you think that is an accident or a coincidence? it’s not. the population of individuals whom I work with are not easily persuaded by bs. I’m not treating drugged-out tree-huggers. I am working with lawyers, doctors, psychoanalysts, high level financial professionals. they are not seeing me because they are down with the alternative, but rather because they have done and seen all of the “regular” channels. it didn’t work. because, when it comes to a spiritual problem, those channels do not work. not ever. my “gift” is seeing beyond the veil of programmed illusion and conscious awareness. and I will tell you that in each of my “medical miracle” cases, I knew the root cause BEFORE the session. that’s how palpable it is in my own body and awareness for the person I am to see. energy does not lie.

we gravely underestimate the impact that others have on us, energetically. this impact is also known as “cords”. every cord is different, depending upon the relationship dynamic. but imagine that you are a computer (*NOTE: many of my references and analogies are purely MINE, born out of my sessions — they are not mainstream or used yet in other text, and I am taking plagiarism very seriously these days as my themes and concepts are being regurgitated and thus used incorrectly. I have a full-time staff and one of their duties is to scour the internet for plagiarism as I write my first complete book. if you enjoy my concepts and they make sense and you are a writer, please use your own terms or credit my years of case-studied work and references. be responsible and accountable in the land of the intangible and intellectual property*). each of us is, in fact, an electronic. on any given day, we are pulling in infinite numbers of signals, both from 3d and 5d sources. energy travels faster than thoughts, feelings or words. or actions. those signals with the strongest/most ingrained energy signatures are the ones that are the most hidden, the most unconscious. insidious. they often come from sources that we tend to break all of the sovereign emotional and cognitive being rules for: “family” and “friend”. and then they repeat in our outer world, in “new” relationships that we form. but the energy signature is still the same. a core template. an outline from which we then live our conscious and unconscious lives. so when those “newer” relationships fail, we can return “safely” to the initial imprint or signature as we blame the newly conscious experiences. because we have never looked underneath the hood of the car aka the template or spore origin.

we don’t look underneath the hood of the car, aka ask ourselves regarding a particular “friend” or “family” member: “if I just met this person and they treated me this way, would I tolerate it?”. because the answer, in many cases, at least the cases I am referring to and will refer to here, would be no. if something is showing up “out there” in our world, in the form of “stuck” or “patterned”, we can be sure that it is already under the hood. however, we typically don’t dare look there. why? because there is too much fear. for one, we naturally crave a tribe. we crave “safety” and “support”, even if it is bad for us. many of us would rather be with a bunch of assholes than be alone, so as to not ever have to feel alone. with this fear, the mind will bury — often until we reach the point of physical or otherwise sickness or stuckness — truth. the truth being, how does this individual affect me?

I have personally, in my private practice sessions, worked with talented therapists and doctors who held onto relationships akin to the above their entire lives due to the social norm and brainwashing around “why” we need to keep a particular relationship / individual in our life. even knowing what they know for their own work, or the way that the brain functions. because like I was, they were sucked into the story. when we would get to unconscious parts of their very being during the session, and it was stated in black and white terms as to the truth of their relationship with their “friend” or “family” member, it sounded CRAZY that that person would ever be in their life. even for another day. or another moment. the tolerance of behavior on the part of my patient was remarkable. by the way, the reason that I reference certain fields / titles like psychotherapy and medical doctor here, is because these are the people we go to or think of going to for help — and even they are not all free from the conditioning. if they can’t be free, if they can’t avoid the labels and therefore the abuse, then who can? and who can do so easily, without proper collective permission? what we need is far more collective permission.

it may be awhile before we each get that collective permission, as labels are still as powerful than ever. for some more good juice on this, please read through Elizabeth Gilbert’s piece on Tribal Shame. but what do labels do? well, as we all well know, labels in general imprison us. but typically we spend so much time on the obvious labels that are a sin, encompassing topics such as racism sexism etc., but what about the other labels? what about the pathological guilt that we suffer when we even think of leaving behind a relationship with a powerful label such as “family” or “friend” and the weight that comes behind it? well, those labels make many of us extremely sick.

the thing with abusive relationships, whether they are overt or covert, is that we can not “just leave” one. there is a huge process involved before we even reach the point that we finally walk away. if there were not a process involved, then we would have very few challenges in our outer life such as repeating patterns at work, in intimate relationships and so forth (even with perfect strangers). our minds have powerful ego, and our minds will keep us entrenched in the problem because we think we can “fix” it or figure it out. this is the trap for us all. the last place that we ever want to look, is the place that might leave us completely and utterly alone. and so we choose, instead, unconsciously, to suffer. until the patterns that we have experienced in the outer world, or the manifestations in our body can not be “fixed” anymore. it is when we have exhausted all “regular” channels for assistance or explanation that we begin to consider leaving what does not serve us.

once we are able to identify the above patterns — and I highly suggest therapy, self-help in any form, meditation, etc to go inward and reach this point — we must ask whether we truly want to continue them. for some of us, depending upon the nature of the relationship, we might just lightly distance ourselves and that might work. but for other relationships, we recognize that they will only kill us. I am of the understanding and experience that 99% right is 100% wrong. but that doesn’t mean it has to be that way for everyone.

for example. I had been through many years of self-help and therapy hopping, and I was in the throes of success with my healing practice when I had dinner with a friend I had for nearly 20 years. in that one dinner, everything that could ever hit me in terms of moving to end that relationship aka meridian line aka energy signature aka cord hit me. it seemed like what will sound like the simplest thing on the outside, that lit up my unconscious like nothing else. as we sat with a group at dinner, I experienced the fact that talking about my work beyond totally surface level, or even at all, was totally off-limits. now, my work is my core. my soul. I do not expect everyone to understand it. I have another friend for over 20 years, and I would not expect her to understand every nuance of it or even embrace it. I have some girlfriends from college who don’t fully understand it, but they fully accept it and it doesn’t feel like I’m talking about politics when I discuss it in a group setting. it feels natural and supportive regardless of their take on it. well, at this one dinner, I saw that on a fundamental level, I am not accepted by this person. in part yes, because this person does not accept themselves. they don’t accept many people, actually. but that was not the point. all in one instant, I realized that in order to maintain this friendship, I would have to continue to be a fraction of myself. it reminded me of everything I had to fight against as a child. there I was, relatively fresh out of total poverty and housing court, fully in my purpose, and I had just worked with a wonderful actress whom we would all be so honored to meet. yet I couldn’t even speak about my experience (not the actress, I do not name names). but it was more than just this seeming surface level reasoning. there were layers — years — of lies, selfishness, betrayal and other things that I. JUST. OVERLOOKED. it was a watershed moment and it reminded me of all that I never wanted in my life, yet had always tolerated. and so that day, it all changed for me…in one instant.

the important thing to keep in mind here, is that a realization like this often does not come with anger. or frustration. because by the time we get to such a point of realization, we have already created and repeated those patterns with newer or our newest relationships in the outer world – where we get distracted by anger and frustration that accompanies them. it’s just that those new relationships now begin to fail as the reasons for our lack of happiness or discontent, and we actually discover that lack in more thickly ingrained regions of our life. so I was not mad at this “friend”. or anything. I was just…done. just like that. but really, it was a train that went off the rails so many years prior. I did not even feel judgmental toward this person that day. I genuinely wanted the best for them! like, I can’t express this enough, I was not even angry. I truly felt for this person. and grieved the end of the relationship as I knew it. I was also grateful because it lit up a pattern that I no longer needed to repeat in other areas of my life. it allowed me to get deeper into the spore of this pattern…

when we are ready to truly let go, it is not accompanied by readied anger or pain. we have already been there thousands of times over. when we are ready to let go, however, there is still the outer-world tangible decision that is made. obviously the person does not just evaporate. we will, of course, experience 3d consequences. the consequences being their pain, their anger, their frustration: because we are not allowing them to continue the dance with us. the outer-world difficulty that I faced was basic stuff (again it was basic at that point, because I had been chipping away at this realization in other areas of my life for years! so to them, while it seemed I just “woke up one day and changed”, that was so far from the case). basic stuff like battling guilt for doing what was best for me. I prayed for months following that, to God, to please guide me in this socially taboo “decision”. I knew I might be judged by mutual friends, even “family”. but the level of self-care that I was practicing at that juncture in my life was simply more important. I wanted happiness and I knew that in order to live in alignment with myself, I could not lie to myself on a core level any longer. and I would have to lie to myself, in some way, to continue that friendship.

if long-term “friendships” are important or difficult in terms of ending dynamics, then just imagine “family”. our little electronic beings have been downloaded with not just beliefs, but SURVIVAL mechanisms that tell us no matter how we are treated by them, they are there to protect us (even if they are doing the OPPOSITE). we are faced with push-back on a primal level, not just a cognitive level. and then, of course, push-back on a 3d tangible level (by others around them). this is pure ego and it’s the hardest ego to kill. it is the ultimate addiction. and here is the thing about it. like my reference above to a particular “friendship”, going no contact with a biological family member is also unplanned. un-orchestrated. it will occur only when the soul and the mind and the body are aligned enough to eliminate what is most toxic to our very being.

years ago, I met an incredible artist through my practice. when we sat down at the onset of the session, she let me know right away that she had been “no contact” with her entire family since her Saturn return (around 28). initially, I thought, well, there must be some serious baggage that she has not moved through, as she does not know how to forgive. or she is holding onto anger. and…NOPE. after 6 hours of conversation, there was not a thread of anger or discomfort around the subject of her biological family, or her life. she had cut off the entire system. in fact, there had been no seriously debilitating ONGOING (she did go through a lot earlier on in life) trauma or direct abuse that she experienced at their hands at the time of separation, but rather the realization that they did not live in truth — and including them in her life would only further perpetuate any shred of lack of truth that she carried. she was stuck at the end of her 20s, she couldn’t fully explain it, and the moment she “let them go”, her entire life changed. she is one of the most brilliant artists of our time. you know her name.

the process of getting to this point and executing this level of self-love is different for everyone. and believe me, I see SO many different cases. people who have done it, people who are close to doing it, and people who want to do it and can not figure out “how”. in her case, she had suggested to a key “family” member that they attend therapy with her. this person was so convinced that their was nothing wrong with them (as usual — toxic people NEVER do therapy, p.s. — they “don’t believe in it”, at least not for themSELVES), they said no. and so that was her exit. they showed her the exit door. she didn’t open it, they did. in the case of going no contact, it is important to note that we almost never need to open the door first — a toxic or abusive relationship will illuminate a door when it is time for us to walk through it. so, how do we know? what do we do when we know? how do we handle it?

we “know” when we can not seem to stop a pattern or manifestation in our life, and we blatantly see the connection to the formation of that energy signature. like when we have a breakthrough in therapy along the same lines. or on our own via conversation with a close friend. but it’s all the same thing. for example, one day I was going about my business, and this random thought popped into my head: “what would my life be like without xyz person?”. it seemed like a crazy thought, because I could not imagine how that would ever be possible. societal norms and all. and “what would people think!!?” (side note — you care less and less about what other people think when you live in your TRUTH). initially I thought it was a passing thought, but similar to my former friend, I could not escape the feeling that my life would be infinitely better with the absence of this ink, going over and over an energy signature that had kept me hostage to prosperity and abundance, love and intimacy, and so forth. I simply could not escape this thought. and so my first action came from my higher self: the knowing that I could not continue this signature any longer. I didn’t know what to do about it, but that was also part of the problem — I was always trained to be responsible for others’ actions and figure out the “solution”. with this one, I just left it in God’s hands. I decided that I would simply state my truth, and the rest would work itself out. it was my hope, of course that once I stated the truth, the energy signature would re-write itself. but that is not up to us. that is up to another person’s free will, and the Universe at large. as I stated my truth, I was met with the most horrific resistance — not an amicable discussion, not one shred of love as the word “friend” or “family” would otherwise indicate or suggest. I was met with attack. they were showing me the exit door, and I didn’t have to be responsible for coming up with the idea of an exit. because it was not my idea. it was theirs. I prayed on this for weeks, went to my dance class, shared my truth with my wonderful teacher at that time, and cried about it for the first time in years. but the 3d logistics still seemed cloudy. how was I to “leave”? it was similar to the concerns I had with my friend at dinner in the beginning of that end. but again: when something is not serving us, when it continues to disservice or abuse us with no end, it will illuminate for us an exit door. there is not a tremendous amount of work to do here. it is no longer our responsibility, and that is a KEY factor in “letting go” of these relationships…

there are always key elements of abuse in any relationship that does not serve us, that we think we can not get out of, that we need away from. otherwise it would not feel or be toxic, and we would not repeat the patterns of such in our outer-world. but these facts can get foggy for us, as we are bombarded with other people’s opinions, stories and realities. another person will NEVER walk in your shoes, so it is VERY IMPORTANT that any decisions you make around no contact are yours and only yours. it’s like 12 stepping alcohol or drugs. VERY MUCH the same, in fact. personally, my limitation is around consistently abusive behavior — that has no rationale, no awareness behind it, or is callously aware. the past IS the past, yes, and I am the most forgiving (to a fault) person I know. but I have STANDARDS for how I want to live and therefore be treated. when someone can not stop abusing me, either covertly or overtly because they are so unconscious (or they just do not want to change — it doesn’t matter which, by the way!!! justifying their behavior is a TRAP and it will keep you patterning in the outer-world, ignoring the spore of the energy signature you are dealing with!), it’s over. I don’t want to change anyone. I can’t. all I can do is live my truth, state my truth and let the Universe or the God of my understanding do the rest. I am optimistic, I do believe in change and miracles (obviously), but I am not stupid: I can not change another person. and if what they do and say to me and about me is damaging, then I am choosing to abuse and damage myself by continuing said particular relationship. no matter “friend” or “family”.

we often think that it takes an angry person to cut someone off. IT IS QUITE THE OPPOSITE. it takes a VERY angry person (not always obvious on the outside, folks!) to continue a dysfunctional relationship. because think of all of the energy that requires, and the outer-world butterfly effect that automatically ensues!? the actual definition of surrender and acceptance is acceptance THROUGH surrender. if I can not make myself sick enough to stay connected to someone, I must let them go. if I have to make myself sick in some way, to stay connected to someone, I must let them go. by letting them go, I am actually accepting them. that’s right. by holding onto something that is sick for us, enabling abusive behavior, we are reinforcing the energetic signature and actually HOPING that person will change. that — is insanity. it is only by fully surrendering and ACCEPTING THEM THROUGH THAT SURRENDER that they even stand a chance at changing. and it doesn’t matter, either. the way another person behaves is not our responsibility. the way we allow another person to treat us IS our responsibility.

some of the “deal-breakers” for me had nothing to do with the “past”, and everything to do with the PRESENT. because the present WAS the past, just through a different maneuver. at different ages and stages of our life, different maneuvers are required to achieve the same end-result: but the intention is the same. so my deal-breaker is intention. and in each case I have personally relative to no contact, and in those of whom I advise, intention is center stage. we can discern intention by repetition. we need not give someone, a loved one, a manual on how to treat us. I will also note, that the behaviors on the part of each person I have gone no contact with, are not mistakes. many of them are punishable by law. all of them, no self-respecting individual would EVER repeat to endure: unless, of course, the active label of “friend” or “family” was in place to keep the hood of that car down.

we will also find, once we go no contact with a person, that the queen ant has an army running with her. these are her enablers, often part of the cancer spore. do not expect these people to stay in contact with you. this is the crux of this entire topic: the real possibility that we will be left completely, and utterly alone. but really, when were we already NOT utterly alone in the context of a dysfunctional relationship or abusive relationship? we will find, when we reach a certain point, that we were actually alone all along. an enabler is often just as toxic as an abuser. because they are weak. and they will throw you under the bus in a hot second to defend their reputation. they will “look the other way”. “brush it under the rug”. it does not matter if they are a “friend” or a “family” member. an enabler is someone who has witnessed, on some level, the behavior of your “friend” or “family” member and pretended that it doesn’t exist or never did. or, who makes the acknowledged behavior ok because they are a “friend” or “family”. never trust an enabler. each enabler, we find, has a different intention. all just as sick as the person we so desperately need distance from so that our life can grow. be willing to be shunned. smeared. and trust that those enablers are suffering far more than you are, because they don’t have the spine to live in any kind of truth. be willing to let everyone go — mutual “friends” or mutual “family”.

if you can believe it, and without getting into any horrific and unbelievable truths related to them, there was actually a person in my life who had the most horrendous things to say about me. to everyone. not only were they obsessed with me, but they were also obsessed with using anything I did in my life to make THEM look good — and claim credit for it. and I’m being extremely basic and light here. I kept them in my life, knowing and experiencing their nonstop duality and abuse, because of a label. a fucking label. that made me sick, and disrupted my life. but I did it for reasons that many of us do it. I honestly didn’t know better at one point, and I feared for my life to know differently. until I woke up “one day”. and gently shared my truth and my process with them. and I was shown the exit door. and this time I didn’t have to be responsible for something. and I took my whole life back. because I could not change what was not good for me. but I could certainly change my exposure to it. and that was all that mattered. and I wasn’t angry real-time. I wasn’t mad real-time. I had processed most of all that. I mourned. I prayed. I prayed not to be guilty for doing what was so necessary for my soul. and I also prayed to stop hoping for this person to change or be what I once had dreamed them to be. I prayed for my addiction to hoping, wishing and dreaming about things being different. I knew that was I was doing was right, but I still fought feeling like a terrible person. be willing to feel like a terrible person, by the way, when you go no contact. it won’t be true in the end, but be willing to feel that way in the interim as the ego chemicals leave the body, mind and spirit.

the logistical components of the above examples are difficult because we live in this human world with these very base definitions of relationships and what they MEAN based on said label. that is the hardest part for me when I let go of someone who fits a label. the logistics. one night, after knowing that I HAD to let go — that my life actually depended upon it — I was shown a dream that I will never forget. it negated all logic (logic being going no contact). it showed me that if I continued on this path, and I let the Universe sort out the rest, that I would know an internal peace that I could not even dream of. the feeling I had in this dream, which felt incredibly lucid, overwhelmed my body and mind in a way that I can’t explain. I woke up in a state of bliss that lasted the entirety of the next day. the voice inside of me said “just…keep…going. in this direction”. it was the most unchartered territory I had ever been in, yet my body and higher self were fully directing me at this point. even whilst my mind suffered. not so coincidentally, just a few months after following this voice, my entire life catapulted “next level”: in terms of business, inner peace, and overall well-being. the validation was overwhelming and I was so relieved that I did not make the “wrong” choice.

in conclusion, the most difficult component for me has been to let go of trying to analyze the conscious and unconscious aspects of said person’s behavior that I was exorcising from my life. I went back and forth, for months, with each case of no contact (there have been many), unconsciously looking for any way to blame myself for choosing myself. I would come up with lists of reasons that they were not to blame, because they were not conscious of their abusive behavior. and then I would come up with lists of reasons that indicated there was NO WAY they were not conscious of their behavior. many of them, they were just never held responsible for their behavior in life. actually, in each case of “main person” (enablers excluded) no contact I’ve had, no one has ever told these people that they are to blame. for anything legitimate in life. no accountability. on the flip side, that is ALL I had known. so I realized that no amount of analysis would ever bring my gaslit and manipulated ego adrenaline the kind of validation I needed to know whether I was doing the “right thing”. the “right thing” was what was right for ME. period. no details included.

some of us finally reach a point in life when labels no longer matter. for some of us, we spend our lives fighting labels in the outer-world, because what we are really fighting against is an energy signature that is toxic to us. but the mind will protect that intention. and for some of us, we actually dare to look beneath the hood of that car. we look only when we have nothing left to lose, no anger left to engage with, no more patterns to repeat born from some unhealthy unconscious aspect of self. we look when we are ready to throw out the labels — ALL of the labels.

The post throw out the labels (“friend”, “family”): it is OK to go “no contact” with anyone who can’t stop abusing you – overtly or covertly appeared first on The Medical Intuitive Blog: Energy Medicine & Reiki Therapy By Elaine™.

from Trisha Gibson http://www.themedicalintuitiveblog.com/2017/08/20/throw-labels-friend-family-ok-go-no-contact-anyone-cant-stop-abusing-overtly-covertly/

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