In the first half of the program, author and hospice volunteer, Dannion Brinkley, honored our veterans by discussing some of the challenges they face, and how we can help them to heal and reintegrate back into normal life. He observed that many combat veterans suffer from ailments including post-traumatic stress syndrome, brain injuries, hearing loss, and the loss of limbs. Unfortunately, he said, the treatment they receive is often simply an intense amount of medication. Brinkley reported that one veteran told him, "they give us so many pills that we become addicts then zombies and then many of us kill ourselves." Beyond this troubling cycle, he noted, is widespread homelessness amongst veterans who have been failed by the system ostensibly designed to protect them.
During the second hour, Brinkley was joined by veteran Mike Lewis of the Growing Warriors Project, which aims to train and empower veterans to develop organic farms. An advocate for legal changes that would allow for the growing of hemp in the United States, Lewis traveled to Washington D.C. earlier in the day and flew a hemp-based American flag in order to raise awareness of the issue. Later in the segment, Shawn Murphy from the group Miracle Ventures talked about his work with Brinkley in helping veterans in need. "We combat loneliness in the VA and those that have nobody coming to visit them," Murphy said, "that is the true beauty of being a volunteer and serving in the VA, being there for a veteran that doesn't have anybody."
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In the latter half, neuroscientist Marjorie Hines Woollacott, PhD, discussed why she now believes human consciousness goes beyond purely the physical, and that we are spiritual beings who possess an infinitely powerful mind. She recalled how, despite being a "materialist neuroscientist" that believed "human awareness is solely the product of neurons in our brain," Woollacott had a life-altering experience early in her career at a meditation retreat, leading her to adopt the practice in her everyday life. Over the course of the next twenty-two years, she became renowned for her neuroscience work while also teaching meditation and yoga. However, she struggled to keep these two aspects of her life strictly separated until it proved to be to wearisome, so she decided to use her neuroscience knowledge to determine how meditation affects the electrical activity in the brain.
Regarding the nature of consciousness, Woollacott theorized that it is "a non-local phenomenon that is much vaster than our own brains." In turn, she proposed, the brain acts as a filter which "gives us only a limited access to that awareness that is out there." According to Woollacott, neuroscience research into meditation and the brain has revealed that the practice does "change circuits in our brain," which led her to suggest that it also alters "something else in terms of our broader ability to access these realms." During her appearance, Woollacott also talked about her interest and research into other aspects of phenomena which appear to show "consciousness existing outside of the brain" such as near death experiences as well as reincarnation.
News segment guests: Catherine Austin Fitts & Robert Zimmerman