I worked as a biological technician for a couple of science agencies of the US government that President Trump is trying to make much smaller or eliminate. I loved being a biologist. Evolution is the cornerstone of biology. Evolution explains the how and why of the history of life on Earth, like what happened to the dinosaurs. I know that evolution is real and that the Universe is billions of years old.
I loved evolution, and it was the core of what I studied in college. I did not attend church because many Christians did not believe that evolution of life on earth was true.
After I gave birth to my second child, I suffered postpartum depression because I was always up, caring for a baby or a toddler, and was not able to sleep. My husband had a really good-paying job, but he worked long hours. It took some doing, but he finally took the baby watch a couple of nights a week so I could sleep a couple of nights a week. I still had trouble sleeping because I remained anxious. I listened to Art Bell on Coast to Coast radio, which was close to three decades ago. One night, he had on a Christian pastor named Howard Storm. Howard Storm had been an agnostic like me. Unlike me, he had been hedonistic and selfish. I don't drink or smoke. I never even tried drugs, and I had a propensity for participating in peace groups. I helped build homes for Armenian families that lost their homes during the Armenian earthquake in December 1988. Later, I went to Jordan, Gaza (yes, that Gaza), the West Bank of the Jordan River, and Israel to listen to both sides of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. I grieve the current loss of life in Gaza and the West Bank and in Israel, albeit to a much lesser degree, but a blown-up home is still a blown-up home and a dead child is still a dead child.
Before I believed in God, I yearned for people to be kind to each other and care for each other. I grieved that we humans have created hell on earth for so many of us. I know about the troll farms where people are forced by corrupt business people to hack into the email accounts, financial accounts, blogs, and Facebook accounts of people like me. Some people do this for fun and profit, but many are forced to do it to survive.
https://virtualarmour.com/the-modern-hacker-who-they-are-where-they-live-what-theyre-after/
https://www.wired.com/story/most-dangerous-hackers-youve-never-heard-of/
https://www.developmentaid.org/news-stream/post/192832/myanmar-cyber-slavery
What the people who are hacking me don't know is that they are dooming themselves to a hellish afterlife experience. It may not be forever, but it might feel that way. Obviously, this is not true for the people who are held in prison farms and forced to try to scam people like me, but they still have to make amends for the harm they have caused. All this hacking and scamming reminds of pastor Howard Storm who died and went to hell because he was arrogant, selfish and good at making cruel jokes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVK-rUn2LmM
For the hackers who are serving as troll slaves, know what happened is going to happen to your bosses when they die, except the bosses may stay in hell for eternity. But you, too, have to work on being good people. You don't have to be a Christian. Buddhism teaches lots of good things, although there are bad Buddhist monks and priests too, just like the pedophiles in the Catholic Church (along with lots of really good people too).
No bad act is without consequence, but the consequence you may experience is to experience the interaction from the point of view of the person you hurt.
I spent my twenties studying animals. I saw lots of dead fish, but once I watched an octopus crawl up through a bin of freshly caught dead fish, over to the side of the fishing vessel I was on, and over the rim of the vessel, falling into the ocean. That was one smart invertebrate.
That is one way I know God exists. Who would have thought that invertebrates could be so intelligent? But they are. Perhaps dolphins and elephants are more intelligent than human beings. They just don't have opposable thumbs, so they can't build things very well. And animals are conscious. That octopus knew what it had to do to survive. Biologists studying animals have discovered that they experience grief, compassion, and curiosity. Just ask Jane Goodall about chimpanzees. She is still alive and sometimes even on YouTube.
What God is is a consciousness that is more powerful and much nicer than human beings, although she is inclined to let humans learn things the hard way. But God does give guidance now and then. Rabbi Hillel was one of those guides, as were Jesus, Mohammed, the Buddha, and whoever created yoga.
After working as a biologist, I was in my thirties, and marriage and children did not appear to be on the horizon, so I went to nursing school and became a registered nurse. My favorite job was working in a psychiatric hospital. What I know is that spiritual practices heal. Mindfulness meditation is very healing, and it is a religious practice. Yoga, when done meditatively, as it is supposed to be done in Hinduism, is very healing. Christian centering prayer, which I learned in the Catholic Church, is very healing and is a religious practice too. Native American dancing, when done meditatively, is also healing. Many meditative religious practices also heal psychological trauma.
I know because I was a child sex abuse survivor who went through a very unstable childhood and trauma because my mother was also a child sex abuse survivor who suffered from chronic depression and alcoholism. I, too, struggled with chronic mild depression, low self-esteem, and anxiety for decades.
But I recovered while going through a very traumatic child custody battle over almost ten years. What did I do? I journaled everything, so I could document what my children and I were going through for a potential legal case. I had to reread what I wrote to know what to tell the court-ordered parenting coordinator and the therapists I obtained court orders for our family to work with.
Journaling about trauma that you are going through and rereading your journaling can be painful, but in the long run, it helps you process and heal the psychological wounds (PTSD) caused by that trauma.
However, I also studied every skill the therapists and the parenting coordinator mentioned, such as Dialectical Behavior Therapy and Nonviolent Communication.
For those of you who are slaves who are forced to try to scam little old ladies like me, I know you are traumatized too. You are probably so broken that you may no longer know what is moral. So many of you are in the country of Myanmar. Turn to Buddhist meditation and values to help you get through the hell you are living through. Know you must eventually resist. Know that your bosses who are mistreating you are going to the hell Howard Storm described in the video I posted.
To the bosses who are forcing people to scam little old ladies like me, just know you are going to hell if you don't change, and you better change right now because your scam factory can be hit by an earthquake or a typhoon tomorrow, and typhoons are increasing in severity and frequency because global warming is real. You might not be the primary source of evil. Our world is replete with evil leaders, and the USA has a significant share of responsibility. But you are still responsible for making the right choice.
I handed out articles on clergy abuse to people in my Catholic Church that showed that the leadership of our beloved Franciscan priest had covered up the child abuse he committed for decades before he baptized and then groomed my autistic son and me. A woman in the church leadership provoked me into shouting before Mass. I was shouting about the leadership of the Franciscan Order covering up child sex abuse by our pastor for 20 years, so they called the police on me. It was choreographed. Buy my book if you want to know more about the story.
I lost my marriage and my financial stability, and I would do it again. I have no regrets about not doing the right things. Doing the right thing is hard. Doing the right thing is painful. Doing the right things is filled with loss. That is why so many people don't do the right thing. But how is our world ever going to get better if people don't do the right thing?
@ Virginia Jones 2025
