A heart of courage can withstand against all odds

There has been a massive setback in my divine quest to uncover the project leader’s (the king in the past life) corruption. In the last post, I described how I was anticipating brutal attacks from the king and his henchmen: https://lightprism.net/2021/06/14/overcoming-my-deepest-fears-to-fulfill-my-divine-mission/

Back then, my initial impulse was to move forward with our attack but I then got a revelation of a past incarnation in Ancient Japan, as well as a recommendation from the Book of Changes (I-Ching) to not advance but to wait, observe and focus on my internal journey. I also had the intuition to re-watch the movie “The Last Samurai”, which contains our strategy to defeat the superior force that we are now presented with (see https://lightprism.net/2021/06/15/a-man-does-what-he-can-until-his-destiny-is-revealed-to-him/). One of the main insights from the Book of Changes was to strengthen the position of my subordinates, i.e. the 3 members of my IT team.

Strengthening my local team members

When I arrived at this project in early 2020, the IT infrastructure here was a disaster. The internet connection was constantly disrupted and the entire network architecture was very basic as if the network setup for a two-family house is applied to an entire city. It is not scalable at all and the limits had already been reached with only 30 inhabitants. So I redesigned the entire network infrastructure and replaced lots of wiring and network devices in order to create a state-of-the-art network. From the start, I was working in close collaboration with the son of the project founders (my brother in the past incarnation) and I kept receiving many inspirations continually on how to improve the system even more. Just a couple of months later the system was completed, right in time as many new investors came into the project. A stable internet connection is highly important for many of them so this could be a “make or break” decision. Those achievements earned me a lot of respect from the project founders (my parents in the past life) as well as the director. This was how I could assume a strategic key position inside of the project and could also advance into other areas, such as the digitalization of many business processes (which ultimately led to my discoveries of grave corruption of the king).

In October of 2020, I was so overwhelmed with work that I was looking for local IT specialists. Just a week later, a very talented individual was presented to me: James (name changed). We had an interview where his first impression was underwhelming. He appeared very shy and a bit insecure. James did not speak any English and my Spanish was not very good at that point yet so there were large language barriers to overcome as well. We employed him for a 3-month trial period to see what he can deliver. And it turned out to be a really positive surprise, as James worked with a level of diligence and determination I have seldom witnessed in this part of the world. He did an excellent job of doing IT support for the local employees, which was desperately needed back then. James also is very experienced in IT security and managed to close several security loopholes. He helped many employees who were affected by cases of hacks or identity theft. James quickly gained a reputation in the project and became well-respected amongst his colleagues as well as by the leadership. James also saved me a couple of times from stupid mistakes and always gave me great advice on complex situations. Unfortunately, it is quite common here that the boss of a department is receiving all the fruits of the labor and the subordinates simply follow his orders. Needless to say, that might work for established industries such as agriculture or construction but not for highly complex technical fields. With our level of complexity, we would need a team of experts who are working as equals where every member has their own specialization, projects and responsibilities.

The thing is that James, unfortunately, did not have a lot of self-confidence. While he is extraordinarily talented and diligent, he could not find a job in the IT field after his studies. This region here is one of the most underdeveloped regions in the entire country, so James had to work for 2 years for an accountant office managing paperwork. There always was an undercurrent of fear of being replaceable, which many employees here are carrying around. As this region is so underdeveloped, there is a high level of unemployment and this project receives hundreds of applications daily. That said, James helped to build up a significant part of the infrastructure and implemented several services, thereby providing immense value to this project. I quickly recognized his talent and decided to build him up to install James as a core member of our IT team. I always talked to him on eye level and took a lot of time to teach him several technical as well as non-technical subjects. The project director quickly recognized how well James and I were cooperating as we kept delivering immense value to the project. On various occasions, the project director spoke out positively about how James and I are a shining example for successful inter-cultural cooperation, to be replicated by others. Over time, my efforts to uplift James showed success as he gained self-confidence and learned to become more assertive, e.g. by prioritizing his time and saying no to certain requests. After the 3-month trial period, James only received a 10% pay raise, despite the excellent recommendation letter I wrote. As I got to know about this, I was infuriated and kindly yet assertively demanded another 20% pay rise for James. After a short yet emotional debate, the project director agreed to the pay raise. James was very thankful that I had his back and we both drew many lessons from this situation.

In February of 2021, the project director encountered another IT professional from the next town and employed him without notifying me at all. His name was Andrew was supposed to develop a digital cash register for the restaurant in this project. At first, I was a bit irritated by the project leader’s behavior. However, I quickly noticed that Andrew had a lot of experience, was extraordinarily hard-working and very responsible. He did an excellent job in his digitalization efforts and I was managing everything autonomously so I barely needed to assist him. Back then, I did not know that Andrew’s father had a high-ranking position for the town’s governor, who was in strong opposition to the project director. Andrew never talked much about personal things, he always behaved in a very professional manner and focused exclusively on his project. He also did not seek a lot of contact with others in the company outside of our IT team. Andrew exclusively focused on his work and generating good results. In March of 2021, we were searching for another employee to implement a digital warehouse (see also https://lightprism.net/2021/05/17/preparing-for-the-epic-finale-of-cosmic-justice/). We found John, who was very experienced and had many good references. The project director agreed and so we entered the “end game”. A great benefit was that John did not come from the next town but grew up in a different city. Hence, he did not have any political ties and could maintain his neutrality. John always had many excellent ideas, was very quick on the uptake and worked very autonomously. Sometimes, he needed a little more assistance but once the priorities were clear, he proceeded to rapidly implement his tasks. John did a great job in creating a digital inventory, especially in collaborating with the warehouse team.

Experiencing sabotage and resistance

In April of 2021, we got an unexpected visit from the city office (see https://lightprism.net/2021/05/17/preparing-for-the-epic-finale-of-cosmic-justice/) who subsequently started to sabotage our digitalization efforts. As explained in detail before, it quickly became obvious that they have something to hide. My 3 team members and I always worked together in unison as we analyzed the situation together. With our combined intuition and brainpower, we quickly filled the gaps and could grasp what was going on. Each of the attacks the people from the city office launched at us only strengthened our understanding of the situation, as more and more pieces of the puzzle were filled in. As described in the other article (see https://lightprism.net/2021/06/04/when-we-maintain-a-high-vibration-victory-is-certain/), they eventually tried to force me out through false allegations of sexual assault but their plan failed and they changed strategy. We had entered a higher timeline where could continue our advancement unharmed – until we had eventually set the king check-mate. Being cornered, they changed their strategy to reactivate a failed implementation of another company. Nothing had happened for more than a year, despite the desperate requests of the project founder. I suspected that the people from the city office deliberately blocked some part of the implementation process. The company responsible for the other system has a lot of customers in this region, processing millions of dollars of revenues, so their system is certainly not the problem.

Of course, it is clear to me what the king and his henchmen are doing: They want to regain control of all critical digital systems. It is a grave risk that we have set up a modern ERP system, which could easily be extended to incorporate their purchase processes and documents. It is also telling that they don’t want to allow that I speak with the company providing the ERP solution. Only the IT guy from the city office is supposed to handle all communication with them. No, this is not suspicious at all! I am sure their plan is to install their system on external servers so that they have all the control over the data. They certainly will try to only upload a subset of all documents to this system so that their schemes remain hidden. Needless to say, they have their backs to the wall and are working towards their own revelation. It is only a matter of time until everything is falling apart and everyone will realize what they were trying to hide.

There is another attack vector we are pursuing: Andrew has developed a point of sales (POS) system for the restaurant as well as a supermarket. The project leader himself asked us to implement legal invoicing for this system, i.e. every customer receipt needs to be a legally valid invoice. To achieve this, we need to request a digital tax stamp from the national taxation authority. In essence, that is a sequential number of codes that need to be printed on each invoice for the identification of each document. Again, we were depending on the people from the city office to request those tax stamps and of course, they only delivered more excuses. Initially, they said, this would be very easy and only take two weeks but after 4 weeks, we hadn’t received anything yet. We were already highly suspicious so we started to do our own research. As I have my own company and tax number, I talked to my accountant in the next town. They are a small yet very professional accounting office and do everything 100% by the books. I asked them a lot of questions about the application process of those digital tax stamps and they assured me that it is very simple, as it is a standard process. My accountant has done that application process various times already. Hence, we have been fooled again and the people from the city office apparently have many more dirty secrets to hide. What is very ironic is that the project director himself requested the implementation of legally valid invoices, which now only increased the chance of revealing everything. It is almost as if he wants that everything is revealed! Indeed, his higher self is tired of this corrupt swamp and wants out of it. He is just too deep into it and his ego is still far too dominant that he cannot hear the subtle whispers of his higher self. So I will do him this favor of helping this uncomfortable, yet necessary process.

Election time: A cesspit of local politics

On June 21st was the winter solstice here in the Southern hemisphere, which marked the darkest day of the year. And a lot of darkness persisted indeed, as it was time for the local elections of the town’s governor. I always despised politics but here in South America, it is on another level. The corruption in the system and in the political culture is severe. It is basically a “winner takes all” system. If there is a change in the political leadership, the winner will fire most if not all government employees put in before him and appoint new people who are loyal and helped him out in the past. It is a prime example of nepotism. People who have the right connections and have helped the right people at the right time will get their reward. Those who lose get nothing basically and the common people suffer the most. This system does not incentivize performance, in terms of improvement of the living conditions of the common man, instead, it is like an “all you can eat buffet” for those who are in power. Corruption, bribery and illegal deals is the norm.

People in this country are rightfully fed up with the system but it is also a deep-reaching cultural problem because the common citizen behaves in a similar way if they get the chance. People here have no problem with taking advantage of others. I found that a big part of it is an educational problem too. Many have a very limited level of education and their worldview is narrow. A fitting analogy is a pie: Most people here think the pie is limited and they invest their whole energy into getting as big of a piece as possible. What they don’t realize though is that the pie can be grown by focusing on education, a mindset of growth and improvement to generate more real-world value. Unfortunately, many people here have already given up and accepted the situation as it is. For instance, people in this region here barely speak English. In a town of 20 thousand people, there are maybe less than 50 people who can communicate properly in English. It would be so easy to self-study English through the large variety of free online materials. Once a certain proficiency is reached, services can be offered to the many foreigners currently immigrating, many of whom have problems learning Spanish. It would be so easy to make a living this way. Yet many people here are not putting in the effort and instead try to take advantage of foreigners by selling overprized properties (yes, it is unfortunately very common). That is another problem I have observed here: While many people are smart and hard-working, they are extremely risk-averse and intellectually lazy. Most people are reluctant to try new things, that are not common in this country.

In many ways, this region is one of the lowest in the entire country in terms of its level of consciousness, even though there is a lot of potential waiting to be unleashed. With regards to the elections, the project director (the “king”) supported one of the candidates and a month before the election, everything became politicized here. There were frequent meetings about politics where the employees were informed how important it is that our preferred candidate wins. The stakes are high as the current governor is in stark opposition to the project director and blocking many of our efforts. For instance, the road from the next town to this community is still a dirt road, which is almost impossible to drive on after heavy rain. Hence, it was promised years ago to create an asphalted road. However, the governor blocked those efforts in an effort to oppose the project director. The project founder, a great visionary who sometimes loses the connection from reality, was already very sure that “our” political candidate is going to win – he even wrote that in an email newsletter to more than 500 investors. I instantly cringed when I saw this as I personally was not so sure of this. And indeed the election was lost! The same team won again, who is in opposition to the project director. “Our” candidate lost by a significant margin. I am sure that the other team played dirty, i.e. by “investing” a lot of money into buying votes from poor people. This unfortunately has been a common practice, even though it is absolutely repugnant to me. Nevertheless, I don’t think that “our” candidate was as popular as the project director announced. Even though this community here creates a lot of jobs in the region, there have been many scandals and disgruntled ex-employees, so the public opinion is quite controversial and divided.

Sadly, my team member Andrew got in the crosshairs due to the political affiliation of his father, who works for the current governor. Weeks before the election he already told me that the cousin of Rosa, who works for the project director, has warned Andrew’s girlfriend that they are thinking of kicking him out. Andrew was advised to send a voice message where he swears his loyalty to the project and distances himself from his father. Of course, Andrew rejected this proposal and did not do anything at all. I agreed that Andrew made the right decision and should maintain his neutrality. Above all, for me, the only thing which counts is results and not how someone is politically connected. And Andrew always delivered excellent results. A week before the election, Andrew told me again that he had received warnings and feels that his job was at risk. I assured him that I would do everything to protect him from these stupid political games, which I so despise. Because if we repeat what is done everywhere else in this country, we will never be able to reach the level of excellence which is so desperately needed to bring the ambitious visions of the founders to fruition.

Last Monday after work, I received a call from the project founder’s son, who was obviously nervous and unsettled. I intuitively knew that they were about to frame Andrew to fire him so I quickly went to the project director’s house. A heated discussion erupted between the project founders, their son and me. The director was sitting on the sidelines, it was very strange. The founder asked me to “which system Andrew has access” and his facial expressions were very agitated and enraged. I kindly asked what it is about and what the problem is with Andrew. The founder and the director refused to answer citing “security reasons”. I asked again only to be shut down by the founder. The founder, in a very enraged manner, kept asking me again. I was really taken off-guard here, as the founders themselves, who always protected us from the heinous attacks of the director’s henchmen, have been flipped and were now attacking one of my best employees. I knew that this was a very cunning, devious attack on my team and our efforts for transparency by the director. An unspeakable rage bubbled up inside of me and I smashed my fist on the table and said “I don’t want one of my best employees to be fired without apparent reason”. The project founder now turned on me and said how I dare to behave in this manner and if I forget with whom I was speaking (the president and vice president of the company). People were fired for far less than what I have done. I realized that I had reached a very weak position and apologized for my impulsive behavior. The founder’s wife chimed in to relax the situation and strangely the director did not escalate but also started to issue words of appeasement. I came to realize that the director had achieved his goal: He managed to put a wedge between me and the founders. Before, the founders and I were a uniform front and they supported all of our efforts to create transparency. But now the director had demonstrated his power, he showed me that, if he wanted to, could easily turn the founders against me by pushing their buttons. I don’t know exactly, what he told them, but deep fears were triggered for the founders, e.g. in terms of losing everything which they have built over all those years. This fear made everything appear very real for them, even if the details of the story would not make sense under scrutiny.

As the situation relaxed, I told them that Andrew barely has any access rights to important systems. He only has access to the systems that he implemented, nothing else. The founder suddenly started to open up and told me that they cannot keep people in the company who are “selling out”. He proceeded to say that there are at least 3 witnesses and photographic evidence which clearly demonstrates that Andrew received money to spy on important company secrets. The director added that he has been having these strange WiFi and network problems for a couple of weeks now and that “someone” showed him entries from his personal calendar on another phone. Of course, he did not specify any names, these were just some arbitrary allegations that could turn out to be gravely exaggerated later on. The director continued, saying that his enemies cannot stop him politically so their only chance is to kill him. He thus needs to clear any potential security holes. As I regained my calm composure, I noticed how overly dramatic this picture was which the director painted. I remembered the books of psychologist Kahneman, who outlined the psychological loopholes of our minds – the director was applying many of those tricks. The debate continued and the founders were still very agitated when the director build a “golden bridge”: As Andrew barely has any access to important systems, we could make an exception due to his good work performance. We should just “observe” him and keep caution. I could not believe what I was observing here! The director presented himself as the kind savior! I noticed how the founders were slightly confused but still very reluctant to the idea of letting Andrew stay. They said that they would need to think more about this problem. Before we left, I glanced into the living room of the director’s house and saw many of the paintings have abstract chess patterns on them. The king considers himself, maybe rightfully, as one of the best political chess players. He successfully managed to surprise me with this attack and put me in a seemingly very weak position right now. If he only knew that I don’t play chess in 3D, but in 5D but more about this later…

The next day, James and I analyzed the network problems in the director’s house and arrived at the conclusion that his network segment was often drastically overloaded with traffic. We improved the network configuration to provide more bandwidth to the director’s house. Afterward, James and I talked in private and I told him everything, even though the founders asked me to not share this story. I trust James completely and he assured me to not share this story with others. James listened carefully and then added that he exactly understands what is going on, as they also tried to attack him in a similar way. James never told me this before but one of his closest friends is working for the political opponents of the director. James still has a close connection to his friend and did not want to cut those ties just because of politics. He even helped in their campaign a few years back. James always knew this would be a potential attack point but he always maintained the highest possible level of professionalism. Nevertheless, several people found out about Jame’s connections and started to question his loyalty as well. Fortunately, James has done a lot of favors for many of the high-ranking employees so they defended him in front of the director and told James everything which happened. Consequently, James did his own research and found out who the people were who made the allegations against him: The photographer who was sitting in the same office with us and his media colleague from the city office. I always had a bad gut feeling when I talked to those two guys, they are people who don’t have a spine and would sell their soul to the highest bidder. As my team already had made many enemies in the city office, due to our efforts for transparency, they gladly took this opportunity to take out one of my best knights.

Later that day, Andrew told me that he wants to quit, as he has an offer to work for my accountant. I initially was surprised but quickly realized that this actually was a very positive development. My accountant could prove to be a very valuable ally in the future, as he is doing everything by the book. He is very trustworthy and has a quickly growing business. That said, I am aiming to obtain the authorization to do legal invoicing with Andrew’s software, which is not possible according to the people from the city office. This might be another reason why they attacked Andrew. His software was a risk as it would put pressure on them to present legal invoices. Now that he is out of the picture, they think that they gained more time to clean up and obscure their illicit schemes. In any case, Andrew was the easiest to attack, due to the political affiliation of his father. James has way too many friends and is well-respected by the founders too. Attacking John would be very obvious as well, as he is in charge of the ERP system for the digital warehouse, which they would like to sabotage. In conclusion, the dark forces have started the counter-attack and took out one of my knights and I am put in a supposedly very weak position. My intuition confirmed to me though that everything is still going according to plan as the king feels over-confident and safe now. So they will advance further, become sloppy and make mistakes. Later that day on a nightly walk, I got a vision of a building that was collapsing all around me. There was dust everywhere and it was very heavy, hard to bear. There was a faint light in the distance, however, which motivated me to keep moving forward on this crazy mission, to eventually withstand against all odds.