Why do we humans elevate the least evolved among us to positions of the most power?

Why do we humans elevate the least evolved among us to positions of the most power?  The list of "powerful" people, politicians and CEOs, who are psychopaths, whose cravings for power dominate their lives, is extensive.  If you list the politicians and CEOs in power now, how many of them are psychopaths? Most if not all. That means they do not care about anyone or anything but themselves and that which pleases them.  And we see the result. The world is on fire. The social contract has been shredded in the US and is in the process of being shredded in other countries. More violence, more hate, more religious insanity.  Aren't we tired of this?  I know I am.  Aren't you?

Independence Day??

Ironic that on Independence day weekend the "Supreme" Court has chosen to take the nation one step closer to theocracy, the very thing this country was founded NOT to be. By ruling that businesses can refuse to serve someone based on religious preferences is an appalling and unethical "flipping of the bird" at the founders of this country, and at the people alive now, the majority of whom do not want the US to be ruled by so-called christian tenets.  

The civil war is on, the evangelical, white supremacist and Catholic extremists are fighting tooth and nail to establish the US as a "Christian Nation" to be ruled by white heterosexual men.

It's Just Another Day...

 I awoke feeling the weight of the world today, seeing all the hate being stirred up in the US by religious extremists against transgender people.  I understand the machinations of cults, and I understand how republican political extremists use religion to manipulate folks who are susceptible.  We have seen in Germany and Rwanda and elsewhere, how those seeking control will demonize a group and get their followers to hate and harm those they've demonized. This is what's happening with transgender people in the United States. The Christian "Right" has chosen trans folk to demonize.  Social media is rife with religious extremists, not only Christians but also extremist Jews and Muslims, broadcasting their fear and hate.  It's very sad and misguided, and eventually, as the "good Germans" did, most of them will come to regret their participation in the Republican death and hate cult, but not until they have caused great harm and suffering. Make no mistake about it, they are causing harm and suffering now.

I do not care what people believe. I care how they behave.  If you don't understand transgenderism, that is fine.  If you disagree with the science and psychology, so be it.  Please, however, do not make other people's lives more difficult because of your beliefs and feelings.  Be kind, even when you don't agree or understand.  

A Traveling Person

One of the things I do with this life I have been given is to travel. I am fortunate to be able to do so! Part of my intention, in all I experience, is to make my experiences available to others so they might find some value for themselves.

On May 9 I flew to England for a month.  I went to visit friends, and to meet up with old friends from Vermont to hike Hadrian's Wall, an 80+ mile trail which runs from one side of the island to the other near the Scottish border.  I attended a friend's concert, I met new friends, I did some bodywork happy to see that I still "have it," I received some excellent bodywork, saw great art (the Van Gogh Immersive Exhibit), ate good food, drank lots of cider, and felt the strong connection I have with that land.  I have 0% Celtic genetics in this body but 100% spiritual connection to the Earth in that place.  I grew up in New England, and if you look at the Pangea maps (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGdPqpzYD4o) you see that New England and the British Isles were all once part of the same land map adjacent to each other,  which may be part of it.  I recognize the flora and fauna as familiar.

Something I notice traveling is how easy it is to share kindness, whether with friends or the person serving in a pub or café or the person ringing up groceries in the store.  This is not news to me. Traveling across Canada and the US in the early 2000s I found the same thing.  Most people are available for a smile and a friendly word, if not more.  With all of the political sturm and drang, and the active efforts by political agents to polarize We The People, I hope this is not lost!  Nowadays politics and religion serve more to divide us than to bring us together, and more's the shame.

Now I am back in Jamaica.  It's hot and green.  The politics here are as corrupt as they are anywhere, with the politicians recently giving themselves a 200% raise while giving teachers 2% and police 5%. 

My vision, and I thank my parents for their contribution to this, is for humanity to collectively reject violence, to reject the power-over paradigm and blossom into co-operation and kindness.  We can do it!  I know we can.  I wonder if we will.

This week's episode of Paradigms focuses on a specific modality of healing music coming from African traditions, infused with some modern instruments and multi-cultural foundations.  I hope you'll check it out at Paradigms.Life.  The episode speaks to our individual healing needs and possibilities, which of course informs the well-being of the whole of humanity.  Made with love.

Seeing from a Distance

Watching the US from abroad for nearly half a year now, it really looks like things are about to implode.  The radical right continues to make inroads, promoting hate and fear, lying about everything, pushing the christofascist agenda.  These things have a cycle.  I don't know if/how it can be rolled back.  It sure looks like karma to me.  The genocide against the native people, the enslavement of Africans, building a nation on that foundation, how can it not eventually turn in on itself?

 

There are so many people working hard to stave off the violence and ecocide.  That's beautiful.  Resistance to fascism has always required bravery and commitment. We saw it in WWII.  We've seen it in Chile.  We saw it not succeed in Nicaragua, Venezuela.  We see the antifascist movement in Spain courageously pushing forward.

Humanity as a whole has yet to awaken to what we are and how good it could be for everyone.  As long as the greed and fear of the minority (of underdeveloped people) thrives, this will continue.  I am just here to say that we have choices.  Each and every one of us can choose who and what we are in the world.  Every single day we each choose, whether we do it consciously or not.  So, with love, I say...choose deliberately what you are in this world, because you matter, your choices and actions matter!  💕‎

Happy Birthday!

Today I am 63 years old, 63 times around the sun in this body. I don't make a big deal about my birthday but the truth is I really love my birthday, I always have.  When I was small it was always a special day.  My mother made it so. So today I miss my mother, gone almost 19 years.

Like every other day I start out by feeling the grief that punctuates everything these days; grief over the endless losses that are part of life, but mostly the waste and cruelty perpetrated by humans. Watching the United States slip into christofascist theocracy is like watching a horror show, only it's real.  Women are dying due to the rollback of reproductive rights. Trans kids are committing suicide. School children live in daily fear for their lives, and nearly every day a fresh batch of them are murdered. And let me tell you, as a therapist who works with teens, I hear about their fear, I see how it damages our beautiful young people to know they could be gunned down any day at their school. This is real.

We're not supposed to point fingers and blame, but I am pointing and blaming.  The perpetrators of this crime against humanity, this hateful religious fanaticism is brought to us by Christianity.  The cult of Christianity is bent on dominating all life, controlling everyone and everything.  It is a pathological ideology being promulgated by sociopaths who only value having power over others.

I hope people rise up and cast these nazis down.  They deserve to be crushed, not literally but figuratively.  The churches should be destroyed.  Not with violence, but by being repurposed. They are not houses of worship any longer, they are now headquarters for hate groups. They are organizing centers for actual nazis. This must not be allowed.

Nazis?  really?  Where are the death camps, you ask.  Understand, Hitler didn't start with death camps.  He built up to them.  That is what's happening in the US.  Already politicians like Marjorie Taylor Greene have called for the rounding up of trans people.  We see the rollback to Jim Crow happening in states like Florida and Tennessee.  We see Republican politicians proposing the death penalty for women who have abortions and those who aid them.

How far will this be allowed to go?  When I say "allowed" I mean that everyone who obeys a christofascist judge or rule is actually allowing this.  Everyone must resist.  Ignore the rulings and laws passed by christofascists.  Do it blatantly, loudly, and often. That means you, and me, and everyone we know.  So spread the word, it is time to defy them at every turn. Take action!  Your life may depend on it, surely your liberty does.

David Crosby...Hail The Goer!

 I'm listening to David Crosby singing the Joni Mitchell song "For Free" and getting ready to start my day seeing clients for psychotherapy.  I see around 30 people a week, give or take.

Some days I wake up and think about the day before me and I have a sense of how it'll go, usually feeling positive.  Some days I wake up and feel overwhelmed by the day before me, by what I will do and by the world in general.

It's been this way for many years, for me...it's all one long day, with sleep periods.  A day goes by fast, a week goes by fast, months and years...speeding by.  I was 5, I was 15, I was 44, now I'm almost 63.  It goes fast. 

There's a lot of beauty and wonder in this life, for me at least, and also a lot of sadness and frustration with what I see, have seen my whole life; humans continuing to make choices that destroy beauty and wonder and innocence, from our wars to our polluting, from our fear-mongering religions to our exploitive economics, humans are doing that thing of repeating actions we already know are deadly or immoral, and hoping for different results this time, this time, this time.

Like many others I tell myself "there are better ways for us to be" and strive to embody those, but we are all part of the dysfunction; buying, using, throwing away...even when we recycle and compost, it's pretty difficult (not impossible) to live in a way that doesn't contribute to the polluting and exploiting. 

I find that I want to end these blog entries with some sort of concluding statement, but I don't have one.  I am left hanging with the big questions just like everybody else.  At least we are in it together.

What have we done?

This planet is amazing.  It provides everything we need on the physical plane and much inspiration and beauty for our ineffable selves to be nourished by.  And yet in just over a few thousand years we have turned much of this place into a polluted toxic hellhole, and the areas we haven't polluted yet, we're working on polluting as fast as we can.  Humanity seems to have some kind of deathwish.  I can't say I really object.  ALL the life forms on this planet would be better off without humans.  There are no life forms who benefit long term from human activity, including humans!  

Many philosophers, poets, and other artists have observed the contradiction that lies deep within humanity. We are capable of such creativity and of engaging with life in gentle loving ways, but we are also capable of immense cruelty, of ignoring what's right in front of us, and of a selfishness that is a betrayal to our kinder nature and to all that is offered to us by nature.

Many of us spend our lives attempting to put something good into the mix, healing, awareness, kindness, honesty.  The image I have is of walking through a toxic minefield scattering blossoms, which are lovely and fragrant but still the toxic minefield grows, extending in all directions. I don't know about you but I am feeling exhausted by this.

I'm not looking for solutions or answers or to be comforted.  This is how it is here.  Coming to terms with it is painful, sad, and can take my breath away.

Today

I have been so angry and sad watching the dismantling of civil rights in the United States this week by an illegitimate Court.  I am still enraged and disgusted, but the bottom line is that I am blown away by the love of cruelty displayed by the Republicans, the fundamentalist Christians, the Nazis, the KKK, etc., who have made common cause to harm those of us who are happy living outside of their paradigm.  They just can't stand the idea that people would be enjoying life, sexuality, each other, not according to the pathologically rigid repressive erotophobic anti-life strictures of their archaic and cruel religious beliefs. It makes them crazy that people can actually be allowed to be themselves no matter their race, class, gender, orientation, etc. so they set out to cause harm. Yes, it's about the cruelty.  The repressive nature of the christofascist white supremacist belief system perverts pro-life impulses into hate and violence and pleasure in causing harm.  We are witnessing something, it's not the first time, but it is happening; the birth of another rendition of the dark ages, when ignorance was enforced through religious hegemony, where life is not valued and the very few rule sadistically over the many.  The only question is, will we stand for it?  A wise woman spoke yesterday at a gathering and talked about how each time this patriarchal system assumes power, they are defeated more quickly.  May it be so.  So mote it be.

Zeus!

 Zeus is a puppy I met a few weeks ago at a local animal shelter.  He's almost grown into his feet so 14 months maybe?  Pit Bull mix, sort of a cinnamon color with a while blaze on his chest.  At the shelter he was alone in a cage and I went to him and gave him treats and he was very very very enthusiastic, and when I got up to go he just sat down and wailed.  Really heartbreaking.  He's very much a baby still.

Friday afternoon I picked Zeus up at the shelter and brought him home.  He is happy to be here and very curious, checking everything out.  He is very affectionate, starved in fact, and he's got a powerful little body and puppy energy.  We're working on "sit" which he now does, and "off" and "no jumping" which he is starting to respond to. He loves to chase the ball or the kong.  He likes the different foods he's getting.  He listens to everything and watches my every move and is clearly "taking it all in."  I suspect he hasn't lived in a house before.  He's a little head shy, so he was probably hit.  I am clumsy and I dropped a knife on the tile floor while cooking last night and he was very upset and frightened. He recovered quickly, though, with gentle coaxing and affection.  He runs around then he crashes, typical puppy.  He barks when he hears someone at the door or at the door to the next door place.

It's a beautiful thing, watching him blossom in a loving secure comfortable space.  He's been waiting for this.

Zeus needs a permanent home.  I can only have him for the summer as I have travel plans.  He will be some lucky someone's really great dog for a long time.  Anyone who's interested can contact me through this blog. He needs a good home with space, preferably country, and loving people who will treat him with kindness and invite him into their family.

There are so many animals who need homes.  I knew it, but going to the shelter and seeing all the dogs and cats, and so many kittens, I had to respond. Hint hint 😊

Here we are

Any field of life, whether a pond or a forest or a planet, has limits, capacities, processes that can be disrupted resulting in die off.  If we look at Earth over the last few hundred years we see an increase in activity, population, extraction, heat, pollution, the list goes on.  It looks and feels like we are headed for massive system breakdowns, in fact many of our human made social systems are already collapsing. Both the social contract and social safety infrastructures are disintegrating before our eyes. That is just the start.  Wait until large planetary systems collapse quickly.  We're getting close, with the oceans dying, the tipping of the Amazon rainforest which now emits more CO2 than it sequesters, and other such Earth systems collapsing under the weight of humanity's demands.  Record warm temperatures at both planetary poles has very significant ramifications.  The momentum is building, we all feel it whether we acknowledge it or not, and that is working on the collective psyche.  Fear of annihilation drives extremist politics and extreme religiousity, both of which shred the social contract.  We see this happening all around the world.

It's always nice to wrap up a blog entry with a pithy resolution.  I don't have one.  Here we are.

Can suffering be a catalyst for positive personal growth?

 I was recently interviewed by Mina Blair for her podcast MatChat.  Here's a link to that interview.

Can suffering be a catalyst for positive personal growth? with Baruch Zeichner

Belief - to Believe

Believe - From Middle English beleven, from Old English belēfan, from be- + lȳfan, lēfan to allow, believe; akin to Old High German gilouben to believe, Old English lēof dear 

How many times do we say or hear "I believe..." and what role does belief, as an action, play in the state of civility in society?

Basically it means that a belief is "something I hold dear."  We like our beliefs.  We are attached to our beliefs.  We defend them and even offer them to others, sometimes forcefully. Belief is something humans engage in.  "To Believe" is a verb, Belief is a noun. They are the product of Mind. The self-aware conscious mind that humans have makes belief inevitable.  We have experiences which inform our beliefs, and, we share ideas with each other.

Religions are sets of beliefs, but not all beliefs are religious.  Belief is the lens through which we see the world, through which we see ourselves. We have a choice, always, about what we believe.  We don't always know we have that choice. Beliefs, enacted, have consequences, sets things in motion. We see this in our politics.  We see this in our physical health and sense of well-being.

If we are to stop killing each other and become something better, frankly, then we currently are, we must learn to see belief for what it is, a personal choice of a way to see the world.  Not Truth.  Not universal. If each human really is a limitless universe of potential imagination, then it's clearly a fools errand to try to conquer another persons autonomy in any way.  It's absurd.  

We go through our lives interacting with each other, though less these days, but how many of our encounters are really fully present Encounters of the other person? Even if it's a person you're encountering through a bureaucratic function, to exchange some words that acknowledge each others personhood.

I have this idea to create a website where people can go who feel politically polarized and don't want to be polarized, who want to come together with others with a common mission, putting political differences aside. The way it would work is you would go to the website, enter your name and zip code. You would then be matched with others from yours and neighboring zip codes, and with a task that needs doing; a park cleanup, a garden planted, a playground fixed, things that benefit everyone.  The agreement is that by using this service you agree to put politics aside and really give it your all to work with people for the common good. What do you think?

Grief and Emergence

On October 3 my dear friend Zack died.  He was a 15 year old dog who had an amazing life.  He was kind, smart, funny at times, and very very much a person.  His natural body smell was like sugar donuts.  He inspired love in people who don't even like dogs. We were together for just over 10 years, together most days, most of the day, and he slept on my bed at night.  I know his death was approaching, he was old for a dog and a few months after we moved to New Mexico, he started to lose his appetite. He lost weight and became weaker and weaker, and finally it was time.  Horrible, awful, devastating, so so sad; I miss him all the time.

It's been almost 3 months.  I am starting to emerge from the depression of grieving for Zack.  Yesterday I went for a hike and today I worked out.  First time for both since Zack died.

2021 has been a year of grieving for our world, for the biosphere which humans continue to destroy, for the bare minimum of human decency which is being shredded by fascists, for all those suffering under the yoke of imperialist violence, for all the animals being mistreated by humans, etc etc.  I could go on and on.

I have never been one to deny my feelings, so I feel sadness and frustration about all of this.  I feel it every day.  I am not the only one, by far.

We really are all in this together. I am not a Christian by any means but when Jesus is quoted to have said "Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me" that quote resonates with me big time.  Until humanity matures and stops giving power to narcissists and other psychopaths, we will continue on this destructive path.  

Most humans are not narcissists, but we keep electing these psychopaths to seats of power.  They make promises and people buy into it, even after being deceived over and over.  Politicians are Lucy with the football and the voters are Charlie Brown. Don't you wish Charlie Brown would just walk away from Lucy, just once? It is the rest of us who keep electing these psychologically malformed persons, that need to mature, to stop looking for solutions from people in power and instead to insist that they actually be in service to the common good.  

May 2022 be a year of enlightenment for us all!