The Turning of the Wheel

It's the last day of 2023.  Ancient ways of tracking of time are about cycles, which are circles.  The physical universe is all about roundedness.  Not perfect circles necessarily, planetary orbits are often elliptical, the Earth is not a perfect sphere, but the force of gravity tends to round things out.

We experience cycles in our lives; birth and death, day and night, fertility, "to every thing, turn turn turn" etc. We even see cycles in our human inventions; economic cycles, cultural cycles, even fashion.

When we are younger and have less life experience, we tend to experience the moment and generalize it into the future, "it's like this now and so it will be like that then."  As we get older we have a different perspective, and so what is happening in this moment can more easily be seen as just this moment, something that is unfolding, rippling effects through time, throughout our lives.  For example, let's say one chooses to care for one's body in certain ways as a young person, that will affect the person's life as they get older.  Likewise if one chooses not to care for one's body, the effects will be quite discernible as time passes.

What happens when we bring together our understanding of the cyclical nature of things with our ability to make choices?  I think this is part of wisdom. That's a word we don't hear a lot these days, nor see practiced by those who are prominent.  We see lots of decisions made for expediency, political and economic, usually very short-term thinking.  It hasn't always been thus.  The people we call Indigenous to the land mass once known as Turtle Island, famously considered the actions of the group in terms of it's effects seven generations into the future.  How will this action affect the people and the place seven generations hence? This appears not to be a consideration in our modern technologized societies. Instead we have sped things up. We walk fast, drive fast, eat fast, think for the present, plan only a short time into the future.  We're busy busy busy. I am reminded of how small children (and some larger children too!) have trouble with delayed gratification.  They want it NOW!  Modern societies on Earth are very much behaving like small children in this way.

Like all things physical, this Earth has it's limitations.  The biosphere is finite and exists within a delicate balance. If you study biology at any level, macro or micro, you learn that life can exist within a fine balance, chemically.  Change certain ratios, say salt to water, and organisms die. Change the CO2 - O2 ratios in the atmosphere and some life forms will flourish while others die off. This isn't an opinion, it's observable fact, what we call "science."

As we recognize another cycle around The Sun it would be wise for us to examine our behavior, as individuals and as a group, to understand the impact we are having on our physical world and in our abstractions (politics, feelings, social behavior).  This is why cultures throughout time have taken moments to stop and reflect on what has happened and how that informs what will happen. Isn't that what New Year's Resolutions are about?

All of this to say that today and tomorrow we have this cultural tradition of reflection, taking time to stop and sit with what is, both to evaluate and to digest. This is the practice of wisdom, and wisdom leads to better choices.  Humanity is (always) faced with choices that have significant effects, in our individual lives and in the life of the group (and by "the group" I mean ALL life on Earth). What would happen if we stopped moving so fast, and instead, considered how our choices will affect the whole in seven generations? What if we stopped thinking about our desires, and instead focused on the well-being of the whole field of life on Earth, and how we as individuals and as part of the group can choose consciously the intentions on which our actions are based?  I invite all of us to take this with us into 2024.

Tonight's episode of Paradigms features Yungchen Lhamo, a woman from Tibet who makes music with the intention of spreading kindness. The music is so beautiful and effective, and Yungchen brings wisdom to the conversation. I hope you'll listen to the episode.

Sunday Morning You Sure Look...

 ...fine, here in the West Indies. It's sunny and warm with a nice breeze. It's nice.  We have been without internet service all week, the 2 month old new modem set-up provided by the monopoly internet service Flow (owned by Cable & Wireless) failed last Sunday night.  I have been seeing clients via phone hot-spot but that's not always good. Probably 1/3 of my meetings last week did not happen.  I really don't like not showing up for people when I've said I'd be there, not to mention the lost income.  We have been told every day by a Flow Rep that someone is on their way, and no one has shown up yet. What a way to run a business!  But mine are US expectations in a small developing just barely post-colonial exploited society. So I adjust, one has to. It did lead to a very frustrating week, including some recording anomaly in Paradigms, some reverb on my voice in the interview.  That was not intentional, but so it goes.

This week's Paradigms episode is about war.  I'm really happy with the way it came out.  The guest, Marc Eliot Stein from World Beyond War, was great to talk with about war and humans and all of it. It's such a pleasure to choose music to go along with an interview like this.  This is the creative part, painting pictures/telling stories with other people's songs and words, to convey what I intend to convey.  The songs chosen for this week's show are like perfectly fitting puzzle pieces.

All media has an agenda, I am right out front with my media production agenda, to inspire people to have visions of a viable future for life on Earth including humans. Certainly Peace is part of that.

Mornings...

Mornings start with awakening into a moment of peaceful light, and then memory comes, reminding me of everything.  Then there is the moment of decision, am I going down emotionally into despair or am I not? Lately it's more "not" which is nice for me, and for those around me.  Then I start looking at the world in my mind's eye, seeing the planet, looking at places where there is conflict, looking at the wonders of nature, perceiving and imagining.  I imagine people with guns putting them down on the ground.  I imagine fighter jets being parked, and war ships dropping anchor. I imagine the factories where the weapons are made, shutting down and going silent. I imagine hungry people being fed and children playing without fear of bombs or soldiers.  I see, in my minds eye, the gardens and fields and food forests of Earth, thriving.  I imagine all the stray dogs and cats having homes where they are loved. One thing leads to the next, from the ceasing of violence to the thriving of life.

Then I get up and start my day. 

It seems so simple.

 It seems so simple.

Train the frontal lobe to recognize when the amygdala is activated, to discern when fight/flight/fawn/freeze is needed and when it is not.

Teach that all cruelty is an aberration and should be addressed as such, because where cruelty exists healing is needed. Make acts of cruelty taboo.

Voila!

Indigenous Peoples' Day 2023

When we hold The Earth and all her life forms in our hearts, and we are part of that, then it is natural to celebrate the existence of all life forms. When I think of Indigenous People's Day I think of all life, all our relations, that magical spark of life which we cannot quantify or replicate, and how easy it is to be awed and to find joy in the fact of existence.

In terms of the politics, today I celebrate and honor the People of The Earth of Turtle Island, who knew, and many still know, how to live in balance.

Today's Sermonette

There are people in this world who would give anything and everything, who would suffer whatever it took, if they knew it would end the world's suffering and bring peace, love, and understanding. That is what the Jesus story is about. It's not about one person, it's about all of us.

Jesus is an idea that we can all aspire to embody, not a supreme being we should worship or adore. Whether it's Jesus or The Goddess you relate to, or any other aspect of divinity, it's the same. BE it, don't worship it. Embody it, don't look for it outside yourself.

As long as humans perpetuate power/over relationships, with each other, with the world, with the divine, we will not achieve our potential. Human potential is amazing, beyond what most humans imagine.

When we elevate divinity and make it out of reach, we limit ourselves. When we allow ourselves to experience being the divine, the possibilities are limitless.

Processing Rita's death 19 years later

OK so this is me just working it out and sharing the product. ***TRIGGER WARNING*** This is me saying aloud what happened with my words in text so you can read along if you want, turn off the audio, but it will be triggering for some folks so, you are forewarned.

 

Today's Sermon

I don’t want to die.  I want to exist forever.  And I will.  I always have.  Every molecule is eternal, until the universe itself ceases to exist. 

I don’t really like being in this form.  I know it’s temporary, thank goodness, and I know that my attachments to “like” and “don’t like” cause me to experience emotions that are felt as pain or distress, pleasure, joy, all of that, the whole human emotional spectrum, energy that flows through the body, subject to/filtered through interpretation and alteration in the mind (brain and everything else?), filtered through the subjective individual “consciousness.” And since we exist in groups, there is also a group aspect to this, where experience is filtered through the group and the group has responses.  Both the individual process and the group process drive our behavior. When I say I don't like being in this form what I mean is...it will be great to become other things.  This cohesive consciousness will dissolve most likely, maybe not, certainly these molecules will become other things, I like that.

There are so many aspects and interpretations of what it is to be human.  Suffice to say that if you aggregate all the philosophies in their purest forms, without dogma or doctrine, from Atheism to Zoroastrianism and everything in between, you can see that we are energy, matter and electricity, and something else which we cannot quantify. It is often called spirit, or soul or consciousness (these terms are not necessarily interchangeable depending on your belief system).  There are other words. The point is, this is what we are.  And if you are reading this, odds are you know enough about the planet Earth to understand some of the biology, the ecology, the interconnected of all the life forms as a system.  

OK, humanity, here we are. These beings with all that consciousness stuff going on. On this Earth.

Humanity is like french fries. Batch after batch goes into the hot oil to be removed when done, and then eaten.  That’s pretty much how human life works. By the batch we come into this world, and we are changed by it, and eventually we die and are transformed (eaten) and become whatever we become, our bodies going ultimately into the earth to become more growing things. What happens with the other part, the ineffable, remains a mystery.

Maybe it’s amazing, maybe there are billions of other examples in the cosmos, but we have this thing we call “free will” which is that we are capable of acting as an individual regardless of the direction of the collective, or of other individuals. Exercise of free will as action requires something that motivates, and some kind of thought/emotion process.  

We know that thoughts and feelings can be mitigated by instincts, so if a person is in a fear state, perceives danger to their existence, survival will dominate their thinking and their feeling, they will be in a constant state of reaction, and so analytical nuance may be reduced as energy is channeled into discerning the danger and how to survive it; fight, flight, freeze or fawn.

We also know that there are people and agencies who exploit human instinct, who manipulate the group with disinformation which is designed to keep them in reaction for the purpose of political and economic manipulation.

Put all this together and it’s a mighty complex system of interconnectedness.  Now we think in terms of multi-dimensionality, so look at reality with the actual physical aspects, all the thinking and feeling going on in all the people, driving all our actions.  Add in awareness of the free will of each person and how it functions, and the group mind responses.  Add in all of the electro magnetic fields we are surrounded by, both naturally occurring and human-made (arguably naturally occurring since we are part of nature and we make them).  Etc.

All of this to say, ok humans, what do you want to do with this?  Do you want to rebalance how we exist on Earth?  Leave Earth behind and take our circus elsewhere? Die off or become much smaller in number?  We have choices.  Some folks are all for leaving Earth and are already working on making that happen.  Some want to rebalance things here. Some favor a smaller number on Earth to be more in harmony ecologically.  Maybe all of these things are possible.

I started out saying I don’t want to die.  I don’t.  I don't want to be in this form forever, and I won't.  None of us will. However living within the current circus, even at the periphery, sucks for a lot of humans. Billions of us are subject to the aforementioned political and economic manipulators.  Humanity as a group has not yet learned to combine prioritizing the common good with the free will of the individual, rather then posing them in opposition to each other.  

Let us also address the issue of human violence.  Violence has created trauma which has been passed down through thousands of generations.  We see the results of that trauma in human behavior around the world. However the instinct to survive, through the lens of trauma, goes awry and becomes a fear-driven greed, which can lead to violence. Violence can be physical in the obvious ways but it can be structural through societal or cultural institutions that maintain unjust social conditions. Poverty is structural violence, just as war and rape are physical violence. In order to stop our own violence against each other and against other life forms, we must, as a group (through individual and group process) make violence taboo, unthinkable, obsolete. 

Caring for the individual AND the group, not one or the other, must become part of how we view ourselves.  In order to do that we must address our collective trauma so we can stop perpetuating it. In order for humanity to step into a sustainable future we must stop traumatizing each other and the Earth. 

We're all going through it together!

Many thoughts converging...natural disaster in Vermont where people are coming together beautifully to help each other, and the human tendency to rise when things are really bad, contrasted with people going low to create social disaster for political and monetary gain (the Republican Party, evangelical Christian churches, the oligarchy, and all their allies); my own emotional cycles of up and down, which I am pretty open about, and noticing how so many people I am in communication with are navigating feelings of hopelessness and ennui.  It's all related.  Humanity is collectively experiencing fear of annihilation due to what we have done to the biosphere.  We are now experiencing significant disruption due to climate change related weather events which create disasters for humans (and animals and plants). Not only are we experiencing this, we know we did it to ourselves.  Even those who deny climate change, deep down, they know.  Most of the public deniers are simply liars making political and monetary points off of polluting industry or the ideological political machine. Fear is driving a lot of the hate and division we see in the world.  People are splintering off into groups where they feel safe because of likemindedness. Ideological positions then become more extreme because people live in echo chambers which amplify their fears and beliefs. It's all a big distraction, though, from the real issue facing us, the increasingly imminent collapse of the biosphere.

Bottom line, if we want to stop the hate, stop the violence, we should all, ALL of us, focus our attention on how we can stop the polluting. That means the wars, which are huge polluters, must stop.  Polluting industry must stop, which means we in the industrialized parts of the world will have to go without some of what we are accustomed to.  It means all governments must immediately focus on sustainability and climate mitigation.  This stops the hate because it gives people a common purpose and something to do to fill their time.  Stopping wars reduces violence in the obvious way but also, countries at war have more violent societies at home than countries that are not at war.  Violence begets violence.

Humanity can do this, if we choose to.  It may be too late, in terms of the climate, but at least we could go out on a more positive note, and maybe, just maybe, if we really get on it, humanity will survive into another, wiser, kinder, iteration.

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.