Wednesday, June 27, 2012
Monday, June 25, 2012
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
What we CAN do...unfurl our edges...becoming more fully bloomed
We cannot control other living beings without stimulating the mind of war within those we control. But what is "control?"
Is it the phone ringing? The caller who dialed our number?
Phone "ringing" can be lowered, shut off, even ignored.
Sometimes we are grateful that the phone rang...and other times it becomes our tipping point. Situations change. Our reactions change. Only we are in control of our stuff.
Is it that wiley woman wearing shapely shorts catching our eye who controls our thoughts and flow of emotional reactions (She must be aware -or not- that some eyes beyond her own belong to heads of under-developed, violent, and violating men)?
... In Iran burkas regulate most uncomfortable or untimely internal experiences that might find frowned-upon outward expression.
... In the US, we just look away if offended ...or avoid Walmart shopping at six.
Does McDonald's make kids obese because as parents we have to feed our kids, and our kids watch commercials, and then they clamor for what other kids get?
...We can see how convoluted "reasoning" gets when we let popular thought-waves wash over our capacity for not only logical thought, but higher thought.
Most of us live (on this continent) in an ultra-stimulating environment...making meditation and stewardship-practice imperative if we are to grow while also maintaining sanity and integrity. It's too easy, without regular self-monitoring and openness to honorable feedback, to victimize ourselves by reacting to anything we find in our environment just because it's there....and we see it, hear it, sense it...and don't like it! It bothers our inner balance, disturbs our inner peace.
Even more disastrous is reacting to something "out there" as if we know it's meaning, it's intention, and concluding that it's purpose was to irritate the living daylights out of us. Our potential for irritability builds from within ... somethings outside ourselves just happen to be easier targets than others. We inside ourselves are responsible to working with our own inner structures and the receptor sites our internalization of outer experience creates.
Unless another opens our virtual doors tossing in a smoking stink bomb, I'd say the only way others can really control us (in the United States of America, that is) would be contractually, legally ( through prison, jail, and LAW-Making ... including of course the means of law enforcement).
Political platforms, personalities, programs, and institutions (e.g. labor unions' self-preserving deviation from original good purpose) that expand their reach into decision-making arenas localized in others must make promises to those they reach over, step on, invade. They "bargain" power-resource exchanges with those watching, listening, witnessing.
Then promises must be "faught for" and lots of other important things need changing in order to deliver that which was promised. Too often, the original intention is lost in the shuffle and the shuffle becomes the reason for being. If we're not playing close attention, we can get lost in the Big Shuffle of Bureaucracies ... big government, big unions, and the underlying drives of America's 44th president. What drives him to make strangely personalized official statements, e.g. "If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon Martin." "After November, I will have more flexability." etc. etc. etc.
Barrack Obama reveals himself to be an elite celebrity president.
Behaving like a celebrity brings the temptation to maintain popularity ... and further cultivate it. As with the intitutionalizing shift made by labor unions to self-preserving wagging of the dog, Obama's shift into motivational gear has taken place. He is simply becoming more of his true colors revealed in Dreams of My Father. Instead of honoring duties and inaugural promises made to all Americans, he honors the anti-colonial war his father waged.
This portrait of the man, Barrack Obama, the advise he takes from elitist Jarrett over experts from the field, along with the decisions of his appointee, e.g. Eric Holder forms a pattern for me that becomes less deniable as weeks and months progress. Unless we follow current events, we miss the dots to be connected. Unless we connect the dots, we are subject to missing the import of what is happening right before our eyes. And that is how many unnecessary and aweful tragedies take place among good people. Even expression of an ugly possibility brings outrage to bearer of a message. Disturbing, unsettling, unpopular, politically incorrect, unbelievable...
Is it the phone ringing? The caller who dialed our number?
Phone "ringing" can be lowered, shut off, even ignored.
Sometimes we are grateful that the phone rang...and other times it becomes our tipping point. Situations change. Our reactions change. Only we are in control of our stuff.
Is it that wiley woman wearing shapely shorts catching our eye who controls our thoughts and flow of emotional reactions (She must be aware -or not- that some eyes beyond her own belong to heads of under-developed, violent, and violating men)?
... In Iran burkas regulate most uncomfortable or untimely internal experiences that might find frowned-upon outward expression.
... In the US, we just look away if offended ...or avoid Walmart shopping at six.
Does McDonald's make kids obese because as parents we have to feed our kids, and our kids watch commercials, and then they clamor for what other kids get?
...We can see how convoluted "reasoning" gets when we let popular thought-waves wash over our capacity for not only logical thought, but higher thought.
Most of us live (on this continent) in an ultra-stimulating environment...making meditation and stewardship-practice imperative if we are to grow while also maintaining sanity and integrity. It's too easy, without regular self-monitoring and openness to honorable feedback, to victimize ourselves by reacting to anything we find in our environment just because it's there....and we see it, hear it, sense it...and don't like it! It bothers our inner balance, disturbs our inner peace.
Even more disastrous is reacting to something "out there" as if we know it's meaning, it's intention, and concluding that it's purpose was to irritate the living daylights out of us. Our potential for irritability builds from within ... somethings outside ourselves just happen to be easier targets than others. We inside ourselves are responsible to working with our own inner structures and the receptor sites our internalization of outer experience creates.
Unless another opens our virtual doors tossing in a smoking stink bomb, I'd say the only way others can really control us (in the United States of America, that is) would be contractually, legally ( through prison, jail, and LAW-Making ... including of course the means of law enforcement).
Political platforms, personalities, programs, and institutions (e.g. labor unions' self-preserving deviation from original good purpose) that expand their reach into decision-making arenas localized in others must make promises to those they reach over, step on, invade. They "bargain" power-resource exchanges with those watching, listening, witnessing.
Then promises must be "faught for" and lots of other important things need changing in order to deliver that which was promised. Too often, the original intention is lost in the shuffle and the shuffle becomes the reason for being. If we're not playing close attention, we can get lost in the Big Shuffle of Bureaucracies ... big government, big unions, and the underlying drives of America's 44th president. What drives him to make strangely personalized official statements, e.g. "If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon Martin." "After November, I will have more flexability." etc. etc. etc.
Barrack Obama reveals himself to be an elite celebrity president.
Behaving like a celebrity brings the temptation to maintain popularity ... and further cultivate it. As with the intitutionalizing shift made by labor unions to self-preserving wagging of the dog, Obama's shift into motivational gear has taken place. He is simply becoming more of his true colors revealed in Dreams of My Father. Instead of honoring duties and inaugural promises made to all Americans, he honors the anti-colonial war his father waged.
This portrait of the man, Barrack Obama, the advise he takes from elitist Jarrett over experts from the field, along with the decisions of his appointee, e.g. Eric Holder forms a pattern for me that becomes less deniable as weeks and months progress. Unless we follow current events, we miss the dots to be connected. Unless we connect the dots, we are subject to missing the import of what is happening right before our eyes. And that is how many unnecessary and aweful tragedies take place among good people. Even expression of an ugly possibility brings outrage to bearer of a message. Disturbing, unsettling, unpopular, politically incorrect, unbelievable...
Only the individual CAN control his/her response to our inclination to take offense, to prefer certainty to doubt, to engage our warring mind. We need only review the multitude of different responses from the general public when we ask an important question, e.g. What's your dream career choice? There are as many answers, available among individuals populating our various environments, as there are differences among snowflakes. We are very different stewards of our many different minds. Pick a topic to initiate a thoughtful discussion...any topic. We have many different choices available:
- What's your favorite ice cream?
- Where would you live in the world if there were no borders or barriers?
- Who do you love (most often, more fully, unremittently, unconditionally, etc.)... and why? and how do you express your love? and who "gets" you? who doesn't? what gets in the way?
- When is it time to be so fully ourselves that our very being challenges the expectations of those we value deeply?
- Why do we prefer to belong to the current version of "politically correct" rather than disclose where, how, and why we actually deviate?
- How might we respond to ones who perceive and express a different portrait of reality than we currently do?
The changing of habits ... or perspective
www.Earth.Google.com
... an experience of moving through generations of perspective
... an experience of moving through generations of perspective
Saturday, May 26, 2012
Both Beauty and War ...
Divine Love sustains Spirit through all casualties of war, past and present and to come. We claim the accelerated evolution of Spirit Strength through suffrage endured daily but differently among us. We claim full deliverance right here and right now from all remnants of experienced deprivation, traumatizing, wounding and death, both actual and perceived.
Divine Intelligence uplifts each husband, wife, mother, father, sister, brother, daughter, son, friend and relation, casualties of life stage losses incurred through circumstance and sacrifice. May all minds and hearts know Truth, forgiving freely and frequently both self and other for not being what we could not otherwise be to him or her, to you and me.
May all grow steadfast and current in the flow of Good, giving thanks where thanks is due. Amen
When we project our personality, our life's experience, our conceptualization of reality onto "other" we react to "them" as if they are us. (Consciously or unconsciously it goes like: This is what I would be thinking, feeling, intending if I did that, said this, omitted here, asserted there.) However comforting it is for us to conceptualize our relationships as "simpatico," unless we cultivate levels of "safe vulnerability" in our relationships and social groups, we never really experience true intimacy -and with such authenticity comes the universal experience of oneness.
To allow safety for others, we must chip away at the reactions (inability to tolerate ambiguity, intolerance, offendability, need for certainty, etc.) we find in ourselves. Such acquired reactions crowd out our willingness to allow for differences in ourselves and others. Extending our capacity to tolerate uncomfortable emotions builds our capacity to tolerate ambiguity, uncertainty, discomfort, aloneness. And when we short-circuit that developmental edge, we silence the differences that will ultimately set us all free.
For as every snowflake differs, so do we. As different as we look on the outside , we are also different on the inside -physically, historically, genetically, mentally. We like to think we are exactly alike. That's what tribe is all about...dressing, speaking, dancing, eating. Hoping that if we do those things together it will make us one. It's an easy identification, very gratifying thought. However, learning that we can count on others to allow us to be who we are EVEN WHEN WE DIFFER FROM THEM...THAT is what brings home the undaunting message of UNIVERSAL BELONGING.
.
Pervasive self-esteem. Authentic democracy. Connection with Abiding Source. Real Safety. Full Freedom. Whole.
We short-circuit true intimacy and access to this universal sense of belonging when we project-then-reject. "Know thyself," is a mission in a life committed to authentic intimacy with others. Relationships always experience conflicts. We are internally conflicted beings -acquiring many of our projections from the different worlds we imbibe daily. The habitual ones require vigilance. How we encounter, and respond to conflicting thoughts, ideology, developmental differences, alternative spaces, etc. opens doors or closes doors to our greater good waiting beyond the door of open dialogue. There is always more good ready and waiting in the wings...if we are willing to tolerate doubt, discomfort, disagreement. We cannot control other living beings, and not stimulate the mind of war within.
And we CAN control our response to inclinations to take offense, to engage our warring mind. We need only review the multitude of different responses from the general public when we ask a simple question, e.g. What's your dream career choice? There are as many answers, available among individuals populating our various environments, as there are differences among snowflakes. We are very different stewards of our many different minds. We have many different choices available:
Divine Intelligence uplifts each husband, wife, mother, father, sister, brother, daughter, son, friend and relation, casualties of life stage losses incurred through circumstance and sacrifice. May all minds and hearts know Truth, forgiving freely and frequently both self and other for not being what we could not otherwise be to him or her, to you and me.
May all grow steadfast and current in the flow of Good, giving thanks where thanks is due. Amen
Although the origin of this prayer was written this morning to honor national heroes on Memorial Day, war on a global scale exists within our minds learning to live in a world of perceived duality. Good/Bad, empty/full, hate/love, etc. etc. Most human beings know what it is to become a casualty of thinking and behaving which knows not yet how to tolerate doubt, ambiguity, uncertainty, significant differences. Most know the experience of not belonging and persecution as well as popularity and acclaim. We are all casualties of the warring mind that exists in the world we encounter daily. What we don't acknowledge consciously, endangers life.
After parenting has completed its cycle...and its effects, society expects individual himself/herself assume the arduous process of enacting full responsibility for stewardship of personal resources: body, heart, and mind. Rather, that is the rhetoric we have been used to finding in our best-sellers, award-winning films, psychology classes, families and churches. It still is the actual philosophy practiced in relatively successful individuals, families, schools, and marketplaces. It is still how most prefer to think of ourselves.
People change, society changes, seasons change. "Change" is a sign of life. When we grow, we change seems inevitable. The Little Prince (Saint.Exuberay) reminds us that what is most important is often invisible to the naked eye. So let us consider a more fundamental understanding of "change": living entities simply reveal more of who and what to date has been dormant, unstimulated, underdeveloped. Intelligence is not static. Growth is developmental...development must be stimulated. This is why the qualities inherent in our environment, parentage, peer group, and educational system is so important. Our minds, our affiliations, our habits, our inclinations are so shaped.
Our esteem, our efficacy however evolves and is sustained by how we steward our personal resources across our adulthood -which is a long process of stage unfoldment. So how do we respond to life's continual opportunities to be current? to integrate our conflicting parts? to be more of who we really are at our core? The wisdom of the Buddhist tradition advises against attachment for a very good reason. Attachments cause blind spots. Attachments keep us weighted down. Attachments compromise balance as we move freely through the world within and the world without.
When we attach/identify too thoroughly with something outside ourselves we miss opportunities to grow, to become more of who we are designed to be. Locked into position, we let true life pass by. When we attach at the identity level we run the risk of missing the ships sent our way by an abundant universe offering only more good for all life. When we attach at the identity level to that which is outside ourselves, we react as personally offended to good expressed toward that which we don't identify. We behave no longer as a free and whole child of the universe but as a member of a tribe...our tribe-and tribes change as needs change. Tribes reflect the flavor of the day, the month, the year, stage of life.
Someone Else's good acclaimed, compliment given, affiliation supported does not need to prompt a personal attack, as if we personally have been offended. The type of offense we experience simply reflects what has been acquired, ready to react. Reacting as if personally offended is the essence of war in the human mind. We do not need to react in this offended way. Often offense perceived is not offence intended, but inherent in our very own projection. Projection is putting on another that which belongs to ourselves. More often than not it is a part of ourselves that offends us.
To allow safety for others, we must chip away at the reactions (inability to tolerate ambiguity, intolerance, offendability, need for certainty, etc.) we find in ourselves. Such acquired reactions crowd out our willingness to allow for differences in ourselves and others. Extending our capacity to tolerate uncomfortable emotions builds our capacity to tolerate ambiguity, uncertainty, discomfort, aloneness. And when we short-circuit that developmental edge, we silence the differences that will ultimately set us all free.
For as every snowflake differs, so do we. As different as we look on the outside , we are also different on the inside -physically, historically, genetically, mentally. We like to think we are exactly alike. That's what tribe is all about...dressing, speaking, dancing, eating. Hoping that if we do those things together it will make us one. It's an easy identification, very gratifying thought. However, learning that we can count on others to allow us to be who we are EVEN WHEN WE DIFFER FROM THEM...THAT is what brings home the undaunting message of UNIVERSAL BELONGING.
.
Pervasive self-esteem. Authentic democracy. Connection with Abiding Source. Real Safety. Full Freedom. Whole.
We short-circuit true intimacy and access to this universal sense of belonging when we project-then-reject. "Know thyself," is a mission in a life committed to authentic intimacy with others. Relationships always experience conflicts. We are internally conflicted beings -acquiring many of our projections from the different worlds we imbibe daily. The habitual ones require vigilance. How we encounter, and respond to conflicting thoughts, ideology, developmental differences, alternative spaces, etc. opens doors or closes doors to our greater good waiting beyond the door of open dialogue. There is always more good ready and waiting in the wings...if we are willing to tolerate doubt, discomfort, disagreement. We cannot control other living beings, and not stimulate the mind of war within.
And we CAN control our response to inclinations to take offense, to engage our warring mind. We need only review the multitude of different responses from the general public when we ask a simple question, e.g. What's your dream career choice? There are as many answers, available among individuals populating our various environments, as there are differences among snowflakes. We are very different stewards of our many different minds. We have many different choices available:
- What's your favorite ice cream?
- Where would you live in the world if there were no borders or barriers?
- Who do you love (most often, more fully, unremittently, unconditionally, etc.)... and why? and how do you express your love? and who "gets" you? who doesn't? what gets in the way?
- When is it time to be so fully ourselves that our very being challenges the expectations of those we value deeply?
- Why do we prefer to belong to the current version of "politically correct" rather than disclose where, how, and why we actually deviate?
- How might we respond to ones who perceive and express a different portrait of reality than we currently do?
Friday, May 25, 2012
Rational Thought or Imagery and "Selling" Impressions
Men's Health (June 2012) reported "persuasive" BRAIN AND THINKING research from the field of advertising (Clay Warren, Ph.D. "Men's Wealth"). Parts of the brain triggered by type of information works beyond commercial enterprise. We've seen it work the same way throughout worlds of media, politics, bureaucracies ...human dynamics in general.
Bottom line: when we communicate information by giving facts, we stimulate the listeners' orbitofrontal cortex and amygdala (Centers of Rational Thought and Impulse Control). We do this if we want to allow our listener, bystander the opportunity to think (not react from a primitive place).
Brain researcher, Jill Bolte Taylor, Ph.D. (My Stroke of Insight, 2006) reminds us to wait just 90 seconds for strong emotion to course through us and complete its course. We can breathe through any emotion to "clear" it. Then we can RESPOND, not react.
On the contrary, we can cause an unsuspecting bystander to bypass rational thought processes by showcasing attributes which foster a narrative (e.g. "you'll be sexy too if you buy this car" "fair share" "big business and the little guy"). IMAGERY stimulus triggers the non-rational, emotive part of our brain.
To avoid reacting emotionally to Imagery-Narrative Stimulators, a person must be able to regulate emotional responses ... catch himself/herself emotionally before displaying reactivity. Children grow in regulatory responsibility (when supported by language-mediated models). Males, more than females, ON THE AVERAGE, reach responsible regulation later (in their twenties). Intelligence development is correlated with regulatory capacity. And unfortunately, age has little to do with this: not all adults are developed sufficiently to catch themselves before reacting...before they have caused damage, started brush fires, committed to something they later wish they hadn't.
Comedians and gangsters (particularly intelligent sociopaths) instinctively know what Clay Warren uncovered...though perhaps not consciously. Some politicians and bureaucrats deliberately use these tactics to inflame, enrage, urge followers to jump on their bandwagon. We see this with entire groups dedicated to inflaming mob reactions (e.g. Black Panthers, Occupiers, Weathermen, etc.).
We see strategic use of inflammatory language (narratives of victimization, images of old day civil rights marching, etc) among faux " leaders" like Al Sharpton (MSNBC) and Jesse Jackson. As Daneen Borelli notes (Blacklash, 2011): instead of updating and redesigning themselves to match the reality of advancement, they must recreate the painbodies of the past ... over and over... to regenerate what they perceive as their usefulness (and generate $). They keep themselves sourced through recreating images and the language of victimization.
Who else prises himself on similar rhetoric, lowest common denominator rhetoric (LCDR) ?
If we really want to stimulate higher intelligence and mindful decision-making, we talk about the economy with facts and figures. When we can't do that, LCDR creates distractions geared to pull others into primitive reactionary states of being.
If our audience has developed sufficient emotional self-regulation, they will pull back from the imagery, the narrative. We are all subject to its power because we all have experienced what we know through social exchange as victimization.
As long as individuals are born differently into not-perfect-for-me circumstances, we have opportunity to perceive the experience of victimization (Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth, 2005) . As of now, it's unpleasantly part of being born into the human family on planet Earth.
Brain researcher, Jill Bolte Taylor, Ph.D. (My Stroke of Insight, 2006) reminds us to wait just 90 seconds for strong emotion to course through us and complete its course. We can breathe through any emotion to "clear" it. Then we can RESPOND, not react.
Regulate your emotional response to those words and the images they stimulate in your brain.
THINK about it. (Images and narratives of victimization, forced redistribution, persecution, classes, tribes, divisions) Precisely what is the gain? for whom? And what is the greater loss for all? Activate your orbitofrontal cortex and amygdala. If we want to achieve A New Earth, we need to cultivate not reactivity, but responsiveness. Mindfulness. Growing our awareness of the bigger picture towards panoramic. We CAN DO .
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