Windows

 

The windows to our world can be television, radio, family, friends, books, or simple experiences.

We see things through so many different filters that sometimes it becomes difficult to know which ones to trust. 

For example, looking through a stained glass window may show things occurring in red or blue, or even sunny yellow, but we know this is an illusion.

That same illusion occurs when we look at the world through fear. Fear can be a life altering filter depending upon what initiated it.

Some things are truly dangerous. We don't have to meet a cobra to know we should not engage them, but watching certain television programs, or reading only the crime section of the news leads some people to think they are in constant danger from thieves, or sexual perverts, or sharks, or even goblins, ghosts and ghoulies. 

When fear becomes the filter of choice, the main way to protect yourself from things that are new, or strange, or things you simply don't understand, it becomes a liability.

How you replace the fear filter can be complicated and difficult, especially if it has been the driving force behind most of your actions for a long period of time. You become the turtle whose body contracts into a shell shielding you from everything both good and bad.

Opening the window to a life of reason is not as easy as it sounds for some people. They are even afraid to consider their options.

This is a mental illness. It means it is time to find a way to talk to a therapist, which of course becomes a catch 22, because that can be something new and new things are terrifying, (and therefore dangerous.)

If you recognize these symptoms, open a new window, let in a little light, let a breath of fresh air enter your life and discover that joy comes with more reasonable filters.

Adaptability of our species

 

One of the most frustrating and interesting things about human beings is their ability to adapt.

This is not necessarily always a good trait.

The ability to rationalize things so they fit into what is believed or wanted causes many problems for people.

Christians back things that are definitely against, what Jesus would do.

Intelligent people ignore the common sense behavior that goes along with getting along with other people.

People who believe they are kind use passive aggressive behavior to make their point.

We use our brains to defy the natural way of things and sometimes that is good. We generally don't eat each other, but we do destroy each other if it fits our agenda. 

A Cold Day In Hell

 

I once said it would be a cold day in hell before the United States knowingly elected a man who would be dictator.

Today that man is being inaugurated.

He was elected, so that means either a majority of the people in this country believe that a dictator, a man who admires dictators, a man who blatantly represents the top one percent, should run the country, or that many people do not really think about who they are electing.

I don't know anyone in the top one percent personally, although I do know one through his children. Most of the people I know do not know anyone in the top one percent. We have very few things in common with each other other than the fact that we are all human beings.

I hope the top one percent understands that being a human being counts just as much as money.

The good life

 

I have spent so much of my life trying to figure out what is right, what everyone else thinks is right, what I should be doing, thinking, acting on, or seeing.

An avid reader, I often catch myself thinking I should be doing this or that in order to be having a good life, but then it slowly occurred to me that all these articles are people trying to find something to write about. Whether it is to make a living, or find fame, or discover some personal form of satisfaction, these people are simply expressing their opinions, fears, and insecurities.

I suspect the most important thing about a good life is asking myself, am I okay with it? After that I can decide if I need more activity inside or outside my home. 

It really doesn't matter what anyone else thinks in the end. 

It is my life and the only real challenge I have is making me feel good about it.

Whether that is by doing something like painting, volunteering, reading, or simply sitting and enjoying the atmosphere, doesn't matter. Finding contentment, or even joy is so illusive for many people. If I can find that, or bits of that I think I am on the right track. There is no need for justifying it.

Historical karma

 

History is like karma. 

It will sort out the heinous from the just.

It will take off the rose colored glasses, the blindfolds woven from greed, eviscerate the words created only to curry personal power, and lay it all out in black and white.

Those with a purely personal agenda will eventually be named for who and what they are.

Of course if it is only a cry for attention, anyone could succeed.  After all, Hitler is still well known.

Depending on your standards it is always possible for a bad person to be wildly popular.

For a time.

Then the truth will rise to the surface like cream in good milk.

The results of all actions eventually speak for themselves. In spite of lapses, science and truth eventually rise back to the top because everything else is ephemeral, a childish desire to make things what we want, not what they are.

You may not live to see the day any of this happens, but it will happen. It always has.

Soup du jour

 

A few months ago someone came to my house and made a wonderful turkey and rice soup just for me.

Today, after a very long day of work, that person is going to walk to the grocery store, buy a carrot and then walk a quarter of a mile through slush and snow to my apartment.

Once here she will chop, cook and stir a lovely soup that we will share while watching television.

Afterwards she will clean up, wash the dishes and walk over a mile home. Once more in bitter cold through snow and ice.

That is love.

True belief

 

If we ever discover all the seemingly magical qualities our bodies have, we might live forever.

I think the problem is true belief.

Saying I believe in something is easy. 

Believing it? Not so easy.

The faith factor is highly underrated.

A mother lifting a car off of her son who is pinned under it does not stop to think, is this possible?

Healing our own bodies from within is probably possible too. There are other animals whose bodies facilitate this, but that niggling doubt negates the benefits.

That is why people have so many crutches. If we can give the credit to some other thing, a magical fountain, a pilgrimage to a sacred site, a particular prayer, it seems it becomes easier for us to really believe.

Still, if those things work for you? Use them!

Life is an ephemeral gift and I, for one, want to explore as much of it as I can before I move on.

Cults

 

I just watched a program about cults. How they work. Their methods, their allure and much of it felt eerily familiar to me.

Once, long ago, I belonged to a very respectable, mainstream church that was in transition. The priest had died and the congregation was looking for a replacement. It took a long time and there were several interim priests that came and went.

Slowly but surely I became part of a very intimate group of Sunday school teachers and fervent church members that ended up with us leaving this church and moving to a smaller one across town.

By this time we were all very closely involved. We were at church several days and nights a week. We had potlucks for all celebrations, church or not. We let our children spend hours together and encouraged them to be best friends. In fact, had something happened to us, we decided we wanted the lead couple to become the people who would raise our children instead of family members.

That couple came from the Catholic church, a former priest and nun who were now married with children. Natural leaders, they set the tone for much of what happened.

In the beginning they ran workshops where people paid a large amount of money to bring a dish to share for a communal group. There people split into pairs and one lay on the floor between large speakers blaring music around them. The other was a sitter who watched over the person on the floor. 

The person lying down began to breath in quick short breaths, really hyperventilating until they hallucinated. These experiences were taken as very serious ways of understanding our phobias, or problems. Eventually several people in the group, including me, began private counseling with this couple.

Slowly they also formed a so called Dream Group. At first it was lead by a Jungian psychologist retired from Switzerland. It evolved into a group that did not include her, but was lead by the former priest and nun at their home.

The group experimented with different modes of work. Sleeping together in a circle on the floor of a local church to see if they would share dreams, sweat lodges by a large creek, drumming circles where we descended in our minds deep into the earth, even classes involving painting. All of these supplemented by the counseling.

I thought of them as my real family, the people I trusted implicitly. At the time it did not feel incestuous or strange that counselors would be leaders and a part of this group, even claiming to be re-parenting some of them.

One day they suddenly decided that all the people they counseled would have to break off into a new dream group that did not include them. All the other events ended too.

They were the center of our lives. Surrogate parent type people who also benefited from us paying for their events and counseling. Suddenly they up and moved far away. He got a parish in the wilds of another state and we were bereft.

Not too long after that they severed ties with me on social media and even when they came to town for a funeral they did not seem to want to carry on our old closeness.

Now I wonder if I was part of a cult. It is an uncomfortable feeling.