Category Archives: #Politicalupheaval

Why is “normal” actually “harmful”?

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We can be like Cinderella’s step sisters or like a middle weight boxer trying to “fit in” to the category we wish to enter. We think, “I want to be a princess so I will cram my foot into these shoes.” We think, ” I must shed weight no matter what the physical cost to be able to compete.”

Social Signalling is out of our control. Our neurons are set up to synk with the behavior of people we observe around us. It is a left over survival pattern. Back in time, we observed others and if Kruk did not follow the ways of those around him and just decided the red berries looked delicious, he would end up curled on the ground poisoned dead. It was a matter of the discontinuance of Kruk and of his DNA.

In the world entranced by the manichaen doctrine the soul of a wicked one was like someone carrying the plague. Wiki tells us Manichaeism taught that life in this world is unbearably painful and radically evil. In Manichaeism inner illumination reveals that the soul, which shares in the nature of God, has fallen into the evil world of matter and must be saved by the means of spirit or intelligence. Consequently, in a society where survival depended on being connected to a village, shunning and exile were used as a passive death sentence.

No food would be given, no shelter, no warmth either physical or emotional. If a member of a social group broke the law of the normal, they were possessed by the devil and were left to die.

Even more contemporarily, various groups use exclusion as a way of controlling desired behavior.

The result is that we have in our DNA the memory of complying with what is considered normal. It is one of the reasons that social signalling controls our choices.

And so we, when trapped in a crowded theatre and fire breaks out, follow the crowd even if it leads to death. And so when we have evidence that certain behaviors shorten our lives and sabotage our health, it is worth it for us. At least we are not alone.

The only way we can pull ourselves out of this hypnotic state of automatically following the mores and choices of members of our social group is to become “the watcher.” We can teach ourselves to sit back as if we are in a drawing class and really concentrate on what we are seeing. We see the lines, the shapes, the patterns, the presentation of behaviors. We take time to consider each action.

The questions to ask ourselves are: “Does this serve the greater good? Does this action, this decision make me healthier, stronger, a better version of myself?”

It is like the mindfulness walk of a Buddhist sanga. Step, step, stop. And as one foot touches another the mind connects to the ground. The mind focuses in on the now. The mind can ask, “Where are you going?” “Are you in balance?”

who could you be?

We are in a time when “normal” no longer is of service to our own lives; to the culture surrounding us; to the earth.

It is time to see who you were meant to be. It is time to grow into a deeply connected self. But not connected to others mindlessly following. We start to wonder who we could be…. if only…..

Hallucinating Reality

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I wake up with my new Russian Blue cat pushed against my legs. Day after day of dense ponderous rain has been falling. All of us welcomed it. The numerous fires breaking out every summer have begun early. They began in April and seered right through to May. Just a week ago we were choked by the brown-gray sky and warned against the evil of outside.

The rain appeared like a blessing that comes from a genii. It was instant. It was within the parameters of what the seeker of a miracle had asked for. But, as always with hope and fate and dread there was that twist, the sting of literally getting what was wished for.

My new thrift store shoes priced in the world of heavy-edged commerce at over $100 were red and sparkling on my feet soaked to the gunnels by the pooling rainwater. As I determinedly made my way to “accomplish” the purchase of items on my list, I was stopped twice by other women who were also wearing Italian-brand shoes.  We stood facing one another showing off our shoes and delighting in our “tribe” of niche consumers.

As my hair became rivulets to channel the heavy rain, I thought about how much my life had been about a rhythm of collapse in the face of opposition and then arising to heroically push forward.

as above, so below
as within, so without

The failed hip, the fear of death lurking outside my door, constant pain. The angels of hope kept showing up to grab me under each armpit and stand me on my feet.

Just before the smoke appeared to threaten our lungs, Tod, my companion cat became anxious and twitchy. He could feel it coming. He was restless and unsettled. Jumping from one viewing place to another, he had all senses alert.

And once the rain came, both he and I relaxed into a deep, long sleep.

“When will my life begin for real,” my ego asks me. “When will I achieve my goals and stand strong and triumphant?”

And then I remind myself that after 78 years of life, I should know by now, it is not a single track run for a prize life.

The struggle is always in the physicality of existence. I torture myself with phrases like “When will you be what you want to be?” I lash myself with the whips of familial and societal expectations.

Nobody tells a five-year-old that simply rising to a challenge; simply loving and caring for the body; simply having a consistently compassionate reaction to others is achieving something. Nobody hangs a gold medal on the chest of an individual who resists the mass hallucination spun out spell-casting of reality.

It is like pushing through bars of a prison, this life.

And as I wake up with Tod, the cat laying on my left leg with his legs wrapped around my calf, I hear him purr.

And as I wake up still alive and held by my body with no pain, I know that pushing myself into satisfying some installed craving by my ancestors, my society has once again been avoided. I am focused on living peacefully. That is a life beyond the insanity of hallucinated chaos.

I watch my thoughts and my actions and I see how skilled I am becoming at dismissing the siren’s call asking me to run my life based on fear and phobia.

Yesterday, I thought, “You have been so closed down, you have forgotten to look at a flower.”

Today, I intend to spend time appreciating the miracle of a flower continuing to burst forth in beauty in the midst of cold, killer smoke and heavy beating rain. How heroic is the lilac, the daisy, the iris. We are like that. We are blossoming. We must congratulate ourselves.

 

What can COVID teach us?

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I was thinking today about perceived reality (again and again). For many, there has never been the sense of waiting for something ‘out there’ growing and coming closer. For many, their lives have been predictable, safe, and they believed that their survival was due to their own merit. “I did this” was a shared delusion.

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And then there are others who have known this current sense of the ominous wait, this sense of fate, the out of my control formation of some new future.
There are those who lived through the depression and knew food scarcity. My mother’s family had six children and owned 2 pairs of shoes for their offspring. Daily, everything changed as they used up their resources and had to adapt for survival.
I remember clearly sheltering at home when school was done as I watched polio spread in my home town. The pool, the movie theatre, the parks were all dangerous. I lost friends. People were deformed for life or laying in an iron lung. It was out there… the unimagined threat. It could not be controlled. And so we waited. We were careful.
As a schoolchild, we heard the school PA go on and at the yelling out of the word “flash” at random times during the day, we huddled under our metal and wood desks. Across the river was a major port. We were told, when the bombs were dropped, it would be close to us. And so we waited and ducked.
One day at noon, I walked into the vast school cafeteria and it was dead silent. We were eating lunch with dry mouths. The Cuban missile crises was underway. A teacher told me it would all happen within 15 minutes. The missiles would be released to cripple the country in which I lived. The missiles would seek out the important ports and melt the area flat. Hundreds of us sat at the tables with our knees pressed against the underside of the table tops. We remember the flash training. We ate our lunch waiting to die.
When a group of people have had an unthreatened existence there is imprinting within them. They begin to think that it is through some merit of their own that they are healthy, that they can predict their own future. And the wounding it leaves on their psyches is that it destroys their compassion. They no longer understand “the greater good.”
They have never experienced the moments of ominous waiting for something that is formulating in the moments of hung time.
Covid is bringing us back to that feeling. We suddenly see that through no fault of our own, we could cease living or for some, even worse, be the one who carries death to others around us through our actions.
We are experiencing what all of those who have lived on the face of the earth have experienced in what we call “uncertain times.” Attacking tribes, sudden famines, plagues, homeless masses of people dislodged and migrant, economic disasters are all the same experience. We are thrown out into an unpredictable world. We see that it is not our own merit that protects us and gives us a good life. We see with stark outlines that it is our ability to react to the inevitable onslaughts as a united group that is, finally, our only protection.
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Is this a time to be conflicted?

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We are between two stools, sitting on two fences, contorted into a new yoga shape that is more Chinese acrobat circus than a pose that has a name. Shouldn’t we be more clear with ourselves than just walking around the gallery of funhouse mirrors watching our projected sense of self morphing into grotesque and incredible shapes.

“That is not me,” we say.

Where do we stand when the floor is lava, the once green and calm back yard is thrust up by earthquake? Where do we stand when the very topography of our reality has changed beyond any name we could dial into our label gun? What do we believe in a time when all beliefs are suspect? Who are we when the nicely-created cattle runs that separated us no longer work? What is our purpose?

I ask who are these people around me when I see a post on social media. A friend boldly emblazons in the status space, the idea that autistic children should be killed because of the drain on society and, you know, the gene pool?

How did we get here wherever here is now? But it all changes first in the dismantling of old systems. It all changes as we have to adapt our behaviour to the new threat to our continued existence. And what I, personally, can feel right down into the marrow of me is that we are just beginning to end it.

I see in my mind’s eye the depiction of an old method of killing an individual who contravened some subtle law drafted with the hope of maintaining a structure of beliefs for some perceived goal. ‘Death by bricks’ is what comes to mind. An individual lays down and is under a board. Weights are gradually added until all the life is pressed out of the person. And for so many that is exactly what it feels like now.

The virus is not real. COVID is only in some foreign land and surely the border mark made in the invisible marker will keep it isolated to hurt only the not me people. COVID is shutting down access to the shiny distractions that have kept us running in place. The second brick is that we can no longer just run in our lives the same pathways we have always run. The third brick is the economic distress now dispersing like ink dropped in a pan of water. People are struggling with fear of the virus while some refuse to believe and are hosting happy COVID spreading demonstrations.

Alone with self

And then we are alone

We no longer have the distractions, the drug of the usual, the mindless actions that we have invested so much time and energy into the building.

And then we are alone with ourselves.

As we sit like those arrested and sent to the involuntary walls of the monastery, we endure the results of climate disruption. Thousands endure storms. Spain has snow. Earthquakes continue. Mountains, we are suddenly reminded, are volcanoes await the moment of release.

As we are like those who are trying to adapt to the weight of the bricks. We see political chaos. We see that which we cannot believe.

But we are getting better and better at absorbing shock. The concept of “It is impossible. It will never happen,” fades away.

The vaccine is created. The virus mutates. The storms throw trees through houses. The crews show up to return electricity.

The stock market keeps track of how happy the corporate rich are in any given situation. And we are envious. We are envious of their invested point of view.

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Our very sense of self erodes. Who am I when I am at home? That is a British saying I have always loved. When you are not involved in the performance art of assuming a character in the eyes of the world, who exactly are you?

When your sense of self is built in the spaces between the restrictive pillars of society, of family, of your role at work, of your star-like coming down a stairway in your costume then who are you?

As we sit at home we are mightily irritated by the sense of being conflicted, of being confused and, may the saints help us all, ignorant.

“I did not know that!” is the beginning. It is where we all become submissive to the idea that what is manifesting in the future will be unlike what our past experiences have lead us to believe was reality.

“I don’t know what all of these bricks of fear are doing to me.” We say this to ourselves as we release expectations.

Some will find it too crushing. Some will decide that it is too much to stay with the transition and to keep creating space within themselves. Some will not make it through.

But others can, at least, build their skills at surrender.

“Yes, I believe two things at once. Yes, I was wrong in my perceptions and I might be wrong even now. Yes, I allow myself to transform.”

And so the old life gets crushed out of us as we teach ourselves to stay loose. We teach ourselves to breathe deeply and not ask for assurances.

The greatest teachers for us are our ancestors. They went through periods wherein the very paradigm of reality shifted. The earth was no longer the centre of the universe. The upstart middle class refused to be slaves to the lord of the manor. Cars and horses shared the same streets. Black death, smallpox, polio swept through towns and villages. Thousands starved because of food emergencies. Wars brought the harrowing Vikings, knights, warriors that decimated the work of generations.

I look at my ancestors and know that in each of us there is the ability to survive even as the very nature of our concept of reality is destroyed. They rebuilt. Those that survived were more creative, more energized and more likely to bring forth an unforeseen future.

I look to my ancestors to understand that what is happening now is simply a new formation of something we don’t understand yet.

The bricks will not kill us. The events will not end our curiosity, our creativity and our desire to participate in a new way, in a more mindful way in the life that is arising.

Embrace the conflict. Shout loudly, “I don’t know. Yet.”