Psycho-horticulture: Diogenes & Alexander, Obstacles to the Sunlight (of the Spirit); Treatment or Prison?

Alexander the Great went in person to see Diogenes, and he found him lying in the sun. Diogenes raised himself up a little when he saw so many people coming towards him and fixed his eyes upon Alexander. When that monarch addressed him with greetings, asking if he wanted anything, Diogenes responded, "Yes, stand a little out of my sun."

It is said that Alexander was so struck by this, and admired so much the haughtiness and grandeur of the man who had nothing but scorn for him, that he said to his followers, who were laughing and jesting about the philosopher as they went away, "But truly, if I were not Alexander, I wish I were Diogenes." Diogenes replied, "If I wasn't Diogenes, I would be wishing to be Diogenes too."

As with all manners of historical recitation, there exist many interpretations and anecdotes of the preceding dialog, but the panoramic reality and its shadows are at worst an opportunity for modern comparisons.

I prefer the following version, while admittedly no less provable: "I have nothing to ask but that you would remove to the other side, that you may not, by intercepting the sunshine, take from me what you cannot give."

In many of my speeches, I quote Mary Jo Robinson, who said that "No one has the right to be an obstacle to a fellow human being getting well." If we stand or block the sunlight, the plant might wither or worse. It would seem to follow that a plant potted in a basement with but one window for light might also compromise the plant. The plant will likely grow at the degree of angle toward the sun as is its' genetic design prescribes. But once removed from the basement of life and placed in regular sunlight next to those plants which are designated 'normal' because they grew organically in earth's natural favor, the former plant would appear an aberration and might be shunned by the classically enamored pyscho-horticulturist. But left in organic soil and protected from acts of non-nature, the aberration will in time grow straight upward toward the sun and 'miraculously heal' of its purported aberration.

Many of us are like the plant in the basement, 'growing toward the light'. Once removed from the unnatural setting and placed back into 'society', the plant still looks like a problem and may act accordingly until it heals. The problem is oftentimes, society takes that same plant and incarcerates it to a new basement called jail or prison, where the sunlight is again only shining into the plant's environment at the same angle that made it appear sick in the first place.

This is why I endorse treatment over incarceration. This is also why I don't think people 'go to hell' after they die. Why would God punish someone for growing toward the Sunlight of the Spirit? We are ALWAYS growing toward the light, as our Spirit knows, even when our physical consciousness appears to contradict our ignorant premise and following conclusion.

Tomorrow when I post my Happy Monday alms on Facebook, perhaps I'll mirror Diogenes's posture before the statues of the gods, whereby he accepts humility and futility as equal teachers without pedestals.

There's Nowhere to Hide

There’s nowhere to hide and no need to hide in “Anonymous”. There’s no one to blame and no one gets credit; that’s beautiful. Yet there is sometimes a desire to hide in ‘anonymous’.

Someone asked why a person would hide their light under a basket rather than shine from the mountain, yes?

What’s the capitol of your attention, if any? Stated another way, what’s the Capital of your attention?

"Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world.  Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves.  All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people."    --George Bernard Shaw

Phoenix 490 Future, 501(c)(3), Call for LOGO Artist

Here I am again, plugging for Phoenix 490!

Time to Ramp Up progress with Phoenix 490! I am finding more speakers and am glad to move ahead. Need to either start a 501(c)(3) or some other organization to ‘make it official’.

I believe the message of stopping impaired driving in our society is critical, but the message has to be more Universal to make a difference. If the mere rendition of horror stories were consummate to the task of aborting impaired driving in this country, we would have ended impaired driving 30 years ago. It’s time to do what works and stop futility chasing our tales, mistaking activity for progress. Empowering drivers rather than ‘guilting’ them is key. But forgiveness is also key to almost all ills in our society, because it unifies people peacefully. Who doesn’t need to forgive their “ex” in a divorce, an offender for hurting them, or forgive oneself for hurting someone else, etc? Healing our culture of racism, for example, is possible through forgiveness. For me, my Gang Symbol is the ASL Sign for I Love You. Maybe that could be coupled with the Phoenix 490 Logo?

But I need to focus on just a few items here, and one is going to the Secretary of Sate to get Phoenix 490 operational. If anyone has any ideas on how to form a 501(c)(3), please feel free to weigh in on the topic. I still need art or a LOGO for Phoenix 490.

My being unemployed for so long, I can’t currently afford to pay for an artist to do the work. But I could certainly help market the artist who helps us with a viable Logo. It should have a Phoenix in it and the number 490 in it too.

I am not the world’s best marketer, but God is my Spiritual Adviser and if this is a ship meant to sail, the wind with be provided while we set the proverbial sails.

Letter to My Friend who Lost His Son to a Drunk Driver 25 Years Ago, May 4th

Seems a lifetime ago we met, Jon, and a day I'll always remember.  Your ability to love was deeper than death and stronger than pain. Still is.  I myself don't know how to go on and I also don't know how to quit.  I remember a cop telling me I should have been fried in the electric chair after hearing me speak.  A school superintendent once called me an idiot after hearing me speak.  I have so many stories I could tell about such comments, but a wise woman (Sue K.) who lost her son told me (after I said her pain was so much worse than mine), that "Grief ain't a contest."  God, she, you, Sharon GD & Sharon B. and so many others helped lend me the strength to carry on, One Day At A Time (one second at a time for the first 8 years of speaking).  Serenity to accept things we cannot change is a collective miracle that we experience both alone and together. 

Phillip's pin that you gave me on the day we met is never far from me in my home office.  Neither is the Bible I cried on for years in my personal monastery (prison).  The collective miracle is the cumulative impact we make upon society.  Audiences ingest 'time release' pills that take years to digest (sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly).  Leaving indelible impressions upon human hearts is no easy task CULTURALLY.  But as I said before, knowing how to quit or carry on is a mystery.  Metaphorically speaking, 'Losing our Speaking Notes' is invaluable when expressing our innermost power.

No one knows what another person has to do with what has happened to them. No one knows what another human being needs on their Sacred Journey.  If we knew ahead of time what our Sacred Journey would cost us, most of us would certainly ‘opt out’, but that’s not the way life works.  Why ‘it happens’ to some of us and others have ‘close calls’ and no consequences is a mystery to me.  Maybe we have Sacred Contracts that only God comprehends.  Maybe Phillip, Little Timmy, and the hundreds of others we know about through our nearly three decades of speaking, are sitting in a circle and sending us their loving protection as we tell our stories.

I know this will sound crazy but I don’t care what it sounds like.  A man who lost his wife was speaking about a year after losing her to a drunk driver.  I saw a light open heaven over his shoulder and CLEARLY saw her face radiating with a loving smile upon him.  His grief was more than palpable, and this grief so many of us know so well, but we are never without our loved ones.  Love keeps the veil thin and while grief is proof of love, and we feel like we are dying or want to die, if we give up then when someone needs to hear our story and live (not having to go through it themselves), then we have accomplished something Eternal. 

I decided to live when feeling suicidal not because of what my life would or could look like, but because if I gave up, then I couldn’t help the people who are also feeling this grief to NOT give up, too.  I can’t help them if I’m dead.  The Itty-Bitty Shitty-Committee in my head showed up to argue this point for the those first eight years I mentioned earlier, until a miracle happened and I quit making anger (FOR ME, anger turned inward) stronger than God. 

History Repeating Itself & Multiple Personality Russian Roulette Syndrome

Nothing really profound here. Just felt like writing a bit.

OK, maybe humans are just plain crazy, but figure out their path, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. It's our beauty that's crazy. Sometimes we turn beauty into judgment, the projection eventually becomes an addiction (Buddhist's prefer the term Attachment), which turns inward and then acts OUT. The voting block in one's head thinks voting matters, then the trouble begins.

There is a center ground between every belief or lack of belief. Common Ground is a starting point. They say (well, someone said, who I don't know for sure), that those who don't study history are 'doomed' to repeat it.

But Zig Ziglar said repetition is the Mother of all Learning.

Prison & Loving Deeper than Pain

People have no idea how bad it really is in some places. You know they say one can 'unsee' a thing? Yeah, that, no matter how much one evolves in the right direction, memories still come up without warning. Most people hear a certain common, everyday phrase and think nothing of it, while others remember something that is REALLY normal. Keeping one's heart soft is a daily task requiring much focus. See the cell above? Try to see it without feces and urine everywhere, with the man covered in his own excrement, hidden away where few get to see him. See the man getting dinner with feces spread underneath his brownie, or mixed in with his gravy (one needed to hunt for the poop in every meal in the psych unit). Imagine a man being tied down and screaming while guard beat on his feet with billy clubs. Imagine seeing your friend's face all swollen after being handcuffed in a chair and having three canisters of mace emptied into his face and eyes. Imagine a man handcuffed in a chair while a guard takes pliers to his nose, breaking it (he later authored a part of the prison newspaper and his segment was called, "The Nose Knows." Imagine daring to befriend someone with such memories and vice-versa. Imagine being honest in a world where no one believes it. I could go on and on with stories, but they would offend the sensibilities maybe beyond repair. So my gravity holds in the clouds, lightning strikes my earth and thunder roars quietly within. This is why miracles are needed. I am relatively peaceful, thanks to those miracles. The quote about what doesn't kill us makes us stronger is only partly true. What kills us also makes us stronger.

I always wondered why God let me see this part of humanity. I think it was so I could love deeper than the pain.

Evolution and Distance

People often make the mistake of believing the part of themselves, the GOOD part of themselves, is what hates the bad part of themselves, but the truth is contrary.

The part of ourselves that is uncomfortable with what we don't like actually keeps us TRAPPED within the PAYOFF of both hated and hater.

The loving part of ourselves is not ‘weak’; it is not 'signing off on' bad behavior in some sort of twisted permission thereof. It’s not cosigning that part of us that cries out for remedy.

The world is addicted to judgement. The pain we feel that is ‘justified’, shows up with a warrant and arrests us, so we turn around and put the cuffs on ourselves; we feel like we gave up on battling the bad part of ourselves by submitting to the police department inn our minds.

Self-loathing is a cunning, baffling and powerful condition that is itself willing to go to any lengths to keep us trapped. We feel the part that hates ourselves is the GOOD part and if we don't feed it, we think we are giving the BAD part permission to keep doing what we view as wrong.

I wish I could explain this better. Put another way, we tend to forget or not notice what people have done right when we experience what we think they did wrong. I have met thousands of people in my life and I absorbed most of what I sensed about them in the moment. I remember one day in a 12 Step meeting repeating the first name of every person who spoke and repeating what they said in a condensed fashion. I ONLY repeated the good intention parts of what I heard.

How can anyone live with the rationality of experiences as such, especially when they feel the blame of the damage they have experienced, rather than absorb the love they were born to live with?

Fortunately, no one can screw up what and who we are and no one can screw anyone else up, either, without their permission.

I had a bumper sticker on my car that I discovered in early recovery that read, SCREW GUILT. Only a self-saboteur who finally lets the love out or in will fathom the rich relief available in such a moment.

When my heart breaks, light shines out from the cracks. Sometimes the reverse is true, like Leonard Cohen said.

Much pain evolves either up or down, dependent upon the distance between what we are and what we THINK we should be.

Quit thinking.


"Makes Your Wounds You Wisdom" (Apologies or Amends?)

A good friend got me to thinking this morning about the 5 Rules of how to NOT be “used”.

As we refocus our lives, we might swing wildly from extreme-to-extreme either to "make things right" or "not get f'd over again". When I was making amends in early sobriety, I not only apologized, I asked what the people that I f'd over wanted me to do to make it right.

Now, some people wanted me to put my body in an electric chair and I didn't honor their wishes. Forgiveness is my HP's Standard and therefore my standard, as well. Forgiveness of others and forgiveness of myself. But making amends gave me some peace, knowing I tried to make things right from my end. Knowing I 'did time' is also a relief, to some extent, though the damage of the Corruptional Facility and the people running it were pretty wounded and acted out frequently on their wounds.

But like people doing time, everyone is wounded and what we do with our wounds is what matters. Like Oprah said, "Make your wounds into wisdom."

You know, it makes a lot of sense to me that we do not confuse apologies for amends. The chronic repetition of apologies would drive ANYONE crazy after a while. Falling in love with potential ALONE doesn't go far enough, but I love seeing the potential in everything and everybody. I do my level best to love EVERYTHING in my life, even the f'd up parts because we all fall short in some area or other. But I see no future in getting blood from a turnip, either. Getting REAL requires help...higher help IMO...as I believe "Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the peace of God."

Yes, definitely believe all red flags, but know that the perception of red flags can also be damaged (again, an HP issue for clarity...I pray for my HP to direct my thinking and THEN I ALLOW MYSELF THE FREEDOM TO THINK ACCORDINGLY).

4: Know Your Worth was what took me the longest to get. Worth is an inside job, totally. A wise woman (Friend of Lois, Henrietta) told me to find out who I am and then be who I am. Her brief Elevator Speech turned into a life lesson for me (we were actually waiting for an elevator, actually, which is itself funny, ironically.

5: Don't lower your standards. I refer back to Henrietta again. It's imperative to 'adapt' to life on life's terms with all of its shifts and turns, but I used to be a friggin chameleon. If someone was unhappy with me, I would change ME (or tried to, usually unsuccessfully) to accommodate THEIR perceived interests or demands. This made me sick, really sick. I sometimes think I was trained this way from birth, so I had to REBIRTH myself (with miraculous help, I might add).

More on To Vote or Not To Vote

 Friends who all believe in voting weighed in to encourage voting. I am in the practice of considering both extremes in any important question or position, as well as the center-ground perspective. Think THINK Think. I attend a very conservative church, a very liberal church, and some moderate churches, and then made a decision about what works for me. I attended an Atheist Toastmasters group for a year to learn peacefulness that comes from the inside-out what everyone around me is arguing things I don’t subscribe to (I referred to them as “Born Again Atheists”, because 1) they were as fervent as Born Again Christians, and 2) they wanted to be the only ones who could finger-point at the Born Again concept. I won’t go into all of the settings where I learned to listen to opposing POV’s without judgement, but I practiced this for decades. The following commentary scratches only the surface of what I believe and remember, just because I am arguing a point doesn’t mean I believe it. I’m just trying to grow past my comfort zone.

When an OPEN & FREE debate is routinely practiced in presidential arenas (currently media circuses), including a voice for the Minority Opinion (not just getting their name on the ticket, which most persons bearing minority opinion rarely realized), then I'll believe "voting matters".

Revolutions are fostered through living what one believes (be the change) and historically takes place behind closed doors. The Illusion of Choice is alive and well in America until we get to see behind closed doors. Like they say, “Follow the Money” if you can…which you can’t.

I wish someone had the initiative to stand up and represent the opposing point of view (voting doesn’t matter), even if they don't believe it. No one knows anything about a point of view until they've argued both sides exhaustively.

Grassroots movements are rarely born by ballot. They might get to the ballot box eventually, but by the time it happens, the system that so many people believe in INfiltrates and strains out anything that doesn't make money for the media. Remember that 2% of the world’s population controls 98% of the world’s wealth (or thereabouts). This is possible thanks to voting (IF voting matters).

Let vote to make sexual orientation a constitutional issue, but then have a judge overturn the popular vote through the balances of constitutionality. Let make killing women who have abortions legal by voting like they want to do in Texas. Let’s vote for buying bullets, enough to place one in the head of everyone who does or doesn’t believe in Islam, Communism, Christianity, all in the name of stopping terrorism. Do you think Muslims are not terrorized when the “All Lies” Allies have bombs that I never voted for dropped on them? Where on the ballots does it say, “If you believe in killing your enemy, check yes or no on the respective box?

***I intend to revisit each post here and consider each argument in depth. This will take a while. In life, I have learned more from people who disagreed with me than from those who were “on the same page’ as me. That's what I was really after, POV's that differed from my own.

Fortunately, I didn't expect anyone to shut up or not complain because they don't agree with me. It's not all about me. Self-respect is respect for others as part of who I AM. WE are more than CONSENSUS and the mediocre freedom that grows from such stripped soil.

True Democracy would vote the well-to-do out of their bank accounts, so the rich insulate themselves by skirting the process (off-shore banking) that the average person makes up for in the form of higher taxes. People that vote people into power who vote for war, do not represent faith-based positions, like ‘love your enemies, forgive those who _____ (fill in the blank), 70X7, turn the other cheek, etc.

We don't "get to vote" over Love. We either do it or we don't. If it ain't about Love, it ain't about God. I enjoy the balance between church and state on those extremely rare occasions it actually transpires. So, I'll study everyone's post and THANK YOU AGAIN for taking the time to respond! I Love You! Pass It On! In the meanwhile, "Let them eat cake!"

Don't Waste Your Vote by Voting

Elie Wiesel said, “We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”  Maybe so, but the ills of neutrality are not remedied by "voting."

 

Voting is one of the most egregious forms of silence, the end product of which justifies the means to embrace nothing more than lukewarm mediocrity in a rudderless one-person, one vote democracy.

 

If all voices are invited to debate in the electoral process and utilize genuine 'freedom of speech,' then maybe we will be free to 'vote' about where 'our' tax dollars go. That will never happen because politicians either think we are too stupid to know where our tax dollars should go, or they are bribed or pressured by special interests (big money) to disregard the citizenry. To live in this so-called Representative Republic means WE get to decide how we spend our tax dollars, which everyone knows is laughable, because of the exclusionary means in which parties are left howling in the void of media blackball-ism. No money, no voice. 

 

We can all complain to our so-called representatives but said representatives vote upon the size of their paychecks, not us. We don't get to decide if our tax dollars will be used for war or peace. 

 

If all parties represent themselves in a national or local debate, then maybe we have a chance to listen to every perspective and make truly informed decisions.

 

Voting has become about money and nothing more.  Only people looking for a financial windfall run for office, but the aristocracy shuns those who enter the arena with honest motives, or worse yet, ruins their reputations for leaking secrets to the people. 

 

When it comes to U.S. Presidential Elections, I refuse to waste my vote by voting.  Voting for president in this country is an 'illusion of choice' geared to numb the public conscience.

 

So, I have to write an essay on voting, the virtues or the ridiculousness thereof.  Only prominent money democrats or republicans, separate wings of the same bird of prey are allowed to 'run' the country.  The Red Pill or the Blue Pill doesn't include the Green Pill, the Black Pill, the Gay Pill, the White Pill, the Native American Pill, the Strait Pill, the Muslim Pill, the Christian Pill, the Secular Pill, etc. and the ultimate balance of the ballot thereof. 

 

To err is human; to edit is divine, but who gets to write the laws?  Voters?  ROFLMAO!

Phoenix 490 Call for Speakers

Now that I'm starting to heal, albeit 'slowly but surely', I am VERY motivated to get Phoenix 490's show on the road! I'm reaching out to potential speakers.

For those who might not know or recall, Phoenix 490's focus is on forgiveness and healing of relationships, such as victim/offender, police/wounded communities, religion/religion, gay/straight, people going through divorce, etc.).

Would YOU be willing to speak sometime for Phoenix 490 to help us get going?

BTW, Phoenix is an obvious emblem for transmutation & rising from the ashes of tragedy and 490 = 70x7 represents how many times Christ said we are to forgive.

Next week we'll be doing an online ZOOM meeting. If you are willing and able to ZOOM with us, please provide some potential dates for us to meet. Hopefully we'll find a time that will accommodate everyone.