We Are Dancing to Oppose a Dictator and Possibly Save Our Lives: The Price We’ll Pay If We Don’t, and the Wondrous Benefits to So Many If We Do

Imagine being in a room outlined with gray clouds and not clearly delineated walls. And inside, so many people, either in black tuxedos and white shirts, or pastel-colored dresses. A few, however, stood out with slightly sharper but still muted colors, some red and blue, others orange, like a sunrise, or purple like dusk. It felt a bit like a dance competition on a fantasy world.

 

But there was a challenge and a threat in the air. How much opposition would we show in the uniqueness or individuality of our dance steps? How much would we say to our partners or shout to the room?

 

The opposition was, of course, to DT and his regime. But nowhere was HIS name spoken or did HIS image appear. It was all unstated, forbidden, but everyone knew what was going on. We were dancing to oppose a dictator and possibly save our lives, despite at the same time knowing that anyone who stood out too much, anyone who seemed too “different,” and especially anyone who took the role of leader could be “disappeared.”

 

I was standing a bit on the sidelines, occasionally talking with people, mostly watching; and looking much younger than I am now. One person I was watching was this older person, in their 80s or 90s, dressed in what traditionally was a woman’s clothes, yet in a sharper red. And they were dancing like a pro, with moves so individual they were shockingly in opposition to conforming and surrendering one’s freedom. I began to wonder if she would soon collapse and be taken out on a stretcher or just disappeared. And crazily, unbelievably, I was beginning to imagine letting loose like that, and dancing in ways I’ve never danced before. Would I then be disappeared? Would my health deteriorate? Or maybe, it was exactly dancing that made me feel young?

 

It’s remarkable that I had this dream the night after deciding to write a blog about a president that is so crazily, dangerously set on building displays to his ego. Tolerating any opposition to his ideas or any differences at all, or any policy that benefited the nation but not his own power and financial situation, was unthinkable, forbidden.

 

ABC News recently published a list of people attacked for defying him. It includes Democrats, Republicans, his former cabinet members, etc. The article could also include all the election workers, victims of Epstein’s crimes, tv hosts and entertainers, reporters, judges, and so many others who spoke out against him; or women alleging sexual misconduct, former employees suing him for nonpayment of wages, etc..

 

And his war against Iran– when DT claims he has brilliantly brought it to a conclusion, remember that he started it to begin with for no clearly justifiable reason.  Did he start it imagining he’d be glorified and thinking he would bring regime change to Iran as quickly as he subdued Venezuela? Did he start it to destroy Iran’s missile stockpile, end their nuclear capacity, or to help his friend Netanyahu? Or maybe he did it to reap profits from the war? Maybe it was a crazed whim? Or maybe, as some have alleged, it was to distract the nation from the persistent, increasing reports about his possible participation in Jeffrey Epstein abuses and crimes? His rationalizations kept changing.

 

His treaty or memorandum of understanding to end the war, is just an agreement to search for an agreement. And does it improve the situation in the Middle East? In an article in the Atlantic, national security scholar Tom Nichols wrote, “it is clear that Trump has failed to achieve every one of the goals he put forward for this war of choice, and now he is determined to deliver America’s capitulation as quickly as possible.” Historian Heather Cox Richardson agrees with Nichols. Iran is battered but stronger while we are strategically worse off than before the war.

 

Although the fighting will hopefully stop, Iran is now under an even more extremist regime than before, even more strongly in the grip of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The Strait of Hormuz will hopefully, sometime be opened– but it will be administered by Iran and they can shut it down at any time. They still have the capacity to sponsor terrorism– and we have spent billions, depleted weapons supplies, disrupted alliances, and lives have been lost not only of our soldiers but civilians in the Middle East. NPR reported the war has increased ‘disquiet’ in the military and worsened our ability to retain troops. Moody’s has calculated the war cost taxpayers $100 billion & counting.

 

In terms of Iran’s nuclear capacity, Iran promises not to develop nuclear weapons. Promises promises. But clearly, we are worse off than before 2018. It was in 2018 that DT tore up President Obama’s treaty of 2015, which had been successfully working to limit Iran. Even now, Iran is nowhere near developing the bomb.

 

Senator Cassidy, Republican from Louisiana, called the war the “Worst foreign policy blunder in decades.”…

 

*To read the ending of the post, please go to The Good Men Project. Thank you.

Myths that Can Be Bought Are Never Ones to Live: Moods, Myths, and Emotions

I was visiting friends in the town of Woodstock, NY. I could feel the town not only in my memory but in my bones. It was that visceral. I’d been visiting there for years. And it wasn’t about the music festival. The visceral feeling I had was very different from drugs, sex, and rock ‘n’ roll. In1969, I was in Sierra Leone, West Africa, in the Peace Corps and didn’t attend the festival.

 

I did go to a festival a year or two later, to see Joe Cocker. I also went to Woodstock to stay in a Tibetan Buddhist Monastery for a few days. I went there to climb a mountain nearby, to visit a native American site, and a Zen Monastery. And then friends began moving to the area.

 

And now I notice that whenever I visit, or wherever I walk in the town, I am engulfed in a mood, and expectation. Except for when I see my friends, everywhere I look, everything I see—the mountain just out of town, the central square, the tourist shops, bookstores, art galleries are covered by some deep-seated sense of a reality originating somewhere beyond sight; it’s more of a walking myth than a touchable reality.

 

And it’s clear that nothing I touch can live up to that myth. That’s one nature of a mood, and myth. They don’t fit into normal boxes. A mood sets the tone for emotion and actions. According to psychologist and pioneer in the study of emotion and facial expression, Dr. Paul Ekman, moods “lower the threshold for arousing” emotions. They set us up, ready us. Think about a time you were in an irritable mood, for example, and how ready you were to get annoyed, or angry. We pick from the world whatever will call forth the anger, or depression, sadness, frustration, inadequacy, etc. and we become less willing and able to stop the emotion.

 

If we’re in a “good mood,” or we feel open, then euphoria, joy, insight all might come more readily. Emotions are more short-lived. Moods can go on for much longer, for hours, maybe on and off for years.

 

Ekman asks, what brings forth a mood? One source can be physiological changes. For example, lack of sleep or food can make our children, or us, cranky. Sometimes, lack of sleep can also do the opposite. We get out of bed in the morning, and our cat or dog sees us, rolls over onto its back, shows us it’s belly, and puts its paws behind its ears. And we start laughing crazily.

 

But Ekman also speaks of dense emotional experiences, ones of high intensity, and often repeated, as causing a mood. For example, someone insults us, repeatedly, and a mood forms around the person and the place we experience them. And if we don’t get the chance to fully respond to the communication or provocation, to honestly express our emotion or to fully experience what we needed, there’s more of a chance a mood might develop. And we no longer see the person and place as an immediate, alive presence. Our freedom of mind, of action can be narrowed or lost. I remember as a nine-year-old having to harden myself in preparation for rebuffing the efforts of another student to insult or make me look foolish and hide my fear. It didn’t take long before the sight of the schoolroom began to evoke a mood of threat.

 

And this fits the myth of Woodstock. My visits to monasteries were short. I never stayed for a long enough session to fully grasp the meaning of the place, its teachings and practices. The experience was just a hint, a mere taste. A bell was rung but never allowed to ring in me. And now I enter a store and have an expectation of finding a book that will reach deeply into my heart or provide me with what the monastery promised. A mood can narrow our mind or remind us of expanded visions we haven’t yet seen. Stores sell myths; but myths that can be bought are never ones to be lived.

 

One day during our recent visit, my wife and friends went off shopping for flowers and I was alone. I went down to a stream in a wooded area, sat on a chair someone left on the rocks probably for just this purpose, and meditated. I started by counting my breaths; but once focused, I let go of the counting and just listened. Cars and trucks were passing by on a road nearby. There was this constant, steady, almost humming sound, which, as my mind quieted, was recognized as the stream speaking. And so many birds. So many I hadn’t heard until then and didn’t name until later– crows, robins, nuthatches, the harsh, loud voice of a pileated woodpecker. The quieter I was, the more I heard. And the less– no more myths or moods. No more getting lost in thoughts and memories….

 

*To read the whole post, please go to The Good Men Project.

 

 

When All that Remains of Me is A Deep and Gentle Laugh

It was about 9:00 am. I opened my eyes and got lost in colors and sounds, some of those sounds soon becoming voices. The voices were possibly from outside the house or inside, outside my head or inside a dream. They were just sounds, with a hint of something familiar. And I was just there, listening; listening to everything, and not wanting to do anything but lie there in the easy tired warmth that can come at the end of night.

 

I remember one time sitting with one of my cats. She gets so happy she almost talks, her words a language of cries, snorts, and kneading of the blanket. It’s a language I of course didn’t totally understand, but I get the drift. She also loves to rub noses, which always evokes a deep smile in me. I feel so full in her presence that all that remains of me is a deep and gentle laugh.

 

In both instances, I’m right there. But let’s say I want to tell someone about it. I get an urge to write this blog, for example, to talk about my funny cat or my taking refuge in the deep comfort of a warm morning, and I lose it. To write about her, I need to step out of my deep loving laugh as a snorting cat and look at me thinking about, and distinct from, her. But I guess writing can be another way to feel full or immersed, another sort of magic.

 

I was reading Zen master teacher Dainin Katagiri’s book, You Have to Say Something: Manifesting Zen Insight. He talked about there being a subtle feeling that exists before we decorate, expand, separate from or bury it with words. Before we move to approach, avoid, or stay still; before like, dislike, or feeling neutral arises. There’s a subtle state, he says, that we usually zoom right past. In that state, there’s “a oneness of our feeling with the object of our feeling.” A oneness with no sense of someone looking at it, no impulse to speak about it. His words shook me up and felt so alive and fresh. But as soon as I wrote them down

that life of meaning disappeared.

 

Back in February, I wrote a blog about re-discovering a leonine version of a Teddy Bear that I was given back when I was 5 or 6 and now lives on the back of the couch in the den of our home. That lion has seen so much of my life.

 

I look out my window at an apple tree that has been living outside our front door since we first built that door in 1972. That tree is so old, and so many limbs have fallen off, that what remains is a shell of what it once was, hollow, seemingly held up only by history and memories. And that tree goes back to other trees, a maple that had once lived in front of my ancestral home in Queens, NYC, back to when I was gifted with the lion. It goes back to pre-school, to a drawing of a tree that was used to formally teach me the word. It goes back to when I first spoke any word, probably Mama— Mama maybe being the root of all words. It goes back to ancient Sumeria and the roots of written language. It goes back to prehistoric caves like Lascaux in southern France and maybe the first symbolization. It goes back to the first humans or first hominids or first creatures to draw a breath. Or back maybe to the wind.

 

The tree isn’t me. Yet, without me and my wife and cats, who would know it, enjoy it, tell stories about it?  When I see it, a universe of me can appear….

 

*To read the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project:

How Deep Does this Now Go into That Later? Firing Colbert on The Late Show and Stealing Our Freedoms from Us

May 21st was the last night of Stephen Colbert’s Late Show on CBS. The show was terminated due to pressure on CBS by DT. The reason: in the words of the Guardian, Colbert had a unique ability to “provide a nightly antidote for millions of viewers discombobulated at the end of another day in DT’s dystopia.” He directly mocked the president, using humor to relieve viewer’s anxiety and bring clarity when the world seemed too cruel and insane for many of us to pay attention. And DT is too insecure to allow anyone to criticize let alone mock him. This final act in the not-so funny drama of Colbert’s hosting the Late Show began on July 14, 2025.

 

In 2024, an interview of then Vice President and presidential candidate Kamala Harris was aired on 60 Minutes. DT then sued CBS over the interview, claiming they had edited it to unfairly enhance how the Vice President sounded. And this editing supposedly caused the President to suffer “mental anguish.” CBS settled with him, agreeing to pay $16 million to his presidential library fund, despite the fact the suit was, according to even DT defenders like Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, likely unfounded. Others, that it lacked any substance, and raised grave concerns over press freedom. The network later claimed it fired Colbert not to satisfy DT but for “financial reasons.”

 

CBS is owned by Paramount, which starting in early 2024 was trying to merge with another production company, Skydance. For the merger to go ahead, it would need approval by the FCC, which was controlled by DT. The bribe worked; the merger was allowed to proceed. The settlement by CBS with DT was announced on July, 2, 2025. And on July 14th, 2025, a day that has proven courageous but also ominous and fateful, Colbert mocked the $16 million settlement. He called it a bribe, and that was the beginning of the end.

 

CBS News President and CEO Wendy McMahon and 60 Minutes executive producer Bill Owens both opposed the settlement and later resigned over it. Critics like Jon Stewart and David Letterman also called the settlement a bribe or an attempt at appeasement.

 

This wasn’t the only example of appeasement of the would-be dictator by the media, law firms, GOP Congressmembers, etc. and I hope it works out better than allied appeasement of Mr. Hitler before World War II. The examples of appeasement of DT are numerous. CBS lawyers bowed to DT by blocking an appearance on the Late Show by Texas State Rep. James Talarico, who was then running in the Democratic Texas Senate primary. And ABC News also paid $15 million to DT and his lawyers, to settle a defamation claim against news anchor George Stephanopoulos for statements he made about the civil judgment against DT for sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll.

 

An article in USA Today reported the Chairman of the FCC, Brendan Carr, a DT sycophant, told a conservative gathering that the President is winning the battle [presumably to stop freedom of speech]. “Look at the results. PBS defunded. NPR defunded. Joy Reid gone from MSNBC… Chuck Todd, Jim Acosta… John Dickerson gone. Colbert is leaving…”

 

And lately, DT’s been ever more furiously editing the Republican party…

 

*To read the whole article, please click on this link to The Good Men Project.

Freeing Ourselves from Fixations, Opening to Joy: The Paradox of Sky, The Revelation of Breath

Sometimes, I have a wonderful revelation and write or think about writing an article about it. And then I pick up a magazine, or read a book, and there, right in front of me, is the revelation. But it’s by another person. It’s by a Buddhist teacher, a Christian, Jewish, or Muslim mystic; a philosopher, a neighbor, or a friend. Often, the first impulse of feeling I have is frustration; what will I write now? There’s envy there, jealousy maybe, although how can I be jealous of Buddha or Jesus?

 

I need to remind myself there’ve been thousands of years of people on this planet. There are over 8 billion of us right now. Do I really expect myself to come up with something no one else ever thought of? The particulars, the context I write about might be different, the flavor. But total originality? And isn’t a revelation a revelation whether or not another person was graced by it before I was so graced? Do I have to compete over joy or get jealous over sharing whatever I think distinguishes me from others?

 

And would searching for total originality be just another way of isolating ourselves from others?

 

Occasionally, I notice a very different response. Oh, wow. I’m not alone. This is exciting. Or: I wonder how this other person describes it? I sort of know where the idea came from for me; but what’s the story for this other person? I feel curious, and a sense of joy for both of us. This response feels so much better.

 

It reminds me of what Buddhism calls Mudita, one of the Four Immeasurables or mental habits that liberate the heart. The other three are loving-kindness, compassion, and equanimity, or being able to discern, adjust to, and move with whatever occurs. Mudita means sympathetic or empathetic joy, or when we feel joyous in the happiness, achievement, good fortune, or in the skills and revelations of another person.

 

When we notice in ourselves these feelings, of envy, jealousy, or the like, and let them go by kindly recognizing how human the feelings are yet limiting. And we wish them good fortune. There’s relief there. There’s a sense of freedom, from fixations and walls of fear. We feel more cared for, and more able to create relationships and community.

 

Buddhist teacher Sharon Salzberg shares how we sometimes, like my first response above, begrudge another’s happiness or achievement. Some of us are even inclined to glory in another’s setbacks or failures. We might think there’s a limited stockpile of success or happiness; that if they get it, we won’t.

 

Yet, we can look up at the sky and feel a beauty that seems to go on forever. It might seem familiar, like it’s just sky, like we know it already. Or it can scare us, wake us up to how small we are in the universe. It can provide a revelation of infinity in the midst of the limited, normal, and every day. The sky is just so different from the trees and buildings that reach into but stand apart from it. The infinity of sky seems so different from the immensity of matter.

 

I remember standing on the great lawn in the middle of Central Park in New York City and looking downtown toward 59th Street. The contrast between the trees and the buildings shook me up for a second. The two sights, great trees and big buildings, just didn’t seem to go together. And then I looked up and saw the sky above— it didn’t fit at all. It was so vast it couldn’t be contained by any mass of trees or grid of streets.

 

Such a paradox: at a distance, there’s the vastness of sky. It’s blue, orange, gray, black or something that includes all or none of those choices. But close up, it’s air, invisible…

 

*To read the whole piece, please go to this link to The Good Men Project.

One Step: The Fight We’ve Been Given

For some reason, or maybe thousands of reasons, the actions of Louisiana governor Jeff Landry were just too much for me. He suspended an election. He stopped Congressional primary elections in his state from going forward, even though thousands had already voted. Why? So, he could redraw maps of election districts and prevent the interests of Black people, and Democrats, from being represented. He wants no more Black majority districts. White majority and Republican districts, yes. But Black, no. He stops an election solely to stop democracy. This is too much.

 

And there’s the GOP in Tennessee eliminating the one majority Black and Democratic House District in the state. They’re disenfranchising black voters and trying to give DT and his party an additional seat in the House. And it’s being done right in our face. Obvious. Blatant.

 

This racist, autocratic manipulation was made possible by the recent Supreme Court decision in Louisiana v Callais which further undermined the Voting Rights Act’s ability to counter discrimination in the construction of election districts. DT’s Republican Party is flat out doing all it can to stop a fair election in 2026 and forever afterwards. They fear us voters. They fear democracy. They fear they will lose badly unless they do everything possible to control the election outcome beforehand.

 

And I can’t help but think Landry’s action is just a practice run for November. It’s what DT is possibly planning if or when his party loses the House and Senate. During an interview with Reuters News Service back in January, he hinted at it out loud. According to Reuters: “He boasted that he had accomplished so much that ‘when you think about it, we shouldn’t even have an election.’” In the previous week, he briefly mentioned “cancelling” the 2026 elections to House Republicans.

 

Propublica published a report exposing several efforts DT is using to prepare to overturn the will of the voters in the midterms and dictate future election results. One notable example is he fired 75 federal officials in the DHS and DOJ tasked in 2020 and before that with safeguarding elections. Then he fired the professionals and replaced them with people loyal only to him, not the constitution. Ten of those appointees had worked to overturn the 2020 election. He also gutted the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency which worked to counter false claims about the election being hacked.

 

I don’t know what will happen. No one does. All we have is right now, what we see and know in this moment, and our plans and intentions for the next. Now, we have a chance. There are millions in this with us. The No Kings marches mobilized 8 million people. 15-20 million people took part in the Black Lives Matter demonstrations in the summer of 2020. Other countries had mass demonstrations to fight for freedom and justice. In June 1987 there was the Democracy Struggle in South Korea; in 2004, the Orange Revolution in Ukraine protested election fraud, forced a re-vote, and ushered in democratic reforms.

 

John Pavlovitz wrote an article published on April 4th by the Good Men Project asking if Americans were too lazy to stop a dictatorship. Are we too distracted, too lost in phone screens, and running so much on autopilot we lack the patience to maintain a struggle, even one to save our own freedom? To save our nation and planet? Or so we might mistakenly think. Despite the world being on fire, for too many of us everything looks perfectly normal– pickleball courts are full, weekend parties in full swing. We need to look deeper at our world and ourselves in order to better discern what’s here and what’s possible 

 

I shuddered reading Pavlovitz’s article, with both fear and a sense of self-questioning, despite recently writing two blogs expressing similar warnings and analysis as his. Do I personally have the determination and courage, the attention span to continue the struggle?…

 

*To read the whole blog, please click on this link to The Good Men Project. Thanks.

When Our Wanting Wants the Wanting to Never Cease; When We Feel Present, We Feel More Powerful, and are Less Likely to be Manipulated

May I be happy….

 

Like so many of my friends and neighbors, I sometimes feel that to spend any length of time other than fighting injustice, going to work, dealing with health issues, or caring for others is a waste of time. Having fun can get lost. Fun is fiddling while the earth burns. It’s putting flowers in the window of a building about to be demolished. It’s sitting silent while our rights and lives are being stolen from us.

 

May I be happy. May I be healthy. May I be at peace. May all beings be free from suffering.  I learned this loving-kindness practice, meditation, and wish from author and Buddhist teacher Sharon Salzberg and others. Visualizing myself happy, smiling, for example, can free me from ruminating, worrying, especially right now, in today’s world. We need to feel we can have moments of happiness despite the multiple threats to our world. If we feel we can’t be happy, we might give up and do nothing.

 

To feel we can be happy we need to feel that we have agency, that we can make changes in ourselves and the world around us.

 

To feel we can make changes, it’s helpful to feel present right here, right now. When we feel present, we more easily feel joy.

 

A few days ago, I heard a program on NPR. The program was an interview by Alicia Garceau of Michaeleen Doucleff, author of a new book called Dopamine Kids: A Science-Based Plan to Rewire Your Child’s Brain and Take Back Your Family in the Age of Screens and Ultra Processed Foods. The book applied evidence of how research paid for mainly by gambling industries was utilized by social media platforms and the food industry to addict us to their products.

 

Doucleff is a science writer and trained biochemist. Several years ago, she wanted to figure out how to reduce her family’s dependence on new tech and ultra processed foods. She found something surprising.

 

We think of the hormone and neurotransmitter dopamine as the pleasure molecule. What she discovered was dopamine doesn’t give us pleasure; instead, it ties us to what we’re doing. It creates a feeling of wanting. We eat chips and we keep eating them, not because they really satisfy us. They have little to no nutrition. But the more we eat, the more we want. We get caught by wanting.

 

And when we want, we feel empty. We feel what Buddhist philosopher David Loy describes as lacking; we feel that what we have, what we are is not enough. It’s part of the Buddhist understanding of the cause of suffering or feeling our lives are unsatisfactory. Wanting wants the wanting to never cease. It robs us of joy and agency.

 

Children intently desire and get focused on their screen time. They get caught up in “the infinite scroll” not because it brings them joy; the screen experience robs them of that. It promises so much, a sense of belonging, community, support. But this is a trick. It’s like a game advertised by a casino that promises us riches but delivers financial loss instead.

 

Casinos aim to create in the player a continuous, timeless, flow-like state so we more easily feel we have won something when we haven’t….

 

*To read the whole post, please go to The Good Men Project.

The Look We Give and the One We Get in Return Are Two Sides of One Reality: The Mirror that Makes Civilization Possible

I remember being told by my father not to catch anyone’s eyes when walking down a big city street. If we catch another person’s eyes, we might truly see who they are, but we’d also be seen by them; we’d become vulnerable. Seeing and being seen are linked. The look we give and the one we get are two sides of one reality.

 

Likewise, most of us have experienced yawning when we see another person yawning. Or felt tears coming to our eyes when we saw someone weeping– or felt bad when we noticed someone else feeling bad. Maybe for a similar reason, simply smiling can make us feel more like– smiling. Why is that?

 

In the book Ethical Wisdom: What Makes Us Good, the author, Mark Matousek details how “a newborn baby, barely able to see, can imitate the facial expression of adults within one hour of delivery.” When the child imitates a caregiver, this creates a coupling between the baby’s expressions, its emotions, and the other person. When a baby sees its mother or guardian, it waits for the other to see it. And when she does see him, her, or them, the baby lights up.

 

Science fascinates me. Or maybe it’s the ability to closely study reality and recognize patterns and connections underlying what drives us to do what we do or feel what we feel. It can help us perceive the universe more “objectively,” meaning relatively free from the enclosure of ego, or without too many of our biases and personal stories getting in the way.

 

When I was teaching Psychological Literature for high school students, we read chapters in books by neuroscientist V. S Ramachandran, especially The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Quest for What Makes Us Human. This book exemplified what I loved about science. It talked about so many topics that expanded our imagination and understanding of our humanity. It introduced us to imposter’s or Capgras syndrome, where we look at a person we know well, like our spouse or parent, and experience them as a stranger. Or synesthesia, which is when we blend our senses, so we might taste colors, see sounds, or hear shapes.

 

Students both loved the reading and yet had trouble believing the power of our brain to both expand our sense of ourselves or distort how we experienced the world.

 

It introduced us to one of the most fascinating discoveries in recent memory, the discovery of cells in the brain called mirror neurons. This discovery so captured the imagination of many people that it led to intense speculation; both scientists and non-scientists drawing conclusions before the science could catch up with our yearning for answers. I felt if the discovery hadn’t been made, someone would have had to make it up. As a result, attacks on the science began, and the whole subject went from the bright lights of headlines to the darkness of doubt and anger.

 

In the 1990s, a group of Italian scientists led by Giacomo Rizzolatti, at the University of Parma, discovered something weird. They were studying monkey behavior. When a monkey noticed an object, or interacted with it, for example reaching out their hand to grasp a peanut, certain sets of neurons fired. These same neurons also fired when the monkey watched other monkeys doing the same thing. In other words, they were understanding what the other was doing through having their own neurons fire as if they were doing it. They were “reading the other’s mind” by modeling themselves doing the action. Ramachandran described these neurons as virtual reality simulators provided by nature to help us understand the intention of others. They were natural empathy generators.

 

One of my students asked, if we can so model the actions of others, how come we don’t repeat them? Why don’t we constantly walk around imitating others?…

 

*To read the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project:

If We Can’t Be Silent, How Then Can We Hear Deeply? Expecting God to Send a Text

How often do we look up to the sky, or sit at our desk or in our bed, and we ask a question, or want to, of a God or the universe?

 

We want the universe to be like AI, or social media. Or we want God to speak at the other end of a text but never get Her, Him, It, or Them. Or we want a voice in a cloud to speak to us, in English or whatever language we prefer. Or maybe we engage in one of those conversations with ourselves that so occupy our time, and we divide ourselves in two, into a questioner and a responder, but all we get in response is a repeat of something old and familiar. The universe then feels silent to us, even empty. Oh, or something happens to us, and we think the universe is sending us the event as a message.

 

As I was thinking about this, one of my cats, then another, went to the glass outer door in my den and intently stared out the window. One, our girl, looked slowly from side to side, as if following something, while the other stared straight ahead. I don’t know if it was her eyes that were tracking something, or her hearing, but whatever it was, it was invisible to me. They were both seeing with more than their eyes. There was no distraction for them from looking, just attention.

 

Maybe the problem is in where we look, or how we ask. In Exodus 3:1-6 God says to Moses, from a burning bush, “Moses, Moses! Here I am.” Or in the 1950s classic religious movie, The Ten Commandments, Charlton Heston stands over the Red Sea, parts his arms, and speaks “Behold His mighty hands.” And God answers by parting the sea. Maybe we’d like such a clear and dramatic response, but it’s a bit much to ask. I’ve never personally seen seas parted by command or heard God’s voice in a bush.

 

Maybe we expect the answer to come in a certain way, and the expectation blinds us to the answer. We might look, for example, outside ourselves, or to some authority or a defined being not ourselves. Or to the thoughts and images in our minds, not the feelings and sensations in our bodies.

 

Maybe we’re hearing the speech of the Burning Bush wrong. Maybe, as some scholars say, we could hear God’s “Here I am,” as “Look Here;” see all this, see this right here.

 

Describing Buddhist practice in his book, You Have to Say Something: Manifesting Zen Insight, Dainin Katagiri, a central figure in the early transmission of Buddhism to the US, says that to truly see a teacher, or see anybody, you cannot maintain an expectation of a certain response. If you have a preconceived idea of a meeting, there’s no meeting.

 

We often create such noise in ourselves. We know this. We know people who can’t stand silence and constantly play the tv or listen to their earbuds or search social media and suffer from FOMO. The world right now is bad enough, so terribly frightening. So, silence, if we can hear it, can be so healing. We need to give ourselves a break, a pause, a bit of kindness. If we can’t be silent, how can we listen deeply?

 

Maybe we’d hear more if we asked ourselves a question and then just listened, listened not just to words, but to the entirety of the moment when we heard the question in ourselves? We ask and then feel the asking. Maybe then we’d hear our own mind more clearly….

 

*To read the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project.

 

To Better Understand the Echoes of What We Do and Say: What Would Happen If We Felt the Rivers of the Earth as the Veins of Our Body?

In a book titled In the Absence of the Ordinary: Soul Work for Times of Uncertainty, the author, Francis Weller, says “we can no longer divide the inside from the outside.” Maybe the pandemic, the climate emergency, regional wars, economic instability, and I’d add, this new administration, have made that illusory division uncomfortable and too painful to live with.

 

Weller thinks we’ve begun to feel there’s no “ordinary” anymore. He describes a felt sense that the continuity of history and our participation in it have altered. Increasingly, we “register in our souls” the sorrows of the world. The sorrow of others, of our planet, is our sorrow. As climate change stresses forests, oceans, the fabric of natural life, social bonds also fray, and clarity of thought diminishes. The world, or at least human civilization, seems to be teetering on an edge. Yet the fate of the world’s climate and history runs right through us. What an unbearable but necessary burden.

 

I hope he’s correct, but I don’t know. How many of “us” now fit Weller’s analysis? Polls show increasing concern about the environment and climate. They show disapproval of the DT administration’s wars, economic policies, and cuts to healthcare. Most of my community of friends, family, and neighbors fit his analysis, but certainly not others. Certainly not the sycophants or supporters of the administration. But will enough of us wake up in time?

 

Dividing up the world, analyzing and breaking down situations and problems, is often necessary and useful, but it yields only partial truths. It can create problems even as it solves others. But dividing ourselves emotionally from the world— never. We need to develop a better awareness of our entanglement with everything around us so we can better understand the echoes of what we do and say.

 

To counter the illusion of a divisive self, Weller recommends we increase our tolerance and ability to descend into the dark mythic underworld, the world of dreams, the unknown. We so often fear or resist the uncertain. We need to allow ourselves to do what we can in this unbearable situation; to let go of much of the life we’ve known so we can step into the unknown. So, we reach into the darkness to find the inspiration and resources to build something new, in harmony with the natural world, and I think just.

 

Weller recommends 5 disciplines to explore and strengthen in ourselves so we can better face the depths of what’s happening.

  1. Deep listening: to sit quietly and listen for the truth spoken and lived by others and the trees, hills, water, around us. Hear what needs to be heard.
  2. Restraint: take a moment before acting to pause, breathe, and reflect.
  3. Humility: look around and become sensitive to how we depend on one another, how enmeshed we all are in each other. And I’d add, realize that we’re all prone to think our view is right and true; so, in order not to be wrong, we must recognize the “right/s” of others.
  4. Embrace not-knowing. Acknowledge we never know what’s going to happen. We don’t even know all that’s really happening right here in front of us. But by acknowledging this, and living it, we can be more open, vulnerable, and humble. We can take in more than possible otherwise.
  5. Let go: Everything is impermanent, always changing. But we can better change in harmony with the world when we no longer try to control all that happens in it.

 

But descending into what Weller calls the dark is, I think, also entering what is always right here, now. It’s just that we don’t look at it or see it. In every perception, there’s not just us and what we look at; there’s the looking, or the awareness itself. When we are aware of awareness, we can be so present. It almost seems unnecessary or repetitive to say it, but when we see another human being, what we experience is not just the person but our awareness of them. That tree, that artwork, has ourselves in it. We are never not of this world. It’s our home. And when we feel this, it can be startling and beautiful. It can awaken the energy needed to dare, to care, to create, and to act.

 

Years ago, I hitch-hiked to the west coast and took a side trip to the Grand Canyon. I stood at the edge of the Canyon, staring into its depths; the strata of soil, stone, and colors seemed to extend forever. Deep at the bottom, a barely perceived blue river. Then a family of 5 parked and exited their car. The woman in the group was maybe 40 years old and totally wrapped up corralling her 3 kids. When she reached the edge near me, her attempt at controlling her children, her focus on anything other than the canyon, was totally forgotten. All she had, or all she was, was an awareness of what was seen and felt. She just looked out at the canyon and it seemed she felt the utter incomprehensibility of everything in front of her. And all she could say was, “Oh, my God. Oh my God.”

 

We need these “Oh, my God” moments, moments of awareness of a reality so startlingly real. And it might not be obvious, but demonstrating with thousands of others for a political cause while thinking with a perspective larger than ourselves alone— acting to save our democracy, healthcare, and planet— ”Oh, my God.”

 

When I was parking my car near a friend’s home several blocks from the location of the last No Kings demonstration, the size and atmosphere of the event became clear. There were so many cars, so many people. It was like a river of people flowing together, a powerful, even joyous river…

 

*To read the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project.