Reflections on The Drive to Know: Reality is More than Words and People are Not Just Concepts

The urge to know, to have an answer, to understand, to explain— this is such a powerful drive in our lives. So many writers, philosophers, fellow human beings have thought and written about this. And we feel it all the time. We don’t hear from a friend or loved one and we send a text, and worry-wait for a reply. We get in the car in a snowstorm yet want to know if we’re being stupid driving anywhere. And when we listen to the news lately, we might wonder what will succeed in making things better? What else might be taken from us, or what will be revealed that will assure democracy and our humanity will prevail over autocracy and cruelty? There can be such pain and discomfort in not-knowing.

 

Many of us can recall a time we felt some new pain and wondered what the cause was. A pain without an explanation is a pain doubled. Sometimes, not-knowing can be fun and add openness, excitement, and anticipation to our lives. But often, it’s just another source of worry.

 

We have this sense of ourselves, of what it’s like to reflect on our feelings or experiences. I think I know what it feels like to be me.

 

But there are times that I’m not so sure. For example, when I realize my attitude, energy level, or what I enjoy doing has changed. Or when so much is going on inside my mind it seems like foreign territory, and I have no idea where it all came from or where it’s leading me. Our inner world can feel so vast and elusive. Or sometimes someone says something about me that shocks me. And as I get older, this rate of change intensifies. I never know from day to day how I’ll be or, of course, what will happen. This is another dimension of not-knowing. We might feel we don’t even know ourselves. How can we control what we don’t know?

 

And then there’s the negativity bias, where we imagine the worst so we’re ready to take action to prevent it. And we develop a theory about ourselves that’s just too awful to face and we cease to care about the reality; we catastrophise and paralyze ourselves. In this case, friends can help us perceive and face what we need to face but haven’t.

 

The same is true if a neighbor, friend, or loved one is in pain. If we don’t know the cause, we worry twice as much about them. We want to help. This is part of our natural compassion. If we have an explanation, a reason, even a mere theory of a cause, we worry less. We have a way to help. Even if the reality is bad, there’s often a sense of comfort in knowing.

 

But sometimes the suggestions we offer others can be hurtful. We can unknowingly imply we’re superior in some way, or that the person is ignorant, or doesn’t know what we think they should know. We can’t totally get into their mind with ours and maybe we don’t want to use our empathy and imagination to even try do so.

 

One issue here is feeling hurt and helpless in the face of another’s pain. We can feel a loss of control in being powerless to help. So, we reach for something to give us that control. But I wonder about control. What does it really mean?

 

We might also expect there to be reasons for things. Not just causes, but something like God delivering prizes and penalties. When something awful happens to a good person, and to ourselves, we might try to figure out “what did we do to deserve this?” But I think God is too big or the intelligence of the universe too inclusive to think in terms prizes and penalties. Maybe, the teaching about Karma is correct, and one thing, one action, one intention simply sets up the conditions for other actions and intentions.

 

And when I try so hard to find an explanation, I could simply be enjoying expanding my knowledge. I love reading and learning. But it can also be an attempt to turn reality into words and people into concepts. A word is so much smaller than the reality it purports to explain. And a concept of a person can describe at most a tiny particle of them. A little bit of humility about what we think we know can go a long way….

 

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

Time Tunnels and Meditating Lions: Searching Beyond Memories for Who I Was Then, And Who I’m Being Now

There is a lion, a leonine version of a Teddy Bear, sitting on the back of the couch in my den. When I look at him, I don’t know what to make of him.

 

When I was young, maybe 5 or 6, my parents gave my brother and me stuffed animals. I thought my lion had a very dignified expression and so I was a bit reluctant to cuddle with him, even though I was of an age when cuddling with stuffed animals was the way of things; and where the imagination was so powerful that simply holding something in mind made it real. The lion resided at the end of my bed, absorbing not only my presence but my dreams, pains, and wishes.

 

And although I wasn’t conscious of it at the time, it spoke to me of my parent’s love. I was so engulfed in it then, I didn’t distinguish it from the home I lived in, my brother, our cousins and neighbors, our dog, the flowers, the rose bushes my mom had planted, the maple tree in the front of the house. It took a while for the maybe inevitable separation to occur.

 

I certainly didn’t realize when I was so young how many people didn’t have the love and resources in their lives that I did, or how much my parents had given me. I was deeply disturbed by but didn’t understand the lack of loving care in many lives, and certainly didn’t understand the poverty, hate and violence that too often plagued the lives of so many. But when I was in college and 3 friends came home with me and stayed overnight, they woke me up to how privileged I was. They joked they wished they had had my parents, and my dog, and maybe the lion, for themselves.

 

I don’t know exactly when, and I don’t know to where he disappeared, but for many years the lion was gone from my life. Probably most of us let go of childhood creatures of comfort, as we no longer feel a need for them– or don’t want anyone else to know that we once felt a need for them. But sometime about 10 years ago, after both my parents had died, my brother found him amongst their possessions and returned him to me.

 

And as I look at him now, I don’t know what to make of him. He’s certainly an artifact of my deep past and is somehow larger in meaning than anything I could say about him. Sometimes, he seems to be me, or to be my 5-year-old self, sitting there on the couch. And he’s trying to talk with me from down a long tunnel made of silence, trying to share some secret, or some game we had played. Or maybe to share what life felt like back then. When I see him, my mind and emotions often jump back and forth, searching beyond memories for the sense of who I then was.

 

We’re all surrounded by such time tunnels, of people, images, buildings, trees, and maybe little lions and bears or the equivalents. Their silence takes us back to memories, feelings, or just to presence. There can be love and joy there. There can be fear, pain, and terrible loss there, not only in the memory but in the journey.  And by taking time to stop and just focus on what’s around us, or on a breath, the feel of air on our face; acknowledging what’s there, noticing as best we can in that moment what lives in the tunnel without feeding it, our lives benefit greatly….

 

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

The Example of Minneapolis; Our Needs are Only One Line in a Song of Everyone’s Needs

The world, and not just the human world, looks so threatened right now. One thing that gives me hope when hope seems impossible or seems like more of a blindfold than a clear viewing, is the response of the people of Minneapolis to the violent attack on them by our own federal government.

 

Every day in this country, we experience the supposed leader of the “free world” causing new threats, new horrors and shocks. So many lives are being upended and destroyed. This is what DT brings to us. Yet, to change this and survive the assault, I think we must look to what’s happening in Minneapolis. There, in eye-scorching detail, is the affliction– and the cure.

 

The affliction: we see it daily. So many injured and arrested. Two innocent, caring people dead. The US government invading an American city, attacking its own citizens, and lying about what they’re doing and why. 3000 members of DT’s personal army roaming the city streets, obstructing the lives of people, not arresting supposed criminals but anyone brown, black, or anyone who gets in their way. Immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than people born in the US. ICE is ripping people from cars, schools, hospitals, places of work and worship. Acting as if the rule of law never existed or didn’t apply to them. These actions cannot be forgotten or excused just because the DT administration has finally announced they will soon end the ICE invasion in Minnesota.

 

The murders of ICU nurse for the US Department of Veterans Affairs, Alex Pretti, and poet and loving mother of 3, Renee Nicole Good, wake us up to the danger every one of us now faces. Every one of us. But reading about the response by the people of Minneapolis to such violence gives me hope and direction; it rescues me and could possibly rescue all of us from the fear and depression DT seems to purposefully instigate. This is the cure. The people of Minnesota are our neighbors. By nonviolently standing up, in a disciplined and caring manner, to oppose this government ordered violence and destruction, they are standing with all of us. But they aren’t just protesting in the streets.

 

A mother of a newborn baby and a 16 year old girl was picked up by ICE on her way to work, leaving 2 children at home, uncared for by any government agency. The 16 year old did her best, but her sibling was used to being breast fed. She called a neighbor, who was breast-feeding her own child, for assistance. The neighbor stepped in, helping the children with food and sharing her own breast milk with the baby.

 

Despite the raids by ICE interfering with business, ripping shop owners and workers from their stores and homes, several individuals and businesses have been doing what they can to help their neighbors. A family was seized by ICE and held in a facility in Texas. Upon their release, a Minnesota bookstore raised $6,000 to help the family return to their lives. A café in Minneapolis has been offering their neighbors free food until ICE is gone from the state. Doctors are making home visits to those needing medical assistance and who fear exposing themselves to ICE on the streets.

 

As the BBC points out, “Operation Metro Surge,” DT’s invasion of Minnesota began after his racist rant against Somali immigrants. He called them “garbage,” said their country is “no good for a reason.”  The political purpose of his comments and the invasion that followed are revealed by his vicious attacks on Somali Democrat and Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, an outspoken critic of DT. DT divides and divides, setting one against another. No community can exist peacefully inside a wall of hate….

 

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

Hitch-Hiking the Unknown: The Intimacy of Night

It’s 3 am, no moon, just darkness. I’m sitting in the living room in a la-Z-boy and turn on a lamp to provide just enough light to write by. And it feels like a whole universe fits under this canopy of light. It’s so quiet. So alone. Nothing yanks at me for attention, except maybe the hands of sleep. They almost close my eyes, almost.

 

There’s this woodblock print by a prolific and fantastic Japanese artist named Kawase Hasui. It’s of The Sanggye Pavilion or temple, located by a body of water in Korea. The structure is so strong, but bare. In the background, trees, of beautiful oranges, reds, and yellows. A man stands alone by the bright trees and water, just like I sit alone by the dark.

 

We might often think of ourselves as alone, especially when it’s night, and we’re in pain of some sort, or afraid, have suffered a loss; or we feel the breath of death on our face. Maybe that’s why the man in the woodblock gets to me. He’s clearly not young, but still very upright. He’s looking off to the autumn trees. Is it autumn in the woodblock because it’s late in the man’s life?

 

It’s so hard to look directly at our own aging and to understand it. It sneaks around all the seconds of life until suddenly, it’s just there. A pain, a sickness, a lost friend. How do we come to realize we only live because we age, and that our constant changing is what carries us through life? And when we’re awake to these changes, like we can be in the quiet dark of 3 am, so much becomes clearer to us. Our mind and the world feel so intimately here for us.

 

And when we’re awake like this at 3 am and we’re lucky enough to be relatively pain-free and open to consciously focusing on our existence in this very moment, we can better discern and decide the great matters of our lives. Consciousness was created just for this purpose, to see who we are, see ourselves both here, alone, and in a greater context, carried by the entirety of life, so we can better make decisions about what we do next with our life.

 

When I was 24 or so I hitch-hiked from NYC to San Francisco and Berkeley. It was the 1970s, a very different time than this one, and soon after I had returned from the Peace Corps in Sierra Leone. Hitch-hiking was never the safest way to travel. But I was trying to figure out what to do with my life.  And when we’re out there like that, on the road, thumb out, so blatantly in the realm of the unknown, with little to serve as protective walls between us and the vagaries of what we might be exposed to, anything can happen at any time. We can get arrested, attacked, run into people from our past. Run into insights and beauties of all kinds.

 

I ran into someone from college, who had been in the theatre group I was once part of, and we spent a wonderful afternoon together. I met and stayed with one cousin and by chance ran into another. What I needed, I found.

 

One day, I decided to hitch-hike north, to Mendocino, California, to find a friend I had grown up with. All I knew about where she lived was that she was part of a commune in northern California⎼ and there were communes in Mendocino. I got a ride to a small town most of the way to my destination. But then nothing. No cars, no rides.

 

I was beginning to think my whole plan was crazy. How could I imagine I could just set off without knowing my destination and actually arrive there? Then a car stopped on the opposite side of the road and a woman emerged from the car. She had a small backpack and soon put out her thumb. After maybe a half hour of doing little but standing on opposite sides of the road wondering about each other, we smiled back and forth. I crossed the road, and we started to chat.

 

She asked where I was going, and I told her I was looking for a friend (I’ll call) Jo, who was living in a commune somewhere in northern California. My new acquaintance said she lived in a commune in the area. And a housemate of hers, named Jo, had just left for New York to meet up with a friend who had just returned from the Peace Corps. Me.

 

Just then a car stopped for her. She told me the name and location of the commune and then left with her ride. I eventually got to the commune, stayed for a few days, and then returned to Berkeley. It took a few months before Jo and I could get together….

 

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

A Dream of a Revitalized Democracy: An Image of a Conformist State and a Vast Cemetery of Buried Selves

Can you imagine living in a nation where oppression and conformity rules? Where no diversity of thought is accepted? Where people are persecuted and prosecuted for thinking differently than the ruler?

 

This is the DT nation. We are at a critical point right now, or maybe each moment of this administration has been critical, or maniacal, malignant. For years, he’s been threatening anyone who opposes or disagrees with him. Now, it’s clear to most that he’s more focused on revenge and persecution than protecting our nation, more focused on his own greed than the well-being of Americans.

 

Just recently, DT’s DOJ started a criminal investigation of the chair of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, who was appointed by DT himself in 2017. Powell’s “crime”⎼ defending the Federal Reserve’s legal independence from the President. Powell dared to refuse to bow down to DT’s command to lower interest rates quickly and cease caring about the long-term effects on the economy and the American people. The DOJ recently initiated an investigation into a modest overrun in a Federal Reserve construction project as a pretext to frighten Powell into compliance. The threats did not work; Powell has clearly and forcefully spoken out about the true nature of DT’s investigation.

 

At the same time, the cost of DT’s own ego-project of illegally tearing down the East Wing of the White House to construct a palatial ballroom has doubled. The project is largely funded with bribes from corporations.

 

As he promised during his campaign for president, DT has also gone after other political and legal figures like Letitia James, Lisa Cook, James Comey, John Bolton, John Brennan, Jack Smith, Adam Schiff, Elissa Slotkin; and recently, his cronies took aim at Hillary and Bill Clinton. He’s attacked, and often worked to fire entertainers like Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Bruce Sprinstein. He defunded independent media like the Public Broadcasting Company, inserted himself into mergers, and/or eliminated government permits to force media sources to pull stories that oppose or expose DT’s wrongdoing. He’s attacked universities and  the independence of educational institutions, defunded research and other programs, persecuted student activists. The list goes on and on.

 

And now he’s sent 1,000 additional ice agents to join the already deployed 2,000 agents in Minneapolis and other cities in Minnesota. The mission: to attack those protesting the murder of Renee Nicole Good by ICE and the arrest and deportation of brown immigrants, many of whom are citizens. The supposed purpose was to arrest illegal immigrants. They are also citing, without clear evidence, fraud by some Somali immigrants in their running of daycare centers.

The presence of all these masked agents, using tear gas, pepper spray, beatings, shootings, and forceful arrest tactics against protestors has inflamed the situation. Is he purposefully trying to incite the citizens of this democratic-voting state into a violent response so he could invoke the insurrection act, deploy the military on US soil, and further disrupt, hurt, and deprive citizens even further of their rights? According to several sources including The Washington Post, this is exactly his plan. He appears to be laying the groundwork for this in his verbal attacks on the political leaders and protestors in Minnesota.

 

In the same week, DT threatened Iran with some form of intervention for its violent response to demonstrators. According to CBS, possibly 12,000 people were killed in Iran over two weeks of protest. Considering what DT’s doing in Minneapolis and other cities, his claim to care about the fate of protestors is ridiculous.

 

In 2016, campaigning in Iowa, he joked or bragged he “could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters.” The shooting of Renee Good might be such a crime committed to serve his interests….

 

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

Sometimes, We Want a Do-Over: When We Are Present Enough, Mindful Enough, Maybe Every Moment Will Be Enough

Don’t we all, at some time in our lives, want a re-take, a do-over? To take back something said in haste? To re-take an exam? Be more aware of a threat coming at us so we can know better how to face or prevent it? Learn from a mistake before it’s made?

 

Such is the premise behind Mitch Albom’s book Twice: A Novel. What If You Got to Do Everything in Your Life⎼Again? A story that awakens us to the power of love, time, and each moment of life. It’s a strangely compelling book.

 

It’s also a very American novel, even though a short but important portion takes place in Kenya. It starts with public school, sports teams, young love, the pressure to be accepted for who we are, to fit in. The main character, Alfred, or Alfie inherits from his mother the gift of being able to re-take a moment of life. All he has to do is whisper to himself “twice” and he’s back in the morning before. But it’s not the word itself that does it. It’s the reality of the wish, or intention. The gift allows him to fight bullies, win friends, and pass tests, academic or otherwise.

 

The night I started reading the book I wound up spending hours dreaming it. I inhabited the story. In the novel, Alfie’s mother dies when he’s young and he can’t save her. He must grow up living only with his father, who forever misses his wife. She was in my dreams that night. Alfie has a best friend named Wesley who dies young after joining the marines. Wesley was in my dreams.

 

So, there are limits to the power. It can’t change the time of someone’s death. And when Alfie falls in love, he only gets one chance at getting that person to love him back. And there are negatives; if we think we can re-do a moment of life, moments can seem less precious. We might not commit to them, and we live at more of a distance from ourselves and others. Alfie realizes we pay closer attention to life when it’s lived in the present tense.

 

When I was teaching high school, one of my classes was called Questions. It was a philosophy class, and students were asked to inquire into the deepest questions they were willing to share. The first question of the year always concerned death⎼ how to face it, how to help others facing it, what did different philosophies and religions say about it, “why” is there death, etc. One of the books we often read was the bestselling memoir of all time, Albom’s Tuesday’s With Morrie: An Old Man, A Young Man, and Life’s Greatest Lesson. Being a teen means living a search for authenticity; Morrie met the criteria.

 

When Albom was a young man in college, Morrie Schwartz was his sociology professor. One night, years after graduating, years after not seeing his old professor, he watched Ted Koppel’s Nightline on tv. The guest was Morrie. The topic: Morrie was dying from ALS. After seeing this, Mitch decides to visit his old professor. They re-kindle their relationship, with Morrie once again as Mitch’s teacher, or coach. He gets a second chance to ask the biggest questions. They establish a new curriculum: of life, death, love and meaning⎼ and how to live with silence. Morrie had offered himself up for 14 Tuesdays as a living lesson in dying. His funeral was the final exam.

 

Alfie’s grandmother, Ya Ya, is in a nursing home for much of the novel. It’s a sad place. The residents can do little except wait for death. Alfie can’t say “twice” and stop her from aging. We all age; if we get to live until we’re considered “senior” citizens, we get the opportunity to expand our sense of self….

 

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

A Time to Remember That What We Need Can and Must Be Fought for and Won: When Our Breath and Heart Find Each Other

The winter holidays⎼ they bring up so much for so many of us. As with many others, I have almost always looked forward to the holidays. When I was a child, I looked forward to gifts and family celebrations. As a student and teacher, I looked forward to a vacation from work. Now that I’m retired, my focus is on getting together with family and friends. However, there were years in college that I dreaded the holidays, especially the New Year. If I didn’t have a family gathering, a party to go to, friends to be with, a date, the holidays could be lonely and alienating.

And this year especially, so hurtful. The cost of toys, presents, for example, are just too expensive. The cost of simple living is too expensive. My wife and I ignore gift-giving for ourselves. The only gift we give each other is our presence. Yet, for the children we know and charities⎼ it’s a different story. And the commercialization obscures if not undermines the deeper meaning of such moments in time.

The holidays could be so rich. Hanukah is a festival of light and freedom. Kwanzaa of family, community, and culture. Christmas of joy in the birth of Jesus. So much meaning in the depths of the holidays.

The solstice was just last week. Humans have, possibly forever, celebrated solstice, the longest reign of night, and the beginning of the cold, at least in the Northern hemisphere where I live. It’s traditionally a time to engage in rituals to assure that the sun will come again, that spring will follow winter, warmth follow cold, renewal follow hibernation.

The holidays thus have a sacred dimension, a connection to a depth of life and history. Maybe every moment does, too. Their significance is not just religious. The holidays celebrate workers getting a break from intense labor. They signify a recognition of shared humanity, however dim that recognition often was in the past and might be so today.

Every one of us needs time to rest, even for those who get no time off for the holidays. The fact that we have days of rest is beyond a right; it’s a sacred necessity.

Every one of us needs time to step back and contemplate why we’re here on this earth. We need to renew ourselves and our relationships with what surrounds us⎼ to stop, maybe close our eyes and allow ourselves to feel our feet on the ground. To feel right now, there’s no separation⎼ we can never step off the earth or out of the universe that sustains us. Realizing this is a sacred awakening.

We might also feel isolated from others. But we carry other people with us always, in our memories, in our language, in our genes, in our hopes and dreams. Feeling this is a sacred remembrance. When we feel isolated, we’re afraid. When we feel present, fear is diminished.

And there have been moments lately when I just start crying internally. I almost never let it out. Who knows what will emerge. Maybe holidays are here so when no one⎼ or just one dear someone⎼ is around, our breath and our heart can find each other.

In the past, people from many nations fought for a five-day workweek, fighting against those who oppressed them⎼ and they were successful. But today, many are forced to work more than one job just to meet basic economic needs, while the DT regime cuts programs like SNAP, MEDICAID, Headstart, school lunch programs that once helped make life possible for many. He’s working to undermine the power of the people, and is giving to the rich whatever they can steal from the rest of us.

 

*This is a rewrite of an older blog.

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

Stripping the Border of Agents Is Not the Way to Stop the Drug Trade: A Performance that Threatens the Reality

I was driving home listening to MSNOW. The Attorney General of Arizona, Kris Mayes, was talking with MSNOW newscaster Katy Tur about how DT’s policies were increasing the influx of fentanyl and human trafficking along our southern border. Even though I should be used to such disturbing information, I still get shocked by it.

 

Arizona is at the heart of the drug trade, said Mayes. Yet, DT has moved so many ICE and border patrol agents from the Sothern border to other parts of the nation to carry out cruel and possibly illegal raids and arrests that now border stations lie empty. One of the biggest fentanyl drug corridors into our nation runs on Arizona State Route 82, but it’s now unguarded. Yet, ICE raids in the north and elsewhere net many more carpenters, farm workers, even military veterans than criminals. Mayes said she asked AG Pam Bondi for 50 more agents for the southern border. Instead, Bondi took even more away. Meanwhile, the importation of fentanyl is up 10%. And who knows who’s gaining entry to our country.

 

Unless something is done, this situation will continue to get worse. Mayes commented that DT is apparently more interested in political theatre then in protecting us from fentanyl or other dangerous drugs, or dangerous criminals.

 

And while DT opens the southern border to drug traffickers, he pardons those who have already been tried and convicted in US courts. He gave a full pardon to “Cocaine Juan,”  the convicted former President of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernandez. Hernandez, known for  bragging about stuffing “the drugs right up the noses of the gringos,” was convicted in 2024 of drug trafficking. He was responsible for helping import more than 400 tons of cocaine into the US, accepting bribes and protecting violent drug cartel leaders from prosecution. DT also commuted the sentence of Larry Hoover, the alleged founder of the Chicago-based Gangster Disciples street gang and Garnett Gibert Smith, a Baltimore drug kingpin. And the list goes on. This is incredible corruption and behavior way beyond irresponsible.

 

The same holds true with DT’s apparent race to war on Venezuela. He has not only destroyed small boats but ordered the blockade of the nation, seizing an oil tanker while claiming their oil is ours. Such a war might somehow serve DT’s personal interests but never serve the stated goal of stopping the drug trade or terrorist operations. Venezuela is only a minor player in the drug trade. According to a 2020 US DEA report, almost three quarters of the cocaine, for example, is trafficked through the Pacific and Mexico. Yet, DT says he’s stopping the drug trade by attacking boats in the Caribbean.

 

Nick Turse in The Intercept published a detailed article on this situation. 20 vessels in the Caribbean Sea were destroyed by Special Operations on DT’s orders. He’s responsible for the summary execution of about 90 people he deemed members of a Venezuelan narco-terrorist organization, yet no evidence has been presented, no legal processes engaged. This operation is a performance, an attempt to appear like he’s competently doing something when he’s actually undermining our nation’s standing and making the drug situation worse.

 

Turse’s article reveals DT has also verbally attacked political organizations and threatened members of Congress and the media with arrest or execution, for the sole crime of speaking out against him. DT called Democratic lawmakers seditious, traitors to be locked up or executed, for the offense of reminding members of the military they’re required by law to not obey illegal orders. DT tweeted, “HANG THEM GEORGE WASHINGTON WOULD!” In the past, he called for executions of the former chair of the joint Chiefs, Gen. Mark Miley, former Rep. Liz Cheney, and demonstrators protesting the killing of George Floyd….

 

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

Returning from the Realm of Ideas to the Immediacy of Now: The “Golden Moment”

When our lives seem as scary and threatening as they do now, thinking clearly, critically, and calmly can be even more difficult than it usually is. We might want to hide reality away. Decisions can feel too weighty and complex. So, I find myself trying to remember what was most helpful when life was a little easier.

 

Maybe 20 years ago, I was lucky enough to take a mindfulness workshop with the author and Buddhist meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg. One teaching that stood out for me was on “the Golden Moment.” This is the moment when we realize we’ve drifted off from what we were doing. We become aware that we’ve lost focus, been distracted, and had ceased being present. And we re-focus on what we’re doing. We return from thoughts, memories, and plans⎼ we return from the realm of ideas to the immediacy of now. This results not only in deeper meditation but clearer questioning and thinking, thinking more engaged with the multiple realities of a situation. It has been helpful in so much of my life.

 

It took a while for me to realize the depth and breadth of the teaching. It reminds us to take a minute; to let all the information and the different aspects of a situation settle in our mind before acting. This is such an old insight. My parents often told me as a child to sleep on a weighty decision. We can take a walk and step out of an old viewpoint so we see a new one. Or we practice mindfulness or meditation.

 

When we slow our breath, being aware of the long exhale, the pause.  Then the inhale, pause, and exhale. This technique is called box breathing. Slowing the breath with awareness naturally slows the rush of thought. It releases us from what binds and blinds us. We feel richer in time⎼ that we have more to give.

 

And we become aware of feelings and emotions. Feelings spur action. They can alert us to important perceptual information we often ignore or don’t take time to notice. We might feel an inner message of danger, of pain or pleasure confronting us; notice energy arising to step forward, retreat, or freeze. We can become aware of details that prove crucial in decision making. So, we need, as much as possible in that moment, to let ourselves feel what we feel. And then we can rationally examine the situation and what we’ve felt.

 

We become aware of awareness itself, the quality of our mind right now, and whether we’re interpreting what we perceive more fully or accurately. Of course, there are limitations on conscious awareness, limits on how much information we can process. So much of what our eyes and other senses pick up is not registered consciously.

 

And there’s what’s called inattentional blindness….

 

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

The Man of Ice, and Hoping for A More Beautiful Spring

It’s 2:30 am. I’m sitting in dark silence, in a lazy boy chair in my living room. No moon; the windows black. About ten feet in front of me, a nightlight reveals a door leading off into unending darkness. The light only makes the night darker.

 

Night focuses attention and surprisingly reveals more than it hides. It releases into the theatre of my mind a whole history of the forgotten that is waiting in the wings to be seen again. The room around me, the chair I sit in, the plants by the window, the book I was reading before I fell asleep, all take on new meaning. The immediacy of my mind, the reality of my life right then, is startlingly clear.

 

I had had a dream. I was on a beach near a body of water. It seemed at first to be a river, a big one, then as an inlet to the ocean. It was morning. I was maybe in my 30s. 6 or 8 young people, unknown to my waking self but not to my dream persona, were there with me. The weather was warm. I ran into the water. But when I started swimming, I noticed the wind waking up and the sky turning gray. I quickly left the water, to get a better view of the sky and weather, and then to warn the other people. Unbelievably, it looked like the air would soon turn to ice; and freezing temperatures, winter was coming. Now.

 

One man would not leave the water. I ran back to the river to reason with him. He said he didn’t care about winter; didn’t care if the water turned to ice. He wanted to turn to ice himself. I left him in the water; it continued to get colder. The man was growing indistinct, as was the sky and the water and everything. Everything was becoming gray, foggy, wintry. The people and place were indecipherable.

 

Why did the man want to turn into ice? Did he dread feeling anything, or feeling emotion more than cold? Feeling his world threatened more than his humanity lost? There’s awareness and there’s denial. There’s night and there’s winter.

 

Like our situation today. Ever since DT, winter has taken on even more emotion and depth. He’s affected the deepest levels of our personal and national psyches. Maybe that’s part of the meaning of the dream. Like ancient people who didn’t understand the science of seasons and might’ve questioned if spring would ever come again, we might do the same. Unlike the man of ice, we today might detest or fear winter, at least the winter of DT. We might fear that spring, a future where our rights and freedoms are protected, might not come again in our lifetime. And we’d have to live in a frozen world.

 

But maybe the winter won’t be quite as cold as it was shaping up to be a few months ago. DT is finally getting resistance not only from “we the people” but from the GOP. Even Marjorie Taylor Greene, once a strong MAGA adherent, now speaks against him. And as columnist Scott Dworkin reports, as of this writing, there have so far been 3 days in a row of protests at the Lincoln Memorial in our capital, 3 days of thousands calling for the impeachment of DT. This news unfortunately didn’t appear in many major press reports.

 

 

And until I heard a program recently on NPR’s Throughline, I didn’t realize that Thanksgiving wasn’t a national holiday until1863…

 

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