Emotional Self Care

Published on by Jim Category: Communication and Relationships, Health Emotional, Understanding Ourselves
I Heart Me
I love myself

A newborn child does not have a choice as to whether or not they will move their bowels or relieve their bladder; they just soil themselves whenever the urge comes to them.  But by the time they are two years old they have been ‘potty’ trained; they have been taught to become aware of the status of their bowels and bladder and how to go to the bathroom and relieve themselves.

This awareness training is called mindfulness, in this case mindfulness of the bowels and bladder.  In so doing they have gained some mastery over the human instrument through which they will experience life and that mastery will enhance the quality of their life experience.

As we go through life we gain mastery over many aspects of our body/mind instrument.  We first learn to crawl then walk then talk then ride a bike and so on.  Each new mastery or skill enhances the quality of our life experience by empowering us to get what we want from life.

Not all people learn the same basic skills in life.  Most people are potty trained and learn to walk and talk. Some are taught mental disciplines that enable them to concentrate their mind on a task until it is accomplished.  Others who have not been taught that discipline are easily distracted and never seem to accomplish much of anything in their lives.

It is a very rare person who is taught Emotional Self Care; how to practice emotions that are healthy for us and give us a sense of contentment, peace, joy, beauty, empowerment and love in life.  Emotional Self Care, like any discipline or habit, takes practice or an effort to develop.

If we are honest with ourselves we will acknowledge that what we want is a life filled with positive experiences like beauty, happiness, joy, love, peace, freedom and the like.  Yet, because of circumstances, we develop habits that produce negative experiences like ugliness, misery, sadness, fear, anger, anxiety, bondage, guilt and the like.  This is not necessarily our fault, for much of society wants us to develop these unhealthy habits.  Others can then use these unhealthy habits to gain power over us.  [I will talk more about this elsewhere.]

There is an old saying, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” and I say that so is ugliness, good and evil, heaven and hell.  Being ‘in the eye of the beholder’ means that beauty is not something that is intrinsic to an object but is subjective to the individual.  Two people may see the same object but one will see it as beautiful and have a beautiful experience while the other will see it as ugly and have an ugly experience.  If we were honest with ourselves we would acknowledge that we want the beautiful experiences.  Therefore, why not develop a habit of finding the beauty in whatever experience we are having?  Of course, this makes sense but how do we do that?

Since beauty and ugliness are NOT inherent in anything, they are entirely subjective,  our choices to see and experience something as either beautiful or ugly are conditioned responses and being conditioned responses means that we can RE-condition ourselves to have different reactions to the same stimuli.  In other words, we can find a way to look at anything and experience it as beautiful or to find joy or peace or whatever experience we want.

Emotional Self Care is about practicing this IN SPITE OF OUR CONDITIONING.

As I sit and write this I am outside a café with cars driving by and people walking around.  The cars and people could be a distraction to my effort to write and I could find that annoying, which is to say I could see them as ‘ugly’ in a sense.  Or, I could see them as the elements of life that I am working at describing here and appreciate them for how they have added to my life experience; thus giving me an experience of ‘beauty’.

Consciousness or being awake is recognizing that I ALWAYS have that opportunity to choose the quality of my life experience.

I am not saying this is easy, it is not, at first, but with practice it does become a lot easier, just like riding a bike.

As with being potty trained, it first takes awareness of what I am experiencing.  Am I starting to feel irritated by the cars driving by or the people walking by and distracting me?  Are my unconscious habits creating tension in my body that would lead me to perceive my experience as negative?  Maybe I am slouched in my chair as I write and that slouching creates tension in my back which radiates out to the rest of my body, thus causing me to feel uptight and negative.

My meditations in the morning often consist of first just sitting and feeling what is, letting go of all desires and allowing what is to just be.  Then I go deeper and recognize that there is eventually a desire to get up from sitting and do something, go on with the rest of my daily life.  In that recognition I also recognize that I want to fill my life with positive experiences including this moment.  So, as part of my meditation I start by practicing appreciation of this moment or I practice feeling grateful for the fact that I am alive and all that I have to be grateful for.  Appreciation and gratitude FEEL GOOD in my body so I then focus on how good that feels.  I have found that in so doing my body relaxes, any tension or dis-ease melts away and the quality of my life experience dramatically improves.

The other day I had a guy get very angry at me.  I had not seen him for a couple of months and the first thing he did after acknowledging me was to get riled up with some ideas that he had about me and my ‘agenda’ that he apparently disapproved of.  He was right in my face and acting very aggressive.  For my part, I remained calm and non reactive, saying nothing and just listening to him as he vented his pain or frustration.  He seemed to want to engage me in some sort of ‘battle’, probably most likely a verbal contest of some sort that would justify in his mind ejecting me from the meeting we were about to have.  So when he asked for a response I said that I was staying in the moment and I encouraged him to express himself fully.  Inwardly I was appreciating that opportunity to practice positive emotions IN SPITE of my conditioned habit of reacting in a defensive manner to this type of confrontation.  I could feel the power of the appreciation as it relaxed my body (not completely but considerably) which allowed me to stay present with him looking him in the eye and fully listening to him.  Being relatively relaxed my mind did not need to come up with arguments to defend myself or my position or ‘agenda’ as this guy imagined I had.

I was able to do this because I had practiced relaxing using positive perspectives and emotions.

Unfortunately for this guy he was not able to finish venting as others came and he seemed to feel self conscious about his behavior.  Nor were we able to resolve his imagined ideas as to my ‘agenda’ in the meeting.

What for me was important was that first I had taken care of myself emotionally and did not personally feel hurt by his aggression or words.  I did feel hurt FOR HIM, my compassion motivated me to want to reach out to him to offer him an opportunity to fully vent and to help him clear up any inaccurate assumptions he had about me that might be causing his discomfort.  I was not dead to him emotionally nor did I harm myself with my emotional reaction to his hurt.

Even now as I think of that situation I keep reminding myself to practice positive emotions as I think of him and that situation.  In the past it has been very easy for me to mull over the situation and to feel undignified or insulted by the situation, thus motivating me to feel some sort of negative emotion as I think about it.  In the past I would have thought he was disrespecting me and I too would have been angry.  Now, I recognize the most important person who must respect me is ME, and that if I react to something like this with anger or some other negative emotion then I am NOT feeling and showing respect for myself.

Emotional Self Care is a process, not a particular practice.  It starts with being aware of my conditioning and how I might be emotionally reacting in THIS moment to whatever life is offering.  It takes discipline to focus one’s attention on the Present Moment, the Here and Now.  Life, or society conditions us to always be thinking about the past or the future, to concern ourselves with the there and then.  Yet life is always experienced in the here and now.  When we are thinking about the there and then we are basically only experiencing our thoughts, not what the rest of our body is experiencing.

A second and very important step in this process of Emotional Self Care is to be honest with ourselves.  This includes accepting the fact that our emotional states or experiences are entirely a product of our reactions to the thoughts we have about what life is offering.  Words cannot hurt us, it is our reactions to words (or the thoughts they produce in us) that can cause us harm.  Yet, part of this truth is to accept that we HAVE BEEN trained or conditioned to be reactive to words or various stimuli in society.  Emotional Self Care is the process of re-training us to react to those words or stimuli in a way that works for us.

This means we have to own our feelings and not blame others for how their words or behaviors “make us feel”.  Everywhere we go we are taught or encouraged to think that others or situations “make us feel” this or that, and if we can only change who we are around or our situation then we can feel the way we want to feel.  This belief enables others to maintain control of us and keeps us trapped in cycles of emotional abuse where we have fear or get angry, upset, offended or some other painful emotional reaction and then we blame others or our situation for that pain.  Thus we are saying to ourselves that others or the situation have the power to end our emotional pain.  This dishonestly traps us in the painful feeling.  Owning our feelings starts the process of accepting the fact that we CAN do something about our painful emotional states.

In my experience, pain is more intensely experienced in a tense body.  Because of this, for thousands of years people have been taught to take deep, whole breaths when we feel tension arising in our body from our emotional reactions.  By consciously taking deep, whole breaths we soften some of our attention (at tension) on the activity in our brains and expand our awareness into our bodies. This softening of attention helps us relax thus lessening our negative experience.

And, finally, practicing positive emotions IN SPITE OF OUR HABITUAL REACTIONS continues this process of relaxing at the level of our mind or nerves.  Again, for thousands of years people have been encouraged to ‘love one another’ or even to ‘love your enemies’ or ‘don’t worry, be happy’ or to practice gratitude for what life is offering.  All of these are encouragements to practice positive emotions.  The more we practice positive emotions the more relaxed we will be and better able to flow with what life offers.

In the example I used above where the guy was expressing considerable anger at me, I used appreciation and gratitude to relax myself.  I was appreciative of the fact that he had found the courage to express himself about the obviously painful feelings he was having.  And I was grateful for the opportunity to practice Emotional Self Care in a situation where I habitually would not be doing so.

I can always find some reason or justification for some positive emotion.  Of course, it is not easy in the beginning for we usually are so attentive to situation that we are not being attentive to how we are reacting emotionally to that situation.  In primitive times or cultures being attentive to the situation was demanded, for if we were not then we might be physically attacked and possibly killed.  I still encourage people to be mindful of the situation just in case it could become dangerous, but most of the time our being relaxed and calm alleviates the situation to some degree.

They say that a dog can detect if you are afraid of them, and if so they will more likely attack you.  In my experience, that is true of people and all animals too.  If we are reacting to them with fear or any form of tension then those people or animals are more likely to attack us.  On the other hand, if we are reacting to them with compassion and caring for THEM then they will more likely relax their tension and aggression, thus alleviating the tension of the situation.

Also, if we are practicing Emotional Self Care we are modeling a healthy behavior for others who can and do recognize the healthy practice and that inspires them to want to develop the same healthy habits.  This creates cycles of moving toward more peaceful, joyous, healthy interactions in society.

Other Softening Emotions

Of course, in the moment of being challenged emotionally we may not remember to breathe deeply or to be in the present moment or to practice positive emotions.  When we become aware of our reactions that may have caused us discomfort or pain we first want to forgive ourselves.  I like to laugh at myself and my silly reactions.  This attitude and behavior releases the tension in my body allowing me to relax and feeling good again.

Sadness is often considered a negative or painful emotion, one that we don’t want to experience.  In my experience, we can only feel sad because we care.  Caring is an aspect of love, a very positive emotions and feeling.  Thus, the feeling or emotion behind sadness really is love, and if we can be aware of that deeper feeling of caring and love then sadness can be a very powerful motivator to helping others with our compassion.  It also feels really good.

I define compassion as a willingness to suffer with other.  I get that definition from the etymological root of the word compassion; com is Latin for ‘with’ and passion is Latin meaning ‘to suffer’.  Any suffering becomes a motivator to working to alleviate that suffering, assuming we can envision how to do that.

I am motivated out of compassion for others who are suffering from emotional pain to write this topic.  I WANT TO hurt with them.  I want to care for others because I am aware that caring is an aspect of love and love is what I want to fill my life with.  And since I have found a way to alleviate most emotional pain, I want to share how I do that with others.

This is a rich process and it fills my life with a wealth that is unsurpassable by any other means that I am aware of.

Practicing all this is the most challenging part of the process.  I often go to be around people or situations where I can practice Emotional Self Care.  Often the most challenging people or situations are the most rewarding.  Of course, if I am not up to the challenge then those people or situations can do damage to my confidence in my ability to deal with situations.  Therefore, I encourage people to start out with less challenging people or situations.

I started by going to listen to lectures or talks by people of various perspectives, perspectives that were not similar to my own.  At first I would only listen to the words and watch my habitual reactions to them, which often means I was resisting the ideas they were offering, and this habitual resistance, being negative, was painful or uncomfortable.

The practice got a lot more challenging when I started to openly question or challenge the words or ideas I was hearing.  But still I practiced listening and questioning with compassion, often taking into consideration the ability of others to hear or deal with the questions or challenge.

When you put something out, like asking questions or confronting or challenging someone else’s perspective, you are asking for feedback that often comes in the form of criticism, judgment and possibly rejection.   Naturally rejection hurts as it is cutting off a part of us, ourselves being the whole of humanity or life.  But the reality is that rejection is a natural part of life and we sooner or later learn to accept that there will always be those who feel a need to reject and cut others off from them.  If we care about ourselves we will come to peace with this process.

We are all responsible for taking care of ourselves. No matter how much another may love and care for us, if we do not take care of ourselves then we will not feel or be cared for and harm is inevitable.  Life offers us many challenges and if we do not make a habit of caring for ourselves emotionally then we will eventually get ‘down’ as we drain our energy with our negative or painful reactions to what life is offering.  It makes sense to practice Emotional Self Care.

Again, I want to acknowledge that there will be those who rebel against the idea of emotional self care.  Some will do so because they see how powerful it could be for anyone who practices it and if it is empowering for the individual then it is disempowering to those who want to control or manipulate others.  Since taking responsibility for your behavior and changing your habits takes effort, the lazy person will resist and will continue to abuse themselves and blame others for the consequences of that abuse.  The only intelligent thing a conscious person can do is to practice loving them and by feeling compassion for them.

The freedom, peace, joy and love that come from Emotional Self Care can transform the quality of our lives, our relationships and our society.  The more we practice Emotional Self Care the more we are modeling it for others thus encouraging a society that is open, honest and caring about one another.

Healthy Boundaries

Published on by Jim Category: Health, Understanding Ourselves

Healthy Boundaries lead to a healthy life.The human being is a limited being, it has boundaries. It cannot go indefinitely without rest, water, food, shelter and the like. There are also many boundaries that we must have in order to have any quality of life.

Sometimes our relationships with others challenge these boundaries and that can be good, for it helps us see what our real boundaries are. But sometimes, probably more often than not, those relationships challenge our boundaries and push us beyond what is healthy for us. This not only hurts us but it hurts all the others around us, for we are being an example of someone who does not care about our own health enough to stand up for our boundaries.

It takes courage to be honest. We first have to be honest with ourselves before we can be honest with others.

Courage is the manifestation of love. We cannot really love another if we do not first love ourselves. If we are feeling that respect, caring, and consideration that is love then it is easier to find that courage to be honest with ourselves and others. But if we lose touch with that self respect our courage will wane and our health and relationships will suffer.

Sometimes we do not want to even think about standing up for ourselves, even standing up against our own desires that take us beyond our healthy boundaries. Getting back in touch with our self respect helps us find the courage we need to be both honest with ourselves and with others.

I have been challenged to be honest with myself many times in my life. It is probably more accurate to say that I am always being challenged to be honest with first myself and then with others. Whenever I did not respect my boundaries it would lead to an unhealthy life. That might start with unhealthy relationships but eventually it would manifest into an unhealthy mind and body.

That unhealthy mind is the first symptom that some place I am not respecting my boundaries. I would get frustrated or angry or depressed; all symptoms that I was not being honest with myself and probably not being honest with others. Eventually these unhealthy emotions manifest into the body as disease of some sort.

Often we resist being honest with others about our boundaries for fear of their reaction to what we say. They might get angry or refuse even to listen to us tell them about your boundaries. Eventually we will have to confront out fears and deal with this lack of honesty or our relationships and our personal health will suffer.

We also often forget that we are here to inspire one another. When we challenge ourselves to be honest with both ourselves and others, even if that causes temporary disorder in our lives, we are demonstrating to those others (and ourselves) what love is and what a healthy relationship both with ourselves and others looks like. This can be the greatest gift we can give others, even if it starts out in conflict by our insistence on speaking our truth and respecting our boundaries.

In order to be a inspiring light to others we have to develop the willingness or courage to be honest with others about our boundaries that will keep us healthy of body and mind. This takes first being aware and FEELING how much we love our healthy life.

Dealing With Tragedies

Published on by Jim Category: Health Emotional, Health Mental, Understanding Ourselves

After each mass killing either here or abroad we hear a lot of people talking about how this could have been adverted, how we could have prevented this type of tragedies. Or they start to ask questions on what we can do to prevent these types of tragedies.

What people completely fail to look at is that the world has changed radically and we are only going to see more and more of these types of tragedies. No amount of legislation will overcome the world wide trend of more people crowding into a small planet. Even with sufficient resources for all these people, which we do not have, there will always be pressure with the crowds and some people will crack under that pressure. It is a function of physics and biology that cannot be denied.

Some people will claim we could outlaw the guns used in such killings, but they fail to recognize that guns are outlawed in China and they have these mass killings with knives. China is more of police state then the U.S. and they cannot stop these kinds of tragedies.

Can we avoid these tragedies by avoiding the pressure cookers of big cities? Santa Barbara, CA and Newtown, CT are not consider to be pressure cookers like like LA or NY so people can reasonably think that these would be the last places one would expect these types of tragedies to occur. But they did occur there and they will start to occur at many more such places in the future.

So what is an intelligent person to do?

The first and foremost thing to remember is that we have to take care of ourselves first, which means that we have to remain calm and centered so that we can have the clarity of mind that will enable us to see the best course of action. This calm or blessed state as Jesus called it is not something one ‘chooses’ in the moment but one that comes with practice. Mindfulness and meditation is just such a practice.

Disaster or tragedy may befall any of us in this modern world but those who can remain calm and collected have a better chance of survival than those prone to reacting emotionally to dramatic events. This capacity to remain calm and collected does not come easy; you cannot take a pill for it. Practice is the only way we know of today to acquire the skill necessary to manage OURSELVES when crisis comes.

Mindfulness and meditation is the practice of developing mastery over our bodies and our minds that so that we can be the master over ourselves instead of external situations or people controlling or manipulating us.

It is also worth noting that those who perpetuate these types of tragedies are NOT meditators, so that teaching mindfulness and meditation to everyone would help diminish the number and severity of such crimes. We can each do our part by first “removing the log from our own eye” and learning how to use mindfulness and meditation in our own lives. Then we can help others by sharing what we have found and demonstrating the advantages we have found from such self-mastery.

Philosophies and Theologies are Just Words

Published on by Jim Category: Christ, Communication and Relationships, Understanding Ourselves

Philosophies and Theologies are just words designed to program humans to have certain general physiological responses to words so that the humans can be control or manipulated.

Philosophy relies on a person’s conditioned responses to various words designed to stimulate general physiological responses in the human instrument.  It is a primitive method of gaining control over humans.  Science is words designed to point the human mind at processes so that mind will have understanding of the process and can therefore use that understand to its own benefit, transcending the external control that philosophies and theologies are trying to maintain.

Love is a general physiological response in the body to a thought in the brain; it feels good because that response is relaxing. One can create this feeling by focusing one’s attention on the center of the body, in the heart area, and by focusing their attention they are sending increased electrochemical activity to that area, thus activating the area and warming it up. The warming relaxes the muscles and nerves of the body giving one a sensation, one that we call love.

The conscious person understands this and practices this behavior so that they can have the positive experience of love whenever they desire, not conditional upon any particular thought pattern or any external stimuli such as a person or object’s presence.

I understand that less than one third of the world’s population is awake enough to understand what I am talking about. But there are those who will hear what I say and be able to use it to improve the quality of their life experience. Many if not most of the other two thirds of the people will resist what I say and take offense.

Look at the story of Jesus. He taught pretty much the same thing but most of the people did not understand him and forgot about what he said. Yet there were some who took offense at him and eventually killed him for his words.   Few if any got free from the power of words to control or manipulate their behavior.  In fact, some of his followers even encouraged the worship of words and their power over people.

This is natural too and part of the reality of life. Yet, we as a species are evolving and humanity is nowhere near as primitive as they were in Jesus’ time. It is science that gives on the understanding of how they human instrument works and how society is designed to manipulate that human instrument so that the individual can gain greater control over their own human instrument to maximize the quality of their life experience.

This advantage is lost to the ignorant masses. The will continue to be manipulated by words or objects so that the ruling classes can have dominion over them; they will be slaves to whoever can push their buttons.

 

Dancing With Words: The Beginning

Published on by Jim Category: Communication and Relationships

DancingWithWordsSpeaking before an audience is difficult.  Speaking before a potentially hostile audience is even more challenging.  Speaking your truth that you know will turn an audience hostile is probably the hardest thing a person can do.  Learning to be ok with people’s hostility and outright anger at your truth is both a science and an art.

I started this process back in the early 1990s as I learned how much power we have been taught to give away to words.  At that time I was living in Boulder, Colorado where they have an open air pedestrian mall downtown.  It is a beautiful place with lawns, trees for shade, places for the kinds to play, fountains and lot of places for people to just sit and watch people. This mall is the living room of the community, not just a place to go and buy things.  There were also buskers performing for their audiences and public advocates tabling to inform people of choices and situations.  Sometimes the religious people would come out and preaching their version of hell or reality as they saw it.

On the west end of the mall there were three large brick covered steps facing a small lawn area, a perfect place for people to set and listen to a speaker.  On both sides were businesses like a coffee shop, two restaurants and a bar all with outdoor seating where people could sit and eat while listening to a speaker on the lawn in front of the steps.

One day as I was walking through the mall I saw a guy standing in front of the steps just talking to whoever might be listening.  Few people were listening to him just as few listen to the preachers, but there was something different about him to me.  At first I thought he was just another religious zealot preacher talking about his brand of hell, but this guy was not talking about religion, he was using phrases like “techno-penis” and “Bourgeoisie-vagina”, derogatory terms he used for the average modern man and woman.  His spiel was mostly venting his opinions of the nature of society.  The only real solutions he offered were socialist in nature with a rejection technology.

He was articulate but looked like a laborer in dress and manner.  Later I learned that he had been a lawyer but was now a carpenter living out of his van. Obviously he was dealing with his ‘demons’ or overcoming his psychological/emotional challenges/conflicts.   One thing I would say he was doing was finding and exercising his voice; gaining the courage to speak his truth.

In just getting up and speaking, he was inspiring me.  For although I had felt I had dealt with my demons or dealt with my own psychological conflicts, I had not found my voice; I did not have the courage to speak my truth to the world.

I felt at the time that I had dealt with my inner conflicts for I had traveled around the world studying many different spiritual traditions, practicing meditation and examining my own thinking patterns that were denying me inner peace.  I had found my root assumption that we all make and I had seen it for the lie that it is, so inwardly I had peace, but outwardly I still had conflicts with how I fit into the world.  And, I had not found my voice; I was still afraid to do what this carpenter/lawyer was doing.

I listened and watched for several days and eventually I started to asked questions.  My questions came from a place of inner peace that the carpenter/lawyer did not have so my questions challenged him.  The questions were intended to help him see outside the boxes in his mind. Eventually he got tired of standing up there and speaking and particularly of dealing with my questions, so he challenged me to stand up there and speak.

I can tell you now that the first time he challenged me to stand up there and talk scared the hell out of me, my stomach turned to knots, my mouth went dry as cotton, my legs were like rubber, but I had a passion and wanted to share my insights.  It was this passion that drove me to stand up IN SPITE of my fears and to speak to the people listening.

I have spoken before audiences before and I was relatively comfortable with that, but this was different.  For one thing when I spoke before I knew what I was going to say and the audience had come to hear me.  In this public forum I could not know what I was going to say and the audience did not necessarily come to hear me.  Also, because the audience did not particularly come to hear me the listeners were a very diverse group of people.  Private audiences are self selected, people who come know what they are getting into and if they are not interested in the topic or feel that it would upset them then they do not go and listen to the speaker.  But in a public forum in a public place this is not the case.

Boulder is a somewhat elite town being that it is a university town, so the people there tend to be more educated, liberal and comfortable with diverse opinions and perspectives.  Still, I knew that my perspective was considerable different than most of the people in that town and particularly the visitors who frequent the mall any summer day.  Also, I knew that my opinions were controversial so I naturally would get a lot of criticism from some people.  This type of speaking is way different that “preaching to the choir” that most people do.  I was potentially speaking to a hostile audience, or at least partially hostile audience.

That first time I stood up and spoke the experience was more than exhilarating, it was liberating. I do not remember what I said and I quickly realized it did not matter so much WHAT I said, but THAT I said, for the very act of speaking my truth in front of people was inspiring to them as it had been to me.

Eventually this carpenter guy, whose name I learned was Craig, and I became friends and even team members of sorts, for we played off each other to build an audience and even a following.  By the end of the summer we would sometimes have thousands of people listening and each weekend people were coming from all over the state to be a part of this community forum.

It was not just fun but fulfilling.  I was part of something that was much bigger than me, for the community was becoming cohesive.  People loved this and so did I.  This was an important experience for me and I learn that others felt the same way.  For many of us it was the most connected we ever felt to community.  It was different than being in any other type of community for there were no rules or guidelines to exclude anyone, everyone was accepted but not everyone felt comfortable there.

This was a great opportunity for me for a number of reasons.  Because of my meditation practice I had developed a habit of watching both my inner and outer behaviors and how events outside of me created inner reactions.  In this situation I would watch how the fear came up within me every time it was my turn to speak. And each time the fear would go away after a while.

There were challenges to speaking in public.  We had many people get angry and one poured a beer over my head.  I was physically attacked in more than one occasion, including once by Craig, the other main speaker.  Always there were those who judged us and called us all sorts of names.  In my recollection now, I believe I was judged more than others and called more names than other speakers and I believe that is because I was talking outside of the boxes of what most people are used to hearing.

There were times when no one would listen and there were times that almost everybody opposed me.  And there were times when I got a rousing applause.

There were also many times that we challenged others to get up and speak; one day we got thirteen others to stand up and speak for a few minutes including an eleven year old girl who mesmerized the audience with her clarity.    There was one guy who often stood up and said the same line every time, a line he apparently thought was smart but that most people just rolled their eyes at.  Often when someone new would overcome their resistance and speak I could see the exhilaration as they overcame that resistance.  I also watched the crowd’s reactions to the speakers, including when I spoke.

What usually happened as the evening rolled on was that the larger forum/audience would break up into small groups or forums where people would go off on tangents and this would go on until the early hours in the morning.

I often would watch the dynamics of the social interactions of people.  In most organizations the type of people in that organization would self-select so you only get a narrow perspective on how humanity might behave in any given situation.  But in a public mall like Boulder’s downtown Pearl Street mall a relatively diverse group of people would pass by.  And I say ‘pass by’ because that is what most people would do, they might stop for a moment and then move on, either uninterested in what was going on or because it frightened them.  I could see the fear in many people’s eyes as they observed what was going on, particularly if the topic being discussed was challenged or judgmental.

CNN Encourages Emotional Abuse

Published on by Jim Category: Communication and Relationships, Health Emotional, Health Mental

The CNN article “Should we celebrate Fred Phelps’ death?” shows a good example of someone who is pointing out to Americans just how programmed they are.

“(CNN) – He was a preacher best known for his virulent anti-gay rhetoric, the force behind placards that read “God Hates Fags.” He taught that natural disasters and man-made horrors like the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting were God’s punishment for acceptance of homosexuality.”

Fred Phelps was a minister of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas who earned the title as the “Most Hated Man in America” because of his rhetoric, because of his words.  Fred never hurt anyone, he just shows that people have a habit of hurting themselves and he was taking advantage of that.

To people who are awake and recognize that words cannot hurt them or anyone else, they experience no harm from Fred Phelps, but they probably felt sadness for him and his followers because they could see how they harmed themselves with their animosity toward gay people.

What irks me about this article is that it promotes or encourages emotional abuse by insinuating that Fred Phelps and his gang were hurting people.  As long as people continue to believe that words can hurt them then tyrants like Fred Phelps will be able to control those people’s emotional states and thus control and manipulate them.  This is the encouraging the slavery of people through the use of their fear of words and how they might be used to harm them.

This attitude is encouraged by the ruling classes because they want to be able to intimidate, control, and manipulate people into obeying them.  Those who are gullible enough to buy into this lie are only participating in their own emotional abuse.

One can never know unconditional love as long as they lie to themselves about the source of their emotional states. The truth will set you free to unconditionally love all that life has to offer, but you have to be open to it.

 

Why Stupid Peope Protect the ‘Honor’ of People Who Choose to be Offended by Team Names

Published on by Jim Category: Health Emotional, Health Mental, Understanding Ourselves

Why Republicans Protect the ‘Honor’ of Offensive Team Names | The Nation.

This article states, “The name of Washington DC’s football team, the Redskins, is under fire. “Redskins” is an offensive term and therefore inappropriate for the team representing our nation’s capital. That’s kind of obvious, right?”

NO!  The word “Redskins” is NOT offensive.  No word is offensive.  But stupid, unconscious people might react to this or that word in such a way as to ‘offend’ or abuse themselves.  This is EXACTLY what the ruling classes want people to do.  The ruling classes want people to hurt around words because they use words and the hurt that people create for themselves to control and manipulate those unconscious people.

If you support slavery then you want to encourage people to think that words can harm them, that words are offensive.  Intelligent and loving people do not encourage this abuse, they confront those who do encourage slavery and abuse.

People have been trained since the beginning of time to abuse themselves around words that the those who know can use that abuse to their own advantage.  How else can the slave owners get the slaves to word without needing to revert to the violence of the whip?  It is words they use to ‘whip’ the slaves into shape.

once we understand that it is OUR REACTIONS to words that causes us harm, our CHOOSING to take offense at something, then we can take commend of ourselves, learn to relax and not react.  Then, and only then, will be no longer need to fear other people, relationships and communications of any sort.

 

Spiritual Testing & Report Card

Published on by Jim Category: Health Emotional, Nonduality

After reading this article on Huffington Post titled The Ten Spiritual Transmitted Disease I started to wonder how one can get a spiritual check up.

I wish there were a way to test myself (or others) for their spiritual growth or evolution.  When I heard of the ‘stress testing’ that the banks had to go through in the recent financial crisis I wondered if there was any type of ‘stress test’ that people could go through.

For me, spiritual evolution is reflected in one’s ability to appreciate, enjoy and love what life offers.  One of the greatest challenges people seem to have is their fear of judgment or criticism, which is why I like the idea of a panel or group of people testing or judging me to give me a stress test.  I would like that because I am always alert to the possibility that I am deceiving myself in some way.  I watch for this because I have seen so many other so called spiritual people who have ended up deceiving themselves in some way or another.

But then again I could be deceiving myself in my assumption that being judged by people is a good stress test of one’s spiritual evolution. I might like that because I have mastered the skill of not reacting to people’s words so the judgments of people would not harm me, but I might be very challenged if a tornado came into town and swept away my home, something I have never experienced.  I have had things stolen from me and I felt I did pretty good at keeping the light when my motor home was broken into and my computer was stolen, or when my bike, which I truly loved, was stolen a month later. But what if I lost everything and could not replace anything because I lost everything, including my ‘nest egg’ of reserve money.

So I wonder what others think would be a good way to examine oneself or another to test their level of consciousness.  I recognize that the nondualist will challenge the language here wondering ‘who’ it is that is being challenged, but I recognize they do this because they just do not ‘get it’ when it comes to playing with the illusion of duality, which is what this exercise is all about.

So please, share your thoughts.

Taking Back the Power of Words to Hurt

Published on by Jim Category: Christ, Communication and Relationships, Health Emotional, Jesus, Understanding Ourselves

I saw an interview today on CNN’s website where Marc Lamont Hill were saying that we should allow a discussion of the “N-word”.  I find that attitude one of the most open minded I have heard in a long time.  Let me explain why.

I have realized that words do not hurt people; it is people’s reactions to words that cause them harm.  We, as citizens of our society, have been programmed to be reactive to words in such a way that causes us harm.  Once we become aware of this we can take responsibility for OUR behavior (our reaction) and re-train ourselves to not react with such hurtful behavior.

Yet, as long as we keep lying to ourselves (and one another) that it was the word that hurt us and it was the person who said the word who is responsible for our suffering, we will stay trapped in a cycle of abuse.

Words like nigger, faggot, failure, dike, sinner and others still have the power to move people emotionally in a way that they would rather not be moved.  The CONSCIOUS person recognizes this and takes responsibility for their part in this and learns to relax and stop reacting.

But what is the advantage of keeping people ignorant of the truth that will set them free of being offended by words?  Well, one is if you were an owner of slaves in the US south 200 years ago you would want your slaves to be moved emotionally by words so that you could use that to control their behavior.  It is easier to get them to hurt themselves with words then to have to hit them with a whip. Or if you were a racist today would you not want to be able to get someone of a different race to HURT THEMSELVES when you used certain words?  Or what about the parent that wants to intimidate their child with words like “bad”; without the child’s fear of that word you would lose some control over them.

These are only a few of the many examples of benefits of keeping intimidated by words.  What I am saying here is that there are many advantages to some people in society to keep people hurting when stimulated by words.

Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount was all about Blessedness.  One of the things he said was, “Blessed be those who do not take offense at me.”  Yet, many religious people of his time did take offense at him, which is why they killed him.  Jesus also said, “Take cheer, for I have overcome the world” which indicates to me that he was showing that you could not offend Jesus with your words (or actions).  And finally, he said, “I have come to bear witness to the truth.”  To me, this means that he was bearing witness to the fact that religious people have been conditioned to abuse themselves emotionally when stimulated by words (as a means of maintaining control of them).  Yet, if you followed Jesus’ way (not the Christian way) you would overcome the world and its ability to push your buttons and hence control or manipulate you emotionally just using words.

So it is my opinion and experience that by bring this discussion out into the open and talking about it, and putting responsibility where it is due, we can show people that it is possible to get free from ever being hurt by words again.

A lot of the pain some kids are experiencing today from ‘bullying’ is a product of their conditioned reactions to words.  If we teach children the old school yard rhyme, “Stick and stones can break my bones but words can never hurt me,” we could end a lot of the bullying that now happens.

Of course, if we do this, those who benefit from people’s habitual emotional self-abusive behaviors will be up in arms about it, just like they were when Jesus was teaching this 2,000 years ago.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this.

Identification Ends Love

Published on by Jim Category: Christian, Communication and Relationships, Liberality & Conservatism, Religion

CNN Exclusive: One conservative’s dramatic reversal on gay marriage – CNN.com.

This story is a perfect example of how a person’s identification with someone or something has limited their love.  Before Sen. Portman realized that someone HE KNEW and loved was gay he was very anti gay marriage.  But as soon as he realized that someone he knew was gay and that sooner or later he would want the same things that the senator wanted, the senator opened his heart and changed his mind to support gay marriage.

If the senator had opened his heart to ALL BEINGS then he would have felt the same desire that he has within them, which is the desire to marry the person of his or her choice.

Sen. Portman identified with HIS family but could really care less with people of other families.  He opposed gay marriage because he did not care about the desires of people he did not identify with. His son’s coming out to him caused him to re-examine his ways of thinking and change his perspective.

To me, this is an example of the biblical concept of removing the heart of stone (the heart of the conservative) and replacing it with a heart of flesh (the heart of the liberal).  [Ezekiel 36:26]

We can see this same thing happening with former Vice-President Cheney, who discovered that his daughter was gay and she wanted to marry her girlfriend.  Because of this Cheney opened his heart and is now pro gay marriage just as Portman.

The point is that our habit of identifying with this or that person, including our own ‘self’ is part of the process of closing ourselves off to or limiting love.

By identify as Spirit one sees themselves as one with ALL beings and the heart become open and we can feel the pain and desires of all beings.  Being one with them you want for them what you want for your Self, which now includes them.

This is what Unconditional Love is and does, it opens you up to the pain and desires of all beings, not just your ‘loved ones’.