Like, Who Does She Think She Is.

This is an excerpt from a letter i may or may not send.

I saw Rick Steve's show on Fascism last night. The Mussolini, Franco, Hitler triad that shocked the world awake for a minute or two, sent chills up my spine and raised my hackles. The feminine snarl can be a more powerful device than the slogan,"don't tread on me." As she is protecting the well
being, the health of the future and puts herself on the line, fierce and loving at once. This is the  "she" the ancient Greeks feared! (okay is theory, but makes good sense)

Please see this PBS Special yourself. Rick did an elegant job of portrait painting. The show, the script, the details are at:

https://www.ricksteves.com/watch-read-listen/video/tv-show/fascism

Using old footage and current monuments, showing the past, illuminating the patterns, this special was an elegant reminder, a poignant show and tell.

Exposing the twisted charisma of what has been called a Godot, a Deus ex machina, a "powerful" character, these dictators donned the masks of shape shifters, illusionists.  They took advantage of the fear and discontent in the 1930s. It is not difficult to lay this script over the current era and see common threads. The what to do now is where the change can manifest.

Just in case that "be the change you want to see in the world" is not trendy enough now, it is from Gandhi. Back in the late 90's it was printed on backpacks and hoodies, another era of naive activism. But it was/is a step none-the less!

Cut to the personal impact experiment of fashionRIP now!

Yesterday, i heard a man tell his friend, "it's texting, us old people have a hard time with technology"  repeating the meme of voluntary diminishment.  Next time i see him, i plan to ask him why he wanted to tell himself this sort of thing.  If it opens a space, i might suggest a rethink like,  "Oh technology has it's place, i use it and make sure it doesn't use me" or "it's good to learn new things, keeps our brains alive"..something!

Earlier in the day, i helped a woman stow and hold her cart, after lifting up a seat to create a niche, at the front of the bus. I had wondered about her and her cart of large pack toilet paper, but when a man yelled at her for blocking the aisle, creating a trip hazard, to "move up front like other's do," and she moved, i realized she wasn't trying to be a princess, she just didn't know the etiquette. My offer to help was really appreciated. She told me her daughter used to pick her up, but she was ill and she had to get some necessities. A lovely lesson in assume NOT!

 I said, "I think we are here to help each other help each other, tho many of us have forgotten " She and i both beamed, felt like an energy flow in neon!  And yes, i said it loudly. Because we can "remember."

I'm telling you because i think specificity sets the individual, the unique space/time relevancy that is as important as the whole in that it is integral to the whole. It's what reverberates, ripples and makes changes in consciousness, like water through mountains, new thoughts to neural connections, it is interrelated, connected.

Okay this is part of my theory of everything, mentioned a year or so ago and i'm still finding it difficult to attract, solicit, generate feedback ....nevermind:-)

Anyway, if this is true, if it sets up a simple positive reaction that transforms negative emotional energy, then the pattern is altered and if it is altered in the micro, it alters the macro. Thoughts are energy, thoughts put to action are actualizations. Now as beliefs become actualized, (A Goswami, the Quantum Activist)  then the reverse is also true. 

Consciousness expands as beliefs change and then "we change what we actualize" Therefore being the change is instrumental and Gandhi like other great thinkers,  leaders of movements, artists and activists, was right minded at the space/time of his action. 

I am busing to work until the weather says "car time."  I enjoy the serendipity that  arises in public spaces. Opportunities to connect in meaningful short term ways is part ,of my practice, my experiment in trusting life itself. (I am pulling from the life spark idea that resonates with the biological event of sperm hitting egg, love it!) There is a health/joy benefit in these moments.

I know our busy goal-oriented templates have corroded our collective awareness. The noise, odor, all the pollutants and toxins of contemporary existence are easily filtered out with headsets and apps. We are adept at filtering out what we have been taught to think of as irrelevant. This too has a history and comes from stoicism and a work on ethic, however working through the pain can be really detrimental.  Blocking the emotional, physical, spiritual stresses with X, has consequences.

We can continue this crazy ass version of  "growth progress"  or we can question the "authors" the thinking at the time of the "set-up" and all the babble, the smoke and mirrors that we erect to fool ourselves and each other.

Aren't we due for a real change here? A change from the pattern repeating default story, that story full of dictators, data miners and prophets that "see" the evidence but do not understand the crime.

Let's put our naked truth on the table, let us be brave and vulnerable, strong and humble at once! After all, we are humans and we deserve a better story.

Love,

deborah

Give Me A Purpose, Any Purpose Will Do or Won't

Here are the steps to finding a life's purpose,  according to the Greater Good Science Center

.... six ways to overcome isolation and discover your purpose in life.

1.     Read. ...

2.     Turn hurts into healing for others. ...

3.     Cultivate awe, gratitude, and altruism. ...

4.     Listen to what other people appreciate about you. ...

5.     Find and build community. ...

6.     Tell your story.

https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_to_find_your_purpose_in_life

 

Okay but as i saw the missing voice here, i responded.

Good article, but missing the shadow. This refers to relativity and the value of the chaos, the dark side, all about  pain and mortality itself. This is relativity, my dear. The new story seeks wholeness,  puts the big W into that which was called holy.

Humans made up a world based on matter and appearances, their senses and their dreams They invented useful tools like arrows and numbers. People became ever more valued for their skills and roles, ideas and talents. This went to the heads of some and that is where things got messier.  So ego built itself a great manifold on which to hang, a design that offered protection from itself and unseemly truths. Fast forward several thousands of years and this construct has remained though the faces and voices have shifted and changed. From Genghis Kahn to Wall Street, from Sumeria to Outer Space, the patterns are significant and telling.

Along the way, one invention stands out. As most of the world has succumbed to the idea that what counts, is something that is countable, usually in terms of wealth which now translates into money or monetary value. Designed as a promissory note of honor, money was a currency, a little thing designed to encourage the flow of goods and services, to support trade and barter. It was a great tool of  convenience until it became a Real Thing. This is an example of how "beliefs" are enabled and then actualized. 

However, it is still really a mere manmade symbolic device, a "legal note of exchange" meant to facilitate economic flow.  So why do humans behave as if seduced and mesmerized? I have some ideas, :-)

Suffice it to say that "we" have been groomed to revere that symbol, we has learned to accept it as a sign of success and worth. That is a problem on many levels. Seems we have enabled an empire of nonsense and apparently no one has the power or the courage to turn it around- yet.

And as institutions, media and all the king's men adapted to fit this Reality, counting wealth became a purpose unto itself.  It was a way to focus, to avert pain in the short term and it was applauded. Therefore it made sense and became its own story.

That left out a lot of seekers and healers, artists and visionaries, that tried to see past its limitations. Then as systems grew to further support this Next Reality, the "monetization of everything" was introduced and many more accepted and embraced the wealth and power twins as an unconditional and legitimate truth in Life.  Participation in feeding the Monster is hardly optional now. It is the great "what is" and though it this "what is" is getting more difficult and the sacrifices are mounting,  causing more unease, more imbalance, more trauma, we appear to be at a loss. However in truth, humans created that Monster and can therefore tame it. We have the power to deactivate the old and nurture a new way of life. Humans have been practicing long enough, we can leap past these false boundaries and beliefs.

So what if we have this collective purpose to face the Monster, to own the consequences, and move into a New Story? What if we untangled the threads of "what is" so far and reweave a better, healthier, more intelligent, wiser and lovelier construct. Simply put, the classic vision of reality needs a remake. And together, we have what it takes.