The concept of Parallel Process is much like what you think it is—the idea that one idea, thing or event mirrors another reflecting back and forth making their concepts similarly obvious and relatable. This is how I’ve come to view the physical “heating up” of the earth’s atmosphere parallel to so many political and societal systems that are doing much the same.

WHAT ALL FALLS APART

From Russia and the Putin problem fraying at the edges (the natives are getting restless) to France’s new retirement rules setting off demonstrations along with other grievances, to America’s rebellious adolescent behaviors of Trump and the “righteous indignation of the Rightists” as well as the disparity of writers and actors striking in the entertainment industry for decent pay, it seems like so many systems in our world are coming apart at the seams.

What’s an old, gray-haired lady to make of things such as this, let alone do anything about them? I swear, I thought things were rough in the 70’s but now? Somehow this feels so very different. I have to say, I’m glad I’m old at times like these. I can’t imagine much good will come out of all this chaos (because that’s what it feels like: chaos) at least not any time soon. I hope I’m off base with my outlook but sadly and warily, my natural optimism has waned of late. Yes, yes, history is littered with systems and civilizations morphing into something unrecognizable, seemingly falling apart, but I’d rather not have to watch in person!

ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENT

I remember years ago reading a book—Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe—a story about his disorientation as his African village’s system and traditions are turned upside down and inside out when British rule gradually but insidiously dramatically shifts village life and traditions he has benefited from and relied upon his whole life. He denies these changes right in front of him, thinking they surely won’t last. He denies them until of course he can’t. And the result is death—his—as change marches on.

This dynamic feels to be operational in our national and even global systems to one degree or another. All around us systems, institutions and certainly technology prod us to rethink how things function and what they’re worth. Added to this dynamic is human populations displaced for various reasons, economies turbocharged at times, sluggish at others with institutions struggling to keep up. No wonder too many people want simplified solutions. And while simplicity has its place, it is rare indeed when complexity is managed by simplicity.

NOT A PANACEA

Take AI for example. There may be a way to manage and shepherd this incredible technology with a certain degree of forthright and responsiveness to its functional speed. Unfortunately, the technological “horses” have already stampeded out of the gate with no one really addressing how to corral them responsibly. With little to no oversight on its massive power how will management even happen? We need wise men and women to take the reins—ethicists wedded to highly sophisticated thinking in this science. Where do we even find them? And what structure is to do it? In the absence of a formal jurisdiction, we seem to remain stuck with this genius tool minus mature genius systems performing guardrails. It’s the “Oppenheimer syndrome” all over again! And this is just one of our many challenges facing us today!

As I say, history is littered with such inventions which often precede responsible management or use of same! And this is just one such problem facing us. In too many other realms the tension or growing pains precede—and too often, severely—predictable adjustments. It reminds me of when my son had pain in his legs as an adolescent suffering from Osgood-Schlatter where bone growth outpaces muscle and tendon growth in the knee. 

Osgood-Schlatter disease:

A childhood repetitive use injury that causes a painful lump typically below the kneecap that affects children’s untimely paced and incompatible changes within the leg system itself. Children who play sports in which they regularly run and jump are most at risk as the incompatibility clashes with usage pressure. That’s the crude definition and though it is very time limited, once all body parts catch up with one another proportionally, the syndrome still causes temporary pain and havoc. So too, social, cultural, scientific and political systems undergoing different rates of change in seemingly uncontrolled fashion.

HELP!

Anyway, here we are in a quandary throughout the world. As luck would have it, it’s this very dynamic that is occurring with America trying to massage relationships with Putin’s Russia while supporting politically modernized Ukraine. Is Putin mature enough to manage this growth spurt? Is he capable of evolving himself? No evidence of it so far. He’s still thinking he can take whatever he wants (i.e. Ukraine) while the rest of the world is way ahead of his intellectually stunted perception of things. He’s proverbially stuck in an outdated mindset similar to Achebe’s main character in Things Fall Apart.

OUR OWN BACKYARD

Back here at home in the US of A, the Republican Party suffers from the same inability to see a more diverse and sophisticated electorate with the R’s stuck in a previous era much like the lead character in Achebe’s African village blind spot. Sadly, the same Republican Party digs in because instead of “leading” their constituents, they’re following, ultimately becoming caught in an outdated political and maturational mindset.

Sadly, we’re stuck with only one functioning political party at this moment in America with no real replacement mechanism. Ditto, the ethical challenges confronting AI with our use and responsibility unpredictable. How this dilemma resolves itself in either case, no one knows. One thing’s for sure, new pathways and innovative solutions are required for most of the challenges above. But no one seems to have a clue. And if we compare it to evolution Darwin-style in which something better, more functional grows out of it, will society’s component parts have time to catch up? 

DENOUEMENT

The threads within each system, be they cultural, political, economic or societal, seem randomly at the mercy of different forces with outsized ability to evolve such things since power and force can be incongruous with one another. Power is integrous and authentic. Force is well, force, and typically not! So while things may operate as parallel processes with some invisible capacity to develop proportional management and functionality as they evolve, will they be beneficial, responsible? And so we wait, with an unknown resolution and unpredictable future like all pivot points for humankind. And yet I read somewhere we’re supposed to have dominion over all this stuff, right??

Big sigh!

No one ever believes they’ll only have today as their last day of life on the planet. Instead, while clearly knowing we don’t live forever, it’s a concept that is only that: a concept. Until of course, it isn’t!

FROM WAR TO WONDER AND BACK

I heard a TV host (Nicole Wallace) when describing Brad Paisley’s recent trip to Ukraine to meet with President Zelenskyy, as reflective, meaningful, inspiring.  Of course! But was it life-changing? Possibly, although I don’t recall that phrase being used by either one of them.

While I have had some, what for me seemed like life-threatening situations, I have no concept of a war environment having never been in one. Some experiences really do boggle the mind and are simply lost in translation. I wonder if Paisley felt that? I wonder if he felt his own existence at risk, his very life but was unable to articulate it. Being in a war torn country could possibly do that to a person.

THE HUMAN EXPERIENCE

As I continue to have seriously challenging health issues, it’s as close as I’ve come to catching the whiff of my own “last days,” though not a solitary one. What would the threat of that be like? I’m not sure any of us can know without the reality of that potential staring us in the face with certitude. And even then, it could be only a potential.

Occasionally I like to play a game with myself of “what would I do on my last day?” How would I behave, how would I spend it, what would I do in that time? And with whom? I never get very far with this odd speculation or fantasy because, of course, I assume it is not in truth my last day! Instead I always assume there’s more…including more time to plan my last day!

THE BREAKDOWN

But as I approach at least a narrowing of the time I have left on the planet, I think more and more and more of less and less of this all-the-time-in-the-world assumption. How can I not at age 71 and with a chronic health condition? And yet, I continue to assume I’ll have at least several days—three days, four days, a week or more, months, maybe even years, continuing the pattern of no real last day.

No matter how much I know our bodies have an expiration date, because I believe I am essentially spirit I trust I’ll continue on after leaving this incarnation, this body. And yet I operate all too often as if I have the luxury of limitless time in this one. It is naïveté and denial at its ultimate. 

Oddly, this foolish denial is even in the face of my body’s continuing breakdown as evidence to the contrary, that this earth experience is finite. It boggles the mind! As perverse as it sounds, I almost envy people who have some disease, usually cancer, who have been diagnosed as “terminal.” At least there’s an endpoint that’s suggested, though still subject to change when one is defined by a medical professional as to a specific last day.

THE SLOW LEAK

The vagueness of body breakdown through some disease process that is not listed as terminal feels worse, although having said that, how would I know? An ongoing deterioration still leaves far too much emotional room for death’s postponement! It’s as if one is being toyed with by God, the universe, or fate! It also implies a control that a person doesn’t really have. 

I had an uncle whom I’d always admired. He seemed strong in spirit, tough in self-reliance and sturdy in mind. He was my colon cancer link. He’d had his colon resectioned (without colostomy) about 20 or more years before he actually did die. 

HOW DARE HE

And then he took his own life! He was 93, only a month shy of his 94th birthday. Even though it was years ago, to this day I remain shocked, and I think mad at him. While he had always seemed so practical, earthbound, and reverent in his own way, the decision he’d made to call it quits remains a mystery to me. And while we’ve all known people who give up (or give in) it is a different proposition to “just surrender to the inevitable” by taking matters into their own hands. It feels like robbery.

For my part, I just continue on, tinkering with corrective surgeries one after another to fix or repair something that has seriously gone awry. Ironically I think I agree to these surgeries not just for quality of life reasons but for “quantity!” God help me! At one point I even told my surgeon “no more surgeries” only to “of course” rescind my own edict! I want more of life and from it. So often, even when I’m exhausted from it all I know deep I’m not done.

WONDER

It sounds greedy but so what. I’ll postpone my last day perpetually, and even assuming the date of my last day on earth is preordained, I’ll do my part to keep consciously choosing life one way or another — up until it’s obvious I don’t have a choice that is mine to make. Surrendering really is the ultimate spiritual exercise. We always think we have control and influence over so much in our lives and rarely is that true. It’s more like we participate in the act of living and hopefully, responsibly so. Yet there comes a time when the slow leak of life accelerates and there’s nothing left but to surrender. 

In the end my uncle was wrong about his ending. Yes, I’ll judge him though still with love and affection. While he’d left home at age 14, lived a long, productive and successful life through grabbing the reins of self-reliance, his life wasn’t really his to take. 

SPECULATION

Which takes me back to Brad Paisley, Zelenskyy and anyone catching the whiff of their human termination date, regardless of cause or circumstance. Paisley’s face did look quite pensive when Wallace was interviewing him. And it had the kind of look that wasn’t just about democracy either. It’s as if he lit on the fragrance of not just the concept of a potential but rather that concreteness of choice and surrender, potentially turning on a dime. And while this is pure speculation on my part, he witnessed through the prism of not just war but that of principle. It just happened to be in the context of war.

THE ODDITY OF BEING BORN HUMAN

We humans are a quirky lot. All our bravado and brains, ingenuity and fortitude, in the end our last day is not ours to determine though some people feel otherwise. For me, even in my darkest hours at times—and I’ve had plenty of them—there seems to be a fierce and stubborn reliance on living. I’m guessing that if I ever have any sense of a last day, I’ll be frustrated as hell.

But I could be wrong. That’s the thing: living always leaves room for wonder!

It was a sisters’ week in Park City, Utah. Glorious, mostly sunny with hints of rain, food-filled and sight-seeing galore. We were glutted on it, which I will write about later. But the earth-moving, mind-arresting and spectacularly surprising day for me was the trip to Salt Lake City. 

Now, the Mormons have a unique and checkered past filled with polygamy, treks west that were not for the faint of heart, and a sturdy trust in their belief system of prophets and clean-living. The city either directly or obliquely reflects this historical milieu. And while Utah is now only 49% Mormon, I suspect it’s higher in Salt Lake City itself.

CLEANLINESS NEXT TO GODLINESS

I was struck immediately by the astonishing cleanliness of Salt Lake City’s center. I’m guessing there was dirt and trash somewhere but I never saw any. The city had a near gleam to the place. Additionally, flowers were lathered everywhere — fragrant, colorful, well-appointed, full beds with no weeds that I could see. I mean, no weeds! It was a pleasure to just breathe the fragrant air. Sensual, actually!

Female mission representatives dotted the streets, ready with a smile and cheerfulness that was arresting and warm. You just couldn’t help but be startled and smile back. These unofficial goodwill ambassadors created a warmth and energy field one was helpless to ignore, pulling you in with their tractor beam. The funny thing is, you didn’t mind either.

THE HIGHLIGHTS

We toured The Beehive House, which was “the official residence of three Presidents of the Church: Brigham Young, Lorenzo Snow, and Joseph F. Smith.” We also saw “This Is The Place Heritage Park” overlooking the city, where the Mormon trek across the West is commemorated. We drove through parts of the University of Utah as well, where the first mechanical heart transplant occurred. On the other side of it were lush, tree-lined neighborhoods sporting multi-generational founding families’ homes.

Our little tour bus stopped at a magnificent structure — the Cathedral of the Madeleine — as we circled back to the center of town. While not in the same caliber as a cathedral in Europe, it was nonetheless impressive with massive stained glass windows, high ceilings and an intricately carved altar area. You could smell the wood. It was stunning.

BUT THE CHOIR!

The highlight of our touring was witnessing the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra during a rehearsal. They were practicing in a large pavilion, I believe called the Tabernacle, very near the world famous Temple which was veiled in scaffolding for earthquake retrofitting and refurbishing. It was all but invisible.

But the choir! I can hardly put words to it. Over 350 voices rising skyward, rearranging the air we breathed as it floated down into our lungs! All volunteers — these singers, rehearsing  a minimum of five hours a week! The orchestra, the same commitment with just over 100 musicians. It’s not possible for words to convey the feeling for me of listening to them all. It’s why we have music—when words are insufficient unto themselves. The word heavenly comes to mind yet still feels inadequate.

ATOMIC POWER

The totality of the singers’ voices dancing on the wings of strings, reed instruments, flutes, horns and tympanies is, well, a sight to see and feel. I was drunk on the majesty of it all. Helpless! The atoms rearranged themselves as a consequence! My internal organs moved, gently stimulated as if being massaged. Had there not been seventy-five or a hundred other people in the audience, I would have wept!

I’m sure I could have slept in a pew that night but alas we had to catch our tour bus, get our car and go back to Park City where we were staying. Oddly, it strikes me that Park City’s mountains are a physical, secular manifestation of the divine in their own right—music made of rock and earth. My God, no wonder Redford was moved. The area is magnetic.

IN THE END

I want to go back. I have not had enough of the energy and inspiration this geography provides. While it feels primal in some ways, it also reveals a sort of grooming possibility, ripe and rich with regeneration and potential, much like I think of birth. 

And maybe even Heaven!

When I was a little girl, I remember playing under an evergreen tree with the lower canopy that allowed for a teepee-like experience. I even imagined (or remembered?) being a squaw in a previous life. Actually, it is not relevant whether it was imagined because the essence of the experience was that of serenity, solid and complete.

STATE OF BEING

There are moments in life when you know there’s something else going on, tangible but ineffable. It is not just in the most intimate recesses of what you believe yourself to be, it is outside of you as well. This awareness is pervasive and infinite, an atmospheric river. Most importantly, it is love-saturated, a palpable, crackling calm yet energetic field of seeming potential. 

I am inclined to know this state is the reality of our being. It is reliable yet all-too-often fleeting in its awareness. So much of our lives, at least my life, has been on the physical plane. But I have constantly been drawn back like a homing device to the other state, the real one, in various forms. I am both helpless yet helped in the process of the return.

Many people call it God or the Presence. It can go by a lot of different names but suffice it to say, the overarching definition is beyond one’s small self, limitless. It is the certitude that there is something greater than a small self, that one has no power over yet participates with as an individual cell contained therein.


WHAT’S IN A NAME

I remember when working with Bennet Mermel, my holocaust survivor friend—cantor, atheist, believer in a different way—and us arguing periodically, about the existence of God. I think it was the name that tripped him up, and all the baggage it implies. Why the Old Testament lets humans name things is beyond me but such is one of our traditional beliefs. With the naming of things comes an implied assigned meaning that is fixed. 

Naming invites us to think we have some sort of power (not to be confused with responsibility) over the thing itself which is absurd of course on the face of it. I laugh at myself that I ever had this argument with Bennet, he being one of the best examples I’ve ever met of a human contradiction—that tension between the physical and the etheric plane.

THE ZONE

In the end of our back and forth, Bennet did tell me that he believed there was something greater than himself. I think he called it nature if I remember correctly. Vividly, I recall watching and hearing him sing as was his nature. Not only was his voice stunning, but I was witness to what Jamie Wheal would call flow or zone. Bennet would be smack dab in the middle of that zone when he sang, hitting the center of the note like a laser drawn to a tractor beam.

Regardless of what we humans name it, it is a state where there is unadulterated awareness of the cessation of time, even physicality. The transcendence of form is in the background yet pervasive. I was aware in my imagination under the lower canopy of the fur tree of that zone, much like I witnessed Bennet when he sang. And while there have been other times I’ve inhabited the zone, they are not frequent. Rather, they come unbidden, as if by accident yet not.

LETTING GO

In the end, I gave up trying to convince Bennet of the existence of God. While that was my instinct to finally let it go, it wasn’t until after he died that I knew for a fact, a fact mind you as reliable as gravity, that it was the semantics that were the problem not the experience itself. He knew it by another name. He couldn’t help but operate in the field, the zone by another name.

Bizarrely, there are moments in time that are outside of it. Some people discover it through ritual or traditions. Some people stumble on it by being on holy ground, in nature, around art, or even something as mundane as waiting for a train. Others by hitting the center of a note while singing. Songbirds know! Still, others experience it while looking at a daisy. Or into the eyes of a cow.


STATE OF CHANGE

How much time I wasted trying to convince Bennet of a noun confused by our conflicting definitions. Ah, the arrogance of the ego! Yet, I remain grateful beyond measure for his voice, his arguing, his insistence on expressing it and in the only way he knew. The pristine quality through his singing was his witness, not all its man-made baggage and assumptions. It was the state he understood, the energy of something greater than himself that facilitated his very act.

The world is currently on a precipice, with so much strife everywhere. So many traditions and institutions are failing us, a critical mass buildup of disintegration witnessed in the current moment. Yet it is only a moment. While all that which has seemed reliable in the past is no longer so, there is an opportunity for reinvention that transcends the moment—not just by renaming things but by creating new paths through imagination, and discovery.

All this is true on an individual level as well as a communal level, from the micro to the macro and back again. It’s kind of funny that Bennet keeps teaching me things he professed to not believe in, even beyond the grave! It is a Grace, one of those mysteries of the living and the dead, in and out of time. Nameless and waiting.

SHIFTING

At some point as a species we will have to surrender our perceptions of supremacy and arrogance though not responsibility. So many old thought patterns and ideas have become extinct. It is time for us to put on our big boys and girls pants and grow up! Humility is the primary vehicle in that turning, just as much as a maturing, playful confidence in ourselves and our own creativity with internal and external exploration.

How all this turns out is anyone’s guess. Between Jaime Wheal’s stunning work in Recapture the Rapture, as well as others research that is pivotal, an emerging potential for devising new ways of living, reinventing rituals, institutions and relationships, there is a promise for unlimited discovery and definition. One thing is for sure: we will not be going backwards, any more than the dinosaurs could! 

I weep for America, but I may not always do so. As I watch the twisting and distorting permeate the fabric of our society, I grieve for the loss of integrity in some corners that manipulate communication into unrecognizable fashion.

I weep for America but I may not always do so. Does the fallen angel always know it’s fallen? How bold we began, with all the embryonic promise the New World had to offer. Making our way in fits and starts doing atrocious things counterbalanced by noble actions. 

I weep for America but I may not always do so. Is this the only Way? To rot from the inside, Staggering under the weight of grotesque distortion and lies? Unable to tell Truth from falsehood? Will we go the way of Greece and Rome through so much corruption, glut, brutality, greed, ignorance?

I weep for America but I may not always do so. Is Our way to become like the giant dinosaurs that die under the weight of rapacious gluttony? Cutting out minorities, a foreign tongue, the middle class? Reason? Facts?

Evolution is a glorious and wonderful thing. But why must we watch our own demise as an American democracy, those of us that have at least some inkling that that is exactly what is happening? Yet the pain of it… is there any ability to stop it?

I weep for America but I may not always do so. And yet, and yet… I know evolution IS creation. Ongoing, time is only perspective, an artifact only by which we live. A mentalization by which we watch emergence of new states of being occur.

I weep for America but I may not always do so. To be in the woods, the monastery, at the ocean. Sanctuary‘s, all. A respite from observation that is alarming, unable to impact what is viewed. Other than, of course, recovering the heart of all things, that the universe will right itself, the purgatorial nature that is earth offering a new choice every second.

Ultimately, I weep for America but I may not always do so. At best, sorrow is a temporary state, a moment, a second, an act of moving from participant to observer. A state of being. Like Ecelesiastes says—“to everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under the sun.”

It is so.

Repeat after me, I am the water not the fish. On a daily basis however, I live my life like a fish. Oh how precious are my thoughts. Because they’re mine! And oh how very special they are. I hunt for more examples of ingrained thoughts, values, perceptions, and systems to sustain them.

Never mind they’ve been given to me by somebody else. Never mind I heard them on Fox News, MSNBC, read them in the New York Times, Newsmax, the Atlantic, it almost doesn’t matter, from whence they came. 

But of course it does! 

We are all programmed. We come into this world as a blank slate, the water as consciousness, hardware waiting to be programmed, ripe for being written on or formed by parents, by extended family, by society small and large. It gives structure and form to our lives, it provides direction impulses, goals, satisfaction, and pleasures. It can be benign, or odious. In short order we identify as a fish, which is to say, a physical being with a mishmash of content.

Where does it go wrong? As a little girl I went to school and learned many things. I learned about information, some real, some distorted, through no conscious fault of my own, nor my teachers or parents because they learned it before I, from someone and somewhere else. But more than anything I learned a set of rules, guided by how I was taught to perceive, on how to live and how to survive second, third, fourth grades, etc.

And The Hits Just Keep Coming.

I learned how to sit still, clean my plate after each meal, praying beforehand for where that came from. (I was hoping for more at the next meal, in secret, particularly candy!) I learned about comfort and I learned about denial of that comfort. I learned how to tie my shoes, button my shirt, walk straight ahead, finish my lessons.

As I grew, I learned how to absorb information around me, putting it into little cubicles of the mind for later retrieval when necessary. I learned how to tell the truth, but I also learned some form of distortion or self-promotion, as early as second grade! (Got cured when shamefully exposed the same year.) It really has become not just the American way but integral to the human condition. There’s no use pretending.

Subtle Program Shifts

It (the distortion) starts innocently enough—to be liked, accepted as part of the herd. Presenting some aspect of yourself that’s not quite accurate. Or as a member of the school of fish. Because we are communal beings.

Many years later I began to view the world, people, systems, humanity differently. Many years! As we grow we do two things: we become entrenched with old ideas and habits. But we also gaze upon new ones, trying them on for size to see if they advantage us in some way. Some new ideas are suggested by friends, schools, workplaces, mass media. Moving a lot and travel made a big difference in my life. By expanding my horizons, I was exposed to many new things.

Some Ideas or concepts felt/feel quite warm, authentic, comforting in the best possible way, providing peace, love, calmness, expansion of some sense of soul. Others are adopted, driven by a slow seduction of either fear, aggression, self-righteousness, perceived or actual, some threat of deprivation.

Oh I Am So Special!

Do you think you’re exempt? Do you think you haven’t been programmed in one way or another? Think about it. Sometimes it might be a religious tradition that becomes ingrained that serves a person far better than it harms. Still others chuck the idea of God, assuming the position themselves! The great wide middle in between is where most of us navigate. Yet this often is expressed dualistically (in tech terms its binary,) as if compartmentalized, resulting in the inability to see the nuances.

If you know anything about physics, including quantum physics and mechanics, you will certainly understand the concept of energy fields, attractor fields, and aversion principles. Like radar silently looking for atom particles to attach, so too, our thoughts and ideas are either positively or negatively charged to conveniently “dock” with preconceived belief systems. Or create new attachments one can enhance life or rigidly block or entrench old perceptions that no longer serve a new context.

Consciousness Is As Consciousness Does

In human terms, we begin perceiving life as primarily physical survival, perceived needs, and desires. it can include money, things that money can buy, and a means to an end for more money. This almost always includes the concept of power (or lack thereof). Power can be yielded for noble purposes as well as malevolent ones. But as we know, power corrupts, especially when base impulses of we humans drive it.

These attractor fields can also be quite positive, peaceful, calming, spiritual. If we humans over here on this side of the globe were instead born in Tibet as a Buddhist say, we would be subject to a different set of both attractor and aversion fields. Our programming would have been quite different, less outer world driven, more inner world cultivated and expressed.

Enter Mass Media: Tech World

Technology can be programmed for anything, as do the ethics that bind it (or not.) And the repetition. And addiction. Yes, there’s all that! The tantalizing effect of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram is ravenous, lying in wait for the next fix. Notice how it’s binary by its very nature. These are the tools of programming these days, of the drunken monkey syndrome. To imbibe or not. It’s a yes — not yes, a “this doesn’t fit my worldview, or it might.”

I’m not saying technology is bad in and of itself. Like so much in life, it’s to what purpose and to what end. The ability to program people, entrain people, etc. by false information is big business these days. But technology also serves us. The conundrum of its usefulness, its enhancement of life depends upon the integrity from which it is applied or operates from. And its user.

Context versus Content

The inability to tell truth from false is a profound problem in mass media these days, driven by split second technological downloads. And the repetition! Why, even Hitler would be impressed with the massive propaganda contained therein. With enough repetition of falseness a new dynamic takes root. It all too often becomes a kind of pollution from which we are unable to see clearly. A mass brainwashing or kind of hypnosis can result. 

Mixed with not just lies, but add absurd conspiracy theories and the false equivalent of contending it’s protected by Freedom of Speech, and rationality is thrown out the window. The defense of the “freedom” to say what you want and claim it’s protected by the first amendment has become distorted for spurious ends and the need for self soothing.

The Self Soothing Problem

Often self soothing is advantageous when the human organism becomes fearful. I quite like to hug myself at times. While self soothing is inherently benign, it all too often can be externally hijacked for destructive ends. Sadly, fear sells and can be exploited, and some entities are exceptionally effective at preying on those most vulnerable. Thus begins the cycle of puffed up self soothing in the form of self righteousness that is actually anything but, becoming a grotesque distortion of the very act itself.

When presented with a problem that I am fearful about, I forage for as much information as I can get my hands on. From Reliable sources. Facts, anecdotal information, others input who are experts, etc., these have been part of my program from childhood, further reinforced by advanced education. As a child, when I would ask either of my parents, say, what a word meant or about some subject matter, they would more often than not, tell me to look it up.

It was irritating at times but in short order, I became “hooked” on the power of knowledge, my ability to get it, and the inherent capability to expand myself the act entailed. It is no small miracle that I stumbled on some unquantifiable instinct to sort information, a kind of discernment within a “pool of water” in which I swam. It also became apparent that it was my responsibility.

Foraging Vs Being Fed

As I grew I began to notice some folks wanted to “be fed,” to not forage for facts, for information, for new ways of thinking. They only wanted to reinforce the same patterns, not curious at all, instead defaulting to a kind of mental and emotional rigor mortis, relying on what others proscribe as true or false, docking nicely with their previous programs. 

This contrast could be our downfall, the fed (and the feeders) part. The world has gotten increasingly more complex, and America along with it. It is so easy in a fast-paced world, to just let other entities feed us with what we think is true. All too many rely on passively being fed far too much, like baby birds, beaks open, waiting for parental regurgitation. And even the curious among us have a hard time keeping up, sorting and discerning the speed information erupts and accrues.

Rights, Responsibility and Privilege

On the other hand, to be a citizen in America, or anywhere else quite frankly, it’s necessary to forage for facts, to find out from multiple sources that are reliable where in fact the truth of the matter, any matter, lies. Besides legislation to curtail some of the excesses by certain social media companies—but equally by some television outlets—we owe it to ourselves to own up to the fact that not only have things become increasingly difficult to understand and sort out, but to know where the truth of it is is a personal responsibly as well as a collective one.

Confusion Is As Confusion Does

In a world where things move at breakneck speed both in terms of hard information, as well as delivery of that information, we are dizzied, grabbing onto the easiest conclusion that fits preconceived notion‘s failing to update context, let alone verify facts contained thereof. I get the overwhelming quality of it all. It is hard but it is also essential for the modern world.

Our democracy is fragile indeed. Yet if we don’t mature as citizens, taking more personal responsibility in the process, foraging instead of being fed, we will lose the democracy we have inherited. 

I am the water not the fish! Which is to say, I am the consciousness from which I gather information, that primal awareness, the hardware if you will. I am not a fixed set of programs others have proscribed me to think and operate from. This is my and our liberation but this includes our responsibility, individually and as a nation. Do you want to be just fed, not knowing what you don’t even know? Told what to think by others because it’s too hard to think for yourself? 

We all have not just an opportunity but more importantly, an imperative to dig more for truth, information, facts. Opinions are all fine and good but if based on madness we are doomed to repeat history in a way that serves none of us. It’s high time we sober up from self righteousness, arrogance based on ignorance provided by others, for their agenda and not remotely in our personal and group welfare. It is time.

Additional essays, articles and books by Rosalie Cushman available on this website.

I have tried many times to write another piece about what is happening in America today only to fail in delivering anything remotely cogent or meaningful. I keep trying to analyze it all in an effort to make peace with the insanity, death and destruction that I witness. Anything short of that has left me feeling helpless, struggling to accept the utter devastation that is occurring right in front of our faces.

BABEL

Ultimately, I have come to the conclusion, albeit temporary, there’s no sense to be made of what is occurring right now. Like the mythic Tower of Babel that God strikes down, forcing different languages on humanity, so too have we been struck incomprehensible to one another. Given this failure to communicate, it is the emotional and ultimately spiritual space that is the most appropriate place for my heart to reside.

Lately I’ve been re-reading Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search For Meaning, a phenomenal depiction of humankind’s struggle to plumb the depths of one’s soul to survive extraordinary circumstances. While the current Pandemic and decimation of American society and political institutions can’t be compared to the Holocaust in any literal way, there are parallels to its “helpless/hopeless” effects on our psyches, as well as promise on how to endure it all with less damage.

PROVISIONAL EXISTENCE OF UNKNOWN LIMIT

It has become quite trendy in recent years to meditate, to practice living in the now, worthy practices to slow the mind and energy systems from the frenetic pace of modern life. A tension presents itself of course when one resumes daily activities that focus instead on some measure of future: Goals, activities, deadlines, etc. Without some aspect of ‘later’ or an endpoint, even if it’s a simple future orientation such as what to have for dinner, we are hard pressed to stay only in the now indefinitely.

With the pandemic we have lost a recognizable endpoint, a goal or destination of it being over, with a return to life as we have known it. In the Holocaust, prisoners lost all reference to the future or any endpoint. Similarly, though monumentally far from being as degrading as concentration camps, pandemic populations know not when any recognizable endpoint will occur. There’s always the tease of one, yet the infections rage on. Further, the chaotic and degraded democratic institutions and structure in America at this time makes nothing reliable. Nothing.

MAROONED 

Added to this dynamic is the disconnection of physical presence with others—particularly painful for pack animals such as humans. We know we are not alone yet feel alone regardless. Besides this psychic chasm, we struggle with an altered concept of time. Purpose for and faith in some goal or intention, has to be reimagined. Is it even possible for humans to not strive for something? And in what timeframe? Without these instruments from which to steer by, life seems rudderless and a kind of moroseness or depression sets in.

Frankl’s wife, imagining, remembering her without even knowing whether she was alive or dead in another camp became his salvation, at least in part. But it was more than her. It was the field of Love in which she resided that he cultivated access, to make it through the days, through the smallest and largest degradations of daily survival. A different perspective, a deeper one, was identified on which to focus, a new horizon from a different vantage point on which to set one’s eye.

A COMPASS

A few years ago I had the astonishingly good fortune to meet and work with Bennet Mermel on his memoir, an extraordinary man who survived the Holocaust himself. I witnessed first hand the field of Love—the goal or drive to help his younger brother, Kalvin, to stay alive as well. By trying to save Kalvin’s physical life, Bennet also helped save his own. It was a symbiosis that fueled surviving a horrific “now”, driven by suffering yet with a dignity that defied comprehensive description.

Yet there was still depression. Besides staggering constant physical exhaustion, depression was the emotional current that constantly served as undertow, threatening to suck him under due to death and degradation that was pervasive in the camps. Had Bennet not had Loves’ compass for his brother to steer by, he may never have made it. The magnet was challenged constantly by the sheer magnitude of a sense of no end in sight. Still, it was the engine that kept him going.

THE EXAMPLE 

I was very heartened by the fact that Michelle Obama and Michael Phelps have recently addressed the problem of depression and mental health issues consequent to the pandemic and the breakdown in our society. In many ways a sorrow for loss is the most appropriate response. Like losing a limb, one cannot help but feel sad for the absence of the thing itself, but more importantly for the value and use that predictability and hope heretofore provided to one’s life.

To share that sorrow with a wider audience is huge. It feels personal, intimate, communicating we are not alone in what we witness and feel. It recognizes our shared humanity and binds us together, exhausting out grief to arrive at the other side. Ultimately, we are left to acknowledge it, to discover our own compass and help others find theirs if at all possible. For while we may not perceive an endpoint to the pandemic, let alone imagine how to rebuild America, life continues and is made better in the process. On the other side of grief is an acceptance that facilitates a language all its own: a non-Babel speak that connects us all.

Rosalie Cushman is the author of several books, The Man Confused By God and Vibrating At The Speed Of Love. They are available on Amazon and at fine bookstores everywhere.

The Man Confused By God https://www.amazon.com/dp/1733802320/ref=cm_sw_r_em_tai_wAyoFbRKCWEQT

Vibrating at the Speed of Love https://www.amazon.com/dp/1733802304/ref=cm_sw_r_em_tai_3ByoFbX6ER6QT

What be this thing called hope, this state? To wander back-and-forth between hopelessness and hopefulness, why at times it feels as crazy as the mad hatter in Alice in Wonderland. It is amazing how it seems to swing so slowly for a period. Yet at others, it lurches uncontrollably in staccato fashion between the two states. 

THE NATURE OF LIGHT

We sit confined, in a prism of our making. Yes, that’s the correct word: prism. Besides the traditional definitions of refractive light, the case I make for the word thusly is, “prisms can be made from any material that is transparent to the wavelengths for which they are designed…prisms can be used to reflect light, or to split light into components with different polarizations.” These latest words depict a state of both a claiming and rejection of elements of ourselves, as well as the implied polarization that is its consequence.

We will not always be home-bound. At some point we will be set free to roam the social gathering places, like gazelles to a watering hole but will not feel the same. For many, it may pale in comparison to the interior depths of ourselves we have plumbed during confinement, finding solace and comfort in a more authentic manner with those we hold most dear, including our own hearts. 

THE TEMPORARY IS JUST THAT

For others, being let loose will provide only temporary thrills, acknowledging a lack of appetite for the shallow and trite, intoxicating though it may be for a time. Somehow freedom to wing-spread will undergo a new definition, an acknowledgment of sorts. Given enough lack of interior sustenance they will begin to miss what began in their heretofore home-bound state, that unnamed itch for growth that has been awakened.

There will be those that carry on as if nothing has altered their perception of the world (and those in it), behaving like drunken sailors and raucous wenches, repressing the recent sting of social isolation, only to behave as before. Yet a seed will have been planted for future enlightenment, ripening once they have germinated long enough, whether in this lifetime or the next. 

ITERATIONS

Regardless, many things will be redefined, restructured and changed, for a quality left to the living will capture enough people’s imaginations to speak it, to live it differently. The “it” is that intangible and beneficent regard for others that acknowledges the depths of connections we all share as a species, regardless of malvescence by some, dependent on heroism by others. Those that have harmed the herd will endure accounting of it, there is no doubt. But with any luck, the subtle change in the refracted light of our better selves will triumph with enough heat and pressure of the current moment. 

And it is this process, the evolution of us as individuals and groups, having come out the other side to a new order of things that hope births. I see glimmers of it already: in nurses, doctors, deliverers of goods and services, in some public servants, and in the ordinary of us carrying on, socially isolating not just for ourselves but for the good of the whole. We KNOW inherently these acts are “in the service for more than us, they are for others too.”

THE PENDULUM SWINGS

Many will not be able to see this change but more folks likely will than not. Of that I am confident, hopeful even, regardless of the human, political and social “infection” we will have survived. Or because of it? While it may not be loud, there will be evidence. There already is in fact, in that subtle shifts are visible in the compassion shown by some media leaders, medical individuals interviewed, common neighborhood helpers and many ordinary people. The angry ones, the bitter and noisy gong people, critical and venomous will pale in comparison.

Not all moments seem to call for hope. There are times that call for despair, and we will have experienced the state far too often during this pandemic. Yet despair can be temporary at best, ultimately fostering hope from which emerges a slow but sturdy light refracted from the prism. After all, we do know why the caged bird sings.

AND SO MUST WE

And so we stand on the edge of sorrow and joy, despair and hope with the intuition that there will be better days, better angels and greater things to come. 

For we are not just refracted light. We are reflected light as well, created from a nature that in the end claims us all. Whether one believes in the divine or not, nature has its way with life, always continuing onward. Groaning though we may be in the current morass, hope is greater than even itself for it reflects something more. Out of it springs a faith in things unseen, of the promise by and for the living; for life ongoing forever after.

I sit here on a gloomy-stew Sunday, just me and the rain. It continues to feel like such a surreal existence, the social distancing, the subtle fear of others—could they have “it” or could I infect them, crossing my mind all too frequently. The odd wariness of people, be they strangers or even friends, it’s disconcerting, but a near curiosity nonetheless.

KEEP YOUR DISTANCE

Through no fault of their own, everyone is suspect, including myself. The rain makes me think the earth is weeping for us. But maybe not out of sadness. Maybe just maybe, it’s a way to cleanse the world and metaphorically, us in it. How many mistakes we  humans make. If I wasn’t so personally involved and engaged in the whole pandemic, from a distance it presents as a puzzle, curiosity about the human race, however briefly. Oh, the folly of us.

It’s impossible not to judge although as quickly as I do, I try desperately to chastise myself for doing it. I watch people walk around without any protection, though not too many of them, and marvel at governors who still don’t have statewide orders to social distance. They are making an assumption because they only have four people in the state who are infected, that they are exempt from tragedy somehow. Oh, the folly of human thought. And the arrogance.

I LOVE ME WHO DO YOU LOVE

Arrogance is as arrogance does, or so they say. So too ignorance, and too many Americans, certainly suffer from it. Sadly, both conditions are part of the human experience, part of each of us in unequal measure. We either think we know best, think nothing bad will ever really seriously happen to us, or believe in wacky political ideas that are naive at best, nefarious at their worst. 

Then there’s the greed and selfishness of people hoarding, sometimes out of downright fear I realize, but all too often out of a belief system that “I’ve got to get mine so I won’t lose out” mindset, strutting their behavior like terrified peacocks. I, I, I! It is the bane of our existence.

COVID-19 RISING

They say the next couple of weeks could be very grim with the contagion spreading like wildfire, infecting many more people, with a rising death toll as a result. It will be an uneven contagion no doubt, much like it has been to date. Still, there’ll be some in disbelief, denial. Still there’ll be people who think it’s a conspiracy, some absurd plot. For what end? What global purpose? Remarkably we still live in an age of the superstitious. Still!

And so we soldier on, trying as we might, to protect ourselves as best we can from “the others” be it person or germ. What lesson is it that we must individually and as a collective learn? What spiritual, ethical and social nugget have we yet to break open and discern? Can it result in a “dear God please let us be better than our former selves, please let us think of our brothers, please let us have compassion and caring,” at least those of us who are capable of it. To expand that intent and cover, not just this nation in an atmosphere of love, but indeed the entire world, is our mandate besides the practical behaviors we all must exercise. 

If only…

 It is hard to make sense of things in the current situation with the COVID-19 pandemic. Especially when there’s no sense to be had. I’m not talking about all the instructions coming out from the CDC, Trump’s undermining of certain medical measures, and minimizing others, pitting constituencies against one another. Get a test, don’t get a test, etc. Open the markets, don’t open the markets ad infinitum.

Even in the best of times, let alone the worst of times, a new disease let loose on the population can certainly create their own contradictions when so much is unknown about the spread of it, how to contain it best. It is particularly challenging, however, when we have a president who has decimated certain aspects of critical governmental infrastructure ever since obtaining office.

THE DEEPER FISHERS

I don’t wanna talk about those. There will be time to do a postmortem after so much of the risk has passed. In the meantime, we are all challenged in the face of social distance, isolation, to reevaluate not just the bigger picture along with the key players. Just as importantly I suggest we look at our individual selves AND the aggregate of the same. It is an opportunity to go in. Not just to relieve anxiety, although that is true enough. But to really take stock of who we are, what we want, how we ferociously judge, what we value, and to look at what and how we want to be going forward.

Is there not a great possibility to consider the other person, to practice compassion and forgiveness even with those we can’t stand, not to let them off the hook for we can illuminate accountability later on. That has to happen. But just as importantly if not more so, we need to get micro as well as macro, to look at our own role and dare I say, responsibility to our neighbors as to ourselves. I know not everyone has the capacity to take this kind of self inventory, but those of us who can would be better served to examine ourselves and the society at large by taking a steely-eyed look at what we value and why. Who do those values hurt sometimes and who do they help, besides our own self-interest.

DELAYING GRATIFICATION 

We are a very spoiled nation in so many ways. What’s more, very few know it. How is it that too many grumble, unable to comprehend the concept “for the good of the whole.” When my son was in college and there just happened to be for the millionth time a flare up of tensions between Israelis and Palestinians he started a film treatment about God making both sides have a time out, effectively isolating them to opposite corners until they could think through the folly of their behavior, their untenable positionalities. 

I likened his idea in certain ways to Albert Brooks’ Defending Your Life film where Brooks’ character has to defend himself in the afterlife for being driven by fear, afraid to really love, afraid to look at the other. In his case it was fear of loving a woman, fearing a risk of rejection, an ultimate loss of himself in some way. As a collective, our American fear is about losing things, money, our precious comforts, possessions, status, power, whatever externals that too often drive us apart instead of together. 

LOVE IN THE TIME OF COVID-19

And now, through the pandemic we all are on the brink of possible redemption juxtaposed with destruction. Do we have the courage to take stock of our values and the fear that drives too many of us apart heretofore isolating from one another in other ways, suckling our precious opinions, greed, judgments, attachments to things or belief systems as our identity. The metaphor writ large NOW is being forced to isolate physically so as not to contaminate one another. Can we not see that we have been isolating ourselves by class, fear of otherness, fear of not keeping up, fear of losing power or influence—the list is endless but still all driven by fear. What a golden opportunity we have now to examine ourselves and what we truly value and exercise compassion and sacrifice. There are great examples in truckers, nurses, doctors, cleaners but they are not the end of it. We are called to make our own.

And so we continually stand on the precipice waiting for a collective aha moment. Otherwise, we will continue to repeat the same lesson through catastrophes such as this or others we can’t even imagine be they physical, financial, societal, political, whatever, until such time as we come to understand how we have created such incredible comfort and privilege – – even those of us in the middle class – – that this is just that: a privilege. But it is more than that. It is a responsibility. And to deny the least among us out of fear we might lose something at the expense of truly loving our brothers, our fellow countrymen, why, we’ll just keep having to repeat “4th grade” lessons of caring compassion, EQUITY, etc until we ultimately learn and live it. 

ON THE EDGE

Bizarrely, we have the choice right in front of us reflected in two “characters” that represent these options: the grotesque distortion of greed, deceit, and self-absorption in our current President on the one hand, and a compassionate scientist in Dr Fauci, looking out for the good of the whole on the other. One defends his “30 pieces of silver” like Judas while the other defends his love of life itself for the true good of all and asks us to do the same via social distancing. What will we do with this golden opportunity of a “time out”. Can we stand the individual discomfort for the good of the whole? We will all have to decide, for this problem runs far deeper than the current pandemic and will only resurface again and again until we truly move past the isolation of too many hearts and minds that exist in this country today.