Current climates have put our ideologies to many, many tests. How have we been holding up? Is focus sharpening within? Are we un-learning the hypocrisy taught to us (Leo Buscaglia), or contributing? Depends on the day! I wish Leo were here to remind us of those human things. Maybe these posts are my odes to him, my way of continuing his devilish advocacy of radical compassion and unconventional understanding. And long-windedness! Everything needed to be said though, so coffee up & belt in.
CURRENT PARADIGM AWARDS that have served extra duty recently:
1. Begin Where You Are
- do something that has no barrier to its completion, distance or resources
e.g. -- mind exercises, isometric muscle movmement, story creation/memory
*accomplishing something generates momentum, motion
2. Ride the Rainbow
- when mental altimeter spins, identify your color, and see what else you can be
e.g. -- can you see the edges between red and pink? blue and seafoam green?
*facility with lateral (e)motion generates Agency (Buddha)
3. Heart to Heart
- Listen to this Kenny Loggins song! healing souls through the ages
e.g. -- being distant, then revealing it's from a feeling of loss
*the way to a solution is acknowledgement and humility
In recent months, my bodily challenges flared up to more than I could handle; I was trying all my stand-bys, meeting with failure each time... I became scarily exhausted... wrote a will... my strangle grip of panic was spiraling down, cutting me off from healing thoughts and absorbing vital mental energies. En route to the ER during a bad episode, a semi backed into our truck at an intersection, and then drove away; an odd water incident was unknowingly stealing the precious remnants of my family photos and irreplaceable belongings that have been saved through thin and thinner. The VA was pulling their shenanigans, running me thither and yon, labelling me mental and using it to deny the physical... That old saw The Resource Ratchet was tightening screws in all the places where I had lack. Spiritually a pile of bricks seemed to bury me. Nightmares of getting squeezed out of existence. Why do I feel like the leading role in a Robert Rodriguez version of Ed TV?
Turning to Doing the Next Indicated Thing (from the Traveler's Cloak post), I was surprised how often it was... to do nothing. Rest-- real repose. Not just some limitation of chance interruptions, but a stillness that refuses all else. In a key moment of mindfully suspending my disappointments, automaticity suddenly brought up an old forgotten piece of information, right in front of a doctor! It turned the tides for my health. Big hooray! But only because of the hours I practiced unclenching the mind fist that kept me contracted. I kept finding not just obstacles ini my path, but roadblocks, washouts. They were signs my paradigm was not grounded in truth. Trying to be that honest with some things was like being afraid of heights and looking down from a tall bridge. Being present asks us to acknowledge the mountains behind us, as well as the mountains to come. Perhaps one experiences stillness of mind only after everything else has churned the shit out of it.
There must be others like me who have somatic, mental, and spiritual wounds, who have had to 'Doctor Manhattan' themselves together time and again... you know, the guy in the graphic novels who had a physics lab accident and had to literally think his way back into existence from being scattered around the universe... I have not been able to find a primer for this, and so am writing one. Years of research and application to share with others wandering in this forest. It has taken much personal work, and I have been very angry for a long time. So I keep refining, polishing, until the mirror reflects only what is. Stillness and depth are correlative for a reason. Depths and scary lurking thoughts can reveal things... Finding 'pay dirt' meant more work to be done. Flashbacks begin, and just like that, my positive person/self construct is in jeaopardy; my chosen reality erupts in confusion as painful reality demands light and acknowledgement... I am left wondering how to fit this truth into my paradigm. What algorithm in my programming is ruining my life?
Chronically ill people have horrible, predictable bouts of depression; yet we keep believing we can think our way out of it, as if something just needs to fall into place. In exchange for receiving the minimum of help, we are always subject to someone's approval. As a prior national service officer, I used to tell my fellow disabled vets, stunned at the holes in the system and crappy choices that sounded insane, that the world-upside-down they were feeling was "a natural reaction to an unnatural situation."
I put another paradigm together, It breaks too. Made sense that the only way to bring any consistency to my life was to wrap around the truth. The TRUTH, duh. Okay, how do I do that, when everyone's is different? Measuring a crooked stick with another crooked stick seemed futile to me.
So, moment by moment, moving through these seemingly endless circles... It can be exhausting. What you've heard about "doing the work" is true. We must re-choose everything, renegotiate our relationships to be mutually beneficial. ALL of them. To fun, to family, to food ... until you have answered all your questions and feel equipped to move about, able to handle what comes. Moving in the circles, I suppose, is how we are presented with 360 degrees of choices of where to spring forth, and make the circle a SPIRAL. Spirals are life. They are always moving, either growing or pulling apart... changing things and allowing adaptation. We are growing or we are deteriorating; sometimes both in different ways. People and systems can lie, but the spirals they leave behind bear witness.
Much rest is needed! This work can be heavy; the smallest kindness is cherished. Changing requires our permission -- our cooperation. I went through the 12 steps of the Program, singularly and without meetings, acknowledging Anger as my addiction. First steps were relatively easier, in hindsight, because then I hit Acknowledging a Higher Power. This was hardest for me, a recovered theist and atheist both. Science became the vehicle to seek higher truth. The simplest laws were my building blocks: objects prefer to stay in motion or at rest, information/matter is neither created nor destroyed, the universe tends toward entropy. It allowed me to correct many assumptions and even begin predicting some outcomes regularly, which is something ables take for granted.
Finding the ability to look objectively at longstanding paradigms -- my Truth, finally -- has taken the longest time and been the hardest to see. Now that I have acknowledged some of my most cherished hurts and listened to my deepest, infected and grown-over wounds, I understand why it was not possible for me to SEE before, much less to heal. In my working life, I was unable to take a helpful amount of time off; living month to month on pain wages, tolerating and drugging as much hurt as I could for my jobs. One day I collapsed, and was down with major symptoms for a month. The doctors were too busy arguing about what to call my condition and wouldn't sign off on me returning, and I lost my job. I refused to be homeless in the city, so I used what resources I had and followed through with some connections, landing up in the mountains to fight the VA for going on the 25th year.
This is all a recipe: mis-, dis-, or un-treatment --> an unbalanced organism; organism attempts to just make it to the next rock, but is it a sinker or a floater? Resources have precise caveats that split hairs, create hoops that were harder than having an actual job. How long can strained favors bend? In this way, friends are consumed, and bridges, and your friends' bridges... A human alchemy of specialized, commodified skills & experiences, family and friend circles, when subjected to the algorithm of changing events/needs in the world, and it only takes a flip here or a switch there, and BOOM! a successful, career-minded person somehow becomes home-free. None of the promissory notes cashed in, private or government, large or small, not for vets or women or ability dependent. Finding out that most every instance of "we support our vets" and "bring them home" was for the people they see on TV, not for broke-ass, family-challenged, unlucky ones like me. That was 2017. Since then, many horrible things have happened. But I have also had a chance to find a community in some of the smallest niches, and so feel blessed in many respects, too.
All some of us have left are our feelings and opinions. Those can become like children tugging at us, needy and unable to submit their requests in writing like professionals. But give them room, a voice, and an amount of free time, while you ask better questions in a detached way -- as if for a good friend. If you come up with some possibilities, try enacting them gently, when you have some bandwidth and a spoonful of try in your pocket. It's okay if it's not right away. YOU have to be the parent! Part of you may know what to do but is drowned out. Instead of letting high erratic emotions go on too long, or get unhelpfully spun up, give them a time-out, however you discovered is best when you were sewing your cloak. But sometimes, just sometimes, they are upset because you KNOW the correct path of action and are either unable or unwilling to take it. They can be right for trying to get your attention. I think I understand how cancer can be an illness of a thousand disappointments. Knowing what should be done, what is the healthy thing to do, but not having the intermediary mechanisms to achieve it -- from lack of time, money, energy, medical staff, and a million other things.
If you can't make any headway, ask yourself HONESTLY if there even IS room for there to be a win. The answer may be a surprise. Often when we have the courage to look, it means we then take on the burden of fixing it. Denial can be a defense mechanism, that really means I don't have enough to go around right now. The key is discerning, like the Serenity Prayer asks, between what is in your reach, and what can be disengaged for the moment in order to tend to important things. Prioritization is not denial. How many times have you heard people NEEDING to quit their job or go off the deep end, or are bordering on illness? What if you are forced to choose between having a job, and having great medium- to long-term health?
It is seductive to squander youth, but only because health can be forgiving; and due to genetic predispositions, what have you -- the able-bodied won't have the same looming threats as people with special needs: like work noticing your frailties, and the extra time it takes to do certain things, perhaps unofficially using them against you... We thought it was bad when not having team support meant you were last in kickball selections, but in this American adult world, those same people are able to use the same selection process when it comes to workplace politics. Now the world is experiencing all the things we vets have been crying out about, that our systems are fragile, unfairly weighted toward productivity, and in some places, cracked or broken altogether and not intended for widespread or long-term use. When the system is done with us, we fall off all the radars and no longer count as unemployed, underserved, or underhoused. There is no way to count the thousands of people not caught by any services, but I see tons of them on this here Olympic Peninsula all the time. Before, during, and after being upset that human beings aren't treated well and with every technology and understanding available, we still have to chop wood and carry water, and live.
When your attempts at managing your disappointments consistently meet with some wall or other, give yourself permission to plumb those depths, but safely. Recognize what it means to be patient, longsuffering: feeling badly, and yet, still do what needs doing. Pockets of hidden ego, cut off from healthy periodic inspection, inform tiny decisions. You know you're in their presence when an internal argument sends your humility into hiding, and you take an indignant posture instead of through the soft focus of judgement-free understanding. Take a moment to see how far up on the high horse some old ideologies may have hoisted you. Some go very far back. Deep rooted beliefs. Forgiving that sometimes the dearest friends, family, and trusted medical personnel can do great harm with the best of intentions. Allow yourself a sigh or cry of acceptance. These attachments that hurt us have also been our company for a long time. Be grateful and remember that they delivered you here, as you send them along.
The thing about cracks is that they subtract people from the conversation when they are most vulnerable: jobless, no health insurance, staying with friends on the couch, trying to make it back to safety. It is an all-day job looking out for oneself in the wild, where the nets of society have failed, and wits are all, unless one is lucky in the family-can-take-me-in department. For most, our voice is gone, our votes with dollars is reduced, everyday resources become a godsend -- it takes a lot of effort to do much more than try to be comfortable. I saw how tied I was to the circus, performing to stay employed as long as I was able, yet not getting the right help. Only after one leaves the cult can they see it truly. Refugees need the right support.
When there IS any voice to be heard on the matter, it is our neighbors, whom we live amongst, commenting on not wanting housing or shelter nearby for any riff-raff dumb enough to end up on the shitty end of a very shitty stick. The argument goes silent when the fact comes up that many of us are vets and/or in need of some sort of care, but there is no place for non-productives in this country. I'll go further and say the systems are designed to make us go away. It is known.
Poor diets and corporatocratic, ever-faster ever-more requirements and demands are setting this country's people up for a giant wave of disability and disease, as has been prophesied by nutritionists for decades. The medical system is admittedly geared for extreme disablement treatment, not for those living slightly "off" and needing to be treated gently, wholly -- this is not pharmaceutically profitable. This sounds kinda ranty, but all these factors caused a perfect storm of cracks that I MYSELF fell through, no second-hand media-fed rumors. One year I'm making six figures, the next three I can barely walk. It can apparently happen to anyone, and only those with means and family resources will survive, or those like me who are stubborn and resourceful in equal measure.
Being a well-reared perfectionist with a top-notch work ethic, I had a lot of anger to work through when I couldn't be ME anymore. Previously such an active person, a trauma which should have paralyzed me instead left certain tissues to degrade in a manner unrecognized and difficult to treat. Friends go hiking without me, family doesn't know what to do with me... with mom gone, the world became graceless, unforgiving, and unwelcoming. The less a human is able to do, the less they are able to fend for themselves, or get loving care. Cruelly, those who need the most help are also ugly reminders of the cost of our lifestyles, getting swept to the corners. My veteran brother said once, we basically gave our lives when we signed, relenquishing any claim to basic humanity foreverafter. He told me, "Sis, it is our burden to be the hated, the forgotten. I know that I'm still a good person in my heart."
As you can see, there was a lot for me to let go of, or even wanted to think about. Things I couldn't fix, but still gave free rent for occupying my upstairs. For just some moments, though, I let myself suspend the hellish reality I had been experiencing, to give my mind a break from focusing on a cramped, tangled knot. It helped free some processing power that was running in the background, unchecked and draining me. I imagined a place, small at first, where I was welcome. Where the lifetimes of my different experiences were woven in with a community, one who wished me good things and felt fuller for having known me. A place where I could contribute and be a neighbor. When I'm on a roll, I expand that to a whole town full of this, this soppy, corny, cheesyness -- but it felt so light to be there. I could breathe easier, I could imagine good things coming out of my interactions, and not be so reclusive. Just making room for it, I guess.
It served me to be able to a put the brakes on the worn-in path spiraling down. It is important to have a physiological break. Get a treat, read a funny, find a moment to yourself where even YOU aren't judging you, let alone anyone else, that you can ground in. This should be completely possible, but is so much harder than it sounds! self-care comes out of self-love. There is an undercurrent of poor self-worth in communities where resources are doled out via a system of judging and approving types of existence. We learn to think of ourselves and each other in the way the Machine sees us, and must endeavor to unlearn dis-care and begin demanding to be dealt with as a human.
The better I got at disconnected observation, the more clearly truth became visible. Suddenly I could admit fault freely, and engendered honesty in others. Only when the lake was drained did I identify my personal attachments to the outcome. This meant looking in the face of things I thought were good in my life, that ultimately kept me from moving forward. Before I went in with my "tweezers," I waited for a set of days where I could give this pain the room to unravel. This is also part of self-care, honoring that until then, you can try to triage your wounds in the meantime in order not to lose it and complicate your situation. Sometimes you get the choice, sometimes not. Be there for yourself when it does, like the bestest friend and advocate. No judging, only listening and protecting.
Increasingly, people are showing more Parking Lot Kindness, and some heroic community deeds! The contrary is also true, that pain and suffering follow the magnification principle, but this is not to be resented. We could distract ourselves with why, but the non-resentment part is how you disengage. THAT is the real work. I practiced inanimating a situation inside a clear blob so I could function while studying it, like the Ironman lab holograms, I tilt and turn, zoom in, connect ideas, and give space to make something work there first, where it didn't have the ability to hurt me or scare me anymore. There is a little meeting room in my mind where all sides involved are discussing and suggesting potential solutions, and in a supportive way. If peace with our struggles is supposed to be possible, it is only after being successfully imagined. Giving the situation permission to actually work out is the first step to it being able to change in life, even if it isn't right away.
These things refuse to be hurried, and are seldom honored by the world. This is where the Cloak comes in. How is yours coming along?
