I'm Not Sleeping At Night

I know I am like many Americans who are appalled at the lack of dignity, decency, and diplomacy from Mr. Trump. His trampling on sacred rights, his denials and alterations of truths, his disrespect of women, his recent tweets of hate and prejudice against Muslims, his bellicose rhetoric with North Korea and his tax plan to embellish the corporate rich of America is leading this country into a cemented position that does not fit our collective future.

Where are the noble ones in Congress to stand against lies and misuse of power and the increasing possibility of nuclear war? Where are the righteous ones to put aside political positions and stand against the usurpations of freedoms and rights?

Impeachment is a process positioned by our founders to right the innocent wrongs of the electorate and the unethical choices of demented leaders. Where is the clarion call in Congress for what is right, not for what is politically expedient?

All of us have the right to personal opinions and to speak for them. The right, the left, the middle, any ideology, does not have the right to impose their absolute position on all. America is not a base core of partisan and minority beliefs; it is an amalgam of legislation through the consensus of compromise and the rule of law.

If we forget it and decline to act, we lose and so does our republic.

 

How the turkey got its name.

I mentioned my Thanksgiving Turkey in yesterday's post.

So why do we call it Turkey? There is a reason, and as happens so many times, the all-American bird got its name somewhat by mistake.

The tale begins with the British Empire which had stretched itself into Africa during the sixteen hundreds. Along with diamonds, the British exported a wild eatable bird back to England, but to get the shipment to the British Isles the cargo was routed through Turkey and supposedly that is how the big bird got its name.

When the sharp-eyed settlers spotted a similar winged bird strutting through the American colonies, they called it a turkey.

Scientists who study these sort of things tell us the bird that lives in Africa, that was imported to Europe by way of Turkey, is not the same bird that is native to America.

We probably ought to call our bird " Meleagris," that's what the turkey is known as in scientific jargon, and that comes from the Greek. In fact, one of the earliest mentions of the Meleagris comes from Aristotle. Just think, if the bird had first been exported from his country we could be sitting down to a Greece dinner with all the trimmings.

This Thanksgiving time

I am thankful for clean water and air. I am thankful for the right to protest the actions of our President and the actions of Congress. I am thankful for the discourse of discussion, but not the argument of absolute opinion. I am thankful for flowers, the scent of a pine forest, the crispness of fall and piles of wood ready for a fire, and the love of my family and friends. I give thanks to the Turkey who gave his life so that we could celebrate this holiday with a feast of abundance and I thank you for tuning into the blog from time to time.

Esoteric wanderings of a quiet mind

I think all of us quest for spiritual truth in our own way.

I also think it is essential for us to think about our individuality, as we move through life and accept response-ability for it.

Searching for Truth is an individual improvisational action, rather than a definable and patterned absolute. Each of us does it differently.  There is not one path to God; all path's lead to God.

Religions think they have the whole Truth and some give credence to only their doctrine.  This practice discounts experiential awareness and obscures the truth of an inner knowing perceived beyond dogma. It is called by many names, enlightenment, nirvana, rapture, and visions, depending on our discipline, and it comes from within when we extinguish or are forced to let go of the egoic “self.”

Remember a time you felt connected to something greater than yourself?  That connection was "experiential awareness."  You experienced it, you absorbed it, and it became yours. It was awe.

Philosopher Kenneth G. Mills says, "When act bears its fulfillment -- AWE!"  During this awe, it may have seemed like you were suspended from time and you probably felt a welling peace, resonance, as it blended from your senses; that feeling is an "inner knowing."  A profound awe.  And if you stayed quiet for a few moments, to hold on to the awe, you heard the sound of the Universe. Scientists call it the din. The spirit knows it as "OM." It is the perfect sound of balance in chaos.

In the fullness of inner-knowing, the Divine within us assimilates these kinds of connections as appreciation of the All That Is.

 Life's simple experiences: sunsets, rain, music, poetry, a touch, a smile, all engender appreciation. When you see them as a creation of love, for all things beautiful are a manifestation of love, you have what is called a revelation. There is no explaining a revelation; there is only the aware appreciation of it as it is processed through the Spirit, Mind, Body as surprised joy.  Philosopher and teacher of myth, Joseph Campbell, calls a revelation the "ah ha" of the mind.

Joy, by its direct connection to the divine, alters the minds frequency to a faster rate, and so the mind loses its rigidity and subsequent fear.  Your spirit then fills the now vast space between each thought with the truth. When that happens, awareness transcends and your perception of the Light increases as well as your feeling of joy.  Joy also encourages you to appreciate all experience without judgment, either of self, of God or others.

When a judgment is absent, pure joy is present as Love, and it not only surrounds us, it is us. We are part of it, by choice, not affliction.  All we need to do is remember LOVE is an individual choice.

A Lesson from 1988

    Humanity is a confusing species.  We can kill one another in war or alleys.  We can hate and hurt what we don't know and never even tried to understand. We pollute and foul our home, and we always choose to change something or somebody else, never ourselves.

   And then we do something great.

    For a small moment in time, back in 1988, the world linked to rejoice in the freedom of two trapped baby gray whales from the Alaska ice.  To rescue the young of another species, governments put aside mistrust,  environmentalists and oil workers, suspended argument to labor together for a common good and Eskimos did everything they could to save what they usually hunt.

    Two little gray whales, either by accident or design, helped us teach ourselves that the essence of life is cooperation, not competition, compassion not conflict, saving to be saved.

    There is a lesson to what happened in Point Barrow, Alaska.  I’ll bet the whales remember.  Do we?”

I'm Curious Alabama!

I’m curious Alabama!

Just how many women must come forward for you to say “enough” and realize Mr. Moore does not reflect the values of decency in America, to say nothing of morality, ethics and the rule of law.

Some of the excuses said on Moore’s behalf are ludicrous. The man has a problem. The Alabama GOP has a problem, and Alabama has a problem if Moore is the kind of man you send to Washington to represent your beliefs, your desires, and your goals.

Many of you embrace Evangelical Christianity. Not all, but many evangelicals support Moore. As I understand it, the term “evangelical” comes from the Greek word “euangelion” meaning “the good news.”

A Moore candidacy is not good news for Alabama or America nor does it, or he follow accepted evangelical convictions. There is a big difference between prayer and preying.

Alabama if you want to support Moore and forgive his indiscretions, please do so in your state. Don’t send him to tarnish America any more than it already is.

It Could Happen

Here’s a scenario.

Moore drops out of the Senate race with expletives to the GOP.

Sessions wins a write-in vote for his old Senate seat.

Sessions resigns from his AG position relieving Trump from firing him and takes his place in Congress.

Trump appoints a new Attorney General to his liking and perhaps bidding.

The new AG fires special counsel Mueller.

All hell breaks loose.

Is anybody listening?

A friend of mine asked the other day, do I ever feel like I’m shouting into the wind. I answered.

“I think truth has always been shouted into the wind for it is then blown back into the cradled face of thought for discernment.

I am reminded of Shakespeare’s King Lear, Act 3, Scene 1
“Bids the winds blow the earth into the sea or swell the curled water ‘bove the main, that things might change or cease.”

Truth does not shout into a zephyr wind for change or ceasing. In my view, it prefers the tempest as a carrier back to the source for constant examination, but it also benefits those in the lea of the wind who hear the fragmented muffled sounds of something different and get curious.

And so I shout!”

Long-term care

Long-term care homes are not an uplifting place to visit, but they should be. When one is approaching the end days of their productive lives because of a debilitating illness their surroundings should be filled with bright colors, music, and art; easels of canvas and posterboard with trays of washable paints should be everywhere so when inspiration strikes any one of the patients can express it.

Visiting a friend a while ago in a long-term care facility I walked several hallways in which the infirm, the halt, the lame and the chair-bound patients were starring into the mindless space of blank walls; boredom is killing them more quickly than a disease.

What I'm suggesting is a change of internal scenery and sound in all long-term facilities. Let comforting music echo through the halls of hope. Have a sound-proof room with a karaoke machine.  Let the brightness of color festoon the rooms and passageways. Let the drab garb of the dedicated caregivers reflect the lightness of life, instead of the medical seriousness with which they must contend every day. Why can't we make their uniforms in fuchsia, celadon and cerulean blue, decorate them with colored lights and flashy trinkets? Distraction is often better than medicine.

My friend told me of one elderly woman who had not left her room for two years. She has no family and few friends. Being alone is a condition that seems to be a curse of old age when you outlive most of your generation.

This is America. We can correct this. All it takes is "intention" and action will follow.

The Power of Manifestation

Have you ever wondered why things that we want or wish for never happen?

Me too!

If you spend time on it with earnest thought; the kind of thought that requires contemplative meditation without judgment. The kind of thought that pushes aside the original desire and the expectation of it happening, you come up with, “it wasn’t meant to be,” but that does not satisfy the “why.”

The “why,” as an answer, is always spiritual and depending on your level of awareness it is either understood with acceptance or relegated to the blame side, the finger pointing side, of not getting what we want. It didn’t happen because of this person or that problem.

We come into this density to experience mortal life in the newness of being, to experience growth through the trials of choice and we learn quickly that all choice, as a product of free will, has consequences. 

Thought is the beginning of all creation.

Mortal living is the manipulation of energy through choice. Manifestation takes three things: intention, concentration and time.

If you want to create something; be specific, hold the thought and by spiritual law it must happen for energy follows thought, but it happens in spiritual time, not mortal time.