Anastasia Rosen-Jones (formally Marcia E. Rosen), New Horizons Small “Zones Of Peace” Project Executive Director and Founder.
A personal and professional blog exploring the vision behind the New
Horizons ZOP and how it reflects my journey from blindness to recovery.
And yet this seeing beyond seeing is truly an aspect of the personal transformation many of us seek, even regularly on a day-to-day basis, as do I, making this quest an integral and essential part of daily practice. This searching for the highest quality of personal attainment and a correspondingly gracious and refined existence is what I have made of my life, built out of the experiences, elements and resources that have come out of the living it. As I stand and look back at all that has been, at this gateway before me, opening to my present and future I am awed at the beauty.and magnificence of it. Yesterday brought the unfolding reality, as it has been showing itself in recent past weeks, home to me, as Michael Cohen testified before Congress. I saw shadows of John Dean behind him and the specter of Richard Nixon hovering over, entwined with Donald Trump. For me watching Michael Cohen testify was like watching the Watergate hearings all over again. This time, unfortunately, with the massive polarization we have today that was observably absent at the time of Watergate. I think we, the constituents of the United States, were too stunned by the happenings of the Watergate scandal to react against one another then. And we had not, previously, in our lifetimes, before Watergate, encountered presidential corruption such as that. But we are a different breed of American these days, jaded and far removed from the honoring of presidents such as George Washington and Abraham Lincoln as we once did. As I watched Cohen deliver his testimony and be questioned, I put my head down and wept with the pain of it all. Shortly after, I lifted my head, again, believing that the time of the manifesting of "My Prophecy," the only one I have ever had in my life, had revealed itself, at last. With the closing words of Representative Elijah Cummings, with whom I am proud to share the state of Maryland, my ideals were lifted. I was proud of what I was witnessing, hopeful a new and better day was approaching than we have been experiencing these past few years, under the Trump Administration, corrupt to it's very core. The form the manifesting of my prophecy would now take, most observably, was to be, first and foremost, through New Horizons Truth or Dare GAME, destination Capital Hill! Who would have thought it? Cohen's testimony, replete with humbleness, transparency and accountability modeled what we, my New Horizons Board Members and myself, are after through our GAME. Perfection and an absence of it past, not so much; Michael Cohen is entitled to redeem himself and build trust someday, the New Horizons GAME community thinks. The cleaning up of what has been – and – the sincere intention to make amends and do better forward is what we saw yesterday and what we seek. For me, personally, in this case, as at the time of Watergate, I found myself choosing to put my bet on a lower rung, identified turncoat, as opposed to the Big Guy, Honcho. Marty Groder, my psychiatrist mentor, veteran, prominent healer of BAD GUYS at Marion Federal Penitentiary in its heyday, newly replacing Alcatraz, had initially shown me the way, back in the mid-1980s, to guide this undertaking. Since I had been envisioning I would eventually lead this parade, on my own, head conductor, now, of the Truth Or Dare GAME for close to forty, amazing years. So the time has come, almost forty years after my prophecy revealed itself to me -- and it is now! In my reverie, I heard the National Anthem playing in my mind. I could see "the dawn's early light" in my mind’s eye, along with the setting of the sun outside my office window, as yesterday was ending and my life was becoming more and more of a MIRACLE! I felt myself ready to make my move. Through the vehicle of New Horizons, to throw my hat in the ring to stand up for "the broad stripes and bright stars thru the perilous fight" to help keep our democracy strong. I knew it, in every cell of my being! My prophecy is about to manifest itself. Watch it play out. And, do, please, come along for the adventure and be a part of it!
Read about New Horizons Truth Or Dare GAME here. After twenty, long, arduous almost death-defying years. Oh, yes indeed, death-defying! Along the way of living in blindness, up until now, this time of "She who rises again, " the Greek and Russian meanings of the name, Anastasia, and following the concluding of my ITAA (International Transactional Analysis Association) Ethics Complaint ordeal, there were days when I felt as if my very life was threatened, moments when I seriously struggled with wondering if I could manage to go on living another minute, or would want to die. To be clear, my "feeling like I'm dying times" were my "blind times." Not my Ethics Complaint times of last year though they genuinely did challenge both my lower and Higher Selves enough for me to notice how very easily they could have triggered this response. By the time of last year's trials and torments, however, I had already learned the art of transcendent living and had managed it, in this instance, with merit, I believe. Yet, we all have these times.
At least almost everyone I've ever met has. Or does their utmost to avoid them, fearing emotions such as these could overtake them, drag them under into the pits of death or burning in Hell where they would not be able to fend off these feelings, instead succumbing to them. However, imagine this -- New Horizons Truth Or Dare GAME provides a safe enough, secure space to dig down into these depths of the Self and the Soul and transcend them all the way to AWE! We did this kind of excavating, transcending and transforming before I was blind, in the “old” New Horizons Truth Or Dare GAME (originally called the Discount Derby). And, we are already touching this place once again, in some who are prepared to be our true Compassionate Warriors, in the “new.” Truly amazing! Yet this digging and its resulting transformation are not the only reasons to play our GAME. Words like the following from George Orwell and our nationally esteemed Oprah Winfrey speak volumes about the "Why of playing our GAME." We hope their words inspire you to want to join us in the adventure of playing New Horizons Truth Or Dare GAME where we can, together, learn to work collectively and establish new trends for doing, being and living in our society and in our politics. From George Orwell --
"In a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
We truly need revolutionary acts in this time of ours. From Oprah
"What I know for sure is that speaking the truth is the most powerful tool we have."
And, we do need powerful tools to manage these times! But I did not have the New Horizons Truth Or Dare GAME when I was blind, one of my greatest losses from that era (1998 – 2006). Had I had it, would I have fared better? I think not. I actually managed the ordeal quite well, given the circumstances. Because during that time I had something even better, Kebzeh community under the guidance of our Beloved Murat Yagan which brought me teachings that, now, allow me to return with even greater gifts to the “new” Truth Or Dare GAME, than I might have, had I had taken another path. (New Horizons Bus Ride Story Adventure is one example of what I/we have brought from Murat and his teachings to New Horizons. One of our dearest dreams and intentions is to get this special tour bus on the road before too long.) So all turned out just fine, as is; Murat and Kebzeh community being my main supports and guideposts, beyond my own, that allowed being blind to make a shaman of me! Now, I am ever so grateful, these days, to be able, once again, to conduct this adventure called New Horizons Truth Or Dare GAME and its associated GAME Community, with a growing number of compatriots. Truly amazing! My Beloved New Horizons Truth Or Dare GAME is back again! So am I, reclaiming the wholeness I once "felt" in myself that my term of blindness and recovery from blindness seemed to have shattered, for a time. To find this in my life, once again, is to truly know the art of kintsugi, “the Japanese art of putting broken pottery pieces back together with gold — built on the idea that in embracing flaws and imperfections, you can create an even stronger, more beautiful piece of art.” Heavy lifting and the, still unexplainable, "crossing over" I discussed on one of my last radio shows, Breaking The (#MeToo) Silence And The Price It Exacts, has brought me here, along with lots of discipline, determination and clarity as to my goals – and – a hand full of loving, supportive people who are “like family,” if not of my blood. This is truly living the Japanese art of kintsugi which I wrote about while I was going through my Ethics Complaint ordeal but never posted. Does this notion of kintsugi make a cracked pot of me, put back together again with liquid gold? Maybe. If so, I'll take it, flaws and imperfections and all else going with it. Such as the hard lessons and unexpected gifts that come along too. Umm. Maybe I will get to posting that, almost forgotten, article, “On Kintsugi and The Art Of Putting The Fractured Parts Of Oneself Back Together With Gold,” before too long.
Yippee! Readers I have been manufacturing a crisis the past few weeks, unknowingly, beginning with the New Horizons Truth Or Dare GAME of Saturday, January 19 and my kitty, Cassandra, dying at the same time. The crisis was revealing itself by my writing voraciously, following that GAME. If you want to see the evidence, check out my three New Horizons-sponsored blog sites for posts since that date plus my production, in progress, of a next Anastasia The Storyteller Radio Show program, "How Truth-Telling Sets Us Free." (Links to my three blog sites are posted at the end of this article.) OMG!! I couldn't dance fast enough! I was functioning as if I had so much bottled up inside of me (which I did), especially with my freedom to communicate zipped by ITAA organizational demands, throughout my Ethics Complaintordeal last year, and a myriad of other factors, coming into play simultaneously, that I was writing as if enchanted. Remember the Red Shoes fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen -- and -- the enchanted shoes of the dancer in the story?
Well, I was beginning to write as if I were wearing those shoes, substituting dancing shoes for my various writing tools, making myself equally as crazed. Not good! Not good, at all! Finally I crashed, as possessed people often do. However, once I began to clear away the rubble I'd generated in my enchanted state, exemplified by my office desk definitely not looking like anything Marie Kondo would advise, I came to realize that I was in need of writing for my pleasure, not only yours! For me, not you -- a "spark of joy."
What happened next is that I set in motion a plan, immediately, to begin working on, not only one, but TWO books; one of which is to be non-fiction, a first for me. Here are my two working titles:
Shana Planet Glo, Daughter Of Queen Androgyny, Goes To Washington – fiction
A fantasy novel suggesting an imaginary solution to our national political disarray. With absolutely no deadlines! OMG!!! My ten years writing under constant deadlines for Random House almost did me in! I’m starting these two for my writing pleasure! If I die before they are complete and published, check for my unpublished manuscripts, now numbering eight, held in trust as “intellectual properties” by the New Horizons Support Network, Inc. And, away I go!!
Writing for my own writing and reading pleasure, first and foremost! A new adventure! Yippee! Look for details to come.
