Saturday, March 30, 2019

On The Subject Of Chaos In The Coming Into Clarity In Oneself In The Era Of The Trump Administration/Congressional Dysfunction


Or,  on the subject of truth-telling as a pathway out of confusion into serenity in the era of Trump/Congressional dysfunction!

Simply stated chaos theory, applied to human psychology, tells us that our vastly unstable minds seek order in the midst of disorder.

In other words while both life and our ever-questing minds can be counted on to upset the apple cart, again and again, our innate striving for order will, also, seek to right that upended wagon.

I got to thinking about chaos and order in all things this morning during my usual sunrise contemplation, pointedly aware that chaos has been running my life for, at least the past month, corresponding, unsurprisingly, with the planet Mercury having gone into its retrograde phase on March 5 through March 28, with its “pre-shadow,” or ramping up on February 19.

Throughout this period I have had to activate two new cell phones, deal with an unanticipated crash on my old computer that kept me from writing and publishing my usual offerings of blog posts, purchase, install and customize a new computer and manage the ordeal of a car accident in which the rented car I was driving, because my own car had been waylaid by my typically reliable auto mechanic, was totaled, although my injuries were minor.

All of this with my being an almost complete tech dummy!

Mercury retrograde, as you may know, is a Hellish three week period during which the planet Mercury appears to be in backwards motion. 

When Mercury is in retrograde, technology, communication, travel, logic, and information all get disrupted. During this time human beings experience many adverse effects, such as memory loss, loss of time, loss of items and sometimes loss of common sense. As for technology, many unexpected glitches occur, such as software crashes and emails getting lost.

Well, okay, this time I seem to be a Mercury and “pre-shadow” retrograde victim! 

And, now that these horrendous weeks are passing away, a Mercury retrograde survivor!

Given that, at last, I am beginning to recover from all the chaos I’ve been experiencing, I did my usual stint, even in tough times, this morning, to check the daily news headlines on the internet. 

There I found a CNN featured article titled “White House In Disarray: Trump’s post-Mueller victory lap is clouded by chaos.” No surprises there!  Could we expect anything other than chaos out of the Trump-era White House?

But... back to me on the subject at hand here, “truth-telling as a pathway out of confusion into serenity,” as it is my chaos I am intent on resolving not theirs!

Given my state of being this morning, however, those headlining words did set me to contemplating some of the hows and why of my determination, these days, to bring New Horizons Truth Or Dare GAME and Truth Or Dare Movement to Capital Hill, as an antidote to the lying and corruption that is infecting and presently destroying the magnificence of our democracy.

Could it be that for all my training and experience in being the Conductor of the New Horizons Truth Or Dare GAME – and -- having begun this track in my life more than forty-five years ago, I had overlooked the bigger picture of our GAME’s objectives?

The potential for truth-telling to help the individual and the collective create order out of chaos?

Could it be that truth-telling was not only a pathway to integrity, transparency, consciousness transformation and other attributes of healthy, top-of-the-line living, as I had been teaching these past many years, but that truth-telling, additionally, paves the way to the kind of order human beings thrive on, if they are to make headway, as an essential part of their natural evolutionary process?

Oh my! Oh my! What a way of seeing things!!

This is a way of seeing things that Groder had started guiding me to develop thirty-five years ago!  

Could the power of the Truth or Dare GAME process have greater far-reaching benefits than he or I had imagined?

Oh my, oh my – look what finding the golden goose who laid the golden egg that was, seemingly, destined to be mine, intended me to have, a still unimagined pathway for enhanced personal and community well-being!  

Perhaps it is time to revisit the possibilities as we chart out our future, built already on an enviable past.

The program New Horizons calls our Truth or Dare GAME was birthed, several generations after, but originating in what Groder was innovatively doing in the prison rehabilitation program discussed in the article linked above.

If you recall that Groder firmly held the notion that convicts and high leadership people can often have similar personality structures, it isn't surprising that New Horizons derives its singularly most impactful program, now intent on heading to Capital Hill, from a prison rehabilitation model that made truth-telling an essential element of recovery from the dysfunctions of the Dark Side.

All I had to do to remodel this earlier approach of his and some of its core philosophies was, so it seemed, to have the courage (Which I did!!) to go through that horrible ordeal of my Ethics Complaint process of last year – and – free myself, speaking truth to power, of the stigma I was carrying about Groder’s Dark Side so I could get past it and speak of the Light he, also, brought into my life!

But maybe there is still more yet to be discovered to this adventure of mine to make --

True order out of chaos for me!

Brought about by my speaking truth to power with the International Transactional Analysis Association who had no apparent interest in hearing it, at all! 

You can do it too!  Just learn to speak truth to power as your lifestyle! And make it a daily habit.

Figuring all this stuff out, these past few hours – and – not yet even having eaten my breakfast, pretty soon this line of thinking called up my deep yearning for our next monthly Truth Or Dare GAME to be held on Sunday, April 7 (currently open only to New Horizons Board Members and specially invited guests).

Taking my contemplations one step further, before I brought out my eggs and stuff, on the possible connections between truth-telling and seeking to replace chaos with order, I was delighted to find that a whole group of other high-minded thinkers were thinking along this line too.

Groder would likely have already have hooked up with them – and – shown them a thing or two, too, about putting theory into action in the the counterculture model he developed, featuring the Asklepeion GAME he brought out of the federal prison system, where he began his career, into the mainstream. 

Now I guess it’s up to me, with Marty now deceased! 

The GAME is mine to conduct, now on my own, as I make my way to Capital Hill with New Horizons GAME, Truth Or Dare!

Meanwhile while I move forward with that track, Maryland Route 270 into D.C. and on to Capital Hill, check out this piece by David Fuller, “Insisting on the truth in times of chaos,” in which he quotes the work of a rather contoversial Canadian professor,  Jordan Peterson, who seems to have given the relationship of truth and chaos considerable thought, as follows -


 “.,, another hallmark of truth, is that it snaps things together..... It’s like the Platonic idea that all learning was remembering. You have a nature and when you feel that nature articulated it’s it’s like the act of snapping the puzzle pieces together.”  Jordan Peterson
Wow!! Kindred spirits!

More on this topic, “truth telling as a pathway out of (chaos and) confusion into serenity,” even in the era of Trump/Congressional dysfunction, likely tomorrow, if I am to make my minimum monthly blog post quota on this site of one per week.

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