Bill Clinton Lied About Monica Lewinsky And I Went Blind!

The two events are directly connected!

Of course you will wonder how this could be. And, of course, I will say, one more time, more on the way. But sagas take a long time in unfolding, especially if one, such as myself, is after telling a tale on the internet, in depth, not just the surface, so all I can assure you now is --

You will appreciate the journey of my tale-telling, perhaps like a mini novel, leading you to discover how Bill Clinton’s lying about Monica Lewinsky resulted in my going blind.  

Furthermore, it is my intention with all of this, that you will, minimally, gain, from my efforts here an enhanced ability, or at least willingness, to consider that what you may be holding back from "seeing" -- and -- "saying" might, as has happened for me, be serving to deter your best level of healthy living -- and -- enable the Dark Side's proliferation in others, personally, and in our society and politics!

But it will take me a bit of time to make my story complete for you. It is quite a saga!

And, if you will notice, my going blind when I see and try to say what I'm not supposed to be looking at, showed itself when I went blind, again, as I discovered the documents that lead to my present Ethics Complaint. 

Not an "accident," by any means, if you know my full story.

There is another story I’ve kept under wraps for a good long time; the story about how I went blind the day I went on the air at a local radio station to say what I saw about Bill Clinton's Dark Side when he lied about Monica Lewinsky.

Now is the time!

Bill Clinton’s defense against his being called out yesterday on where he stood in cleaning up his act with Monica Lewinsky, honoring the opportunity #Metoo has given him (and untold numbers of other power-over abusers) just tipped the scales, making it my time, too, to add a bit more spice to the #Metoo conversation!

Most intriguingly I just happen to have a recorded documentation of the day I went blind, confronting Bill Clinton lying about Monica Lewinsky!  My sharing it has been in the works for awhile.

Now is the time!

You will be able to hear snippets of those recordings, over time, on my Anastasia The Storyteller Radio Show as we go ever more deeply into the Dark Side Warrior aspects of How We Are Going To Move Ourselves Through The #Metoo Era.

Today Bill Clinton crossed a final line with me, from whence he will never return. 

Not because I am a person who holds grudges but because he is way past redemption!  And a woman needs to decide which abusers merit forgiveness (and why) in this #Metoo era of settling up our books.

Should I say thanks to the almighty powers that be that Hillary did not make it to the White House?

Where would #Metoo be today, if she had?

I tremble to think it!

Listen in this coming week, provided our local flood disaster recovery makes ample headway in the cell tower repair department, as we take another step forward in digging in as deep as we are able on the air to help move the healing of #Metoo damage forward. 

Our show will be all about “leaning in,” as the pathway to healing the wounds of #Metoo that neither Bill Clinton nor his consort, Hillary, and likely his daughter, just don’t get!

Join us for this week’s show – 
Moving Beyond Gender Tyranny: Setting The Stage (Rescheduled Show 2x)

Saturday, June 9 11:30 a.m.

G-d willing and the creek don’t rise, again!

Yesterday our "creek," the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers at Harpers Ferry, crested at over 21 feet!

OMG! The lower town of historical Harpers Ferry is flooded!

Thank G-d we are high above the river, up here at New Horizons Harpers Ferry Retreat Center.

More to come as I am, obviously, Anastasia The Storyteller here and on Blog Talk Radio with a thousand and more stories to tell.

What Chaos and Crisis Teach Us

I have had enough chaos, crisis and tragedy in my life to write a book about it. That’s why I am currently trying to finish up three books; To See Or Not To See: The Art of Transcendent Living, The Middle East Crisis In My Backyard: How Communities Come Apart and How They Heal, based on the story at this link, and Hot Pants, Motorcycles and K Street. 

Each of these books and all of them are tales, somewhat in the form of memoir, that tell of chaos, crisis and tragedy in my life, as well as enormous successes in my life, born of crisis, chaos and tragedy; personal transformation, in other words, that has been the product of personal challenge. Additionally I am also trying my best to put excerpts from my first three books as posts on my Dark Side Warrior blog site as these books have been on hold for longer than I care to remember due to my losing my eyesight.

Pushing our way through obstacles is the sterner stuff we humans, particularly Americans are made of; challenge turned into opportunity. Or as Murat,  New Horizons Beloved community development mentor and my personal spiritual teacher, might say how we humans carry out the alchemy of our personhoods naturally, transmuting the lead within to the potential for the gold within.

I know this pathway of transformation well. In fact, periodically I feel inclined to remind readers that I am available for you as a guide for this treacherous terrain called personal (and collective) transformation. I know it well having chosen to traverse it for decades, if for no other reason than personal survival.

I don’t like crisis or chaos, least of all do I like tragedy. You probably don’t either. But what can you do, other than sink or swim, win or learn from what seems to be loss?

Ihese are a part of life that almost no one ever escapes unless you divorce yourself  entirely from what is going on around you.

When I was a little girl, up until I was about eight, I lived a near idyllic life. Nothing severe had ever touched me, at least as I recall. Then, overnight my life was turned upside down. After three miscarriages my mother birthed a full term baby girl, named Sharon Iris. What joy! What a miracle! What exhilaration for my parents and for me who would no longer be an only child. 

Just like I had wished for on a star!

But --- whoa – tiny Sharon Iris lived less than two days.

What devastation; the end of paradise for me! And the beginning of a world that seemed never to right itself; one crisis, chaos and tragedy after another!  

Bottom line: I discovered I had to learn to manage, work with, even transform upheaval or die! For me it was that urgent!

Right now the state of affairs surrounding our current society and politics feels like chaos and crisis, of tragedy, I am not so certain. But things sure are challenging.

What are you going to do about it, personally? 

What are we going to do about it, collectively? 

Especially those of us, like myself, who see Donald Trump as dangerous and even mentally off balance and abhor the thought of his taking over the White House.

I despise what I see happening around us in this current presidential campaign cycle, especially coming from the Republican side. But I “looked” at 9/11 as a time of Divine Chaos as that was all I could “see” of it. And I am glad I saw it this way; a painfully important message designed on the level of Divine mystery that had much to teach us Americans. Much that we apparently needed to learn, and perhaps still do.

I don’t know what the message or grander, greater implications of Election 2016 hold, for now and for the long term.

But one thing I do know about circumstances such as we are faced with today – I am a part of a greater whole. And, to be at my best I must align with this whole synergistically or I will be lost! Even if this means adapting my views to support our next elected president whomever that is! Therefore I must lean in to others who are also a part of that whole to work our way through what is presently facing us in America today in our society and politics.

David Brooks of the New York Times in an article titled “If Not Trump, What?” expressed my intent completely when he said –

I don’t know what the new national story will be, but maybe it will be less individualistic and more redemptive. Maybe it will be a story about communities that heal those who suffer from addiction, broken homes, trauma, prison and loss, a story of those who triumph over the isolation, social instability and dislocation so common today.

….. Trump will have his gruesome moment. The time is best spent (for the rest of us) elsewhere, meeting the neighbors who have become strangers, and listening to what they have to say.

Mr. Brooks suggests what I have learned well, but not always easily – 

I know that surviving by transforming within myself to manage what is outside of me has taught me this—

When I lean in to others and give up any isolation (isolation being different than solitude) to actively be a part of the whole, somehow, almost magically, I am stronger and wiser about how to manage challenge than I am alone!

That’s why building small “zones of peace” matters to me!

The Light Is So Bright It Hurts My Eyes!

I made an emergency visit last week to see my local ophthalmologist. For days beforehand my “new” eye felt irritated, the vision diminishing. Worst of all were mornings. Upon awakening each day the bright light of morning flooding my room was blinding me and painful, prompting me to hide out under covers for as long as two or three hours until I could, without undue discomfort, face the day.

Needless to say I was alarmed!

I had experienced this effect previously with all, or most all, of my earlier six corneal transplants (this one had been number seven). And I had eventually come through the healing process successfully. Was I, this time around, becoming more conscious of the healing phases as they progressed, I wondered?

Still the situation was not to be dismissed. So off I went into town; never an easy trek for me as I am totally devoted to my mountain life. But I was glad I went.

According to my doctor, while there was a bit of inflammation present, the greater issue was that now more Light was entering my visual field than previously. I was growing more SIGHTED! 

Imagine that!  Truly seeing more, not less!  What a joy! What a blessing!

Without my being fully conscious, or at least not aware at this level, of what was opening up before me; metaphorically, physically, in reality, theoretically and practically, my eyes were beginning to reveal new levels of seeing!

On the heels of my surgery, I had pledged myself to a spiritual, emotional healing journey to parallel the physical I was undergoing. Apparently the rewards of my intent were surfacing and – possibly – the Light was so Bright, amazement, even disbelief, was my response. 

Could my eye challenge last week and my need to see my doctor with an emergency visit, simply and not simply at all, be that I was facing into, once again, Divine Chaos; the chaos so Exquisite I had been able to see only the downside. 

Maybe, at almost four months after my corneal transplant, I need to begin considering that my whole being is somehow being transplanted, or at least refined. Or, perhaps, more aptly the freedom I allowed myself on the heels of that surgery seems to have elevated my consciousness. If that is possible for real, along with the actual, physical visual clearing, perhaps I am now beginning to see the world around me as being so filled with joy and love, so inordinately peopled by an abundance of good will and camaraderie, that I think I must have been asleep until now.

Sharing my amazement with my Spirit Sister Sue, the feedback she gives me suggests I might just be entering the Promised Land. Ah, “Next year in Jerusalem,” as goes the traditional Jewish greeting and good bye has arrived for me now; I have reached the promised land! Or perhaps I am entering the world of Alice In Wonderland where all kinds of unexpected and magical experiences arise.

Or as Murat might describe it, discovering the cosmic Jamboree that comes of doing the “work” of conscious evolution. From Sue’s vantage point of witnessing my journey I can even “see” and define the influence of the choices I’ve made lately that brought me here!

Wow! Whatever it is in real time language, I think I may have truly entered, with my eyes wide open, the next level of living in a dimension of deliberately creating a purposeful path to “Finding Light In The Darkness.”  

With its many rewards, the main one now being that I can SEE me SEEING! That istruly gorgeous and amazing! 

Is Seeing Or Not Solely A Medical Question?

Now many years after the fact I can look back at the first hint I had that there was possibly more to my vision problems than that which simple, though not simple at all, medical diagnosis could account for.

The year was 1978. I had just recently remarried. This time to my one true love, Michael, who brought into our marriage a supreme devotion to not only me, but to my two children, not his own. Our dream wedding was not long past. And I should have been fully wrapped up in enjoying my new  married life.

On some levels this was how it was. However, a dark cloud hung over my otherwise sunny days in the form of what was soon to be diagnosed at the world renowned Johns Hopkins Wilmer Eye Institute as hysterical blindness.

It is this topic; hysterical blindness, and its implications as well as how understanding these is relevant to an examination of the ills of society and its politics that I wish to take up now. The subject I am offering here is complex, generically. It is also inordinately complicated and sensitive for me personally.

Nonetheless at this time of the correspondence of another year’s ending and my just having had my seventh cornea transplant less than two weeks ago, I feel myself desirous of discussing this topic and its relevance to many issues, including above all, the combined agendas of New Horizons and myself as they relate to our Coffee House Conversations Project.

Because of the many facets involved in this discussion and my intent that what I am sharing here make some difference, albeit even a limited one, I am committing myself to presenting my online readers with a series of articles on the subject of whether or not seeing or not is solely a medical question.  

And, if it is not, as I will be intending to open your eyes to considering, what then?

Do you or do you not have the courage I have developed to face what may be, heretofore, the unexplored terrain in yourself and your associates of seeing beyond the physical realm– and – take the consequences of both on the earthly and spiritual levels?

It is quite a mighty trip!

Do You See What I See?

Do You See What I See? Do you hear what I hear?

Long time coming? Or was I just lacking in patience?

September 11, 2001

It was shocking, horrifying, devestating that terrorists could breach our national borders and kill U.S. citizens in cold blood on American soil.

I could not SEE what you saw that day. I was blind at the time. (Now I am blind no more. I wish the same for you, spiritually as well as physically.)

But then mostly all I could do was listen to hear of what you saw; on televised newscasts in the newspapers, magazines and periodicals. Through a haze like two sheets of waxed papers I sensed images and heard the anguish.

I was a part of this world and yet not quite.

Nonetheless, we all still remember and read and talk about it.

We always will.

We were changed by what happened. Yet not quite enough – which is one of my main points here.

In the aftermath we came together in shock and fear. We gathered in churches and synagogues wherever two or more could meet to talk and pray. We sought comfort in one another and that which was somewhere beyond. That which we could not quite see, but longed to feel; peace and comfort and meaning in that which seemed to have no meaning at all.

After a time, too little time, however, most returned to business as usual.

As if there could ever again be “usual.”

What I saw in 9/11 because I could not see what you saw -- of the bloody aftermath was only that which I could see with my heart. And the images I sensed that went beyond the physical into the spiritual dimension.

For me the time brought close the words of  Helen Keller --

The spiritual world offers no difficulty to one who is deaf and blind. Nearly everything in the natural world is as vague, as remote from my senses, as spiritual things seem to the minds of most people.

This very much reflects how I “saw” 9/11.

For me there was little difference between the physical world and the spiritual. So I saw what you saw as best I could; the spiritual taking dominance as the physical was so very vague for me.

Since that day, 9/11, and the weeks and months after I came to realize that I was sometimes able to hold onto my spiritual musings more easily than most.

After all I had no meaningful work at the time to distract my attentions – and – no lingering, terrifying and bloody graphic images to haunt me. Soon after that day I created a brief study of attitudes and such to explore with the limited number of people I had access to in those blind days after 9/11.

Not able to drive and living, as I still do, up in the mountains, I found comfort for myself and created it for some by drawing those few into storytelling about what 9/11 meant for us all.

Not realizing, at the time, that I would come to find storytelling to be a path to healing and peace, personally and collectively; a recognition that would come, a few years later, when I had, after eight years, recovered my eyesight and had begun to heal from the trauma the loss brought about.

Storytelling would come to play a central role in my life after blindness, continuing to this day.

Now as the vista of 2015 looms ahead, I am recalling that brief storytelling time following 9/11, yearning for more of the same; seeking comfort with one another. 

And I am seeing something that I hope you too are seeing. Many are beginning to catch on that telling our stories is a viable first step to creating community healing activities; a means to build bridges of understanding that bring comfort as we discover more and more about one another while we go about working together to find solutions to our shared problems. 

That early study presaged what my latest study, the Possible Human, Possible Society Study, has revealed, sometimes inspiring -- through stories -- and – sometimes disappointingly in contradictory actions that demonstrate, too frequently, what our minds would likely choose to dismiss –

We are a nation of people who, typically, only take time to lean into one another  opportunistically. When tragedy erupts or when doing so serves some other self-centered agenda. 

Thus we neglect doing that which would serve the higher good of all for one, one for all; leaning in to one another with constancy to build bridges of unity and peace; an antidote to the poison of polarization.

For example, individuals and groups have come together in protests around upsets involving police violence against African American men.  Several years back an equal or greater number took up the call that became Occupy Wall Street, pushing these protesters in our faces on a daily basis.

Did this make a difference for all its noise? Did our country improve for it? I wonder. Now you barely hear a word spoken of it. Is this what Ferguson and NYC will also accomplish when time has passed?

Protest can be a good thing, boldly affirming our First Amendment rights to freedom of speech. Protest also can turn violent as we are seeing. Even the simmering can be a precursor to treachery and tragedy.

Today I am standing on the side of a mountain where I live, overlooking the historic town of Harpers Ferry. My backyard backs up on sites, once sheltering civil war soldiers from both the Confederacy and Union.

It is almost an effortless endeavor up here to immerse oneself in the history of that era. It is with relative ease, correspondingly, with scenes of bloodshed surrounding us on every side, to call up those long ago voices of death and our nation divided; the cries of young men, dying for freedom.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. It never did. War, even "civil" war is not an answer such as we have in congress these days, if genuinely civilized men and women will work together.

So let us come together as the New Year of 2015 makes its way in and seek personal and collective growth as an ever more truly civilized humanity, striving to take our evolving another level up.

New Horizons will do its part with an emphasis on guiding whoever will join us to tell our stories and listen to one another with our hearts on our path to healing. Our forthcoming Coffee House Conversations of Race Relations and our Possible Human, Possible Society Study expanded into a Campus Life track are two of our efforts in this direction.

Do You See What I See? The unity and peace!

Do you hear what I hear? The unity and peace!

We can do this, more and more in 2015!

Spiritual Warrior Woman Seeking Signals

These are turbulent times all around us -- and -- for many of us within ourselves. It is not easy to integrate the data flooding our senses; the impressions vividly presented on the internet, the sheer deluge of happenings reported from around the globe, the rapidly shifting world we live in, almost moment by moment.

For a person such as myself – still and forever, no doubt, recovering from extended blindness, day-to-day sensory overload is even more difficult to manage than for the ordinary person.

By maintaining the spiritual ambiance I developed in my years of blindness and recovery from blindness (1998 – 2006) I managed to buffer myself from these daily onslaughts and nurture the serenity I developed during that period.

Being blind gave me the gift of being able to see beyond what one sees ordinarily.

Beyond has often been a comfortable place to be, but it is not enough, over time.

I tell myself that this extraordinary sight came upon me, most pointedly, at the time of 9/11. Unable to see the graphic displays of physical destruction at the World Trade Center and elsewhere, I instead acquired a heightened sensitivity to the emotional, spiritual and cultural energies in motion at the time.

I have never been the same since. On the other hand, no one else has been either.

It was at that point that I believe I began to experience an added dimension to my sense of self in the world around me. Had I not been, also, the beneficiary of input and guidance from Murat Yagan, my spiritual teacher and New Horizons community development mentor at that time, perhaps this dimension might not have become as expansiveness as it did.

So I was blessed, again, by this circumstance.

However it came to me, there it was – and – there it is; I have a gift to be able to view the systems of society and politics, personal and community relationships with an expanded view.

This past week I’ve gotten a bit overloaded by national circumstances, specifically what has been happening in Ferguson, Missouri.  This upheaval pulled me in.

It is time for me, I realized, to not hold back, time to give up spending quite as much time as I have, cloistered on this mountain that is home to New Horizons Retreat Center and myself.

I must take time away now to join with others in advancing our troubled conditions, racism long being an issue that riles my sensitivities. I carry a long history along these lines that makes it matter like no other issue.

Honoring the need I feel for participation on this is hard for me. I leave my sanctuary with reluctance.

The world beyond is embroiled in chaos.  To serve it is to immerse oneself in it. How to do this and not be pulled down into the turmoil, but rather to allow ones Light to lift, I am not completely certain.

For now, the only way I know to do it is to set my sights on seeking the signs that signify “….this is the way, follow it.”

What I imagine will come next is engaging with other Spiritual Warriors like myself.

And, so I will. Divine Guidance will be our guide, if we are to do right.

Cutting Off Versus Leaning In: The Legacy of In Between

Yesterday, a familiar-seeming face in a photograph of one of the “special to CNN” contributors drew my attention.  Something about that face startled me. Almost hauntingly, throughout the day, the picture kept coming back to me.

Then it struck me; the face in the photograph was my mother’s, or almost so!

Spurred on by that realization, instantaneously, I returned to CNN and the article. I was, by this time, intent on finding out more about the author. Already I had a strong supposition; she was someone I knew; a family member, in fact.

Confirming my hunch that this woman was, indeed, my first cousin, once removed, granddaughter of my mother’s sister, I wondered, once again, at the magic and mystery of life.  This was, undeniably, a long lost cousin!

Having, within hours, only just finished doing a radio show on my newly presented “Lean In Legacy Template,” now, I was face-t0-face, via the internet, with an heiress to the major source of what had been generations of family cutoffs. Here was a carrier, albeit in innocence, of a legacy of family disconnectedness, continuing to this day.

Seeing this living, breathing symbol of the “Cut-off Legacy” of my own family; my first cousin, once removed, who I had neither seen nor spoken to in more years than I care to remember, uprooted a cache of stored memories and emotions, primarily sorrow at the loss.

On the heels of introducing my well-articulated antithesis to disconnectedness of every variety, here was a living representative of the challenge I had built my life upon to dispel; polarization, be it familial, cultural or political. 

Grounded in denial and lies, conspiratorial alliances had managed, to the best of my knowledge, to produce a family tree, rife with the poison of polarization, mired in the kinds of dysfunction that marks our country today, especially in the political arena and international affairs. A toxin so widespread it left no one unmarked in an extended family of hundreds, bringing about as much as one hundred years of heartache.

In a family abundant in doctors, lawyers, and other high profile careers and plentiful in prominence and money, as well as a scandal or two, a secret war of collusions, distrust and disconnect had managed to proliferate. While, at the same time, family members acted as if nothing at all was amiss; denial was viral in my family.

Wondering, once again, at the illusions we had lived by, upon seeing this familial reminder of that past, brought, now, into the present, my mind turned to contemplation on the facts, as I knew them.

Among them was that this relative of mine, albeit unknowingly, on her part, was from the faction of my family most rooted in the cutting off that had plagued our family. Given to a healthy respect, as I am, for synchronicity, my next thoughts turned to what I might do with this unexpected intrusion into my day of pleasure regarding the introduction, through my radio show, of my “Lean In Legacy Template.”

Now what, I asked myself? Was I being given a message guiding me to my next “b’shrt” moment (b’shrt meaning “destiny” in Yiddish/Hebrew)? Was it b’shrt that I lean in to this cousin of mine as my next step in my quest for family unity?

Considering this possibility, I consulted with trusted friends, tossed my I Ching coins, did a new Tarot card reading and contemplated further.

No, I told myself, my golden moment for leaning in, again, to my family was not quite yet. I belonged, for now, at a maintained distance until a gentle portal, or a rational one, based on a quest for truth, higher consciousness and compassion might open.

In the meantime, at least, I now knew where to find a missing – and – missed family member; a public online profile and a web site.

I might seek these out when it was time.

Meanwhile, I would continue waiting and watching, remaining on the periphery, on the edges.  And, do my best to contribute my own legacy; a lean in legacy, as my prescribed antidote to our family’s discord.

I would know when it was time -- and -- how for me to take the next steps toward my family, again.

Point of clarification

Could the fact that I have a personal life that might differ, albeit slightly, from my professional world cause a stir or controversy, for anyone, anywhere?

Being blind made a shaman
of me.

Such as the next, very important revelation that some celeb or other is announcing, today, that she/he is gay or black or bi-racial might?

I would hope not. At least not in any negative way! 

Sometimes, my “other (personal) life” does, however, seem to matter to some who do wonder whether or not New Horizons is a spiritual program.

Especially, given the recent passing of New Horizons’ community development mentor, Murat Yagan. Murat was, also, my personal spiritual mentor. From either angle, interest in New Horizons or a reader/supporter of mine, a significant increase in references to Murat would be natural at this time.

Whatever your interest, please note the following clarification.

New Horizons publicly speaks of Murat as our "community development mentor" and his, also, being my personal "spiritual mentor." If you have an interest as to how these two roles Murat provided entwine, the recent contribution Sue and I made to Murat’s last published book, AhmstaKebzeh: The Science of Universal Awe,Volume II, offers as complete an explanation as would be needed, I believe.

(The recent publication of this long-awaited book, which includes this article by Sue and I, would have naturally resulted in our expansion of comments and connections to Murat and his influence and impact on New Horizons had his unexpected death not occurred as it did in December.)

To further explain, however, allow me to state  –

The objectives of New Horizons are to offer consulting, training and conversation forums as a mainstream community development model and program, not a spiritual training or development program.

We do our best, at New Horizons, to be very cautious as to how we present ourselves, in terms of offering guidance or education to our participants and supporters, respecting religions, personal philosophies and so forth, be they drawn from cultures, religion, philosophy or any other source. In fact, at New Horizons, we actively seek to assist, particularly through our community conversations, to build bridges across the separations of diversity wherever they exist.

Additionally, the ethical principles of our organization do draw upon, what we consider to be, the accrued wisdom of the world, including, of course, the teachings and traditions of Ahmsta Kebzeh.

We do not, in any way, shape or form, wish to impose on the willingness of supporters or participants, who accept our leadership and guidance, as permission to intrude or trespass on the personal values and needs others hold.

With Kebzeh community principles and traditions interwoven into what was originally a long-established therapeutic community model, we have every evidence that we have developed a superb mainstream community development template. To continue our carefully earned, fine reputation as professionals in the area of mainstream community development, we pay heed to maintaining this.

Sometimes, for me, there is a fine line between my professional persona and personal values. Because, occasionally, this juxtaposition can be tricky, I proceed always with caution.

Of one thing you can be assured, no matter how far my visioning may take me or my spiritual perspectives guide me, my feet are always on the ground!

So Beautiful, Yet So Challenging: The invisible Becoming Visible

More excerpted from “Hot Pants, Motorcycles and K Street” – manuscript in progress.

How very strange, I reflected, that revealing the extent of my current eye problem crisis on this blog site brought a calm to wash over me; a lightness of such purity and subtlety that I felt lifted to a higher realm of being.

How could an experience like this bring such transcendence; simply sharing, openly, that which I, generally, so closely hold private?

It is not with any intention to be less than transparent that I have held the subject of my eyes and their ongoing threats of blindness, quiet . Only inadvertently has the subject;  not been shared more fully. And, yet in exploring my “Anastasia The Storyteller” blog site, today, for that which I have previously shared, I find I have written a fair amount on the subject. So my situation has not truly been kept secret.

(Check the labels on this home page for “Keratoconus,” “Blind/seeing“911,” "To See Or Not To See" and “Recovery from blindness” for these articles.)

Actually there has been more than enough about my past visual impairment to suit me to date.  Do you think, perhaps, that I have been too reserved on the subject? I have in the past and, thus, robbed myself and others of the growth possibilities that the sharing of sorrows and losses can prompt.

Please do let me know, if this is so, for you about me.

No matter, destiny seems to have pushed the issue, once again, to the fore so that I/we have another opportunity here, if we missed out before.

Journalist Mike Corrigan, writing under the name G.M. Corrigan, wrote a beautiful article about my experiences with and recovery from blindness in “Finding Light In the Darkness” (Frederick News Post, August 6,2006). I so much appreciate how he utilized his proficiency with words to tell my blindness story and capture the transformation that was also mine, along with my losses and challenges.  I hope you will take time to read the story, if you are so inclined.

Making my black-patched eye, half-blindness as big and bold as a Hollywood happening, my former press agent, Charlie Brotman, brought both my impairment of a time past (late 1960s, early 1970s) into the spotlight in tandem with the U.”S. “Male” Service. Charlie’s creative genius, also, gave immense dignity to my vision challenges.

The U.S. “Male” Service (circa 1966) is the entrepreneurial enterprise that serves as the foundation for “Hot Pants, Motorcycles and K Street.” It was purportedly the first reminder and gift shopping service known worldwide according to Voice of America (1967) and also offered an all-female, in hot pants, motorcycle delivery service to handle its deliveries. The delivery service was called "Special Delivery Messenger Service."

(See "Hostess For 'Eye Patch Party' Has A Personal Concern: Marcia Rosen, Who Had Unsuccessful Surgery Helps Those Who Helped Her," Washington Evening Star newspaper, November 21, 1969. Article to be posted, pending copyright permissions.)

With all this past, I was so surprised and happy that sharing my eye crisis, in my own words on this blog site, quickly brought me generous notes of caring and concern to fill my email inbox. I was touched!

Yet with this outpouring, questions, generally held in my personal cold storage vault, now arose; the central theme being around my dread of more public visibility than I can comfortably manage and the consequences therein. 

Thus, inquiries, most appropriately made, prompted me to seriously ponder my responsibilities to others as well as my personal priorities, present and future. 

Legitimate questions such as --

• ·         How recently did my present eye crisis arise?
• ·         Was the loss of my right eye’s vision a certainty?

To respond to these queries, individually or publicly on this site, I had my own questions to answer:

• ·     How big or how small is this present eye infection crisis for me, up against the backdrop of the overall framework of my life?
• ·     How big or how small is the situation in terms of how I describe my circumstances to others?
• ·     Is there a public version as well as a private version for the story of the situation?
• ·     Where does one draw the line between the two; the private and the public?
• ·     And, does that line drawing respect all concerned (not being too reticient, nor burdening others etc.)?
• ·     What is the potential fallout for me and for New Horizons from my being more transparent on this issue than I have been so far 0f now being half-blind?
• ·     How can I guide the effects of my transparency onto a positive track and, thus, offset the negative?
• ·     And, above all, perhaps, how can I now find my voice and be an active part of the co-creation of beauty in this often challenged world, especially when I, too, am challenged (i.e. how does one bring this into balance)?

What I actually yearn for most is the calm, washing over me; the lightness of purity and subtlety in everything I say and do that can bring healing to our troubled world.  As well as the healing of my wounded eyes, lifting me to that higher realm where all things are possible; the “universal awe” to which Murat, New Horizons’ community development mentor, so devotedly directs our attention, as his most recent book, "Ahmsta Kebzeh: The Universal Science of Awe, Volume II," so profoundly explicates.

Now, however, as fate would have it, it is time to light the first candles of Chanukah and to usher in Thanksgiving day.  So, for now, I will seek to find my peace in being thankful for what I/we have.

About Anastasia and her views on transforming the Dark Side of the U.S.A.

From the board members of New Horizons Support Network, Inc.

Dear blog readers,

We, the members of the New Horizons Support Network, know, full well, that --- given the scope of our organization; its programs, projects, developmental underpinnings and the conceptual foundations upon which all these have been built -- our package is enormous. And, often times, more than likely, difficult to nail down.

Anastasia Rosen-Jones
New Horizons'
Executive Director and Founder

We understand  this and we don’t like it. We know you do not either, as we get our share of complaints on this limitation of ours, now and then.

However, with a visionary such as our founder and executive director, Anastasia Rosen-Jones, at the helm of this vessel we are crewing, we have found naught else to do other than to sail forth in the manner and at the tempo that seems most unifying to us of our many parts.

Nonetheless, in consideration of the frustration this pace evokes in you, we are offering the following links about our esteemed director with the hopes that they may, in some small way, shed light on your curiosities and allay your vexations.

Find out more about Anastasia -- her theories on the Dark Side and its transformation, her principles for culture-wide systemic change – and – her visionary capacity that was greatly enhanced by term of blindness -- at the following links.

• Anastasia, New Horizons Founder and Executive Director, bio;
• Anastasia, "Finding Light In The Darkness" --- Frederick News Post, August 6, 2006;
• Anastasia, losing her eyesight and discovering Murat Yagan, New Horizons  community development mentor.

Also, be sure to listen to Anastasia on our Possible Society In Motion Radio Show as she attempts, with the aid of co-host, Jack Slattery, to articulate some of the essential concepts, underlying New Horizons’ package of principles for Dark Side and culture-wide transformation.