There's No "Real" Excuse For Abuse In Our Poltics

The day I lost my eyesight, Friday, Labor Day weekend, 1998, I did so on the way to the recording of a two part radio interview that I did on the Dark Side of Bill Clinton and the state of our American politics. Once again, a president’s lying, especially about BIG stuff (as in Monica Lewinsky) was incredibly disturbing to me. And my way of handling the upset was about to turn my life upside down, again. (My first BIG upset of this nature had been about Watergate and Richard Nixon. That one altered the course of my life ever since.)

If I am able to obtain permission to use the audio, it might make a worthy contribution in today’s political climate, at least in terms of historical perspectives, for this blog site and, possibly, our Possible Society In Motion Radio Show.  Obviously, the Dark Side is alive and well in the American political scene.

Who is calling the kettle black?
You decide.

Permissions and history aside, however, today I am reminded of that two-part interview that, no doubt, set off one more hysterical blindness episode for me as it definitely ushered  in my eight year blindness era (1999 – 2006). I’ve  never doubted for a minute that what I discussed on that radio show, broadcast on WFMD radio, was the trigger for what happened to my eyes that day.  

You must listen to it to hear and begin to see the tie in that existed for me of the lying of the President of the United States, Bill Clinton this time, and another hysterical blindness episode.

My point today, however, is not about blindness, mine or anyone else’s. It is rather the issue of abuse; another issue close to my heart and soul. As the Esquire Rage Quiz demonstrated to me, although I am, according to the quiz, less angry than 50% of other Americans, I do have my forays into that state; once a week being about the norm for my getting triggered by the onslaught of s…t slinging – and – other yukky stuff that that is served up to us as news these days. 

This week, my hot button trigger is Donald Trump’s attacks on the Clintons, Bill in particular, for his past history of male sexual aggression inflicted on women, consensually or otherwise; actions that are inexcusable in my value system -- and -- past history I do hope.

Over the years I have done more than my fair share of trying to make my perspectives on such activities large rather than minimizing these gross indiscretions – and – the enabling of that which I firmly believed Hillary did. Still I do hold that Trump’s offensive attacks of both Clintons at this time are way out of line!

Can’t someone please shut him up?

Corollary question: Can American politics only be handled from a position of slander, or is there possibly some other way we might more favorably endorse?  (Actually Hillary’s dignity and diplomacy throughout her campaign in light of this climate truly has invited my admiration.)

I offer these thoughts, not in any way intending to let Bill Clinton off the hook, or Hillary either, for that matter. However, I believe we all must clean up our integrity GAME in this country. In fact, aiding this objective is one of the prime motivators of most that I do, professionally. 

So clean it up, Clintons, is definitely near the top of the list of political priorities in my book!

But who is going to make it clear to the leading Republican candidate, along with all the other Republican candidates that confronting abuse by being ABUSIVE as does Donald Trump is really dirty pool.  And nationally and internationally embarrassing I might add!

Thanks for hearing me out, now I feel a bit more motivated than before to see if I can’t get permission to air that earlier interview of mine for your listening pleasure. It is way far from archaic.  And, I think you would really appreciate hearing it, especially now that you know me a bit better.

Speaking Truth To Power – And – The Healing of That Which Afflicts My Eyesight

As I began to take my first steps toward my hoped for full recovery from the blindness of my right eye, I began, simultaneously, a one year journey of conscious healing. During this period I would allow myself to refine and direct my already well-defined practices of meditation, contemplation and reflection. What I would add to these would be an enhanced, consistent mindfulness regarding certain key issues; my emotions, psychological patterns and spirituality, that I hold to be critically interwoven with my physical well-being.

I have kertaconus, an apparent hereditary-based eye disease that causes a diseased cornea to develop into a cone shape rather than retaining its normal, healthy curve. I also have had numerous, intermittent episodes of hysterical blindness, also known as conversion episodes, a certain type of stress reaction followed by severe attacks of diminished eye sight. 

To date I can identify about a dozen or more of these episodes over my lifetime; each one following a particular pattern. Some of these have been documented at Johns Hopkins world-renowned Wilmer Eye Institute, dating back as far as 1978. The episodes are, each one, in and of itself, uniquely worthy of in-depth discussion, but I will reserve that for a later time, if appropriate.

I know that my recent experience on the operating table, undergoing my seventh cornea transplant, merits my wholly embracing the physical healing I am presently undergoing. I also have come to realize that this event, wherein the cornea of a newly deceased person is now alive and well in my body, is also truly deserving of my paying attention to the accompanying emotional, psychological and spiritual healing I am now going through, accompanying the physical.

I have been living with threatened blindness from keratoconus since I was a junior in college. My eye problems have been routinely and effectively managed since by top ophthalmologists.  I, also, since I was eight years old, been living under mortal threat, if I dared to “see” what my mentally ill mother did not want me to see.  Initially the threat was inflicted on me in real time. Eventually I continued to be defenseless to that which was still embedded in my psyche; images and feelings, that could, when triggered, derail my best attempts to bypass them.

The challenge to surmounting these terrorizations has often been truly death-defying.  And, as it has turned out, over time, I became the only known “expert” I could find to address this aspect of my vision problems. Being a trained psychotherapist, I think I have done an admirable job of being both patient and healer for this aspect of my eyesight afflictions.  Now I am ready for the “advanced” course of this healing. Thus in the year ahead, as I heal, body-mind and spirit, from a lifetime of threats to my eyesight as well as my life and my VISION  I am going to be even more proactive on this issue than ever before.

Alberto Valvo, a noted opthomologist, in his book, "Sight restoration after long-term blindness: the problems and behavior patterns of visual rehabilitation," quotes, as follows, from a (rarely) recovering blind patient --  

"One must die as a sighted person to be bom again as a blind person."

Prominent neurologist, Oliver Sacks, draws on this statement in his article, "TO SEE AND NOT SEE" expanding upon the original comment with his own version -- 

“...and the opposite is equally true: one must die as a blind person to be born again as a seeing person.”

I have encountered both of these transitions in my lifetime; dying as a sighted person to be born again as one who is blind and that of dying as a blind person to be born again as one who is sighted. Of the two, it is the latter; dying as a blind person and being born again as one who sees, that I have found the more difficult.

With that in mind, as I now proceed on my healing journey, with “a wonderful new cornea,” as my ophthalmologist, Dr. John Gottsch, told me repeatedly before, during and after my recent surgery – I am now intent on completing the latter transition, moving from non-seeing identity to being a fully seeing person to the best of my ability, with an expanded agenda.

Speaking truth to power, increasingly, is going to be a key part my healing journey. This, as it turns out, is one of the most restorative paths I could take; abuse of the power over me as a small child by my mother brought on my hysterical blindness, I feel certain. I was instructed “not to see” what I see. Today I choose to see everything I can!  And, I will choose to speak more and more of what I "SEE" (as nicely as I can). But speak I will!

Taking back my full, G-d given powers will be my release, I believe.  

I am hoping you will also join me in this health giving undertaking upon which I am now embarking, as I know, even if you cannot yet “see” it, that none of us humans fully escapes “not seeing” sometimes. We all have blind spots. And we very much need one another to help us through the Darkness to find the brightest Light.

So please come along with me on an adventure to “awe” that only truth, yours, mine and ours, collectively, can produce.  If nothing else, we can all use a good dose of practicing speaking truth to power. And listening to it, sometimes, to help adjust ourselves on occasion.

With gratitude, 

Anastasia

From Fear To Faith In The New Year

The motion of moving from New Year’s Eve into New Year’s Day can bring magical clarity when I, as executive director, open my eyes to possibilities and New Horizons Board Members share the transition.  

Thus it came to be that the birth of 2016 shared by board members, Sue deVeer, and Anastasia brought into being a long-held New Horizons plan; New Horizons’ Council of Elders, along with me, personally, turning my fears into faith.

That ball drop in Times Square, even online, can have that effect!

We could easily anticipate board member Lisa Boyer voting “yes” for this plan that has been being discussed for years. And a quick call on New Year’s Day to Kebzeh mentor, Joan McIntrye, immediately confirmed that we would be supported in this endeavor's unfolding by the guidance of our community development advisors and Elders in British Columbia who are carrying forth Murat Yagan’s beautiful work that has been shaping New Horizons "exceptional communisty model's evolution for close to twenty years now.

Murat's message is conveying, worldwide, how we, ordinary people, can reach a universal state of awe, if we keep striving for it. New Horizons has been one of the beneficiaries of these teachings.

Stonehenge

So the New Horizons Board of Directors now, with joy and confidence, proudly announces ---

New Horizons Council Of Elders To Debut in 2016!

Be alert, however, this does not herald any quick fixes for long-held, deeply entrenched community problems. Rather a new entity, New Horizons' Council of Elders, will now begin to organize, take applications for membership and lay out strategies for implementation on the local level of Frederick County, Maryland where we are immersed, day-by-day, in doing our part to create a model “exceptional community.”

We know this local area to abound in wise people who have the determination and know how, or at least willingness to learn, how to work consensually together to address local civic problems.  

With our new Council of Elders supported by the wisdom and input of our advisors in British Columbia, we are putting our hopes and faith into Frederick County, with prayers that this will be only a next step in achieving our dreams, which in truth go far beyond this locale.

Look for details as they unfold.

Reflections On Being A Part of The Problem or A Part of The Solution

I ended 2014 with a commitment to being a part of the solution in 2015, regarding the intensifying race, police and community relations problems such as had just recently, then, escalated, in Ferguson, Missouri and New York City.   I knew that my organization, New Horizons, and myself had the expertise to help in some ways so certainly we should.

Looking back on that time, now, I can see that the community successes that built for New Horizons and myself out of that intent must have had a lot to do with my motivation seeming to be of Divine guidance, infused with love as well as practicality. 

You can almost always trust Source to get you where you should be if your motives are pure.

Now here it is again, New Year’s Eve, and I am, as usual, drawn to taking one of those periodic personal inventories that help make the cycles of my life so profoundly meaningful and beautiful.

So what do I see, especially at this point in time when eye surgery has made the very ordinary, though not so ordinary act of “seeing” so profound for me?

I think the article I just posted on the  “Year End Assessment” of New Horizons Coffee House Conversations Project sums up where I stand today, professionally, especially the latter parts where I summarize the work yet to be done in the days ahead, if true social change is to be achieved.

But that doesn’t say anything much about what all this means to me, personally. Or what that which I laid out there indicates about my personal commitments for the year ahead.  

2016 promises to be a big one for me; in some ways that I can imagine and in other ways completely unimaginable. And, then, of course, who can truly read the future? Not I for sure. Yet we do have some inklings about what lies ahead, if we are wise, born of experience, and if we trust our intuition and instincts.

What I imagine lying ahead for me, personally, and for which I feel trepidation though I know I will lean into it rather than my old way of pulling back from the adventure – is – that I will more and more pick up my old ways of being “Game Master of the Truth or Dare Game.” But do that in very new ways; most particularly in mainstream community life.

The challenge for me is enormous. Speaking truth to power is the emblem of our "Game". But doing this in a protected, counterculture, therapeutic community such as "old" New Horizons had established was so much easier. At least there the rules for proceeding were agreed upon and abided by everyone or else you lost your membership.

The mainstream, on the other hand, can be so much more vicious. There are almost no agreed upon practices or ground rules for effectively dealing with the "subtle violence" that proliferates in epidemic proportions, day-to-day, out of the discounting, denial and lies of our culutre. A total free-for-all exists and it can be emotionally, psychologically -- and -- even physically deadly such as driving teens to suicide from tauntings and hurtful internet exposures. 

Subtle violence is far from subtle, especially when you are the target!

Being judged by others for speaking truth to power – and – then punished by ostracism, for example, is also a high cost that I, like most others, experience from time to time. It hurts, no matter how adept you become at managing the assaults. And, I have not yet developed a tough enough skin to be able to always respond with grace to such hurtfulness while both holding my ground with respect for who I know me to be as I, also, lean in to others, seeking common ground.

That is if the others would have the courage and commitment to seek common ground with me rather than polarize, separate and retaliate for hurts they might feel at my hands but not yet have the skill and experience that I (and New Horizons) do to heal such woundings.

Oh dear, the conflict potential is so painful and scary; so scary for me I almost want to run for cover, especially as so few truly know, through experience, the snags to synergy way, the pathway to awe.

But I’m gonna do it anyway; speak truth to power, keep reaching for dialogue over debate, stay focused on learning rather than defending and head for awe  -- even if it gets me in trouble and hurts on the way (and I do it imperfectly)!

Bill Cosby Takes The Cake!

Having been severely traumatized by the sexual abuse of my first husband; a sordid experience  still remaining, to this day, bizarrely unsettled, I have followed the Bill Cosby sex scandal closely.

I take heart at the unrelenting courage of the women who have come forth to confront this serial rapist who hides behind his money, power, gender and status in an attempt to make fools of them.

Carefully and generally quietly,  I watch – and – I wait,  wishing and hoping.

Maybe – someday – it will be my turn to make public what has so long been hidden and secret; the cover ups and lies enforced by threats of punishment of which I have already had far more than my fair share.

But today I must speak out just a bit; Mr. Cosby purports to give failing eye sight, including the very same eye disease, keratoconus, I have for his felonious behavior!

Come on now, Bill Cosby (and Camille, your enabler), you take the cake for BLINDNESS of a more devious nature;  out and out lies, twisting reality to suit your guile, making small what must truly be BIG here, the damage you have inflicted on untold others!

Keratoconus is a disease of the cornea. You have a disease of the soul!

What Is Hysterical Blindness? And Is The U.S.A Suffering From It?

Part II: Is Seeing Or Not Solely A Medical Question?

Hysterical blindness, in the annals of psychology is also catagorized as a type of conversion reaction or disorder, meaning that symptoms displayed of a neurological dysfunction, such as blindness,  are not consistent with any organic cause. In particular, it is thought that these symptoms arise in response to stressful situations affecting an individual’s mental health. 

The term "conversion" has its origins in Freud's doctrine that anxiety, fear or traumatic episodes can be "converted" into physical symptoms. Though hysterical reactions have previously been thought to have vanished from the west in the 20th century, some research has suggested they are as common as ever. 

What has changed, however, is the name change; hysteria to conversion reaction or disorder. And, the shift from this problem, somehow, being endemic to women only as indicative of our inferiorities.

Personally, I can attest to the presence of fear, trauma and stress being converted into blindness. I have lived with this circumstance, episodes diagnosed as hysterical blindness, since the onset of an initial trauma when I was eight years old.  

But more about my story another time. Here I am most interested in creating a conversation about the parallels between physical blindness, particularly of a hysterical nature, and the discounting, denial and lying that is rampant throughout our society; a situation I consider to be akin to hysterical blindness throughout the masses of our society.

(I will also take up these three prongs, discounting, denial and lying, as the means of avoiding true reality and clarity at another time.)

(Yet, it strikes me as so incredibly beautiful that movements like the Black Lives Matter effort are actively fighting these systematic dismissals of reality daily with their protests. Bravo! Let their efforts of speaking truth to power make a difference; a big one and soon.)

The following excerpt picked up from another blog site that is no longer active illustrates some of what I wish to illuminate on the subject at hand here. I found myself rather amused at this anecdote, recounted by Dr. Sanity, a Board Certified Psychiatrist, from the case history of a patient. 

The anecdote makes one of the many points I wish to address regarding our politics and their relation to hysterical blindness.  As this piece was written in 2005, I see much about it that relates to politicians in general, not just Democrats or Republicans.  I offer it here in the service of creating the conversations I wish to encourage about hysterical blindness being very much alive – and – viral in our United States politics and society at this point in time.

By Dr. Sanity, regarding a patient diagnosed as suffering from hysterical blindness (i.e. a conversion episode).

Barbara, I submit to you, is a perfect metaphor for the Democratic Party of the 21st Century. Like Barbara, they have had a rude psychological shock, stumbled, and become blind to the serious events happening in the world around them. They feel they have been deceived and lied to --betrayed even--and have chosen to direct their rage against President Bush, the symbol of all the evil in the world. By doing so, they don't have to focus on the real evil --the horrific attacks of 9/11. They appear to be sublimely indifferent to the reality around them and choose to focus on events and incidents that are trivial in comparison. Like Barbara, their world is falling apart, but all they can do is close their eyes to it and focus ("displace") their anger onto a convenient target whose election was a blow to their narcissism.  

(In treatment} …Barbara slowly became well again. In psychotherapy, we focused on trying to get her to "see" what she really couldn't bear to face--…. she had to develop the necessary maturity to cope with the new reality of her world--to "see" it for what it was. And somewhere along that difficult psychological path, her vision returned.

I sincerely hope that the Democrats are able to negotiate that same path. 

What do you think of my premise (which I will steadfastly stand by regardless) that the dysfunction of our country is, in part, symptomatic of a hysterical blindness?

At least consider my logic and engage with me in dialogue on this critical issue.

Thanks,

From Anastasia, healing well from eye surgery so far.

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!