So Glad I Asked. So Glad You Told

What if, someone asked you how you really want this country to run; the way you’d really like it to be? What if someone wanted to know, sincerely, what you think about our national concerns, without having an agenda to sell you on buying?

What if someone wanted to know what your vision is, presently, for a healthfully functioning U.S.A.? Just simply for the sake of the dreaming, the hoping that we can, indeed, be the best we know how to be, in a great country also being at its best. No real agenda, other than helping to enhance our standing, individually and collectively, for that which we believe in. What if someone wanted to hear what you think? Not just leave you with your dreams for peace and unity as little more than as a voice blowing in the wind? What if someone wanted to know what you think that is not about complaining, polarization or protest?

If no one else has been asking, I may just be the one.

Last year at this time it would not entered my mind that I might be the one asking questions most others had not considered inquiring about. But here I am, now, less than a year later, wondering if I just might, at least, be one someone who is doing that probing. Though truth be told, I would hope to have a whole lot more company in the doing. And, maybe I do, but we just haven’t quite found one another quite yet.

Anyway, now, with the addition of the Possible Human, Possible Society Study, these two blogs I write are now taking inspiration from the hopes and dreams of people in our study. So I’ve got to state, here, what I am thinking, loud and clear, about many of the responses being collected: I’m glad I’m asking and so glad you, who are now in our Possible Human, Possible Society Study, are telling; what a healthfully functioning U.S.A. might look like to you.

For me -- and possibly for visitors to these two sites -- this is a much better conversation than all the complaints and polarization the politicians and the media are feeding us these days. And, against which few of us are amply protected. Who knows, if enough people start saying what they do want in this country, instead of what they don’t want, maybe we can find our way to change, sooner rather than later. And, possibly, achieve this objective with less than the chaos surrounding us now.

For me, personally, the asking and the telling that is going on in our study might just be the option to help me let go of considering selling the one single vote I have on e-bay for all the difference it might make in the November election, 2012. Of course, you know, if such an endeavor is possible I will give that money to New Horizons, my favorite charity.

What I Can Do

Helen Keller had a favorite quote, written by a friend of her’s, Everett Edward Hale.

I am only one,
But still I am one,
I cannot do everything,
But still I can do something,
And, because I cannot do everything,
I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.

Today I am reflecting on how I might apply these thoughts to my concerns and clonflicts over the coming election.

Realizing that I have only one vote and that will not go very far in the whole scheme of things, I had a few added thoughts of things I could do so that I can be doing the “somethings”: I can do.

• I can speak the truths I am carrying that best represent ME
• I can share my truths through my blog postings
• I can use the various forums of New Horizons’ programs to speak my truths
• I can engage others in dialogue in settings that I am assured will invite conversations that are open hearted and high minded. (None of that solely intellectual stuff for me, day in and day out. I want to get to the real heart of the issues, or at least some of them.)
• Sue and I (and our volunteers and supporters) can use New Horizons Bus Ride Story Adventure series to model, encourage and inspire others in our community to speak out similarly --- from their minds and their hearts.

This is my hope:

If each of us is only one and has only one vote, which, of course, we are and can only do, when we speak out, as we will be encouraging, without polorizing, but instead listening with our hearts as well as our mind, perhaps --

one plus one plus many other ones -- will become larger than the sum of the parts.

Thus, perhaps, we can a bigger difference together with our voices joining than any one of us can do by ourselves.  Not by just complaining but by sharing our hopes and our dreams.

I hope and I pray.

Election Reflection

I don’t want Obama for president!

A Spiritual Perspective

I reflected on what I had written for my last posting, feeling liberated, as if a place of clutter had been cleared away inside of me. I didn’t understand the experience. Generally I can name the emotion, sad or scared, resentful or angry, joyful or elated, even if I cannot yet quite comprehend its immediate significance. So I felt rather at odds with myself and somewhat confused.

The experience was similar to how I felt the other morning when I awoke, after having read a collection of the “Friends Journal: Quaker Thought And Life Today.” Sue, my collaborator, also called “Quaker Sue” by some of our associates, had been clearing away her own clutter lately and had given them to me. Sue and her husband, Paul, are in the midst of moving these days. De-cluttering is thus common practice for her right now. So once again, perhaps, Sue’s trash become my treasure? One can only wonder at that.

Nonetheless, after reading these journals, I awoke feeling mystified and confused. I was unable to pin down how and why what I had read on these pages had evoked a feeling of such utter amazement in me.

Eye-opener: There were actually real people nearby who thought through the congruency or incongruency of their values, behaviors and feelings and how they lived these out with one another as community. People, like my “Quaker Sue,” that had been there all along. But I had been too distracted by the contention I saw around me in the local Jewish community to even see them, except for Sue.

After all, other Jews were my landsman, the people of the land from whence I originated, my heritage. Were we not all supposed to be as one? And, if other Jews would not be for one another, where was that One-ness to be found?

It would take too long and be too complicated to explain what I mean by this comment here. Besides I don’t know that I understand what these journals evoked in me well enough at this point to articulate yet.

But the time will come as finally it did, after the adventures of my vacation had settled. I am confident of this more and more, only this past week or so. What I have to say and express through New Horizons and my writing and speaking efforts will find expression in due time. Even when my writer’s block appears to be a terminal illness, I know now, with greater confidence, that it will soon pass.

On one thing I am already gaining clarity:

I do not want Barak Obama to be president!

And, the very notion that I would think this, much less voice it stringently, feels as an anathema for me. Thus, along with the myriad of other changes now going on in my life, I am somewhat mystified presently.

A values clarification is, indeed, occurring at what feels to be the deepest levels of my being. I trust you, too, may be as bewildered these days as am I; a sign of the times, don’t you agree?

Beyond the collective, one slice of that whole pie that I have come to call ME has, over the past two years (In fact right before your eyes on this blog, if you’ve been following it.), I have recovered from being an anti-Semitic Jew. I have come to take pride in my being a member of such an illustrious tribe. For a tribal Jew is what I now feel myself to be.

Forget religion as the issue. Forget Israel as the issue. I am a member of an ancient tribe with a rich heritage. And, though it be based on illusion and a somewhat childlike belief in what my grown-ups said, I grew up believing that Democrats in America helped protect my people from extinction, albeit quite late for the six million of us who were exterminated.

If the Republicans take office, who will protect my tribe from extinction? It is too big of a job for us alone. Like all else in this global village of today, we need good leaders that we can trust and rely upon. Leadership!

Where is that for us, as Americans, and as Jewish Americans?

Letting go of Obama is, for me, letting go of a vision of leadership I had believed in; the vision that brought me to Washington, D.C., as if to Camelot many years ago.

But no more! Gone!

I don’t want to vote for Obama!

Values clarification quandary.

I don’t want to see this man, Barak Obama, in office again. Of this I am quite certain. Yet, as is my customary way, I am open to change, open to the learning that may bring about that change. For now, however, his campaign ads offend me. His wife, in these ads, calls up disgust in me which I am not all that proud to admit. Still, I am a registered Democrat who has almost never voted anything else.

So why would I even consider voting for the Republican nominees for this coming presidential term? How about independent? Or, not voting at all?

I know that if you are reading this, as an American citizen with voting rights, you are likely in a quandary yourself on the subject of the coming elections in November. But what to do? What to do?

Mayor Deborah Burgoyne, our guest speaker at our recent Abkhazian Dinner, cleared away any thoughts I might have still been harboring as to the latter being an option. Not voting is not an option for me anymore. On that point I have been straightened out and have Mayor Deborah to thank for that. Though I must admit that other than the year Geraldine Ferraro ran for vice president, I have really not cared much one way or the other.

Most of my adult life I have been a sporadic voter, at best, and almost totally disinterested and not at all informed. In fact there were times when I thought that voting might just be beneathe me. Although there was that one election when myself and my employees ran around on a skooter doing errands for the Democratic National Committee and looked pretty for them in some photo shoots. I have recovered from my complacency though. I can, at least, attest to that. I think?

So why do I care this time? And, what to do about the quandary I am in over it?

Well, if nothing else, if I don’t allow myself to get in a tizzy over it as the media and the politicians appear to want us to do, I might learn a few things. Maybe even have a few stories to tell the youngins when I am really elderly. Something like, “Let me tell you a story about the election of 2012.” My, oh, my. now you should have seen that one!”

Of course, by this time there will have come to be a moral or two for the story; a few teachable moments from which we can learn for our future betterment, should we survive that long. And, given my enhanced maturity, at this time, particularly in the realm of my spiritual perspectives, perhaps, I will be able, by that time, to tell about the fact that it was just simply important that we did what we could, but not do nothing.

Also, maybe I can tell how sending prayers out into the cosmos, brought us all through some rough and stormy waters until, finally, we somehow discovered our ability to unite in the service of democracy. And, that it was all only about the evolution of our humanity and our human consciousness in the end anyway.

Still for now, I know one thing; I don’t want to vote for Barak Obama. But let’s see how it goes.

To See Or Not To See

To hear or not to hear, to see or not to see, to say or not to say; all of this can be a challenge. To be whole and truthful and carry goodness in your heart and, then, out into the world, is not always easy; to know the right thing to do.

It was so costly
not to see.

I have been tested, once again, by the enormity of following this path, each and every day of my life, as I live it today, having formerly paid my dues by doing otherwise. That kind of facing up to life was what I carried with me on my vacation as I yearned, wholeheartedly, to find the highest truths of my heart. The teachings of Murat’s tradition call it Marjah, I understand this to mean the reflection of the Divine as it is within the Self, a state not so easily come by.

H.D. Johns, my first clinical trainer, long deceased, pointed out to a group of trainees, of which I was a part, that deciding whether or not a particular action is one of co-dependency (i.e. caretaking others in a way that deprives both oneself and others of their wholeness), rather than being genuinely caring and, thus, life-affirming, is a tricky kind of thing.

He told us that choosing which way to go can sometimes be as comfortable as sitting on the very head of a pin. And, said, H.D. to a room full of eager new psychotherapists, “I hope you never get off of it.”

Moral of the story: Never believe you can be certain as to the best choices to make when it comes to how you care for others (and yourself).

Of course, H.D. was right, I have come to understand this lesson well. It is often the hottest of those trials by fire. So, earnestly seeking my Marjah, I was challenged about certain choices I believed I needed to make, as executive director of New Horizons and the designer and chief implementer of our Possible Human, Possible Society Study, as I vacationed and then returned.

I pondered and I pondered. I sought counsel from the most able I could find. I hope I chose wisely and with care and compassion. As I have said, again and again, recently, referring to our recent Abkhazian Dinner event with its array of teachable moments; the good, the bad and the ugly, this event brought New Horizons to a turning point. Event became process without our needing to do more than our planned presentation up against the backdrop of our Possible Human, Possible Society Study and a most interesting selection of guests.

I made the best leadership choices I could manage out of circumstances as they presented themselves, hearing, seeing and speaking truth in the most caring ways I could discern. So I state, once more --

“We will never see the end of what began …. but we will always remember where our adventure originated.”

Stay tuned into the adventure. Our blogs will surely assist you in understanding, more and more clearly, at least from my perspective, how a bus ride can, also, be a labyrinth.

Hidden Behind Our Masks: It’s About The Humanity

Barely a day goes by that I am without conscious intent to stop hiding behind a mask. I wear a thousand of them and all of them are me. Each and every day I do my best to present the authentic me. Try as I might, succeeding better and better as my skill improves, still I more frequently than not miss the mark, aware that what I have presented is still not the full, true, straightforward, heart-connected me.

In her article entitled “We need to stop masking our pain,” Whitney Houston’s friend, Terrie M. Williams, laments her dear one’s passing. A whole world of family, friends and fans mourned the loss. Whitney was gone, leaving untold lessons behind for all who loved her, including those who were feeding off of a talent and beauty that masked great pain. But there was not enough of some unknown something to save this exemplary womanhood, this magical potion of gifted and seemingly blessed humanity, Williams continues. So now she is gone.

Ms. Williams offers solace from her own experiences with an especial emphasis on the healing of her weekly appointments with her therapist, identifying this as her lifeline. It was with this brand of consolation that she lost me though the title of her article warning that we need to “stop masking the pain” engaged me at my deepest level. I take issue with this, the dependency on a paid professional for a person’s most significant human connection.

Unfortunately, too often that is all the humanity there is available, not because we need more highly trained personnel, but rather, we need more who are adept at simply being human. Even the privileged are stuck with the lack of human beings, simply knowing the art of being human. So we wear our masks, pretending that our surface is what we are when truly beneath that surface dwells someone who is confused, often even suffering greatly.

I ended almost a quarter of a century as a psychotherapist in 1998 when I lost my eyesight. But I was heading in that direction anyway when the licensing in my state for professional counselors changed, just months before. Though it would not have taken much in the way of paperwork to ensure my “grandfathering in” of that officialdom, a prolonged resistance to participating in the process, already in motion, deterred my efforts.

In the years since, I have, not infrequently, thought of writing a pamphlet on the hundred or more reasons I do not want to do therapy anymore. Among these is my criticism of a society, such as our’s, that seeks to rely on paid professionals for the essentials of humanity; human connectedness, unmasked and vulnerable. But right now we are stuck, as a consequence of our various systems with the same old, same old; the power and money brokers controlling the flow of this commodity to those who might even be most in need of it.

Yes, I was burned out. And, yes the insurance coverage game, heralding in the PPOs and the HMOs, was putting a snag in the offering of these services, as I had been trained and come to know them. But there were several other important reasons behind my procrastination. I may address them at a later time. Nonetheless, a third reason seems to have come, over the years, to matter most to me.

Therapeutic community work opened my eyes to the essential need for everyone to have access to skill-based, even artful, caring and compassion from others without it having to be paid human contact, i.e. professional counseling or psychotherapy. Running a therapeutic community is the work I did for most of my twenty-five years plus as a psychotherapist. I cannot imagine anything that could ever be more gratifying, for me, than being a part of people transforming their own lives, individually and collectively, and then being able to pass their abundance on to others. The Twelve Step people do it, how about the rest of us?

By the time I lost my eyesight, I had already stopped wanting to work with the problems I saw. I no longer had the heart, nor the energy, to work with the worst case scenarios; adult wounds of child abuse, relationship addictions and domestic violence issues. Actually, as a provider I, personally, needed more of the community connectedness I was building for others.

Yet it was still a few years into my term of blindness and recovery from blindness (1998 – 2006) before I came to realize that what I wanted instead was to use the skills I had developed in my years as a therapist to find new and improved ways by which to make our society a better place to live, lifting up the most likely to contribute, believing that, then, they would pass on their bounty to others. Though providing this, as it has turned out, has been a rough road to hoe, especially with the financial burdens being blind brought into my life, nothing could ever be more fulfilling for me.

What brought my leanings in this new direction to its heights was my meeting with Murat Yagan in the first year after I lost my eyesight. It was Murat who brought the certainty into my life that we can, intentionally, co-create that sense of awe in our communities that can make a difference to people in all walks of life wherever they are, worldwide. We do have the essentials to support the well being of one another and save many more lives than we now allow ourselves to consider. If we will stretch our humanity beyond the constraints too many of us are putting on the simplest aspects of it. Then the true unmasking can come forth; midnight at the masqueraders ball of humanity. What a celebration that would be!

Perhaps our Bus Ride Story Adventure series can contribute to this effort by helping guide and train ordinary citizens, closer to the top of the ladder, to overcome their own areas of alienation and social divisiveness and thus free up human resources to provide more for this vast need. Not simply for the disadvantaged, but for those who simply want to be that possible human in a possible society and pass that on. Those seeking a depth, a breadth and a height of community connectedness that spells, not only the survival of beautiful and talented beings such as Whitney Houston who seemed to have everything, but somehow not enough of some unknown something still needed.

I do not pretend to know how to have saved this one life. However, I learned growing up from the elders of my heritage that to save one life is to save the world. I strongly believe that real people support, i.e. simply passing on the art, the skill and the wisdom of being human, with all the inherent challenges in today’s world is as critical in our times as it was in the past. God is not enough, but people with that Power could make a huge difference. At least so I believe.

More to come on the importance of building exceptional communities.

Then There Is The Frustration

I feel such freedom when I experience my wholeness. Sharing the wholeness in me, then being understood and accepted, even supported in my fullness, can lift me right up to awe. Of course, this is not an experience unique to me. You and I know that it just grows out of our basic human nature; our yearning for what is sometimes an unknown something better than what we experience in the ordinary.

I had a Mountain of Awe high from this kind of experience recently; this being acknowledged and understood. It looked to be a genuine gesture and a promise to climb. Then it sank into the ordinary, maybe even a step below. A new friend of mine was quite adamant about my reading, at least, one quote from a favorite writer of her’s, Neale Donald Walsch. I thought/hoped she was, thus, a real walker of the talk. So I gave my heart away.

The quote follows here.

"How is it possible that 6.9 billion people can all claim to want the same thing (Peace, security, opportunity, prosperity, happiness, and love) and be singularly unable to get it"?

With this same friend the backsliding occurred. I felt such frustration and disappointment When it became clear, one more time, how it is possible for so many to say they want what sounds on the surface like the same things and yet be unable to achieve the satisfaction of this yearning, seemingly so likeminded. But not surprisingly there really are so many reasons we are unable to attain what we say we want with one another.

Not the least of these is simply an absence of skill in the art of being human at our best (i.e. the possible human in the possible society). This is some of where my heart and mind visited while I was on vacation; this disappointment and frustration that was already brewing. Thus New Horizons Small “Zones of Peace” Project and our Possible Human, Possible Society Study came to a turning point that grew out of our Abkhazian Dinner event. Recognizing the absence of skill in encounters of diverse natures we saw emerging at the event, right in the midst of our offering to move beyond such limitations, Sue and I took serious heed as to what for us to do next, realizing that we do have a tried and true skill set.

What to do? What to do? Thus we came to a turning point. As I stated before

“We will never see the end of what began …. but we will always remember where our adventure originated.”