Child Abuse as Government Policy and Adverse Outcomes of Moral Failures – Is this a war crime?

The purposeful separation of children from their families is child abuse, and it violates international norms, universal morality and law. There are eight things I think should be considered here. (I should note that this is not intended as some partisan political rant but, first of all an articulation of moral outrage shared by an increasingly bi-partisan coalition, second, as a professional psychologist who has seen the long-term effects of childhood traumatization and, third, as a father.)

First is the shear heartless cruelty of purposely traumatizing vulnerable children in the name of “national security,” economics, legality or any other attempt at justification. Justifying it does not change its nature as criminal child abuse.

Second is the bizarre use of Biblical passages to not only support antisocial behavior, but also to claim that governments are established by their god and, therefore, we should be obedient. We do not live in a theocracy but a constitutional democratic republic. This scriptural claim is an affront not only to the scriptures, but also to the constitution, rule of law, due process and the dignity of individual sovereignty to judge whether the government is behaving poorly or not. Furthermore, I’m left wondering if these people actually ever read the Bible with its admonitions “Whatsoever you do unto the least of these, my brethren, you have done it unto me,” or “do no harm to your neighbor,” or “do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” or “by your love for one another, others will know you are my disciples,” or “love is the fulfillment of the law,” as well as those calling for care of the exiles and immigrants, etc. In short, I’m appalled that these Republicans (or any one else) would use scriptures to justify sociopathic, immoral and unlawful actions. They (and their followers) have lost all moral credibility and should be removed from whatever civil positions they might hold.

Third, as the world gains perspective, I wonder if this manner of separation of children from their parents and the destruction of families might come to be considered a war crime. Just think what the reaction would be if this were done by an Islamic country. They are using (and willfully harming) children to serve their ends – as tools to manipulate foreign and domestic populations.

Fourth, let me return to America’s loss of moral credibility and magnanimity. We have suddenly become small, dark, defensive, paranoid, and cruel. In our name, under our watch, our government has turned from a country hospitable to human dignity and aspiration to one willing to sacrifice the well-being of children and other vulnerable populations for political purposes.

Fifth, I must ask the question, who is profiting from this? Who have been willing to give up any sense of conscience, moral responsibility or religious authenticity to earn money by supplying cages, fencing, foods, clothes, militarized support, personnel to run the camps, rent, etc.?

Sixth, let’s look at the impact on the children and their families. Although the president’s supporters try to portray the administration – and even themselves – as victims of a tide of immigrants, they are the people in power. It is the families and their children who are being victimized – not the powerful.

Purposefully traumatizing children through child abuse and destruction of families will certainly have adverse consequences not only in the development of these children, but also in terms of what we are setting up for the future. People who were coming to this country (I speak here of the sincere asylum seekers) inspired by America’s ideals are being turned to enemies; and their children into people who will grow up soured by a system that has not only abused them but also blames them for that abuse. We do have a choice here. We could be fostering productive citizens who will contribute to our country by honestly using the system already in place to sort out the true asylum seekers from the opportunists, and then helping them integrate. When any of those damaged children – their development disrupted by adverse experience – act as angry criminals, it will be we, the American people and our administration, who have shaped them. There is no way to avoid this responsibility. (We can only hope at this point that others will be resilient enough to move through this, but that doesn’t alleviate us of responsibility for willfully imposing the trauma.)

Seventh, we must remember that this is facilitated by a president who readily admits to being uninvolved in the rearing of his own children. What does this tell us about his psychology, sense of responsibility and ability to grasp the importance of parental bonding with children? Deeper analysis of the president’s psychological conditions is left to books already published, the www.adutytowarn.org website, and more writings planned by mental health professionals who see the obvious pathology in his behavior.

Finally, there are those who support this sociopathic narcissist and his policies no matter what he does because he has touched on (and facilitated) long-buried fears and has given them permission to act out their disorders rather than resolving them. They are being played for the benefit of profiteers. Furthermore, these are people who do not share our common human values about the sanctity and/or value of family and family bonds, about the preciousness of children. Nor do they show usual moral imperatives to protect children from abuse. Even if one supports a strong border policy, one could still object to this particular means of attempting to deter and punish those seeking to partake of a “great” country.

The Coming Storm

At this point, the rest of the world and most Americans are turning against the regime’s policy of breaking up families and traumatizing children (ironically supported by the party of “family values”). This cruel and abusive faction of our government will not give up without a fight. These are not people who share our values of respect, due process and human dignity.

A still worse storm may be coming as thousands of children will have experienced their victimization as public policy and will have little investment in “the American way.” Such is the natural consequence, but those in power will do anything possible to avoid looking into the eye of the children they abused or to recognize their part in the adverse behaviors that may come from adverse experiences.

I would again call attention to the absurdity of blaming asylum seekers for the behavior of the powerful. This is the “you made me hurt you” rationale we hear from nearly all abusers in dysfunctional relationships. And there are the bizarre arguments over semantics such as whether the children are confined in cells, cages, pens, fences or warehouses: they are still confined, broken from families and traumatized.

Religious organizations, normally highly reactive to any threat to their vision of family bonds, have been strangely slow to stand up to abusive behaviors because of having invested themselves in political factions rather than their own morality. This deal, it turns out, was with the Devil.

We also see the hardening of the obedient followers of the “cult 45,” as their hatred, fear and anger are turned away from the real threat to our civility and directed onto the most vulnerable of peoples. This hardly a testament to their bravery or patriotism.

America’s conceit of Judeo-Christian tradition has obviously been a thin veneer hiding a festering hatred. It has miserably failed us. Perhaps I should say we have failed the ideals of this tradition, but the result is the same. In the end, we have failed not only ourselves, and our traditions, but our children, our neighbors’ children, the poor, the vulnerable, the suffering and all those who have looked to us for guidance and support as an example of a better life for families and children.

Mother’s Day, Mothering and Lost Goddesses

It has often been the custom at Unity North Spiritual Center that men lead Sunday services on Mother’s Day. This year, I was asked to deliver the lesson, and what follows is the written adaptation of that talk.

Good morning, and Happy Mother’s Day to all.

Some of us are biological mothers, some of us have mothered other things – projects, ideas, children, other people’s children, puppies. All of us come from mothers, so all of us have a stake in this celebration of mothering.

At this time, it seems to be the thing (according to Hallmark) to extol our mothers’ virtues – and we should – but there seems to be pressure to make them something more than human. This is one of the questions I’ll explore here. But first, some revelations – not the book that Carol and Rhonda might talk about, but three times that life revealed something to me. The first one was about hair.

Revelation 1: Hair

When I went away to college, I came back with a goatee and hair not much longer than it is now. This was the 1960s, and I found that some people were appalled at my beard and hair – despite the appearance of the unruly-looking, long-haired, bearded man whose picture was at front of church. This revealed a disconnect to me between what some people seemed to worship but would reject anything similar in the real world.

Revelation 2: Hair again

Through the 1960s and 1970s we often heard preachers bemoaning the long hair of the hippies (if you are old enough to remember that). They quoted the Bible, saying that long hair was a woman’s crowning glory, and not so good on men. Now, it happened that I came across a copy of the New Testament in direct translation from the Greek, and thought I’d read it on general principles. Among my surprises was that the preachers were only using half of the Biblical passage. In I Corinthians (11:14-16), amongst admonitions that a man is the head of a woman and whether one’s head should be covered or bare, I found this passage:

Does not Nature herself teach you that while flowing locks disgrace a man, they are a woman’s glory? For her locks were given for covering.

And that’s what we heard from the preachers. But then I read the next verse that says:

However, if you insist on arguing, let me tell you there is no such custom among us, or in any of the congregations of God’s people.

I had to wonder then, what else isn’t true that we’ve been told by word of mouth? And it became evident we had three layers of Biblical messages: the scriptures as written, whatever they originally meant at that time in that culture, and the verbal tradition. So, the Bible was being used to promote a cultural value that the biblical writer had repudiated, a repudiation of an idea that was still being used into the 20th century to vilify a group of people and tell all how their hair should be. So, I set about to read the Bible cover to cover and found my third revelation.

Revelation 3: The Bible(s)

In addition to the issues of various translations, I felt like I not only faced Old and New Testaments, but a hodge-podge of writings falling into at least four very different books. First were mythological teaching stories (that many have mistakenly taken literally). Next was attempts at history that seemed to mostly justify the Hebrews’ specialness and conquest and slaughter of indigenous peoples. Then came the Gospels – a shining jewel of beauty and wisdom. This was followed by administrative details and the vagaries of building a socio-political establishment taken over by Paul – which includes how our hair is to be done, misogynist passages, and how women are supposed to serve men – many of them complications when ideals get mixed up with customs, organizations and conceits of authority.

I also found through research that some of the Bible was copied directly from Egyptian texts, but that’s another story.

Questions

These revelations left me with two big questions (from which a lot of other questions came):

Who were the “other people” on Earth when this god created Adam and Eve and where did the sons of Adam and Eve find their wives? (I suspect some of us are descended from those “other people”). These were the people against which early Hebrews and Christians had to vehemently defend themselves with purity rules and with swords. Who were they really? I mean, Christianity did not arrive fully formed and unrelated to the cultures around it.

The other question is this: how did the beauty and wisdom of the Gospels end up with a church history of war, misogyny, inquisition, genocide and book burning?

About 40 years or so ago, I began to dig into these questions, wrote what I found and ended up with a manuscript of over 300 pages and 700 footnotes.

So, let’s look at my two big questions.

Question 1: How did the beauty and wisdom I found in Gospels turn into a Church history of war, misogyny, genocide, torture, book-burning and inquisition?

We’ve all heard the history of the Roman church – taking over lands, suppressing heresies and heretics, promoting the idea that women should be submissive to their husbands, that women brought sin into the world (thank you), that birth was meant to be a painful labor and, therefore, midwives and herbalists who sought to provide comfort and healthcare to women were to be shunned, if not burned. Many were executed as witches.

Women were not left with many options. Respectable women could be a mother, a dutiful wife or a nun.

And how is it that women are still fighting for respect, authority, value and their sovereignty in this century? The answer, I found, was in the cultures from which came our dominant forms of Christianity – cultures in which women were second class, if they could even be considered citizens or having souls.
Women were not valued in these traditions, and they were kept inferior and subservient. Nevertheless, the feminine still embodied an awesome power, and rules were made to keep women in “their place” and safely contained. Men were afraid of that power – and we still see that fear today in various religions and political movements. (After all, we couldn’t have men coming under their spell, could we?)

As empires grew, they found advantages in centralized government and a centralized religion centered on one god. Thus, monotheism became a political tool, along with some of the “Christian” doctrines we see in churches today. The emperor Constantine did not want another messiah appearing, so his henchmen made sure that Jesus would be the only Son of God.

So, we see history and political needs impose themselves on the beauty and wisdom of the Gospels.

Genuine Christianity – the movement begun by Jesus – hardly had a chance as it was taken over by the state.

And then comes that other question – who were those “other people”, the ones about whom our preachers declined to speak sympathetically, against whom the Hebrews and Christians struggled, those who were invaded and killed? And what was before Genesis?

Question 2: Who were those people around the early Israelites?

There were people already on earth when the stories tell us Adam and Eve were created.

People of earlier times had gods, goddesses and the Great Mother. Mothers were celebrated as the source of life and women were the face of the Divine (as were men).

We saw gender in many things: sun, moon, earth, mountains, caves, trees, rivers and seeds.

(These were not universal gender assignments, I should add, because there could be a moon god or moon goddess, depending on the culture; the sun could be a goddess for the Celts and a god for others. Egyptians had an Earth god named Geb, and a goddess of the sky over him named Nut.)

What’s important here is that both masculine and feminine were divine. Both feminine and masculine had natural representations of their divinity. (I would note that Crete seemed to have the closest thing to a culture of equality.) What’s more, there was divinity in everything.

Conclusions

Where does this leave us – on this Mother’s Day? For one thing, having lost our goddesses, we look to our earthly mothers to be divine and perfect, for we still yearn for the Great Mother Goddess. But the loss of those goddess models lets us forget that every woman (and every man) is of the Divine.

Indeed, behind every person’s face is the story of the universal divine taking unique shape in that one individual; and when we look into the eyes of that one person – male or female – if we pay attention, we might just see the light of the Divine shining through their eyes. (It’s no wonder we can’t gaze into each other’s eyes for very long without something emotional happening.)

This may also mean that when we look to our parents to be better than they’ve been – even if we have legitimate grievances – we should remember they are just human beings with their own struggles and with no more of a clue of what’s going on than the rest of us. They themselves did not have ideal models of parenthood or personhood – and not a goddess in sight. We really need to separate out our childlike need for an ideal Mother Goddess from the real and human flesh-and-blood woman who gave birth to us, as well as those who cared for us. If you are looking to a parent to be a god or goddess, you’d better look elsewhere.

For another thing, I would assert that we live in perpetual relationship with our divine parent that expects us to grow into divine adults in a world where every woman or man might be supported in the realization of her or his divine presence, whether as parent, partner, sibling, lover, child, adversary or friend.

Finally, these religious and spiritual traditions that we’ve inherited may not be perfect, just like our parents, but that in no way absolves us from seeking the Divine in them, where we can find it. We would do well to look beyond the faulty cultural shapes imposed on the essence of the Divine Presence. It’s up to us to follow the trail the Divine Presence leaves for us – a trail that often places us on an individual path; and we must make our own way, sometimes creating the path by living it.

Indeed, we are constantly birthing our own destiny and fate, but we do not do that alone. Many people have nurtured us down through the ages and among the years of our lives. These are all mothers of some part of ourselves.

In closing, I’d like first to offer a quote that I believe comes out of Irish tradition and that is:

The heart of God is a mother’s heart.

And I’d like to offer my gratitude to my own earthly mother, to her mother and foremothers before them, back to the first Mother and the Great Mother, for that is my lineage, and yours as well. And thanks to all of you who have nurtured something in me. You have mothered me and helped to make me who I am. Part of what I am is a function of your mothering and, for that, I thank you.

The Pressure to Forget Who We Are

No matter how many times we’ve been here, each time we incarnate into this world, we come as strangers. We find ourselves in a body we scarcely know what to do with, cared for by people we don’t recognize and themselves having no idea who we are (but plenty of ideas about whom they want us to be). And we’ve forgotten who we are and why we came. Already estranged, we are now in a world that wants us to be something else. We can feel the pressure of our parents and their parents and the line of ancestors – their unmet needs falling onto our shoulders, hoping we will find an answer to questions they didn’t even know how to ask.

Over time, we gradually discover the shape of our own karma when the same things keep happening, the same emotions arising, the same judgments returning, the same people with different faces. Then, too, biological imperatives grip us with hormonal force and direct us toward partners, approval and the survival of belonging. Beyond that, still, it seems that everyone wants something from us, for us, with us, by us; and the social and industrial machines want to harvest us to fulfill their vision. Research dollars are spent in finding out how to capture our attention, plant insatiable needs and inadequacies in us that make us think we must have what they would sell us – things, people, or conditions. Religions take advantage of our need to belong, and our need to connect to something greater than what we see – but give us dogmas and pressures of conformity rather than illumination and liberation.

It’s enough to make us forget our soul that sought to incarnate here and fulfil its vision, its yearning, its destiny. Yet something knows we are more than all those distractions. The distractions may take over again and again, but something inside arises in deep yearnings and itching dissatisfactions of the things of this world, all its beauty and the love that can be found here notwithstanding.

Still, something inside knows there is more. And that becomes yet another temptation for the spiritual predators whose teachings never quite satisfy because they are not nearly large enough to contain our secret immensity, or to tell us who we are or why we are here – only who they want us to be. They try to impose their vision, their “methods” and articles of faith with promises of salvation, illumination, liberation or mastery if we only make enough effort, attend enough trainings or give enough money. But this only sometimes partially works because, again, their vision, ideology and methods are too small, too circumstantial and too general to fit any of us.

What’s necessary is that we find our way through our precious vision found in the secret corners of our own lives where our destiny has planted its seeds of future growth, and gives us again and again the lessons we need to find the direction that belongs to us, the path that opens to our steps, the life that is hospitable to our gifts.

We could be discouraged by all that seems to oppose our self-realization, or we can take heart at how resilient, persistent and forgiving is the Greater Self within us.

Cults of Sacrifice

In our modern sophisticated world, we look down on those early “primitive” cultures (including our own) that made human sacrifice to their gods, and we wonder at the brutality of their priesthoods and the demonic nature of the deities that would require such a thing. Over time, we seemed to have evolved, and animals were sacrificed on those altars instead of people, but the dominant version of one of our major Western religions centers around the sacrifice of a man-god to appease his father-god, while in the Celtic world, sacrifices of beautifully-made implements were made in bodies of water. Sacrifice came to mean “making sacred” and we hear of sacrificing less-desirable things for more valuable outcomes.

We may judge such things “primitive” and unenlightened, but our modern life is full of human sacrifice adorned with civic rituals. Soldiers are sent into declared and covert wars (often to save the wealth and power of a select few); and their deaths are called “sacrifices.” Whole populations are sacrificed to poisons to save industry’s profits. Apostates and heretics to free-market capitalism are targeted and demonized. Weapons of war and killing are cherished and regarded by some as a sacred gift. Women’s well-being is sacrificed to save this patriarchal society that was built on outright slavery and still thrives on economic slavery and misogyny. Perhaps worst of all, our society is quite willing to sacrifice children to war (if it’s other peoples’ children), to poisons in the environment and for the profit of weapons manufacturers.

We are also willing to sacrifice the health of the land, the purity of the water, the cleanliness of the air we breathe and even the truth so that those in power can seek the blessings of their god of money. And to elevate their greed, they invoke the American constitution as though it were a sacred scripture. They are like the ancient priests, enchanted by their dogmas, unable to grasp the consequences of their action, indifferent to the suffering they cause, and unwilling to stop the poisons and bloodshed.

Thus, we still cherish and justify our cult(ure) of sacrifice, even if only for the enrichment of the temples of our devotion (markets and manufacturers) and the holy objects we think will save us. Or evolution has a long way to go.

Another Addendum to the Extraordinary Stresses Series

Throughout this work, I’ve advocated that we operate from our core values and not add to the malignant stress waves, but I’m not suggesting, by any means, that we cannot avoid creating stresses when we advocate for our position: any action we take against the status quo will likely create a stress for those who want to keep things as they are. As we experience our empowerment, those who have been dependent on us and have benefited from our vulnerability, powerlessness and fear will experience their own waves of stress. In the larger picture, however, these will be the natural stresses of evolution, correction of injustice and awakening – rather than the mindless and habitual stresses of ignorance, helplessness and vulnerability.

After all, stress is inevitable in anyone’s life who is actively engaged in living, but how long we stay there and how we respond to it are up to us.

An Addendum to the Extraordinary Stresses of Our Time

My cursory survey about the stresses created by the 2016 election (and their precursors) omitted a significant question. If the election of a man known to accost, bully, cheat and lie to others is so stressful, why aren’t his supporters similarly stressed? Certainly, many of them have been abused, too.

There are some well-known psychological dynamics that may have come into play here. One is that of “identification with the aggressor.” Some people, as a reaction to their helplessness in the face of aggression, make an identification with the aggressor as a way of handling their powerlessness. This allows them to deny their vulnerability, to feel powerful and to avoid needing to confront the abuser’s behavior.

Another mechanism is the fact that some people with anxiety (over encroaching minorities, their own lack of resources, economic instability or what have you) seek an authoritarian leader they hope will save them from their real or imagined peril.

It would also appear that some supporters are not much concerned with the content of the man’s character or the nature of his policies, but are caught in admiration of his attitude. An identification with his attitude promises a freedom from constraints of “polite” society (or should we say “politically correct” society?). This again refers to people who feel they have not had a voice, and here is a powerful man who can say the most ignorant, offensive, abusive, patently false things and still flaunt his power. So, it’s not just the content of the statements, but the fact that he will say them outright and get away with it – with tacit approval from most of his political party. He will not be cowed by social convention or pressure. The fact that some portion of the content parallels what they would like to say is enough to validate him as a representative of the attitude they want to show the world.

Constraints of polite society and the judgments that come to them for their violation is clearly distressing to them and, of course, adds to the general stress wave – including the backlash of judgments being made about them by most of society. These people have been (in their own eyes) outcasts, and he gives them voice.

“Conservatives” have embraced him because of his advocacy of unbridled individual freedom, free from responsibility for one’s fellow citizens, for the centrality of wealth in their value system, and for the love of unregulated corporate power. He appeals to their negative inclinations toward personal greed and neglect of social responsibilities. These “conservatives” have experienced considerable distress under the evolutionary pressures of universal healthcare, inclusion of other races, ethnicities and non-conforming sexuality. (It’s remarkable how they seem to desire powers for corporations where there is no accountability that they find abhorrent in government where there is.)

Traditional “family values” groups have easily set aside their social and moral standards because this man is doing what they would like to be able to do with impunity: judge, criticize, persecute and dominate – and he implies that he will support their attempts at domination in a theocracy.

These supporters may well be playing a part in the dynamics of the rest of us – as our own negative shadow, making them people the rest of society can look down on and not have to examine the ways in which they have, themselves, allowed the problems of our modern world to fester unresolved.

Regardless of whether we see these mechanism of rationalization and support as cynical manipulation, gullibility, insanity, stupidity or sincerely-held positions, they all reveal unresolved concerns about modern civil society and have created a festering pool of distress that has been neglected by those pleased or advantaged by “liberal” society.

The Extraordinary Stresses of Our Time and What To Do About Them, Part 3b

This is the almost final posting of this series. It was my original finale but, because of more reflection, there will be some addenda coming in a few more days, addressing some unanswered questions, taking some ideas a little deeper, or clarifying some points.

Putting What We Know into Action

After all that’s been said, there are three primary things to keep in mind, so we can stay on a heart-centered track:

Mitigate the impact of stress waves (internal and external)
Make daily efforts to restore core values
Take action in the world based on core values and supported by personal balance

1. Mitigate the impact of stress waves

Let’s get more specific. Here are five ways to mitigate the impact of stress waves:

Our own stress-management, not just to reduce stress, but to restore resilience and well-being;
Bolster our personal boundaries – personal, psychological and energetic, including how much we expose ourselves to media, and what kinds of media;
Invest our attention into the heart of our own development, healing, sovereignty and creative self-expression;
Enlist the assistance of whatever spiritual forces, beings or principles we have available;
Join with others in positive communities of like mind in common activities and endeavors.

Here are some of the ways we can daily seek restoration and a return to our Core Values:

Meditation
Prayer
Contemplation
Acts of Service and Volunteering for people, housing, animals, environment
Time in nature
Time with pets
Beautifying our surroundings
Exercise
Shamanic Practices
Chants, songs, mantras (clear the mind and synchronize with something greater)
HeartMath practices noted earlier
- Indulging in core values – by memory or by action
- Inner Ease
- Quick Coherence
  - (There are others found on HeartMath’s website or through certified coaches.)

2. Engage with Representatives

If you don’t like what’s going on in our country or the government, communicate with your elected representatives. Yes, they may be under the influence of other parties and you may only get a vague, party-line form letter back, but their job depends on keeping constituents happy. If you don’t bother, you are letting others make the decisions for you. Here are two sites to identify elected officials (national and in Minnesota) and how to contact them.

https://www.usa.gov/elected-officials

https://www.leg.state.mn.us/leg/districtfinder

There’s no need to put a lot of time into your message. They don’t have time to read long letters, and short missives are usually clearer. Don’t overestimate their ability to digest complex reasoning.

3. Vote with Your Dollars

Do the companies you support reflect your core values?

What advertisers might be influenced to support more favorable media?

What do the companies do with their profits, and do they “hide” them off shore?

What political parties, representatives, policies do they support?

Will it make more of an impression if you stay in an organization and advocate for change, or cut loose?

Does the company verbally advocate for equality or the environment, but then donate money to the party or politicians that have other ideas?

For banking – do you want a large system or credit union or cooperative?

Do your investments reflect your values?

It’s not enough to just change from one company to another, but to communicate why and on what core value.

4. Keep Perspective

It’s necessary to separate goals from sub-goals and the steps toward them; and focus on increments of change over all-or-nothing judgments. Never let improvement fall victim to perfectionism. We always need a healthy dose of self-forgiveness because we will not be perfect in this endeavor. Forgive your lapses and resolve to learn from them and move on.

5. Recognize and Express Your Identity

Is there an interest you had a child that you would enjoy reviving?
Is there a skill you’d like to learn, if only for the pleasure of it?
Is there a language in which you are interested?

6. Causes – Choose Wisely and Focus

There are numerous causes to which you can give support (financially or by volunteering). It’s important to focus on a small number to which you can really feel connected. Focused advocacy is usually more effective than a shotgun approach.

7. Self-Care

Take care of the one area of the universe for which you are primarily responsible. What do you really need to be healthy, happy and whole? There is a saying I heard from a Mongolian shaman. She said, “First, heal your community; then heal the world; then straighten your sash.” I interpreted this to mean we should certainly engage in advocacy and activism in the our outer lives, but also must care for our own health and wholeness.

Resources – Where to Go for Support and Action

Coaching: coaching is available from HeartMath certified trainers and others to reduce stress and realize goals

Classes/groups: there are many outlets and community education resources for learning about your world, learning a new skill or joining with others with similar interests.

World Wide Web: of course, the internet is a resource for finding advocacy groups, for research into areas of interest, and for deepening an understanding of current events.

Non-profits: many organizations exist for everything from animal rights, to the environment, to child care and political action, to gun safety, to name just a few.

Service organizations: some non-profits are actively attempting to meet the needs of suffering populations. They may build houses, serve the homeless, or feed the hungry.

Making an Action Plan

So, here’s what an action plan might include:

Daily practice(s) to anchor, center, balance, restore focus on core values
Daily review of unresolved emotions triggered during the day
Occasionally things to do that restore a focus on core values
Awareness of things to be careful about or to reduce in life
Things to work into life
Actions to express who you are, what you value, and what you truly love
Causes you might consider supporting that align with your core values
Development of a hobby, special interest of exploration, or activity that you can do just for the pleasure of it – perhaps an earlier-life interest you’ve set aside.

It’s likely to be overwhelming to try to do too many of these at once, so I wouldn’t try. Pick a couple that appeal to you and go with them. Add the others as you feel ready, if you have time. Just try to keep yourself balanced and engaged.

Summary

Perhaps I can summarize all this in a few words:

Acknowledge – acknowledge the stress or issue.

Surely, as we acknowledge the nature of the problems, we will feel their impact on us – anger, stress, discouragement – but awareness of these internal responses is a good thing unless we stay there. Our awareness gives us choice whether to act, and what actions to take. Our emotional responses tell us about ourselves and about our relationship with what is going on in the world.

Re-balance – don’t get stuck in an immediate automatic reaction

Being aware of the way in which our perceptions of the events have affected us, the second step is to re-balance ourselves. Given the adverse impact of stress on our reasoning, and because of the stresses and pace of modern life, acting out our initial impulse is not usually the wisest or most effective course of action.

Re-center – return to a focus on Core Values

This might help us remember who we are and to return to an awareness to our deep values – what’s important to us beyond momentary provocations.

Act – take constructive action that’s aligned with Core Values

I’d like to see us attend in a healthy way to the challenges we see in the world. Equally important is the fact that the nature of current stresses can throw us off center, distract us from our path of healing and growth, while flooding us with waves of stress, anger and discouragement. After all, we are in relationship with both the outer world and with our inner selves (even if we ignore them). What happens in one has an effect on the other – for good or ill. My hope for these postings is to make it better for both realities and not to add to the stress waves or fruitless unhealthy argument we so often see today. We can do better; we can be better. Maybe we can even communicate with one another. And it helps to remember that how we are is often as important as what we do.

*(This series is adapted from Restore the Balance, a presentation made at Unity North Spiritual Center on January 7, 2018.)

Note also that a video course is being prepared on The Patterns that Shape Our Lives – and what to do about them. It includes explorations of patterns of emotional responses, relationships, dreams, physical ailments (and more), how to explore them and, with some effort, gain liberation from them. If you are interested in knowing about when it is completed, let me know.

The Extraordinary Stresses of Our Time and What To Do About Them, Part 3a

Moving Forward – Empowerment and Engagement

Empowerment

As we look to reduce the negative impact of stress on us, as well as to make our efforts at inner and outer change more effective, we need to address at least three factors.

First, we must learn to resist the intrusion of adverse forces and ideas; that is, to resist stress waves, emotional viruses, misleading information and geomagnetic anomalies that flow through our collective consciousness, along with the provocations on which many people, organizations and other entities feed.

Second, it behooves us to anchor ourselves in the power of our heart-centered sovereignty (our core values), and to work from that foundation, rather than from fear or anger. Our fear and anger may certainly motivate us and provide information to us, but we want to operate more effectively by centering first on our core values.

And third, we need to maintain forward development and expression of our own identity as a unique, soul-filled individual – and craft our responses to things based on this identity. Beware of allowing external agents to capture our attention and, thereby, hold in abeyance our own interests.

Each of these three factors helps to keep us from becoming the mirror image of those we do not like, and gives access to our own moral compass. This means, in part, making time for that which nurtures us.

A Review

At this point in my meanderings, we’ve looked at a list of cultural stressors, their impact on us, our connectivity with nature and people, the adverse impact of stress, the inestimable worth of our core values for guidance and health, and how to use our emotional system for perception and problem-solving. Our next topic will be moving forward to make change in the world and in our lives – on a foundation of our core values rather than provoked reactions. But first, let’s look at some of the not-so-obvious factors that make change difficult.

Hidden Pitfalls on the Path toward Empowerment and Sovereignty

Many of us resist change – and there are reasons why we might choose to resist even that which would ultimately benefit us.

Some people have an ingrained authoritarian orientation. They find security in looking up to a strong leader and clear rules. Loyalty becomes a high value. For such individuals, independent thought, too much self-examination or ambiguity are uncomfortable. They like things clear and direct; and an autocratic leader saves them from responsibility and uncertainty. (This authoritarian orientation was early noted to be a common denominator of the president’s followers. This allowed candidate Trump to brag that he could shoot someone in broad daylight and not lose any followers – as if that were laudable.)

Also, something in us wants our leaders to god-like – to believe some divine force put them there. On the other hand, to be automatically cynical (“They’re all corrupt.”) is an equal abdication of responsibility since one is once more freed from the obligation to think, evaluate and act. Such individuals are still authority oriented – just negatively so.

Others may be attached to their stresses or may be getting something out of their current situation – even if it has unpleasant features. They may enjoy a benefit, special consideration or the moral high ground. And having someone to blame for their troubles (even if true) can take the onus of off them to move on.

Still others may be attached to their anger (reflecting deeper personal issues) or even addicted to the anger chemicals in their body (certainly a more powerful feeling than vulnerability). If one is angry, one is focused on the infraction and perpetrator and not on one’s pain.

Finally, it’s often the case that change is just plain hard work, requiring attention to our goals, honesty about our efforts, and evolving the relationships around us, many of which may be invested in things staying as they are.

This is not to blame the victims who live in pain and struggle to keep going, but only to recognize the full ramifications of introducing change into a structure.

So, before undertaking efforts at change, it may behoove us to explore these questions:

What does the current situation cost you, or deny you?
Has it given you any special considerations or privileges or a moral high ground?
Are you gratified by having someone to blame?
If things truly changed, is there something you might have to give up?
If things truly changed, are there responsibilities you might have to assume?
Are there people who depend on things being the way they are – on you being the way you are?
If things changed, how might your relationships change?

Another broad question might be to ask what your investment is in things as they are, as well as the need for change? With that awareness, you may be able to approach efforts at change in a more wholistic and effective manner.

Next, we’ll get more specific in the final section – part 3b.

The Extraordinary Stresses of Our Time and What To Do About Them, Part 2b

Stress, and the Physical and Metaphoric Heart

As I mentioned before, I’ve been teaching about various aspects of stress-management for decades and it has never seemed more applicable. In this section, I’ll be presenting some of my own ideas based on my experience with hypnosis, psychotherapy, biofeedback, and the science-based methods of the HeartMath Institute (www.heartmath.org).

Power of the Heart

Let’s begin with the millennia-old concept of “heart.” Since ancient times, the heart was seen as the seat of intelligence. The word “courage” even comes from a word that means heart. One way to access the wisdom of the heart is to consider the following questions. I suggest that you take the time to write down your responses to these questions, and to note how you feel as you think of them. Take your time.

What means the most to me?
What do I love?
What makes life worth living?
When do I feel my best?
What do I enjoy doing for its own sake?
What makes my heart come alive?
What do I think the world needs more of right now?

You may have realized that these are the same sort of questions put in different ways. Our answers reflect our core values – values originating in our metaphorical heart. When I do workshops and ask these questions, there is invariably an experience of peace, well-being and joy, along with the realization that almost no one spends nearly enough time in that state, or doing those things that elicit that well-being. Blame for losing touch with these core values is most frequently put on distraction and stress.

The importance of the heart is not just metaphoric, however. The relatively new medical field of neurocardiology has recognized that the heart has its own intrinsic nervous system that both responds to changing conditions, as well as participates in perception and decision-making. In addition, researchers have discovered and measured the way heart rhythms can either coordinate or disorganize brain functions – including our ability to perceive our environment, remember facts and solve problems. And our emotions play a major role in the way the heart responds. Many of our responses to the environment and our own thoughts are an interaction among our perceptions, emotional memories, coordination of the thalamus, heart rhythms, heart-rate variability (a reflection of interaction of the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems), hormonal secretions, focus of attention, and opportunities (or not) to respond in a way that metabolizes the stress hormones our body generates.

The most efficient and user-friendly methods of intervention I’ve seen are those taught by the HeartMath Institute. Derived from research-based exploration, these methods have been used by ordinary people, health-care workers, military and police personnel, educators, students and other groups to restore core values, reduce the wear and tear of stress on the body, improve cognitive functioning and enhance social relationships. With a little practice, we can become healthier, calmer and smarter within minutes – all by shifting our attention, regulating our breathing and generating a positive feeling. It seems too simple, but it works. The heart of the method, so to speak, is heart-focused breathing and the activation of a feeling of care or gratitude. Regularized breathing calms the nervous system, and the activation of a fun, positive feeling is hormonally restorative and makes the good state last longer. Furthermore, one can use the technique for a quick calming (in about 30 seconds) or as a sort of meditation over five to fifteen minutes.

One of these tools, “Inner Ease,” can be found on the HeartMath website at https://www.heartmath.org/articles-of-the-heart/heartmath-tools-techniques/inner-peace-inner-ease/. My favorite technique, called “Quick Coherence,” can be found at https://www.heartmath.org/resources/heartmath-tools/quick-coherence-technique-for-adults/. The institute’s research is also available on line.

When I worked in the schools, I watched these methods restore people to their core values, re-discover the things that made life worth living, and improve test-taking skills. When I practiced regularly, my immune system was stronger. For more detailed information, I suggest accessing the HeartMath website, attending a seminar where the methods are explained in detail, or you can engage a HeartMath coach for individual instruction and goal-setting.

You can also purchase biofeedback-like devices to monitor and practice regulating your heart-rate variability. These devices are either computer connected (called “emWave”) or powered by a smart phone (called “Inner Balance”).

The biggest stumbling block, however, is developing the discipline to care for oneself. To take a minute several times a day to apply the above techniques, or to take 15 minutes once a day to lock in a state of well-being can seem insurmountable – especially for people who are caring for others. Researchers have found, however, that such self-care is not just a benefit for the persons practicing it, but also for those around them. That is, well-being (like emotional viruses) can be contagious, which takes us to the topic of connectivity of living systems.

The Connectivity of Living Systems

A fascinating area of research is the way living systems connect with and influence one another. I already mentioned the effect of geomagnetic storms on human behavior and well-being, but we ourselves are also generators of electromagnetic influence. It turns out that every beat of the heart broadcasts your emotional condition through the measurable electromagnetic field generated by the electrical pulse that activates the heart muscle. This is one of the invisible influences among people – for good or ill. This heart-based influence has also been seen between people and horses and other animals. What’s more, trees’ responsiveness to earth events and human emotion is also being explored. You can find more information about this research at https://www.heartmath.org/gci/.

These new research projects support my earlier point that we are not alone, separate and individual. Certainly, we have our individual characteristics, but we are also connected to nature and to each other. Taking care of ourselves is also caring for the earth and our fellow citizens.

We have choice

I hope this all-too-brief foray into the science of stress-management makes clear that our efforts at staying balanced and heart-focused are not selfish acts of personal contentment but, rather, a decision to not contribute to stress waves and, instead, broadcast a field of care and rejuvenation that may make a measurable difference in the world – and certainly for ourselves. Furthermore, it’s my hope that, through these efforts, we not only increase our well-being, but also experience the empowerment that heart-centered living can provide.

In part III, we’ll move on to the applications of what we know so we can bring benefit to ourselves and to the people around us, even while we tackle the stresses of our time.

The Extraordinary Stresses of Our Time and What To Do About Them, Part 2a

Recovery and Restoration

This begins the process of restoring our balance, reducing the impact of all those stresses on us, getting us centered into our deep-heart values, and enlisting the positive power of our emotions so we can move forward toward making constructive change in the world without betraying our own identity.

Redeeming our Emotional Resources

Emotions: Are They Friend or Foe?

In the face of a lot of stress-management writings, Eastern ideas about non-attachment and New Age dogmas, I need to address the power and value of our emotions. Plus, I’ve implied that our emotional reactions might be problems. They can be – if not allowed to do their job. Our emotions have been betrayed by some of the things we’ve been taught. One of these betrayals is that some emotions are blessed as being positive and others are judged to be negative. We’ve even been told by one writer that there are only two emotions – love and fear – regardless of the wide spectrum of emotional responses that we all experience.

Another potential pitfall is the teaching that we should only attend to positive, elevated emotions, and not give attention where we don’t want energy to flow. Sometimes this works, but it is only a partial truth. Of course, we have a choice whether to feed an emotion by fixating on it and replaying the memories that created it, but it is fruitless to deny what is already there. We must distinguish between suppressing an existing emotion, on the one hand, and re-generating emotions we don’t want on the other.

Our emotional system is just not as simple as some would like us to believe, and I’d like to present what I think is a more useful perspective.

So, what are they for?

We have, I think, four primary emotions, each with its own functional purpose in our lives.

Each is a form of perception of our relationship with some aspect of the world.
Each is an agent of valuing things, people and events.
And, each is an attempt to resolve some issue with which we are faced.

In short, our emotional system is a form of perception, evaluation, response and problem-solving – if we allow it. There is a difference, of course, between naturally-occurring emotions and those we generate ourselves or contaminate with judgment, intent or attachment. Also, they can be incorrect, inappropriate, misplaced, mislabeled or based on false realities; but they each serve a purpose that, if recognized, helps us to know who we are and what we are being called to do. If not recognized, however, they create distress in the system.

Again, please note that I’m talking about the primary emotions not contaminated with judgments, or incorrect labels. These basic emotions are sadness, fear, anger and joy. Anger, for example, is an honest emotion, while hatred is not. Hatred includes a judgment, and a target marked for aggression – one whom we have decided no longer deserves the respect we say we value. As another example, feelings of betrayal are usually a mixture of disappointment, sadness and anger.

The specific functions and value of emotions should be clearer if we look at my “Emotional Toolkit.”

The Emotional Toolkit

We have four primary emotional tools.

Anger is a response to a perceived violation. It helps us maintain personal boundaries and to get our needs met.
Anxiety is an instinctive response to protect us from a perceived threat.
Sadness makes us aware of the absence of something (or someone) we value.
Joy shows us what our lives need for renewal. (My hypnosis instructor many years ago told me, “Everything necessary for the preservation of life, the Creator made pleasurable.”)

Of course, what I’ve put forward here is the ideal. In real life, our emotional systems can get distorted by inadequate or misguided parenting, needs for approval, gender expectations and emotional wounds. But that’s not the fault of the emotional system itself. Rather, it’s our failure to understand and nurture the proper development of these tools of living.

When beset by an emotion, we might ask:

What does my anger want me to change? What boundary has been crossed? What or who has held something from me (or someone else) due me?
What does my sadness show me I’ve lost? What does my sadness show me I value?
From what is my fear trying to protect me? Does it really need to? Is there a deeper fear under what I’m feeling?
What does my joy ask me to make more time for in my life?
What do I want? What do I really want?

That last question is one of desire, more than emotion. Desire is another often-misunderstood human function. Desires are often dismissed as transitory and shallow, which they can certainly be. The desires we should pay attention to, however, are those that seem to come from deep within us – usually desires related to our core values for they tell us who we are.

When the work of the emotion is complete, it leaves us of its own accord – unless, of course, we feed it, or we have mislabeled it. This means we need to recognize it, find some way to express it honestly, and then let it go.

So, each emotion and desire are signals about who we are and our perceived relationship with some event, person or idea in our environment. In addition, they carry the energy to realize and express our identity and maintain our sovereignty. To reject, disown, degrade, or dismiss our basic emotions are all forms of willful soul loss, self-abandonment, and self-suppression.

Further self-reflection can help us evaluate the appropriateness of our emotional states and make better use of them. We are not trying to analyze them away, but to embrace the meaning of each one and its relevance to our lives. Here are some considerations to test the validity of the basis of an emotion. (Note that we are evaluating the validity of the basis of the emotion, not the emotion itself.)

First, how much of the emotion actually belongs to me? Is there some portion of it that I absorbed from those around me or when I was a child under the influence of adults? (Whether you consider this a transfer of actual emotional energy, or a kind of sympathetic response is not as important as being able to distinguish what is ours and what really belongs to someone else.)
How much of what I feel is manipulated or generated by what I’m reading or seeing? And how much by what I’m replaying in my head?
How much of what I feel might I have absorbed from a social wave of emotion?
Does this emotion cover some deeper or rejected emotion?
How much of this is an emotional memory from my past?
How does the emotion relate to its purpose as noted in the Emotional Toolkit?
To what degree does it relate to my core values?
How can I use its information and energy to support and express my core values related to this?

Note that this self-assessment is in no way intended to invalidate or immobilize the emotion. Rather it is to give it its true place, to honor your perspective and allow you to take the appropriate action based on current external realities, internal needs, and your core values.

Speaking of core values, we’ll next look at their place in our health, stress-management and as a moral compass as we address the stressors of our time.