...waking up...

"Empowered to turn negativity into a resource, I found flowering in me an unconditional cheerfulness and patience that is indestructible, because it is not based on the rejection of obstacles..... I learned how to crack my habits open and discover the luminous, enlightened energy frozen within them -- energy which became available for creative work and joy..... I understood that virtues are always cultivated from their opposites:  patience is the ability to accommodate impatience, courage is the ability to handle fear, and wisdom is not possible unless confusion is allowed to emerge.  Therefore I developed immense respect for my mistakes;  without them, my discoveries could not have been made..... Any consequence, including betrayal, is a means for waking up."

~Stephen Butterfield

...everybody knows...

So many of us are walking around shocked, numbed, horrified, angered by the on-going catastrophe in the Gulf.  The damage and losses are, to put it mildly, obscene.  It is time for the greatest minds in the world to come together to solve, end and somehow heal this tragedy.

The following true, if cynical, lyrics from Leonard Cohen's song "Everybody Knows" express the powerlessness, hopelessness and dread I feel each time I watch the news reports and images of BP and the gushing, seemingly unstoppable oil well.

Everybody Knows

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded

Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed

Everybody knows that the war is over

Everybody knows the good guys lost

Everybody knows the fight was fixed

The poor stay poor, the rich get rich

That's how it goes

Everybody knows

Everybody knows that the boat is leaking

Everybody knows that the captain lied

Everybody got this broken feeling

Like their father or their dog just died

Everybody talking to their pockets

Everybody wants a box of chocolates

And a long stem rose

Everybody knows

Everybody knows that you love me baby

Everybody knows that you really do

Everybody knows that you've been faithful

Ah give or take a night or two

Everybody knows you've been discreet

But there were so many people you just had to meet

Without your clothes

And everybody knows

Everybody knows, everybody knows

That's how it goes

Everybody knows

And everybody knows that it's now or never

Everybody knows that it's me or you

And everybody knows that you live forever

Ah when you've done a line or two

Everybody knows the deal is rotten

Old Black Joe's still pickin' cotton

For your ribbons and bows

And everybody knows

And everybody knows that the Plague is coming

Everybody knows that it's moving fast

Everybody knows that the naked man and woman

Are just a shining artifact of the past

Everybody knows the scene is dead

But there's gonna be a meter on your bed

That will disclose

What everybody knows

And everybody knows that you're in trouble

Everybody knows what you've been through

From the bloody cross on top of Calvary

To the beach of Malibu

Everybody knows it's coming apart

Take one last look at this Sacred Heart

Before it blows

And everybody knows

Everybody knows, everybody knows

That's how it goes

Everybody knows

Oh everybody knows, everybody knows

That's how it goes

Everybody knows

Everybody knows

~Leonard Cohen

P.S.   Don't miss the comments that have been made on this topic!  Some fine bloggers pour their hearts out here ... and YOUR thoughts and feelings are, of course, most welcome.  If only we could bring our collective intellect, talents, skills and creativity to bear to help solve this on-going disaster.

...your flowers have arrived...

Your weekend flowers are now delivered.
May this Memorial Day Weekend (and these modest flowers) bring you joy. 
May this weekend also see an end to the gushing oil well in the Gulf. 





Here, also, are a few words from Rilke worth contemplating - if you are so inclined:

I squander my torments when I look only for their ending.
I forget they are my own seasons,
my leaves that can stand a winter,
my ponds and meadows,
my inner landscape where any bird
 and dweller among the reeds is quite at home.


~Rainer Maria Rilke

A peek into a child-centered wedding day!

"Let's take the four children to Disney World.  Oh yes, and while we are there,

let's blend our families and get married!"

Watching fireworks the night before the wedding.

The wedding day arrives and so does the hairdresser/make-up artist.

Everyone gets their locks curled and coiffed.

The bride paints the toenails of one of her flower girls.

The resourceful groom irons his wedding Bermuda shorts.

The bride receives text messages of well wishes from back home.

Time to put on dresses and shoes and head to the hotel lobby

to greet the minister and photographer.

Bride, maid of honor and flower girls talk to the minister

before he heads upstairs to meet the groom and best man.

The photographer arrives and begins his task.

The beautiful bride is the eldest of our three children.

Posing with her orange calla lilies and pink roses bouquet.

The ceremony will take place on a balcony in front of the tall window

above the waterfalls.

The groom, minister and best man discuss last minute details.

There are those well-ironed Bermuda shorts, and sandaled feet

at this very casual, child-centered wedding.

Two flower-girls have strewn the path with orange and pink rose petals.

Bride and maid of honor (bride's eldest daughter) follow the petaled path.

The ceremony begins with all the members of this future family

gathered around.

The best man has just handed the groom's ring to the minister.

A sand ceremony symbolizes the merging of six individuals

from two families, into one. 

Each member of the new family has chosen a color of sand

to represent them and pours it into one glass vase.

The children join in the champagne toast with a non-alcoholic beverage.

The new couple will begin their life with a six person honeymoon!

Darling daughter seems to be bursting with joy while the photographer

composes a shot.

The youngest of my daughter's children checks in with her joyful Mom.

The happy couple have a shared moment of delight.

A beautiful wedding supper with family and guests includes the requisite cake -

this one decorated with mickey mouse ears for the children!

I know I'm biased, but truly, this is one beautiful family!

After the supper and a change of clothes, a private boat ride

takes the new family and wedding guests

to enjoy more fireworks.

May this marriage and family be blessed with love, joy, harmony and health.

taking a break for a few days ...

I'm flying off to a wedding!  Not only will we gain a new son-in-law, but with him come two beautiful grandchildren to add to the two we already have.  It will be a joyful celebration of life, love and family.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Looking forward to catching up on all your posts upon my return late next week.  Until then I leave you with a few wise words from Thomas Merton.   Please know how brilliantly you all shine for me, and may you all be well until we connect again.

A deep existential anxiety crisis precedes the final integration of the Self.

~Thomas Merton

Instead of hating the people you think are the war makers,

hate the appetites and the disorder in your own soul,

which are the causes of war.
~Thomas Merton

The beginning of love  is to let those we love be perfectly themselves,

 and not to twist them to fit our own image.

Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.

~Thomas Merton

We have what we seek, it is there all the time,
and if we give it time, it will make itself known to us.
~Thomas Merton


God isn't someone else.

~Thomas Merton

There is no way of telling people that

they are all walking around shining like the sun.

~Thomas Merton

thoughts for my/your day

When love is my only defense, I am invincible.

~Tao Te Ching

The Way is gained by daily loss, loss after loss until at last comes rest.  By letting go it all gets done; the world is won by those who let it go.

~Tao Te Ching

...hold an emotion in the transitional space of bare attention...

~Mark Epstein

...when we feel pain it does not mean that something is wrong.

~Pema Chodron

We are bees of the invisible.

~Rilke

reflections

God does not die on the day we cease to believe in a personal deity, but on the day our lives cease to be illumined by the steady radiance, renewed daily, of a wonder, the source of which is beyond all reason.

~Dag Hammarskjold

 

Possible Relief From Chronic Pain and Unexplained Illness

The following is a re-post from July, 2009.  Many of you were not following this blog at that time, and I thought it might benefit some of you who suffer from nagging health problems.  See what you think - and give it a try. 

For many years (twenty at least) I struggled on and off with back pain. I am not alone. Very few among us have escaped some sort of back, neck or shoulder pain at one time or another. A variety of doctors and chiropractors had, in my case, made a variety of different diagnoses from: one prescient chiropractor suggesting it was psychosomatic and if I got out of the restrictive, fundamentalist religion I was in, the back pain would go away; to another saying my legs were not the same length and that caused the back pain; to another saying I had early onset arthritis in my back; to of course the ever-predictable diagnosis of a slipped disc which was also proffered.

I rejected the first treatment suggestion back then (making my escape later from a rigid religion :), and other treatments seemed soothing for the moment, but never truly relieved the nagging pain, nor prevented occasional episodes where the pain was so bad I was bed-ridden.




Then several years ago I stumbled across the book, The Mindbody Prescription, Healing the Body, Healing the Pain by John E. Sarno, M.D. (I recalled seeing television health reporter John Stossel, from ABC's 20/20, talk about Sarno and how he (Stossel) had rid himself of debilitating back pain by following Sarno's "prescription".) So I read the book, agreed with Sarno's theories and conclusions, tried out his "prescription" (which is nothing more than reading and applying his theory and self-talk exercise) and the pain went away!

If the slightest tremor of pain returns, I return to Sarno's book, re-read and re-apply the self-talk prescription, and the pain goes away. It is like a little miracle. It costs nothing but the price of his book (I got mine on sale for $5.00!). You do not have to go anywhere, adhere to any group, subscribe to any newsletter, take any supplements, buy any exercise equipment, etc. Nothing - except read, understand and apply his theory about the reason for all kinds of chronic pain.

Because Sarno is Professor of Clinical Rehabilitation Medicine at New York University School of Medicine and attending physician at the Howard A. Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine, New York University Medical Center, and a long-time specialist in back, shoulder and neck pain, his theory was first applied only to that problem. Now, however, it is being applied to many conditions, such as: gastric reflux, irritable bowel syndrome, tendinitis, migraine headaches, joint pain, unexplained chronic conditions and even certain recurrent infections, etc.

As Doctor Sarno (now a medical practitioner for over 50 years) gained experience he came to believe his patients' pain originated in their muscles, not in their spine. He also noticed that there was a common personality profile in the patients that came complaining of back pain. He developed a theory that the mind was basically divided against itself, and to prevent the conflict from rising to the surface of consciousness and disturbing the patients life, the mind decides to distract the person from the inner conflict by causing physical pain. He further theorized that the mind/brain caused the pain by restricting the amount of oxygen that went to the muscles in the area where there was pain. As well, the mind, being a savvy plotter, often caused pain at the sites of previous injuries where it would make perfect sense to the person that they would experience pain.

Sarno says that many of us have repressed emotions that our unconscious feels are unacceptable, especially anger and rage. At some point some of this rage threatens to break through the barrier of repression, and the unconscious mind fears that we will act out our rage and, thereby, threaten our safety and security in the family and community, and decides to distract us from the emerging rage by causing physical pain that demands our full attention.

Many think, "well I'm not an angry person, so this could not apply to me". Not so. It is the anger we have repressed that is the factor here - and repression is an unconscious process. We do not know we are doing it. And we have all had disappointments, slights, wounds, failures, barriers that have made us angry. Much of our unconscious anger is justifiable. Anger is not, however, an "acceptable" emotion in Western society - thus the high level of repression among us.

Interestingly, the outward qualities most evident in Sarno's patients with back pain were perfectionism and what Sarno calls "goodism". So if you are known far and wide for being "nice" and "good", and if you are a perfectionist, Sarno's theories may apply to you. Just try his method, you will see.

Sarno's "prescription" is supremely simple. He says all you have to do is become aware of the reasons for rage in your life (past and present reasons), and then talk to your unconscious mind letting it know that you know there is a well of rage threatening to bubble up and disrupt your life, and you know that it is causing physical pain to distract you from these unconscious emotions threatening to rise to consciousness. In a nutshell that's it. Once the bodymind knows you are aware of its strategy it stops using it.

So once Dr. Sarno has ensured that the patient has no physiological basis for the pain (which you should do with a physician as well before you try out his plan), he encourages them to come to a couple of his free group lectures so that they really grasp the theory and understand how to apply his self-talk prescription. Once that is done, in most cases the pain goes away. Of course, he says, if you don't believe the theory - the prescription doesn't work. The mind will not apply what you do not believe.

Working in the field of psychology I saw immediately that Sarno's grasp of the unconscious and of the ego defense of repression was sound. And I thought I had nothing to lose so why not try his "mindbody prescription". He suggests you write out all the past reasons you might have to feel rage. This is quite an interesting exercise in revisiting your past. By the way, you do not have to feel or emote the rage. All you do is recall the events that could have caused you to be angry and that you may have repressed part or all of that anger. No 1960s-ish cathartic pillow-hitting or anything like that is required in Sarno's technique.

The next part of the written exercise is to write down current things that could be sources of rage that you are also repressing, e.g. pressure at work, discontent in relationships, economic woes, etc. This is an illuminating exercise as well. Once you become aware of the very legitimate reasons you may have to be enraged - you then begin to talk to your unconscious, letting it know that you are aware, that you can handle any rage that comes up, that you are an adult and you have impulse control, and you are not going to do anything socially unacceptable with any rage that emerges. You tell it to stop trying to distract you from the rage by causing pain. You tell yourself this over and over.

You tell your mindbody not to divert the pain to some other area of your body to distract you either. You let it know that you know it is trying to protect you, but it's efforts are sabotaging your life and it must stop now. You have to be willing to do this sort of talking to yourself for a period of time. One little chat with yourself will not do it, in my opinion. Then again maybe you could be the lucky one. I have tried to share here, briefly, what Sarno has written several books to explain. If you are suffering from any kind of chronic pain issue, or even chronic unexplained illness why not find this book and read it. Not a big investment for the possibility of a lifetime of relief!

 

Henry Ford's philosophy and Jehovah's Witnesses

Henry Ford had many great ideas.  We all know about his great car and his Ford Motor Company,  but Ford also changed the face of American industry with some avant-garde concepts.  He paid his workers a high wage that shocked industrial and financial sensibilities of the time.  This higher wage contributed to the development of a middle class.  However, Ford's idea of a high wage for a day's work was more self-serving than it might appear.  Ford had figured out that if he paid high wages to his employees, those very employees would become the customers that would buy his cars.  Genius.  Workers as customers.

The Ford Motor Company's Website describes Ford's philosophy on how the American worker could also be the American customer:
"Henry Ford had reasoned that since it was now possible to build inexpensive cars in volume, more of them could be sold if employees could afford to buy them. The $5 day helped better the lot of all American workers and contributed to the emergence of the American middle class. In the process, Henry Ford had changed manufacturing forever."  (J.E. Taylor, 2003)


Ford had figured out that by paying his factory workers a high wage, and producing more cars in less time for less money, that everyone would have enough money to buy a Ford motor car.  Ford was strongly criticized by Wall Street for initiating a 40 hour work week and a fair minimum wage. He soon proved, however, that paying high wages would enable Ford employees to afford the very cars they were producing, and ultimately benefit worker, company, state and country.


Allow me to now suggest one other place where Ford's philosophy seems to have been applied - that affected me as a former 'worker bee' for Jehovah's Witnesses, when I was in my teens and early twenties:


Jehovah's Witnesses are best known for their door-to-door preaching work where they talk to you a little, and end by asking you to read their literature.  From what I have read, they now no longer tell you how much the literature costs (in a ploy to avoid having to pay sales taxes), but offer them for any small contribution you would be willing to donate, and if you cannot afford to contribute to the cost of their printing, the Witness has been told to give them to you for free.


When I was knocking on your doors, we charged 10 cents per magazine and one dollar for a small hard-covered book.  Not a lot of money.  But what I have only recently realized is that The Watchtower, Bible and Tract Society, the official, administrative printing wing of the Jehovah's Witnesses, did not care if we collected any of the money we were to charge in the door-to-door 'ministry', since they had already received all the money they wanted FROM US.  We were never told to turn over the money given to us for the literature to the Watchtower Society.   Yes the real customers of this mega printing operation were/are the Jehovah's Witnesses themselves. 

At weekly meetings we would replenish our personal stock of magazines and books before going out in your neighborhood to try and convert you.  We paid about 1/3 of what we charged the person at the door - so about 3 cents for a magazine we were told to charge 10 cents for to the interested party.  The seven cents profit we would make did not enrich any of us, as we had to pay for our gas to get to your area and were never paid a cent for the time we devoted to going door-to-door, and, truth be told, very few of you were interested in purchasing them anyway.  Every week we had magazines left over in our bags (that we had purchased at the Kingdom Hall) that we had not been able to convince you to buy.

These patterns of distributing their literature were established in the 1920s/1930s - about the same time as Ford published his philosophy of making the workers the customer.  So the canny directors of the Watchtower Society seem to have adopted Ford's genius principle and expanded upon it.  The real customers for those magazines were Jehovah's Witnesses themselves, not the people they disturbed in their door to door ministry.  Not only were we the true customer, we were recruited to offer our time and energy at no charge to produce the literature. 


(Above you see a picture of one of the first presidents of the organization setting off for a convention in Detroit in his chauffeur driven Cadillac.  Sorry Henry, they used your ideas but not your cars.) 

In fact, we were always told that if we could not sell the magazines (they actually always used the word 'place' the magazines, so we could avoid thinking of ourselves as peddlers and continue to fool ourselves thinking we were servants of the true god, Jehovah), we should give them away once the next issue had emerged.   The leaders of the Society also suggested we leave them in waiting rooms and bus stations so the 'multitudes could read about the good news of God's kingdom'.  They did not care if they were given away, as they had already made their money on the magazines when we little worker bees paid for them at the Kingdom Hall (what Witnesses call their churches).

With this method, The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society developed an international printing business with branches and huge printing plants in many countries around the world.  The headquarters, at that time, was in Brooklyn, New York where their printing operation and residences for all the volunteer workers took up several blocks of real estate.  This real estate has since appreciated greatly and is worth multi-millions.  All the full-time workers in these printing plants were volunteers, who received free room and board at the site of the printing plant - believing that this work of producing magazines was God's work.   More than 340 Jehovah’s Witnesses, all volunteers, work at the new Watchtower Bible and Tract Society’s Wallkill, N.Y., printing conglomerate, with over 1,000 volunteers in its 18 printing facilities worldwide.  Below is an old photograph of many of the volunteer resident workers at the Brooklyn headquarters with heads bowed for the prayer before their meal.  After the meal they went off to work, for free, in the offices and printing plant.  These Witnesses felt honored to be able to serve their god in this way.

Back when I was raised a Jehovah's Witness, every other week millions of issues of the Watchtower and Awake! magazines were sent to Kingdom Halls around the world to be minimally paid for by the Witnesses who would be knocking on your doors on the weekends.  Because they were distributing them, and optimistically hoping you would all be welcoming and anxious to purchase them (joke!) all the Witnesses would buy several copies of every issue.  Meetings of Jehovah's Witnesses were built around studying these magazines and talking about their content, so each Witness including children was encouraged to have their own copies for study and meetings, as well as the ones they hoped to sell in their preaching work.

So the Jehovah's Witnesses were even cannier than dear old Henry Ford.  They figured out that they could establish a huge printing conglomerate which they would represent as doing the work of God in these 'end times'.  They would get Witnesses to devote their lives in service of the organization and work for free to print, PURCHASE and distribute their literature.  It worked.  And since they are a religion, The Watchtower, Bible and Tract Society pays no taxes on what it produces nor on its significant property holdings throughout the world.

What is particularly galling to me about what they did was how they accentuated and pushed that this preaching work had to be done and that these magazines were instruments of God to alert the nations that he (God) would soon intervene in human affairs and destroy the wicked at Armageddon and establish his Kingdom rule.  There was always an urgency attached to the work.  Lives were at stake!  People had to know how to save themselves from destruction!  We were doing God-ordained, life-saving work and had to purchase the literature that we would offer to people to literallly save their lives! 

In fact, I have since learned that when sales of the magazines seem to slump, the Witness top brass would come up with a fast-approaching date for the end of times -  to add to the urgency - and the devoted worker bees would work even harder and bring the sales back up.

What the organization knew was that very few people actually became Jehovah's Witnesses because of buying a magazine or book from the Witnesses in this unrelenting preaching work.  Most people who converted to become Jehovah's Witnesses were relatives, friends, neighbours or co-workers of a J.W.   So all this frenzied activity of going door-to-door before Armageddon,  (such as you see here from a photograph taken in the late '50s) was really just to get us to fill our preaching briefcases full of magazines (that we purchased).  They knew it produced very few converts.  So the ruse was to make us believe we were doing God's end of days work, and to make us the customers (buyers) of the magazines.  It was all a grand hoax that we needed to get God's message to the masses via these religious magazines - and to do this work as devoted servants of God - because what loyal worshipper of Jehovah would charge for his or her services.

To summarize:

*  All our production and preaching services were given freely.

*  We were given quotas of how many hours we should spend each week in the preaching work.  If we did not meet those quotas we were 'counselled' by the elders in the congregation.  Knowing we would spend several hours each week going door-to-door we had to be prepared by having purchased several copies of the magazines and books in order to offer them to you - the supposed 'customer'.


*  Their supposed dates for the Battle of Armageddon were always changing to lend urgency to the work we thought we were doing. 

*  We paid small amounts regularly for millions of the publications that we thought God wanted us to distribute to the doomed masses of humanity.

*  None of the work really counted for anything, as they knew it drew few converts.  All they wanted was for their devoted worker bees to buy the millions of magazines and books.  They knew we ended up giving most of them away by tucking old copies under your welcome mat.

*  The Watchtower, Bible and Tract Society became a multi-national printing company (while claiming it was a religion) by this means.

Jehovah's Witnesses themselves were/are UNKNOWINGLY the customers for the witnessing work's industrial and legal arm called The Watchtower, Bible and Tract Society.  Just as Henry Ford's employees bought his cars, Jehovah's Witnesses themselves bought the magazines that supported the construction and growth of this huge printing organization.  It did not matter one iota whether anyone out there bought the magazines from the worker bees.  The Society of Jehovah's Witnesses flourished with their own adherents as their customers.

The Society did not have to make exorbitant amounts of money from each of us.  They charged very low rates for the magazines, tracts, books and Bibles that we purchased.  They did not have to charge a lot, as they had a guaranteed base of customers who bought several copies of every item they produced.  They clearly understood and used the concept of volume sales for low prices.  

During the time I was a Witness back in the 1960s and 1970s, there were about 3,000,000 of us world wide.  The Watchtower and Awake! magazines were published twice monthly (so 4 per month) and we purchased them for about 3 cents each.  Say conservatively each Witness purchased 5 of each magazine (and many, like my mother, would buy 30 or 40) at 3 cents each.  That would make an income of  approx. $150,000 dollars per issue and with 4 issues per month $600,000 per month - x 12 months - approximately $7,200,000 per year.  That is not counting any book or Bible sales which would have accounted for millions and millions of dollars more.

Now, I believe there are about 6,000,000 Jehovah's Witnesses world wide.  I have no idea how much they pay for the literature they distribute, but you can be sure it is more than what my mother and I were paying back in the sixties and seventies.  I have heard that they are losing members at a fast rate these days, but I am sure that has not affected their application of Ford's idea to use the worker as customer.

It irks me to see Witnesses going from door to door with the literature they have paid for - knowing that they believe the person at the door is The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society's customer, when in fact it is them! The work they are doing is ultimately for naught.  They are being misled, used and scammed.  So sad.