About Tim Trudeau

Posts by Tim Trudeau:

Love Your Neighbor

Racism!
It’s the trump word of the lamenting left.
The visceral judgment that dominated my psyche was, “How could they!”
“How could such racism still be so prevalent?”
The rage and judgment was so thorough, and… and, final!
It’s upon further reflection that I’ve begun to see, more clearly,
Aspects of my own personal judgments.

I saw myself as open and understanding.
I could speak fluent republican.
If the situation demanded, I was relatively certain I could convey a republican ideology.
I understood the platforms.
I could empathize with the arguments.
I could stand in their shoes and see their world.
Well, sort of.
There was a flaw in my game.
My affluent friends’ conservative perspective, was what I understood.
I missed an entire demographic of republicans.
The ones I never understood.
The “middle American republican”,
The blue collar, disenfranchised, 2nd amendment, God fearing, republican.
The “alt right” republican…
This person was off my radar.
In fact, it gets worse than that. I had no respect for them.
I just wouldn’t have engaged.
I don’t even know if I could have spoken with them.
I’m not so sure what that even means?
Maybe, that I felt there was no room for compromise with “those” people?
I metaphorically disowned them without understanding the ramifications.
I completely missed my own personal prejudice.
What I’ve come to recognize is, I’d lost my sight of the ability to empathetically engage with the people I so easily disregarded.
It was vitally important for me to remember the circumstances that are required to be able to engage in higher stages of consciousness.
It’s a basic tenet of Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs that basic needs must be met in order to engage in higher levels of consciousness.
This is key.
If I want the alt right to embody concern for all of humanity, I have to recognize and have concern for them also.
In order to do that, I need to engage them, to understand them.
I have to understand what their needs are.
I need to empathetically embody their perspective.
It’s imperative to remember that engaging in empathy doesn’t require you to surrender your beliefs. All it requires is understanding someone else’s. Even if you vehemently disagree with them.
Deep empathy isn’t easy.
Somehow it’s easier to empathize with pain.
I think a lot of us do this quite well.
Empathizing with hate and anger is much more difficult. But, if you are to understand the root of the problem, then this is the path. We need to remember there is rationality behind these ideologies and if you do not understand their rationalities, you’ll never understand the origins of their wounds.
Wounds that need to heal.
We need to broaden our compassion and concern.
The world is in pain.
The alt right is in pain,
And we all know what people do who are in pain.

I recognized I had a rather dogmatic belief. If you are a racist, xenophobe, and/or misogynist, I thought you were a bad person and therefore, unworthy of consideration and ultimately, compassion.
This is a gross error and over simplification.
I believe human beings start off as intrinsically good.
Actually, intrinsically pure.
It’s the culmination of negative life experiences that results in hatred.
Hatred isn’t innate.

If my desire is to eradicate racism, I will not succeed by employing repression; pushing them down and dehumanizing them. I will not succeed if I do not stop treating them as an other.
This is the very embodiment of the prejudice that I judge.
Carl Jung referred to this as shadow.
Although the wounds are fresh, I need to understand this.
I need to embrace radical forgiveness.
I need to open my heart and home.
Kindness and love is the path.
People change when they feel purpose.
People feel purpose when they feel respected.
People feel respected when they feel included.
People do not hate those that they know.

“If you imagine someone who is brave enough to withdraw all his projections, then you get an individual who is conscious of a pretty thick shadow. Such a man has saddled himself with new problems and conflicts. He has become a serious problem to himself, as he is now unable to say that they do this or that, they are wrong, and they must be fought against… Such a man knows that whatever is wrong in the world is in himself, and if he only learns to deal with his own shadow he has done something real for the world. He has succeeded in shouldering at least an infinitesimal part of the gigantic, unsolved social problems of our day.”

~Carl Jung

Can We Agree?

Ok, let’s start with the obvious.
This whole Trump thing really rocked my world.
I feel moments of heartbroken anger.
My wife is an African American, Muslim and my son is Latino.
If you cannot understand the sadness and sorrow I feel,
Well, then there is very little else I can say.
I feel let down by my friends, family, and countrymen.
I’m literally stunned.
I want to fix this, but…
Today, I do not have the ability to see a solution.
I need time to heal; to see through this clearly.
I’m hurt.

I had a lot more to say on this topic but I’m going to resist for now.

So, I’m going to take a stab at getting all of us to agree on something.
All of us, as in the whole kit and caboodle.

Well, here we go…

Our environment is in dire straights and I think I have an idea on how to bring us all together in this polarizing and convoluted topic.

The idea of global warming became contentious years ago.
So the slogan changed to climate change.
Again, contentious.
I don’t want to get into an argument over the validity of climate change.
No one will agree, and that’s ok.
So I have to ask, is there anything we can agree upon?

How about this?

Don’t pooh where you stew.
Don’t defecate where you consummate.
Don’t shit where you sit.

I think everyone can agree on these crass epithets.
Sorry for the language, but if there is one thing I’ve learned in the last week, people love simple slogans.

We have been shitting where we have been sitting for far too long.
Then we bicker over whether or not the shit is affecting other shit.
There is a point we seem to be all missing while we are all bickering.
It’s a simple fact,
Shitting where you are sitting is silly.
It’s infantile.
Even my 1 1/2 year old gets it.
He’ll point to his diaper and says, “Poopy, poopy, poopy”
Why? Because even he knows it’s disgusting.
Disregarding it is juvenile.

Funny story:

I was helping my son clean his closet.
And…
I found four zip-lock bags full of liquified toxicity buried in the corner.
Remnants of lunches I packed months ago.
He was trying to hide the fact that he wasn’t eating his vegetables.
Nasty, right?
It was only a matter of time before we had a toxic spillage on our hands.
Fortunately, the Environmental Parental Agency came in and put the kibosh on those antics.

That’s exactly what we do as humans.
We stash our shameful shit in the corner of the closet and think no will notice.

That’s what environmentalism is.
It’s your mom.
She says, “Clean your room!”

Come on, you know that shit is nasty!

Let’s drop all this convoluted bickering regarding the semantics of what is happening to our environment and agree that throwing and spewing shit all over the place is just plain stupid and adolescent. Plus, we are running out of places to sit and that’s a shame.

I propose we drop the contentious ideologies.
Let’s remember that we do agree on something.
Let’s keep it stupidly simple.

DON’T SHIT
WHERE YOU SIT!
Or, if you’re a patron of the PC,
Give a Hoot, Don’t Pollute!

“The environment, after all, is where we all meet, where we all have a mutual interest.  It is one thing that all of us share.  It is not only a mirror of ourselves, but a focusing lens on what we can become.”

~ Lady Bird Johnson, First Lady of the United States (1963-69)

 

Transcendence

Transcendence is a phenomenon that’s rare, beautiful and mysterious. I had the pleasure of personally witnessing a client of mine come to a place of deep peace. Witnessing this transformation gave me the opportunity to see it from an outsider’s perspective for the first time.
She was willing to give it all up for him, to sacrifice everything for the chance to be with him, to love him, and to live her life with him. He was her ultimate; tall, dark, and handsome. He was powerful and knew how to treat her like an elegant and sensuous woman.
She felt full and free with him.
Their path was not entirely traditional. Some may even say it was hurtful and destructive, but their love was absolutely true. She was a mother of five, married to a catholic man with very traditional catholic views. She found herself repressed and controlled by structures and forces that were not her own.
Their love affair was somewhat cliché of that era. He was a successful businessman, and she was the beautiful secretary. However it happened, the affair turned into a deep and passionate love that burns within her to this day.
He retired a few years after they were married.
The children from their previous lives were all grown.
They lived eight charmed years before the diagnosis.
It was something that didn’t fit into their plans.
It was almost an insult.
Cancer?!
He was powerful and vivacious.
They knew this was going to be beaten.
They vacillated between disbelief and utter dismay.
They tried to continue to live their charmed life of dinners and travels, but his treatments started to get in the way.
They both knew this would be short lived and he would soon be on the path to recovery.
It didn’t happen.
He continued to be beaten down.
The cancer was consuming him.
He was losing.
She was succumbing to the stress.
The dread was an ever-present weight she was having a harder and harder time shouldering.
He was everything to her.
All of her eggs were in that one basket.
I watched this whole thing play out. Every six weeks she was in to see me and would sit in my chair for two hours. The conversation was about food. It was the last thing she felt she had control over. Their diet was clean, organic, and meticulously planned. The conversation ultimately turned toward the spiritual. She was trying to understand what it was that she believed.
I guess that was my role; to listen, to reflect, to witness. I guess, more than anything, to provide support and a sanctuary for her to feel safe and feel beautiful.
Anything other than that, penetrating dread.
He ultimately succumbed to his demise before his death.
He tried to prepare her for what lay ahead.
There was plenty of money.
He loved her so much that it was his sincere hope that she would find love again. He wanted to give her permission, to set her free.
His affairs were completely in order. There was nothing left for her to do.
In losing him, she lost everything.
It’s really that simple.
Her sun rose and set with him.
Her world was his.
He was the air that filled her lungs.
And then he was gone.
I don’t know for sure when the transcendence occurred for her. It was right around the time of his death. The first time I saw her after his death, it was clear that she had let go and I don’t mean this in a bad way. She’d surrendered; her entire essence was pure peace. It’s hard to explain what changed from a physical perspective, but she literally glowed. Her eyes were crystal clear, her skin shone, her hair gleamed, her spirit was unencumbered.
She was it.
She was that thing… that mystical thing that we all talk about, worship, and most misunderstand.
I knew within seconds of seeing her what had happened. It took a little while for her to feel free enough to tell me, but when she did, my emotions overwhelmed me.
The heat and the tears were immediate.
The profound bliss consumed my entire being.

Presidents

“We have a large public that is very ignorant about public affairs and very susceptible to simplistic slogans by candidates who appear out of nowhere, have no track record, but mouth appealing slogans” 
~Zbigniew Brzeziński

We ought to rethink the way we perceive our presidents.
They are not what we think they are, they can’t be.
We need someone who is comfortable in the arena of being able to make the best decisions possible in horrific situations. All the while understanding and weighing out the negative implications of those decisions.
Their job demands daily, hourly, and sometimes minute to minute decisions to be made with varying degrees of extraordinary complexity and negative consequences.
They don’t live with the luxury of right answers.
Every answer has a significant down side.
That’s the job.
We need to grow up.
It’s time to own what a president does.
It’s time to own and understand what we demand.
Do you think it’s just a coincidence that presidents leaves the office grey?
Can you handle the truth?
Humanity depends on it.

We are dependent upon access to affordable and plentiful resources. All these resources have a multitude of consequences behind them. To further the complexity, we are outgrowing our resources and our global population levels are unprecedented. Cultural tensions and clashes are bringing about problems never before dealt with.
So what’s to be done?
What’s a president faced with?

Is it justifiable to kill ten to save ten-thousand?
Is it worth it if you radicalize ten-thousand more?
Are some resources worth human lives?
What’s of more value, cultural heritage or the safety of millions?
Do the intrinsic problems of drones outweigh the benefits?
Is there a place for covert warfare?
How do you handle covert warfare? Is secrecy paramount?
What if there is an intelligence breach?
Do you employ damage control?
Should you just tell the truth?
How much truth?
What are the consequences of exposing covert actions?
Are there times which warrant the public being lied to or misled?
How do you handle the demands of cultural clashes that unleash xenophobia and racism?
How do you find peace for a polarized public?
How do you handle the political arena in an election year when 90% of what the job demands, is by necessity, veiled in secrecy?

The old rules don’t work any longer.
Wars are no longer fought the way they once were.
The demands on our resources have never been higher.
Humanity stands at a precipice.
Our leaders can’t save us.
Only we can save ourselves.

The geopolitical sphere is akin to a chessboard. Each piece and move is strategically used to manipulate and gain control of the board. The players are masters who are dozens of moves ahead of each other and incidentally are all playing by their own rules.
Confused?
Everyone is.

“History is much more the product of chaos than of conspiracy”
~Zbigniew Brzeziński

We’re not told how the game is played because the game is a game of manipulation. Winning moves are made by manipulating the mind. The strings of indoctrinated ideologies are easily pulled. Subtle, and often unrecognized propaganda surrounds us and manipulates us from all sides including our own. In the information age, wars are waged covertly. Information is a weapon. A weapon to manipulate all the pieces on the board. These strategies are played out by monied interests that have little national interests.

“Nation state as a fundamental unit of man’s organized life has ceased to be the principal force: International banks and multinational corporations are acting and planning in terms that are far in advance of the political concepts of the nation states.”
~Zbigniew Brzeziński

The media pushes the middle east and the Islamic State, trumpeting the fear of these insurgencies. It’s not to say they are not of value and significance. What’s worth understanding is that what we are dealing with in the middle east is a byproduct of purposeful actions taken many years ago. With that knowledge, it is vital to understand the geopolitical maneuvering that is occurring in Eurasia. These are the sights of the wars of the future. Understanding why this area of the world is important is vital for an informed public to make informed decisions.

“For America, the chief geopolitical prize is Eurasia… Now a non-eurasian power is preeminent in Eurasia and America’s global primacy is directly dependent on how long and how effectively its preponderance on the Eurasian continent is sustained.”
~Zbigniew Brzeziński

With information weaponized, the power of propaganda needs to be recognized. The heard mentality is strong. Our desire to fit in and be loved far supersedes our rationality and altruism. The utter inundation of media consumes us to the point there is little time to think outside of the prescribed parameters.

“Shortly, the public will no longer be able to reason or think for themselves. They’ll only be able to parrot the information they’ve been given on the previous night’s news.”
~Zbigniew Brzeziński

Understand this, change occurs in only one place,
Your mind.
You’re either freely dictating your own thoughts or you’re ruminating over the thoughts of others.
We are all told what to fear and what to hope for. We submit control by choosing to allow the media to think for us. We allow them to be our primary source of information.

“The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.”
~ Mark Twain

So what does this mean?
We don’t understand global conflict.
We don’t know where, why, or how we wage war.
We don’t understand the grievances of our enemy.
We don’t understand how our covert missions are waged.
We don’t know who the “Gang of Eight” is.
We don’t understand how we use private military contractors.
We don’t know about the multitudes of CIA interventions around the world.
We don’t understand our alliances with Saddam Husain, Bin-laden, and those of their ilk.
We don’t understand the geopolitical significance of Eurasia.
We don’t understand the concept of economic espionage.
We don’t understand the global currency market.
We don’t understand how the dollar benefits from the blackmarket.
We don’t understand the drug trade, specifically heroin.
We don’t understand fractional reserves.
We don’t understand how our own currency is created.
We don’t understand the privatization of all the world’s fresh water.
We don’t understand the sources of our resources.

Instead we spend our time processing prescribed problems.
Contemplating the varied solutions which have been previously provided.
Ruminating over the cornucopia of these prescribed possibilities.
Because of this, we miss the bigger pictures.
We are awash in blind ignorance.

When was the last time you really changed your mind?
Where did that thought originate from?
Those moments we actually change our mind are pivotal and rare.
It’s hard to have an original thought.
It hard to authentically change your own mind.
It’s likely that your mind was changed.
This isn’t to say this is intrinsically bad, it’s more of an appeal to recognizing the source of our thoughts and ideas.
We’re told how to think.
We’re told what to say.
We’re told how to discredit the opposition and bolster our position.
Prepackaged ideologies that are so neat and tidy.
It’s all quite simple really. With free thinking being such a rare commodity and fear being such a clear motivator, the corporatocracy has a relatively easy job.

The fight is for your mind.
Only you can transcend beyond the propaganda.
Only you can choose to see outside of what you are told to see.
So how do we find each other?
How do we come together?
How do we handle the deluge of polarities pushed upon us?

Read books.
Ask questions.
Read more books.
Ask more questions.
Read what offends you.
Read what frightens you.
Be brave with the books you choose.
If you always ask the same question,
you’ll always get the same answer.
Read banned books.
Think critically.
Think hard.
Think.

Healthy, well informed, balanced criticism is the ozone of public life.
~ Mahatma Gandhi

Tall Grass

It was about fifteen years ago, around this time of year, early fall, midday, and warm. The prairie grass was long. I was riding my mountain bike on a trail that was almost entirely obscured. The thick, yellow grass was so tall that it was rolling over my hands as I rode through it. I was near Cedar Lake in Minneapolis riding on an area that, at one time, was an old lake bed. Flat and featureless, without trees. I was fit at the time, so I was riding fast. As far as I could remember, I’d never been on that particular trail before. I assume, by the density of grass covering the trail, that no-one else had ridden it in a long time either. It’s a rather public area. The trail was maybe two hundred yards from a two lane bike path we call the commuter trail. It’s heavily used and takes you into downtown Minneapolis. I’m sure people were around, but I wasn’t paying much attention. The trail, barely visible, was a blur. Like I often did, I was pushing it. I knew I couldn’t see the trail, but I’d gotten used to ridding in conditions where I couldn’t see well. That’s mountain biking, pushing your bike just past the point you’re able to consciously process what’s happening. When it’s good, you’re in a buttery flow just reacting to the moment in front of you. The grass was whipping my fingers and stinging my hands and legs. I was fully in the zone and happy to be riding something new. I lived less than a quarter mile from there and had ridden nearly ever trail possible.
New was nice.
Before I could process what was happening, I was over my handlebars. As I was flying through the air, my hands were the last thing to leave my bike as my legs catapulted over my body. My bike came to a sudden and violent stop. As mass does, my body maintained the velocity that had been interrupted only milliseconds beforehand. I crashed onto the ground in a violent heap. Landing on my back with a blunt hard thud, my entire body compressed like a great bellow, and the air from my chest exploded from me with a deep guttural burst. Recoiling on the ground, my body contorting from the blow, I dizzily tried to understand what had just happened. Straining my neck to look behind me, I saw a railroad tie across the trail. Immersed in pain and unable to catch my breath, I curled into a ball and moaned.
The tall grass obscured me.
I wasn’t lying there much more than thirty seconds before a man was standing over me.
“What-cha doin’?”
“I just… crashed… my bike”, I said in a week slow voice.
“What-cha doing?”
Knowing something was off, I reached behind me and grabbed my bike. Using it as a crutch, I slowly pulled myself to my feet.
Annoyed, I replied, “I just crashed my bike!”
“What-cha doin’?”
Without the ability to move quickly, I started to step away from this guy who was creeping me out.
“Where ya goin’?”
As I took another step, he reached out and aggressively grabbed me in the groin.
I paused for a second, shocked.
Instinctively, with as much force as I could muster, I punched him between his right eye and temple.
Presumably stunned, he stammered and ran away.
Astonished, confused, and still struggling to gain my breath, I fell back into the grass.
Stunned, I just laid there.
It took me a week to admit this to anyone.
Waiting for a time I could ask him privately, I asked my boss at the time if this was normal or accepted in gay culture? Taken aback, he assured me that it wasn’t.
In hind sight, I see the question was offensive.
I wish I hadn’t asked, but I was trying to make sense of what happened.
My head was still spinning.
Did I do something wrong?
Was that a pick up spot?
Maybe I shouldn’t have been there?
Did I look like someone that would be ok with that?
Could I have done something to prevent it?
I couldn’t process it.
Aside from Bryce, I didn’t tell anyone else for at least six months.
And then, I only told my wife.
Embarrassed, ashamed, and confused, I was slowly able to understand the assault for what it was.
To merge this fucked up thing into my reality wasn’t something I wanted to do. That’s the thing with assault, I didn’t get a choice. It happened and there is nothing I can do about it.
I swore that I’d never forget his face and someday I would find him.
I never did.
I wanted revenge!
I wanted him to pay!
Assault isn’t something you gleefully share.
Quite the opposite.
I think it’s common not to talk about it, don’t you think?
If you were assaulted, would you talk about it?
A great conversation starter, right?
No, it’s the opposite. You bring that shit up, over and over, and no one is going to invite you to the party any more.
That’s the reality, you know it’s true.
No one wants to talk about that.
When I tell people this story, it’s always awkward. They always ask the same question, “Do you think he put the railroad tie there?”
How should I know?
I doubt it.
If he did, he had to have been the most patient molestery freak ever!
My guess is, like most people that do this sort of thing, they are opportunistic, narcissistic assholes. Selfish people who pray upon the weak. I guarantee you he wouldn’t have done this if I hadn’t just crashed my bike and was gasping for air.
That’s the way this works.
Opportunistic, weak, selfish, immature, insecure, narcissistic assholes do this shit!
Imagine if the person who assaulted you was a person with power and influence?
What are you going to say?
Bill Cosby touched me?
Dr. Huxtable?
Bill Cosby, Bill Cosby?
What! Are you crazy?
Turns out, nope. He’s a sexual predator!
Who would have thought?
More to the point, who would have believed it?
When did it become convincing for you?
Was it when the first woman accused him? I doubt it. Bill Cosby? No way!
I was judgmental too.
It wasn’t until the numbers got upwards of twenty that I said, “What’s the likelihood they are all lying?”
Me, the guy who’s been assaulted and I still doubted these victims.
Which makes sense considering I even doubted myself.
That’s what the victims are up against.
That’s why victims stay silent.
In today’s world, if you say you’ve been assaulted by someone who admits they assault people, who brags they can assault people, and brags they get away with it because of their celebrity, people still doubt the victim.
Look how we treat these people who swallow their pride and admit something that’s so shameful to them!
They’ve been assaulted!
And then publicly shamed.
Ah, ya know, I’m probably making up that shit in the tall grass too.
Never mind me.
He’d make a hell of a leader,
No worries,
Carry on…

Injustice

Did you hear that Amy Goodman was charged with trespassing and then when those charges didn’t look like they would stick, they changed the charge to inciting a riot?
Ya know, for reporting on something that wasn’t being reported on?!
Yea, reporting!
What’s further alarming is the lack of coverage by fellow journalists that a fellow journalist was being criminally charged for being a journalist. Oh wait, I mean rioting.
I’ve become accustomed to the extreme bias and distortion in reporting, but this seems to be counter intuitive for reporters to not report on a reporter who is being repressed.
I’ve seen arguments that suggest she had no right to be trespassing. I find that curious since those charges were dropped before they were even filled. Maybe she wasn’t as “trespassy” as the trespassing charges suggested?
Maybe they were a bit trumped up?
It’s hard to argue they weren’t. Especially when she wasn’t accused of inciting a riot until the trespassing charges didn’t look like they would stick. It seems like they were looking for anything to stick her with, don’t you think? It’s hard to argue they weren’t bogus accusations when the judge stopped the charge levied against her by refusing to sign the charging document.
Is it illegal to levy false charges?
Or is it ok to just make up charges willy-nilly?
Can you charge someone for charging someone with charges that have no merit?  Can you charge someone for using public resources to threaten someone who is challenging private interests?
Of course not silly, this is America, you can’t do that to corporations. They have rights, ya know!
I heard arguments that Amy wasn’t being an objective reporter? Because she was “siding with the protestors.”
Does that mean she was standing on the wrong side?
Would she have appeared more objective if she were standing on the other side?
Behind their dogs?
To that point, would the pipeline company and their private security have welcomed “objective reporting”?
Would they have welcomed Amy objectively reporting the Native American point of view?
Would that have been a problem?
Or is that the wrong sort of objectivity?
Should she have been as objective as the super objective reporters from the mega media?
The reporting that’s known to be rife with such objective objectivity.
The irony is rich, even cliche.
Their lack of objectivity, that is.
I’d argue the objective of the folks building the pipeline is objectively blocking all objections. Unfortunately, that gets really hard to do when the largest gathering of Native Americans in years has gathered to get all “objecty” to the pipe line they object to.
I’m sure they thought it wouldn’t be that hard to quell the decent.
The Indians know their place, right?
We beat them down years ago.
We haven’t played cowboys and Indians in decades.
We’re on to new bad guys who wear robes and pray on carpets.
Who even talks about Indians anymore, anyway?
Indians are so pre-coldwar.
No one cares about them anymore, aside from their casinos…Jackpot!
I’m sure they thought they could quell the images of decent.
Well, until, that pesky Amy Goodman got all reportery.
So what did they do to this reportery reporter?
Try and throw her in jail?
That’s right, they tried to throw her in jail!
How dare she report on things corporations don’t want reported, right?
You know the age old question, if a tree fall in the woods and no one is there to hear it, did it make a noise?
Would the same be true if a private security company used attack dogs to quell decent and no one is there to witness it? Would it have still happened without that reportery reporter?
I wouldn’t have known, would you?
We know that’s the case with police brutality.
But that didn’t exist unit Obama became president and did all that race baiting, right?
Or was it those pesky cell phones that are to blame?
Taking all those unauthorized videos and showing them to people.
Or is it, as they have always said, the police have been brutalizing African Americans for years and now, for the first time, there is proof?
Sorry, off topic.
Back to these uppity Indians. I mean really, who do they think they are?
Being all demanding and telling us how to use our land. Right?
What rights, I mean right do they have?
The Indians have their reservations.
Those deals were made fair and square!
They have their land, and we have ours, and we can do what we want.
This is our America now!
Ours, as in the corporations who finance the lobbyists to write the laws that support the corporations who use the laws to justify the corporate policies and profit.
Ours!?
It’s all by the book though, right?
Where was I?
Oh, Amy Goodman.
I signed the petition, Don’t imprison Amy Goodman.
I think the charges were dropped about the same time I signed.
You should know the judge’s name.
He did the right thing.
I don’t fully understand the politics behind these charges but that North Dakota state prosecutor was, from my point of view, working for monied interest, not human interest.
As we know, all too well, money and power usually win.
So when someone stands against the tide, in the name of liberty and justice for all, that should be recognized!
That judge’s name is District Judge, John Grinsteiner!
His name should be spoken with pride, District Judge, John Grinsteiner!
He declined to sign the charging document.
That’s special, he’s special.
We can all stand and do the right thing.
My mom made me so proud and stood up for a Muslim woman that encountered hatred. She stood up in front of her peers; disregarding judgment and condemnation. When one of her church peers refused to let the Muslim woman into the church on a cold day because they weren’t open yet, my mom stood up! She took this woman in out of the cold and gave her a chair and a blanket.
Disregarding her peers!
Think about that…
That’s radical!
Understand, when the tide of peer pressure is weighing on you to not do the right thing, and you do it anyway, that should be recognized!
That’s powerful…
Period!
That makes me glow with pride.
The woman who filmed the black man being harassed in Edina saw an injustice, stopped her car, and was a voice of reason and justice.
Her name is Janet Rowles, a revolutionary, standing up for justice and freedom. Think about it, stopping your car to be a voice of reason, and a witness to injustice?
She willingly put herself in harm’s way for a stranger!
There is no way she could know the consequences of her actions.
For as many accolades as she has undoubtably received, I’m sure she has received an equal amount of condemnation.
For a stranger!
Janet changed the world that day.
Judge John Grinsteiner changed the world, My mom changed the world, and Janet Rowles changed the world.
We all can change the world.
Evolve…

“In the beginning, there was only a small amount of injustice abroad in the world, but everyone who came afterwards added their portion, always thinking it was very small and unimportant, and look where we have ended up today.”
~Paulo Coelho

If you want to heal the world, heal yourself

There is a divide in our culture that is fracturing friends and families. I think it’s important to recognize that this isn’t something we are just experiencing here in the U.S.
It is a global phenomena.
We are not alone in this plight.
If there is any future where this divide could be healed, it is not being discussed.
For the moment, let’s take a closer look at ourselves.
We are going thorough a difficult time of growth in the world. Growth that will require a shift in consciousness.
People of different cultures and religions are finding themselves intermixed at levels that have never been seen before.
The thing with culture and religion is, the very essence of them is rife with dogmatism. They need to be. They wouldn’t be effective if they weren’t.
Every religion is right. Every religion is speaking to an element of truth and attempting to express the wonder and awe we all experience. They are an attempt to show an elevated path and provide answers to the difficulties we experience and the questions we have. Every culture has remarkable beauty and pride. They have traditions and language that define them.
These are their truths.
This is what we are up against.
Everyone knows they are right, because they are.
With the advent of the internet and social media, the transfer of information has accelerated at an unprecedented rate. A consequence of this is that ideas don’t stay put, quite the opposite. Ideas can make it around the world in a matter of days or even hours. Ideas that would have never found a global audience, do. Ideas that wouldn’t have traditionally taken root in cultures, can find support. Isolated people find others of like mind, and contentious ideas emerge. These contentions exist in our nations, in our families, and amongst our friends. Destabilizing the security we formerly took for granted when our neighbors maintained similar beliefs.
This all fosters a sense of isolation that is growing at an unprecedented rate due to the advent of social media.
Now, we all have access to our neighbors’ subconscious.
Realms that, at one time, rarely saw the light of day.
The subconscious is an imperative component of the human psyche. It’s the place we sort out our ideas. It’s the place to make mistakes and reconstitute future ideas. It’s not meant for mass consumption. Now these undeveloped, immature ideas are regularly thrown about.
Reckless and reactionary dialog constitutes the new norm.
Every impulsive and adolescent thought is acted upon and shared. Feelings are hurt and people are incensed, and it snowballs.
No, it’s more like an avalanche.
Triggered by an unintentional act and within moments, homes and communities are being destroyed.
People don’t even need to leave their homes to feel attacked.

There is something called integral philosophy that can help us grow to understand this divide and give us the tools to grow through it.
It isn’t going to be easy.
Growth is hard.
From this perspective, the root of the problem is conflicting levels of stage development.
In order to understand this, you need to understand the levels of stage development I’m referring to. The first is “world view”. The stages build in a hierarchical fashion. It is important to understand that each stage builds upon the preceding stage.

1) Egocentric: Concern for self
2) Ethnocentric: Concern for family, tribe, or culture
3) World Centric: Concern for all of humanity
4) Cosmo Centric: Concern for all sentient beings

I’ll also refer to the developmental stages of human consciousness.

1) Archaic: Base level awareness.
2) Magic: Egocentric, superstitious, omnipotent, a belief that your gestures and ideas influence and control your external environment.
3) Mythic: Ethnocentric, conformist, petitionary prayer, pre-rational, traditional fundamentalist religious world view.
4) Rational: Industrious, capacity to take third person perspective, trans-rational, subscribes to the scientific method and objectivity.
5) Pluralistic: Everyone is equal, multicultural sensitive, with a deep desire not to marginalize or exclude. Politically correct.
6) Integral: Ability to see a partial truth in all stage structures. Has the ability to meet people where they find them. They have the ability to have respect for someone as they are, versus how they want them to be. Understands the hierarchy within the stages of consciousness development.
7) Transpersonal: Transrational and transverbal.

We are experiencing such cataclysmic divides due to the conflicting stages of development we are in. Speaking in generalized terms, it was the status quo for the majority of the population to be at an ethnocentric/mythic stage of development a little over a hundred years ago. But the world was a bigger place at that time. There was a very real possibility to live your entire life without experiencing another culture or religion.
Rationalism emerged as a recognized stage of development as the understanding of science and the scientific method infiltrated into our societies and cultures. Pluralism is a relatively new phenomena that gained traction in the 1960’s. What the mythic, rational, and pluralistic stages have in common is a dogmatic adherence to their stage perspective. They are unable to discuss opposing views without encountering conflict.
It is the integral stage of development that is able to see the value of all underlying stages. Although the integral stage is emerging, there isn’t a critical mass that supports it at this time. I believe the Dalai Lama was the first cultural leader who embraced this stage of development in his leadership. It was unprecedented for a religious leader to encourage a scientific study of his religion’s practices. To speak in stage development terms, this is an alliance between the mythic and rational stages of development.
An analogy that is often used to illustrate a hierarchical structure is understanding the relationship between cells, organs, and the organism. Cells are the building blocks for organs and organs are the building blocks for the organism.  The more complex structures wouldn’t exist without the less complex. Higher stages of development do not negate the value of the former stage, quite the opposite. The higher stage and more complex stage wouldn’t have been attained or even exist without their less complex counterpart.
This is where it gets difficult.
It may be easy to see the hierarchal structure in our biology, but to transfer that understanding to the human experience is an entirely different thing. The cultural war we are experiencing is between the ethnocentric/mythic/rationalist and the world centric/rationalist/pluralist. As I said before, the complexity arises in the dogmatism that all of these stages adhere to.
It’s the integral stage of development that can help us move through this. If we can speak to the problems that we see through an integral perspective, this would be a radical evolution in consciousness.
We all have so much to say and so much wisdom to share. There are so many opportunities at the dinner table, the water cooler, or talking with extended family. Social media has such broad reach and the tenor of the comments could definitely stand to be scaled up. It’s the orator alone who can transmit their message in a way that is heard and that will find success. Re-postulating your ideas, so they can be understood and appealed to by someone who embraces a different stage of development, is truly what we all want. I, so often, hear people say, “I don’t how anyone could think that way.” Remember, they don’t understand how you could think the way you do either.
You have three choices. Continue to argue from your perspective, surrender to an apathetic stalemate, or attempt to extract yourself from your dogmatism and reframe your argument to appeal to the stage of development of the person you are speaking to. The latter is the most evolved choice, but it isn’t easy and it will demand an evolution in the way you see and interact with the world.
That process will require the ability to learn to speak at a former stage of development and clearly understand the imperative value within that stage you’re appealing to.
Awareness is the key.
Recognize to whom you are speaking.
Honor their stage of development.
Reframe your argument in accordance with their stage.
Let go of any projections rather than reverting back to an old argument.
As they say, the art of a good therapist is for you to see your own folly.

Security

A few years ago, I refused to go through the full body scanner at the airport. The TSA agent was notably surprised. No one was happy, least of all me, but I thought, I’ll be damed if I’m going to submit myself to this injustice. Little did I know, the TSA agent would make a mockery of both of us. He pat me down as though I was entering a high security prison. With the unreasonable amount of time he took on one of my arms, I knew it was his intent to make me regret my decision. I was surprised how far he took this. Slowly and methodically, he went over every square inch of my body. With my legs spread and my fellow Americans staring, the TSA agent pushed my left testicle to the side pushing his hands up into my groin. His fingers between my scrotum and inner thigh. Upset, I looked him in the eyes and bitterly asked him if he was enjoying himself. Flustered and irritated, he glared at me.
My guess is he was in his fifties.
I wondered how he saw himself?
I’m sure I wasn’t the first to refuse to be scanned.
Was he a supervisor showing his agents how to handle the uppity?
Could it be he was just as uncomfortable as me?
Or was he on his own power trip?
As more of my fellow Americans submitted to the injustice of exposing themselves one by one, I stood there as he went slowly up my right leg to the point he touched, what under no circumstance, he should be allowed to touch. Pushing it aside, he again slid his hand firmly into my groin. I again growled, “Are you enjoying yourself! This is bullshit! I hope you are proud of yourself!”
As I attempted to make a mockery of all of this, they made a mockery of me.
I was prominently displayed and publicly fondled.
I was clearly made an example of.
When it was all done, I was beyond furious. The gritty charge of adrenaline pulsed through my body. I swore I’d never submit, but one extremely drawn-out public fondling was all it took.
A public fondling the TSA refer to as an “extensive pat-down.”
Today, I bitterly exposed myself, for the umpteenth time, for the theater we call security.
I assume that TSA agents saw all my dangly bits.
My wife went through first, exposing herself.
Who gets that job?
What are their credentials?
Presumably, they saw through all of her clothing.
My beautiful wife, who has handled herself with such dignity.
Exposed.
Curiously, they pulled her aside and said they needed to pat down her shoulders, why!?
With multiple lines merging, my wife and I were separated. Not paying much attention, I did notice the woman in front of me was pat down after her scan as well. I didn’t think about it until they told me they needed to pat down my legs after I went through the scanner.
Annoyed, I found myself spread eagle again.
Didn’t they just see through my clothing?
Isn’t that the point?
Didn’t they see my legs and everything in between?
I asked the agent, “What are you looking for?” He didn’t respond. I asked, “Did the scanner see the steel rods in my legs?” He nodded and chuckled and said, “Ya.”
There are no steel rods in my legs.
What’s the point of all of this?
What’s the point of all of us standing spread eagle with our hands in the air, in a machine that can see through our clothing, if they are only going to further grope us?
What was the point of making a public mockery of me if the scanner I refused to use doesn’t even provide them the information they need?
When I have traveled with my baby recently, the agents have taken us out of the scanner line and brought us through the metal detector. No “extensive pat-downs” for budding families. It would appear they are reserved for those with the bravado to demand their rights not be violated.
Unfortunately, the irony is all too clear.
I knew a twenty-something who was a baggage handler. He told me he could have put anything he wanted into the cargo hold of a plane.
Anything!
He assured me the security was just as lax for all of the baggage handlers.
Aside from his background check when he got the job, he could come and go from his breaks to Taco Bell and Super America, unmonitored.
That’s an interesting contradiction, isn’t it?
Upstairs in the theater of perceived security, I have my shoes off, my belt off, and my pockets are empty as I walk past garbage cans filled with water bottles and other bits of naughty paraphernalia.
All in preparation to pose with my legs spread wide.

I flew to Mexico. It was on my way home that a TSA agent found a 4oz bottle of sunscreen in my bag. There was just shy of an ounce left after my beach vacation. Throwing logic out the window, he reprimanded me and threw away the remaining sunscreen. As he threw it away, I condescendingly reminded him that the other agents had failed to find the sunscreen the other three times I passed through security.
To that point, every time I fly, I break the rules.
I don’t use plastic baggies.
I bring too much liquid.
I know I’m being contentious.
I also know my shampoo isn’t the reason they put these bans into effect.
Maybe it’s not my place to test them?
But I find it curious that their enforcement is so ineffective.
I don’t know what the exact number is, but since 9/11, I’ve likely gone through TSA security over a hundred times.
They have only caught me once, with a nearly empty bottle!
This is beyond a coincidence.
In fact, I inadvertently flew with a pocket knife in my carry-on about six months ago. I didn’t figure it out until I had unpacked my bags.
This all brings home the uncomfortable reality that any notion of security is an illusion.
It seems the role of the TSA is that of the director.
Ensuring we all know our lines in this masquerade and theatrical performance we call security.
The TSA knows the screening doesn’t work.
With their own self imposed test, they failed to find 95% of the explosives and weapons they attempted to bring through their own checkpoints.
Let that soak in… a 95% failure rate!
They were able to get explosives and weapons through the TSA screening in 67 out of 70 attempts.
The testers, by their own admission didn’t use any advanced techniques to disguise the explosives and weapons. They were acting as untrained civilians. Imagine what the failure rate would be if these same people were trained to evade detection.
Would they fail 100% of the time?
With a failure rate that high and no aviation based terrorist attacks since the establishment of the TSA…
This speaks to an awkward truth.
Reason would suggest they could not have prevented any threats in the first place.
That’s what’s so ridiculous.
They know their organization is a failure.
Yet, they continue to exert their authority suggesting everyone needs to continue to expose themselves.

This is what we have bought into.
A dramatic increase in the price of admission to the security theater.
The price is our dignity and our civil liberty.
This is what the TSA will provide: If you allow federal agents to see through your clothes, they will in turn, assure you that you are safe and secure.
Wink Wink.

The point of this is to further illustrate that our fears are unfounded and security is an illusion.
This is our truth:
We dogmatically adhere to ideas that provide an illusion of security from threats that don’t exist.
In the name of security, we surrender the freedoms that we are fearful of losing to ensure that we maintain the freedom and security we have already given away.
A paradox of our time and culture.

 

 

Addendum: Our TSA experience on our way home is worth mentioning.
The first thing the TSA agent said to us as we approached the scanners was, “Today is opposite day. You’re going to do the opposite of everything you normally do. Leave on your shoes and belts. Just put your phone in your carry-on. Leave everything else in your pockets. We are going to see how well you are listening.” Perplexed, my wife and I walked forward, expecting to be ushered towards the body scanner. Instead, we walked right past it into the metal detecter. They sent us all through so quickly that we were all bunching up waiting for our bags to go through the scanner.
TSA agents were scattered about not doing much of anything as far as I could tell. Some of them were chuckling as though they thought this was absurd. If there was any order to what was happening, it wasn’t obvious. For the life of me, I don’t understand what they were doing.
I thought to myself, you just can’t make this stuff up!

Asleep

Missing shingles and holes in the roof leave the house exposed to the elements.
Chandeliers with missing crystals coated in dust and cobwebs hang tenuously from their mounts.
The remnants of expensive wallpaper hangs loosely from the walls.
The once elegant kitchen smells of rot.
Fixtures are covered in corrosion.
Mold and mildew permeate the air.
The wood floors, now soft and rotten, have given way in places to expose the dark, dank basement.
Books that have been ravaged by water and time sit yellowed and wrinkled on warped shelves.
Unreadable.
Money, long ago, lost its value.
I vaguely remember the desperation I’d feel when I would lose my phone.
How silly social media was.
Arguing with strangers.
Strangers I would gladly hold and hug today.
I was never so sure of my ideologies.
What a luxury it was to have someone to hate.
I see how foolish I was, when I have no one to love.
I haven’t spoken to another human in years.
I don’t even know what time is any more.
It lost its use long ago.
The cement foundation is crumbling and brittle, leaving a wet gray sludge strewn across the floor.
I forgot the fear of death as desolation devoured my days.
Death, what a luxury.
Will today be the day the house finally falls?
Will I feel the debris crashing onto my body?
Oh, the luxury of pain.
I haven’t felt anything in so long.
Without any story to share, I stare.
Without the tension of death, I’ve lost the meaning of life.

Like a distant memory from the past, I say, “I’m ready”.
I’ll step into the abyss this time, I won’t turn in fear.
I welcome the looming darkness and deafening quiet.
I’m not afraid anymore.
Peering into the vast, open, and endless void, I willingly fall forward…

My senses flash like lightening in a storm.
With a start, I gasp as though I forgot to breathe.
I push myself up sharply and try to blink my world into focus.
I vaguely recall the dream of a personal apocalypse.
Pulled from the abyss, I’m bathing in the light of a distant looming rainbow.
Sitting on the swim dock with my sister.
Sailboats heeling.
My parents waving from the shore.
I promise I’ll never leave you!
I dive in and the cool crisp water envelops me.
Diving deeper and deeper, I turn towards the surface.
Spreading my arms wide, relaxing, and floating…
With a hard, swift kick I burst forth from a field of fresh dry powder.
The brisk mountain air kisses my cheeks.
Snow pouring over my chest.
My sister in stride.
Stay with me!
I’ll never leave you!
The steep pitch is perfect for the plentiful powder.
Charging forward, fearlessly, faster and faster.
The landscape, an unrecognizable blur.
My path, like the rhythm of a wave.
Bounding weightlessly.
The mountain sun, so bright.
I can hear my dog in the distance.
Howling, happy.
Is that coffee I smell?
But, she died years ago?

I wake up, confused.
My face mashed into a matted pillow, wet with drool.
Was I dreaming of a dream dreamt?
My head dizzy with deja vu.
The morning sun is pouring through my windows and my neighbor’s dog is barking. I hear my wife down stairs making espresso.
Disoriented, I grab my phone and text myself a quick note.

When I come home from work, I tell my wife, “I had the craziest dream.”
“What?” she says, distracted.
“I had the craziest dream. I wrote it down so I wouldn’t forget.”
“Oh…”
“It’s in my phone, I texted it to myself.”
“Oh”, She turns to look at me.
Here it is, “I awoke with a fright, only to realize, I was asleep while sleeping.”
“What does that even mean?” she says confused.
I’m not su…

Beep
Beep
Beep
Beep
Beep

Fumbling, I find my snooze.

Disappointment

My truck was packed and ready to go. We had just gone over the final details the day before. The race started in five hours. When I got to my friends house to pick him up, he told me that he had changed his mind. I was literally stunned. The relationship has never been the same.
Disappointment is hard.
I have a relationship where we used to talk all the time and then it stopped. I didn’t get it at first. But eventually I understood the phone would never be answered. The relationship has never been the same.
Disappointment is hard.
I lied to someone for years. Every time I would get caught, it would whittle away at the trust. One day, it was over.
Disappointment is hard.
I was lied to for years. I knew I was being lied to, and did my best to manage it. The anger and disappointment won over.
Disappointment is hard.
I should have written those thank you cards.
Disappointment is hard.
I see the brutality of disappointment creeping into my son’s consciousness.
Disappointment is hard.
I let someone down this week.
Disappointment is hard.
That race? I went by myself. I was strong. I grew.
The phone? Still not answered, but I’ve grown to accept the relationship for what it is.
After years of lying, I surrendered and found myself and no longer feel the need to lie.
The years of being lied to provided me with just enough disappointment to have the strength and desire to see through the illusion.
It’s disappointing to disappoint and be disappointed.
That’s the path.
Yin is yang.
Black is white.
Contraction is expansion.
Still evolving…

 

Marriage

I used to be a biker and a skier.
When I introduced my wife to a long time friend, she said, “She must be a biker or a skier?”
My wife was a dancer.
Her friends were surprised to find out I wasn’t.
I’m white; she is black.
She was raised Muslim, and I was raised Christian.
When I was a young boy, I wanted to marry a skier.
A friend of mine married a biker.
They rode and raced together for years.
Then they divorced.
Didn’t they have the ideal relationship?
Another friend married a skier; they are unhappy.
My mom and dad were both skiers, they divorced.
What went wrong?
How come these expectations are so pervasive?
When my first wife and I got married, we were advised to see a pastor to determine our compatibility.
He asked us many things.
What our expectations were regarding church and children and how we would handle money.
The pastor determined we were compatible.
We divorced fifteen years later.
Do you know what I’ve never heard anyone ask?
“Do you know yourself?”

Fishing

“Many go fishing all their lives without knowing that it’s not fish they are after.”

~Henry David Thoreau

I’ve heard many people over the years talking about yoga as a way they center themselves. Some tell me that as they are going deeper into their practice, they are experiencing altered states of consciousness. I know people on the fringes of society are using psychoactive chemicals and plants and isolation tanks to access a variety of altered states. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the author of Flow, suggests that these states are not only for those that explore the more esoteric realms. He suggests that everyone can experience them in a multitude of ways. He speaks of a factory worker who consistently worked at a heightened state of consciousness, which he refers to as flow. I have a coworker that works within that flow space; he is nothing short of remarkable. My wife falls into this state somewhat regularly; it’s magical. People in this state are on another plane. Like a highly trained ballerina, they float through the air defying physics. They exude grace, precision, and ease; flow. I think most will agree, these altered states of consciousness are remarkable to those that witness them and arguably more so for those that experience them.

I’ve experienced deeply altered states of consciousness that radically reshaped my world while doing long distance bicycle races. Ironically, the first experience left me feeling isolated and mildly embarrassed. The distance and time on the bike were so unusual, people asked how I was able to do it and what it was like. Because of my lack of context and experience with this sort of thing, my immediate response was, “I saw God!” I honestly really felt like I did. It was that profound. But I had also just gotten off my bike and was still consumed in a fog of euphoria. It was clear by the responses I received that my comments were misunderstood. Likely, because I didn’t fully understand what I was saying myself. My community of cyclists didn’t discuss altered state of consciousness; at least that I was aware of. Needless to say, I didn’t receive any help or guidance with this before or after this event. I was on my own. The simple reality is, when it happened, I was a changed person from that point forward. I had experienced something that was so far off the charts and so profound that I was left simply in awe. It literally took me years to understand and articulate these experiences with any fluency.

Now, I assume the following:

  1. That others have had equally profound experiences.
  2. That others have found the ability to replicate these experiences with some relative predictability providing semi-regular access to these states.
  3. That these states resonate at a frequency and level that is very personal and special to the practitioner.
  4. That there is a certain dogmatism with your relationship to these states of consciousness.

I understand, these states and realizations do not come easily. They come from a diligent and likely, very personal practice. They provide access to what some would refer to as a spiritual realm. It’s not a mistake that nearly every religion has some sort of practice or tradition that brings about these states. These states provide a physical experience that can be used to support the validity of the desired ideology.

I would like to suggest something to think about.

If you’re like me, the desire to re-attain these states are, or were, a consistent thought and allure. But I had made a mistake. I thought enlightenment was a permanent, altered state of consciousness. I later learned that enlightenment is rather an evolving stage of consciousness. Ken Wilber, a contemporary philosopher that specializes in integral philosophy, articulates the distinction between states and stages of consciousness. A state of consciousness is non-abiding and temporary. A stage of consciousness is abiding and permanent. An example of a stage of development would be when a woman becomes a mother. The broadness of her concern has permanently expanded beyond herself to the child, from egocentric to ethnocentric. A state of consciousness would be the euphoria of finishing your first running race, the buzz from a glass of wine, or an emotional response to a movie. All of these are non-abiding, and not permanent. I understand that there are exceptions to these examples I gave, but I’m just trying to get across a general idea.

Getting back to these heightened states of consciousness. Many people have heard the eastern traditions (Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism) concept of enlightenment or awakening. The western traditions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) allude to this idea, but it’s not widely recognized or acknowledged. Our world is filled with tales regaling those cultural icons who have attained these heightened stages of development and set the precedent for man kind. Joseph Campbell wrote a book called A Hero with a Thousand Faces to illustrate this point. Every culture and ideology has that special iconic figure. They are central characters in the ideology’s spiritual and enlightenment saga. All of these people are perceived to be special for a reason. They have developed an elevated stage of consciousness that is remarkable within the culture they live. What’s worth realizing is that these stages of development are attainable for you too. You have everything within you. The hero’s journey is for you to undertake. Joseph Campbell is talking about finding the hero within yourself. He is alluding to a stage shift in consciousness that transcends the egoic perception.

The state experience gives you that valuable glimpse of the nonphysical, or spiritual. This takes these concepts out of the abstract realm and places them into the tangible. It’s stage development that will bring forth and reveal an abiding awakening or enlightenment.

Evolve…

“Furthermore, we have not even to risk the adventure alone, for the heroes of all time have gone before us. The labyrinth is thoroughly known. We have only to follow the thread of the hero path, and where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god. And where we had sought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves. Where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence, and where we had thought to be alone, we will be with all the world.”

~Joseph Campbell

Quitting

Ya know those moments that sit with you?
I was fairly young, in my late teens, maybe early twenties.
I was in a mountain bike race.
It wasn’t my first, but unbeknownst to me it, would be one of the most significant.
Why?
I quit.
The race was three laps.
The irony is, I fancied myself quite the mountain bike racer,
I wasn’t.
I had raced before, but that’s where my credentials ended.
I was surprised to see my sister’s ex boyfriend there. I didn’t know he raced. I thought he looked like an amateur.
It was within the first mile or so that I knew I was in trouble. The course took us over a rutty farmer’s field. Within a short amount of time, I was off the pace. My sister’s ex was well ahead of me.
Immediately, my ego was formulating excuses.
By the second lap, I was beaten. My head had gotten away from me. I was so far behind that I was fairly certain the leaders were going to lap me. I bumbled through the trail like the amateur I was.
I was not having fun and to make matters worse, I was embarrassed.
At some point, it hit me. I was going to quit.
My plan was rather than going out for my final lap, I’d ride to my car, throw my bike on my rack, and drive away as fast as possible.
The irony was, the idea of quitting gave me a boost of energy.
I was rejuvenated.
I was filled with a vigor and punch I hadn’t had minutes earlier just at the thought of being done with the race.
An irony that was lost on me in the moment.
I remember riding through the parking lot; trying to keep a low profile and manically looking to see if anyone could see me.
That was my biggest worry.
As I drove away, I felt like I had gotten away with something.
Little did I know…
What’s the moral of this story?
What I failed to realize: it was my own personal sense of integrity I had violated. The integrity we have with ourselves is the basis of our reality. Because I copped out, I became a copout. I didn’t give myself the chance to know or understand my own potential or power. I didn’t give myself the opportunity to fail. I instead gave in to apprehension. I reinforced a willingness to buckle when things got hard. I learned to believe in myself less. Our personal truth is forever in a state of flux. Being relentless with your resolve is the basis of a foundation built on a personal sense of integrity.
That race changed me.
If I started, I finished, for better or worse.
Years later, I put that resolve to the test in a way that today, I find interesting.
I raced a 58 kilometer cross-country ski race with the flu. The first 30 kilometers, I raced strong. The last 28 kilometers, not so. When I hit the wall, I was soaked with sweat from pushing so hard. Cross-county ski racers wear thin spandex suits with lightweight long-underwear underneath. It was a few degrees above zero. You stay warm when you’re working hard. When I slowed down, I quickly started to freeze. As my energy faded, so did my coordination. I started to miss my pole plants, and then I started to trip and fall. In hind sight, I’m sure the falling looked desperate and sad. I could have quit. Arguably, that may have been the smarter thing to do, but I didn’t. Each time I fell, I laid in the snow a little longer in a delirium that would nearly overwhelm my body. Every time I got up, the delirium would leave a bit more of its after affects with me. To the point, it soon consumed me. Friends would ski past me and say “you look awful. What are you doing!?” Determined, I pushed forward, only to fall again a short time later. Each time, dizzily pulling myself up from the ground. After nearly two hours of this agony, I was near the end. The last kilometer of the race, you ski off of a frozen lake up a small incline they call Bell Tower Hill. Again, I missed my pole plant and fell with the full force of my unrestrained body. My head and right shoulder hitting first with an equally violent force. My ears ringing from the blow to my head. I remember looking across the ground from this horizontal perspective trying to make out the fuzzy landscape. A sweet woman dressed in a colorful Swedish folk dress bent down to look at me in the eyes and said, “Don’t worry sweetie, you’re almost there.” Slowly, I sloppily pulled myself to my knee and wobbly, found my way back on my skies. In an altered, almost robotic state, I found my way across the finish line.
When you cross the finish line of these marathon ski races, there are often people there to hold you up. I was alway curious about this because I never needed it. That day I did. I fell into their arms with a dead weight that surprised them. It took two to stabilize me. I vaguely remember them telling me that I had bad frost bite on my face and was likely hypothermic.
My friend who had finished well before me had long since changed. After waiting so long, he had begun to worry. He had moved his truck next to the finish line and left it running to keep it warm. When he saw me finish, he came to help me. In one arm, he took my skis and poles, in the other, he supported me under my arm.
Slowly, we walked to his truck.
I know cold. I was born and raised in Minnesota. This is my home.
I’ve swum in water with ice on all sides of me many times.
I’ve raced in temperatures that were double digits below zero with 25mph winds.
I’ve been soaking wet in below zero temperatures more times than I can count.
I’ve been frost bit more times than is reasonable.
I know cold.
The depth of this cold was like none other.
I was so cold, it took me at least a half hour to begin shivering.
It took another ten minutes to start shaking uncontrollably.
I don’t remember getting warm.
What’s the moral of this story?
The idea of failure is a misunderstanding. There is trying and not trying.
Every failure, every bit of pain, every moment I struggled; has provided me with profound wisdom. Life cannot be lived half way. Every action has a consequence.
You can’t hide from yourself. Wherever you go, there you are.
You have either finished what you started, or you haven’t.
These experiences are the basis by which we learn to believe in ourselves or not.
It’s pushing beyond what you think you’re capable of that will allow you to discover hidden aspects of yourself.
Be willing to fail and find success.
Be willing to let go of idealism and find grace and humility.
Be willing to let go of ego and discover your path and your essence.
It’s pushing beyond yourself that you’ll discover self.

Sandwich

My thinking tends towards non-dualist structure. I continually and dogmatically strive for the lowest common denominator or the most basic and simple fundamental truth. This is not a complete representation of my reality, however.

That being said, the rich, complex, and diverse landscape of the dualistic world is the sandbox in which I find myself most often.

Within that construct, I’m quite certain that I’m a bewildered being living a deluded singular existence within a singular universe. Simultaneously believing I’m an expression of an infinitesimally complex universal construct that knows no limits, whether it be the often over looked realm of no-thing-ness or the little understood realm of everything-ness.

I want a sandwich…

Birds born in a cage think flying is an illness

“Birds born in a cage think flying is an illness.”
~Alejandro Jodorowsky

I was talking with a friend.
She was telling me about her spiritual quest.
She told me she had searched and searched and ultimately, she had come to the edge of an abyss. A darkness that shocked her and repelled her.
“It was just black emptiness, nothing was there!”
It was too much for her.
I could see the horror in her eyes, the sadness.
She saw it but couldn’t bear it.
She couldn’t accept that it could possibly be the truth.
Nothingness is human heresy.
How could emptiness be the answer?
To say yes to the abyss and step into it.
We somehow know it will swallow us whole.
Few step forward.
At some level, you have to be willing to die.
To let go of what you believe; to be everything.
The contradiction is confusing.
Desperate, we feel confined, but don’t know why.
Yet, to let go…
At least we know our cage; it’s comfortable.
Let me extend you a hand.
That darkness is freedom.
When you let go and step into the darkness, your essence pixilates.
Your notion of self bursts into everything-ness
Just as everything-ness amalgamates into you.
That darkness is limitless, timeless, and pure light.
You just need to step in to see it.

Cloaked

Grey cloak person: Truth is subjective.
For some, black is true. For others, white is true.
The conglomeration of all truths is some obscurely dynamic shade of grey.
After years of searching for non-subjective truth, I found no-thing.

Black and white cloak person: I disagree with you there. Truth is only relevant to its believer. Your actions are based on what is best for you. In order to move forward you have opted either black or white thus far. To sit and analyze things after the fact may seem grey today, as you have grown, but at some point you followed one side or another.

Grey cloak person: You’re absolutely right. Every moment of every day I’m making decisions.
My life is a representation of all of the decisions I’ve made thus far.
There is one possibility you may have overlooked.
I no longer believe my thoughts.

Black and white cloak person: Do you really think you no longer believe your thoughts? Is that not a thought in itself? If you don’t believe it then how can I be convinced it is what you believe? Circles are easily made and lead nowhere.

Grey cloak person: I don’t believe a word I say, including the words I just said.
I agree, circles are easily made and lead nowhere.
I’m perfectly content nowhere…

Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along

“Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.”
~Rumi

I was forty when I met her.
I had just met myself three years prior.
Before that, I was a lie that loved a lie.
I didn’t love what was in front of me.
I loved what I thought they could become.
They loved me equally.
When I met her,
I saw with crystal clarity,
She needed nothing,
Which is exactly what I was.
We chose each other.
Her name, Fatima,
My name, Tim,
Fa-Tim-A
Art imitating life,
We have always been together.
Life imitating art.

If Only

Our pain is so duly placed in structures that we know are hurting us and those we love.
We’re so sure our pain can be cured, if just this changed, or that.
We encounter a person working towards the same goal as us and we don’t see it. Instead, we demonize them because of their different solutions. We separate ourselves from them. Believing them to be other than what we are.
The pain is so exquisite and we have no idea why nothing fills the void we feel.
We want for clarity, sureness, and stability.
Our answers are so clear, if only people saw what we saw or knew what we knew.
We claim to be strong, to understand, to know, but down deep we still question…
The void pulls at us and we don’t dare look, for fear of what we might see.
The quiet is so painful that it’s deafening screech is desperately drowned out with anything.
Anything that will distract us.
Our books and dogs, our phones and our gods.
This is how we flee.
Emptiness abated.

The Power Of the Pen

When you write, sometimes things turn on you.

That’s the power of the pen.

I wrote a piece last week that I didn’t end up posting. I tried to defend a notion of personal responsibility that I had, but it didn’t hold up the way I expected.

I tried to start with a relatively benign aspect of personal responsibility before I dove into the more contentious.

If it looks like it’s going to rain, do you bring an umbrella…?
If you’re going into the mountains or onto the ocean, do you take time to prepare?
If you’re going to ride a motorcycle or travel, do you take special precautions?
I questioned the relationship of personal responsibility and drinking alcohol.
I looked at personal responsibility with regard to ethnic minorities, homosexuality, bigotry, and prejudice.
I suggested personal responsibility could play a role in limiting the difficulties, trauma, and negativity people encounter.
I’ve had enough conversations with people to know I was on shaky ground.
This was a touchy subject. However, I really thought I had something.
After setting up this idea, I tried to defend it by asking if human violence is natural.
All evidence suggests it is part of our natural world.
I thought, if it is, why is it that we feel so strongly about avoiding the topic of personal responsibility when someone is victimized by another person? I found it odd that most people aren’t averse to discussing personal responsibility when someone is hurt by something like an avalanche or a motorcycle accident. But, personal responsibility seems to be a taboo subject when a human enacts violence on another human.
I understand, there is no excuse for violent crime!
It’s bewildering when a human hurts another human. We desperately want to make sense of the assailant’s behavior.
They broke the most basic and fundamental laws we set for humanity.
A tight dress doesn’t mean “touch me.”
Diamonds and jewelry don’t say “rob me.”
Yet, violent crime happens.
On the Serengeti, it is the weak and infirm that are the most vulnerable.
We as humans are not immune to this biological truth.
That’s the way of the jungle.
So I had to ask is there any room for discussing personal responsibility in “the jungle”?
Predators are looking for weakness, vulnerability, and opportunity.
Our body language, the way we dress, the people we are spend our time with, all communicate something to the outside world.
The outfits we wear present an identity.
A priest collar or a motorcycle gang patch…
A business suit or Carhartt’s…
A burka or Birkenstocks…
A tube top or a fur coat…
They all say very different things about the person you project into the world.
Recognize what you are transmitting into your surroundings.
Listen, learn, adapt.
I suggested to teach your children that the world isn’t fair.
Teach them that they cannot control their environment, but they can control the way they respond to it.
Teach them that there is pride and strength in personal responsibility.
Teach them that personal responsibility, integrity, and self awareness are of the highest value.

I felt like I had defended this idea of personal responsibility in relation to violence in a novel way.
But, it wasn’t the answer I thought it was.
It’s not that simple
There is another side to this argument.
Something that can’t be resolved.
Really bad things happen to people who seem to do everything right.
This idea negated the argument I was trying to formulate.
Personal responsibility will not protect you.
Life is a bit more like a slot machine.
Sometimes we wear our lucky hat when we pull the lever…
Personal responsibility is like a lucky hat.
You can do everything right, but in the end,
No one is immune from violence.
Bad things can happen to anyone, at any time.
I got caught up in some self righteous ideas.
I was wrong.
Evil is a subjective reality.
Life is akin to the ouroboros.
The snake that’s consuming its own tail.
Blind to the source of its nourishment… It’s very own decomposition.
It’s the nature of things.
A biological truth, a biological imperative.
This thing we judge as evil and good, happy or sad, that’s a misunderstanding.
Good and evil are subjective realities. Stories that conscious beings who developed the ability to communicate, share with each other. Subjective reality is egoic.
There is no ego in objective reality. Interestingly, it can also be seen as a metaphor for compost. The source of beauty and harmony disguised as entropy. A compost of rot and decay that sprouts fruits and flowers. The fruit and the filth are of the same source. We don’t want it to be, but it is. The beauty you see, is death and decay transformed. Just as the rot that makes you retch is the source of everything you love.
I lost sight of that with this piece.
I forgot that no amount of control will remove you from the snake’s mouth.
Good and evil are an illusion.
What you think you are, is an illusion.
You’re the monster you demonize.
You’re the saint you canonize.
You can’t escape evil, because you are the evil you see.
You can’t find love, because you are love.
Subjective realities are not objective realities.
You can’t dodge the reaper. You are the reaper.
You are the care taker and the saint.
You’re the murderer and the thief.
This is all to say, nothing can protect you.
Do you get it?
You are nothing.
No-Thing…
Don’t understand?
It’s the ego, the story you’ve told yourself, the thing you so desperately want to believe. It isn’t true.
You’re no-thing.
Ooof, that hurts, but that’s the objective truth.
I guess, if you’d like to, you could look at it in a different way.
You’re everything.
Everything known and unknown.
A thing that turns over and into itself. A cauldron of rich compost that births hydrogen and humans and galaxies and glaciers.
You are the source, and of the source.
You are everything know and unknown.
This oneness, this everythingness, is the quiet we bump into. It is the quiet we fear. It is the deafening silence that swallows us whole.
It’s the primal void.
It’s pure darkness and pure light.
It’s everything and nothing.
Every little bubbling urp that percolates up from the primordial compost is consciousness.
Humans, an aspect of primordial consciousness.
An aspect of consciousness that has the ability to recognize itself.
A self that it can see as separate,
With a separate path.
Paths clouded in self-righteousness.
Forgetting that your role is not only of a purposeful life but also of a purposeful death.
Birth, life, and death, a cosmic fusion.
You are simultaneously that one thing.
You are the compost that life sprouts from.
From you, galaxies will be born.
From you, the universe was, and will be.
The source of the trees and symphonies.
The you,
And the me.

Although, that’s not to say personal responsibility is an entirely bad idea.

Wink, wink…

Addendum: The reason I chose personal responsibility as a topic is because it played a pivotal role in resolving personal issues that I carried with me for years. It was such a powerful tool for me I thought it would translate into the topic of empowering people and deterring victimization. It didn’t hold up the way I thought it would. Such is the power of the pen.

Subjectivisim

Condensing from a gas to a liquid.
Solidifying into a solid.
Crushing rocks and cutting canyons,
Rising and falling.
Do you recognize it?
It nourishes life.
Yet, like a malevolent god, it will take life.
Its capacity to burn contradicts its ability to freeze.
What’s so clear to me, may not be for you.
Crystal clear and blue.
Boiling, brown, and frothy.
Formless and colorless.
Pillowy soft and hard as stone.
Left to sit, it will rise to the heavens.
Can you pin it down?
Its rhythm will relax you.
Unrestrained, it can crush you.
You can see yourself in it, and it fills the self you see.
Its path and our path, a perfect metaphor.
To fight against it, is to not understand its nature.
To fight against your nature is to fight against your path.
Try and grasp it, and it will slip through your fingers.
The essence of an orchid and a tiger,
Like you.
Like you, it’s not to be contained.
Restrained, it loses its vitality.
Containment, obfuscating connection.
Dogmatism, restricting growth.
Our desire to know limits our knowledge.
Convention, restricting world view.
There exists unknown potentials in ourselves and everything we see.
Those unknown potentials are the path to new vistas.
Vistas with broader perspectives;
Perspectives that alter knowledge.
A knowledge, some call wisdom.
Open your eyes.
You are not what you think you are.
What you see as evil, is you.
What you see as controversial, is your own insecurity.
You fear, because you don’t understand.
Your disappointment, was born from your desire to control.
Your hate, is derived from notions of love.
What you see, is God seeing.
The mystery of the universe, lies within you.
You are divinity in action.
Let go of belief.
Love is the path,
The current.
Like a leaf adrift,
Surrender.

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© Tim Trudeau 2024
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