Tag: Psychology

What’s changing the attitude of immigrants?

by kendunning, posted in Building our future., Community, Economics, Environment, Oppression, Personal Development, Politics, Spirituality
sailing-ship
(c) NesaCera http://www.fotosearch.com

There have been a number of posts about how someone’s ancestors (like mine) immigrated to the U.S. Were glad to be here, learned the language, and assimilated into the culture. That used to be the norm.

As is all too clear from the news that is not necessarily the case with immigrants today.

However, there is something else that is different that isn’t as widely distributed via the news. When my ancestors, and others, in the past came to the U.S. it wasn’t because U.S. individuals and corporations, and foreign tyrants, often with assistance from the U.S. government, had destroyed living conditions in their countries of origin.

That being the case, why would they want to come here?   Why come to a country whose governmental policies obviously, and increasingly, show moral bankruptcy?  A country which the home to those who have absconded with a great deal of their country’s natural resources? That’s a good question, however, it also provides the answer. They are just, as the phrase states: following the money.  The wealth which, at one time, resided in their home countries, or was the land they lived on and farmed.

Countries are like ships.  While conditions are acceptable on them, whose going to jump overboard and risk the dangerous swim to a ship on the horizon?  Nobody, or very, very few.  Everyone needs a ship to live on.  We all need a home.  We all need hope.

So, unless we want to see this mad scramble continue indefinitely, this mad scramble to find space in one of the ships of state where conditions still offer hope, one of two things has to happen.  1. We either try to revitalize conditions on the other ships in our world, or, 2. We kill a whole lot of people around the world, stop the flow at the source.

At this point a lot of you are offended, shocked by the latter option.  Good for you, you’re still fully human.  But there are some reading this who may not be shocked at all.  Who will think, good idea, let’s take that second option.

There are a number of ways that a human being’s innate sensibilities can be numbed to the point the second option seems attractive.  Ongoing trauma, over years, might do it.  Chronic severe stress, again over years, might do it.  Or belonging to a group, a family or club, which engages in practices designed to numb, to obliviate, those aspects of our humanity; empathy or any other innate connectivity to others, can do it.  And if you aren’t already aware, there are such groups, families, and clubs.   If you occupy a position of authority, it doesn’t seem to be all that difficult to find some who will blindly follow.

Humankind has a sorry history of people being willing to be used by those in positions of authority.  We’ve been doing it for decades, centuries.  Sometimes it doesn’t require a whole lot of effort on the part of those working to manipulate us to serve their agendas.  If starting with a human being early enough, with the right indoctrination, mass murder can just seem normal.  I think that was probably one of the goals within the Hitler Youth movement.  There are many reports of practices among groups claiming to be satanic which feed such a state of being.  And, as noted in the prior paragraph, there are others.  If you doubt this at all, look around, events in the world clearly show there are a good number of  people who do not flinch at the prospect of killing, murdering others to gain some worldly resource or another, or simply because someone in a position of authority told them to.  They can be found in dark alleys, on battlefields, and  they can be found in what has come to be known as “polite society”.

I tend to think it requires even less in the way of indoctrination to get people to perform activities which support rapacious, materialistic behavior when all they know of it are figures on a spreadsheet, abstractions.  White collar crime has, in many places, had many of it’s forms legalized by those who benefit most from it’s practices.

So, what about the rest of us, those of us who are still fully in possession of our innate human faculties?  Do we just follow the example of the three monkeys, hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil?  Following that model will only help pave an unobstructed road for those who seek to prey upon the world at large.

I am in the U.S., the examples I have given refer most directly to things going on the U.S. However, the behaviors, the actions, the dynamics described in this post are most certainly not limited to the U.S. The very same dynamics are going on around the world. Different predators, same activities.

What those of us who still are cognizant of the interconnectedness of life, who are still guided by our innate sense of what is fair and reasonable, must do is speak out, act out.  Speak out the truths we know.  Do not quietly allow those with purely self-serving agendas slant, distort and/or fabricate the information which is being disseminated within our communities.  Act out.  Vote whenever possible to support just causes.  Participate in and support businesses and activities which truly are benefits to our communities.  Refuse to participate in the machinations working to drain the economic life out of our communities.  Refuse to participate in activities which are polluting our air, water, soil, our world, our very bodies.  Discourage our young people from becoming tools for the militaristic destruction of other people, the takeover of other country’s resources.

Love one another as we love ourselves.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“The only devils in the world are those in our own hearts.”

by kendunning, posted in Building our future., Mental Health, Oppression, Personal Development, Spirituality
Fotosearch_k17282832 (1)
(c) mrdoggs http://www.fotosearch.com

Mohandas K. Gandhi is quoted as saying:  “The only devils in the world are those running around in our own hearts. And that is where all our battles ought to be fought.”

Is this true?  Or are there spiritual forces originating from outside us which bedevil us?  Sometimes I perceive that there are spiritual forces present around us which do try to exert influence upon us.  To push us this way or that.  However, in order for them to succeed, we have to be providing them with the opening, the thought/feeling processes, which they can then add impetus to within our minds, our hearts.  In other words they can energetically “nudge” us the direction they desire us to take.  Sometimes possibly more strongly than others.

Even if this is true, it in no way lessens import of Gandhi’s statement.  Because if we are paying enough attention to our own mind, our own thoughts, our own feelings, we can own our own direction.  Truly be the Captains of our own ship.  If, on the other hand, we do not pay enough attention to our own thoughts, feelings, we can be exposing ourselves to being manipulated via “handles” we didn’t fully realize we were subject to.

By engaging in a process of paying attention to our own thoughts and feelings, we can provide ourselves with true autonomy.  True freedom.  We can decide if we really want to be kind, considerate, empathetic, or rude, inconsiderate and heartless.

On our path to such a state of autonomy there are challenges we face.  Most, if not all, of us have been through traumas, times when we have been hurt bodily, or emotionally.  We can have gone through times of chronic stress, anxiety.   Or times during which we have had certain thoughts, feelings, values imposed upon us by others.  Those times leave an imprint on our psyche.  Those imprints can influence our lives, our behavior for years, decades, after the condition or event which resulted in the imprint has past.  These types of imprints can be some of the hardest challenges we face.

Often, to us subjectively, these imprints can be so deeply imbedded, and/or so old, have been with us so long, we may not recognize them for what they are.  We may consider the thoughts and feelings stemming from such imprints as “normal”.  We may believe that everyone carries a similar orientation as a part of their innate being.  But nothing could be farther from the truth.

If we have, somehow, had fear, hate, a judgmental orientation toward something, maybe a people or a place, or a behavior, deeply ingrained within us, we can truly believe that the thoughts and feelings we experience when we are exposed to those people, places or behaviors are entirely normal.  That they are truly an innate part of our being.  And being such, they are from the source of our life.  From God, divinely ordained.

How much suffering, how many wars have stemmed from exactly that illusion being mistaken for reality? 

And it isn’t just that carrying around such imprinting may cause us to harm others.  Carrying around such imprinting can also result in our regarding ourselves in an unrealistic, negative, derogatory manner.

Engaging in an ongoing practice of examining our own thoughts and feelings can be difficult.  We may not like what we find.  Sometimes these revelations can be emotionally, even physically, painful.  Yet, even when that is the case, there is cause for gratitude:  because we have found it.  When we have found it, we can enter into the process of changing it.

One thing we should all know about such processes of change is that they usually (always?) take time and repetition.  Deeply ingrained feelings/thoughts tend to occupy networks inside our mind, our spirit.  We will find ourselves facing the same, old, thoughts and feelings over and over.  They gradually emerge out of the nooks and crannies of our mind.   We need to endeavor to be aware, as often as we can, of what is happening and to consciously intervene in our own lives at those times.  We need to edit, replace the old thoughts with those we want to replace them.  By doing this, over and over, gradually we will retake ownership of our own lives.  We will have “cleaned house”, so to speak.  Sometimes it takes less time, sometimes more.  But it is inevitable once we make the firm decision to mindfully take back the control of our own life.

 

 

 

 

We Can Heal Our World

by kendunning, posted in Building our future., Community, Economics, Environment, Fixing our Culture, Healthcare, Mental Health, Personal Development, Politics, Science, Spirituality, Unified Field

IMG_1010My life from early adulthood has been focused on learning what I can about mental, physical, and spiritual health.   I’ve managed to accumulate time in 5 colleges, earning 3 degrees.  I’ve accumulated countless hours in workshops, seminars, trainings, not to mention all the I’ve time spend reading studies and research reports.  I’ve traveled a good deal, seen a lot of different cultures both within and outside the U.S.  Also, I’ve spent time in 4 different jails and 2 maximum security prisons (one in the U.S., one not).  I’ve spent time with people from all walks of life:  doctors, shamans, people holding high governmental office, engineers, rocket scientists, writers, outlaw bikers, priests and ministers, drug dealers, prostitutes, psychologists, veterans and draft dodgers, bankers and bank robbers, persons inside the intelligence community and the mob.  Hippies (I’ve experimented with many psychoactive substances), wealthy “straights”, a lot of musicians, the homeless and some with multiple residences, murderers, artists, bartenders, hermits, socialites, social workers, nurses, people from every race, sexual orientation and religion.  At one time I have sat across the table from and had a conversation with a cannibal (we weren’t having dinner).  I could go on, but even I am getting weary of the list.

Where I am going with this is:  all of these people, all of them, are much more alike than dissimilar.  

This is our reality.  We are all so similar; it’s like we’re all from the same, very large, family.  This being true, how have human actions and interactions gotten so fucked up?  You would think after all those experiences I might have encountered some answers.  And I have.  Why do we so often mistreat each other and destroy what we need?  The reasons all come back to something one of the shaman I spent time with shared with me:  “All sickness is sickness of the mind.”  I know, what about germs:  bacteria, viruses, parasites, etc.?  Yes all those things exist and all of those things, and more, can and do affect us.  Yet, when we track it all down to the least common denominator, to the source that saints and prophets, spiritual leaders have been informing us about for centuries, and which quantum physics is now confirming, the instruction I was given by the shaman back in the early 1970’s is absolutely correct:  “All sickness is sickness of the mind.”  As a matter of fact, what is becoming increasingly clear, is that all that is, is of the mind.  But for now, for this post, I’m going to try to stick to sickness, and health.

It took me a surprisingly long time to realize that the inverse is also true:  All health is health of the mind.  Now, that is something to weigh into.

That includes your or my personal sickness or health, our families’ sickness or health, and up to and including the sickness or health of cities, nations, and the world.  Whatever the case may be, the origins of it are in our minds.  Does this mean that all the doctors should just send their patients home with prescription that says:  “Think Healthy”?  No, although positive, healthful thinking is never going to hurt the situation.  Our reality is a little more complex than that, our minds are more complex than that.  But on the most profound and inclusive level of our being, it is that simple.  We get to decide a lot about how things are going, both within our personal body and, collectively, within the body of humankind.

Let’s heal our world!  There are three criteria necessary for us to heal our world.  That’s all.  With these three criteria met, we can build a world which can be a nurturing, supportive, exciting, wondrous home for all of humankind.  And a much more hospitable world for all other living beings, and species, upon this planet we call home.

These three criteria are:

  1.  The Resources Needed to Create and Sustain It.  In spite of all the doomsaying about depleted and disappearing resources, we have enough to handle the population of the world, and then some.   Our problems have never been about insufficient resources, not on a planetary scale.  Our problems in this area have all stemmed from our management, or mismanagement, of what we have.  For one thing, we have allowed various resources to become like pieces on a game board for certain players to capture and hoard.  This is a horribly dysfunctional manner in which to manage the precious resources of our planet.  Another horrible aspect of our mismanagement to date is the quantity of resources we have allowed to become unusable due to our too often  cavalier regard of them.  This includes polluting our precious natural resources in the name of monetary profit.
  2.  The Knowledge to Engineer the Reality.  There also is no deficit in the knowledge needed to heal our world.  Again, not on a planetary scale.  Today, too often the most potentially beneficial innovations and inventions are often shoved into a closet.  Effective treatments and cures for illnesses, which aren’t the potential money makers for those who currently control and monopolize healthcare and pharmaceuticals, are either ignored, suppressed or somehow co-opted.  Realizations about better, more efficient, cleaner energy resources are ignored by those in power in deference to the money being applied by those controlling the archaic, dirty, systems which have managed to monopolize world industries.  If we were to measure the what, when, where, how and why of the resources and methods we employ in our day to day lives by the yardstick of human well-being, we would find we have all the knowledge we need to create and sustain a culture which provides for all of us, with food, housing, education, jobs, medical care, opportunities, and with abundant, exciting wonders to go around.
  3.  The Will to Make it So.  One might think this would be the most readily available of the three criteria.  Who, in their right mind, wouldn’t want a healthy, thriving, prosperous, exciting, wonderful world for themselves, their loved ones, friends and neighbors?  Especially as we’ve already seen centuries of what the alternatives are:  war, death, illness, suffering, hunger, homelessness, hopelessness, depression, stress, anxiety, loneliness, trauma, abusiveness, every plague; physical, mental and spiritual, known to human kind.  We get to take our pick.  The will to make it so is the only criteria which is the stumbling block right now.  Are we going to opt for the sickness or the health of it all?  

It is easy for anyone to look at these three brief descriptions of the criteria needed to heal the world and think:  but that’s not enough details.  We need more details!  The reality is that all the needed details are readily available.  All it takes is looking to find them.  Articles, videos, books, information detailing innovations which provide all the materials, engineering, health related and sociological knowledge needed to heal our world exists.  It is waiting for us:  online, or in the libraries and, most importantly; the minds of people around the world.  It’s all there, ready to be accessed.

Just to “prime the pump” of awareness a little, start looking at the possibilities available if only we would optimize all the uses of hemp.  Look at the health benefits we would reap if only we would clean up our environment, eat organic food, lower the toxic burden on our bodies.  Imagine the benefits of increased nutrition, education and health care, along with decreased stress.  I’m telling you, it’s all here, now.  All we have to do is want it enough to make achieving it, bringing it into reality, the organizing principle in our thoughts and actions.  If we do that and truly act it out, treat each other how we would genuinely like to be treated, we’re there.  We’re home.

Too idealistic, too utopian?  That’s the sickness which has crept in and set up housekeeping in your mind talking to you.  That kind of thinking has kept humankind involved in all manner of war and other inhumanities for centuries, millennia.  Negativity, egoism, jealousy, envy, greed, self-defeating thoughts, grudges, apathy, depression.  These are a few of the common psycho/emotional stumbling blocks we have to overcome to realize that which is actually our birthright:  a bright, incredible future.

We have a birthright!  The primary reality it is incumbent upon us to understand, to embrace, in order to realize our birthright is this:  we are, all of us, children of the Universal Creative Spirit, the Divine, God.  We are family; we are interrelated and interconnected.  When we learn to treat each other not only with equity, trust and civility but with love, then, as a global community, we will be opening ourselves to the full benefits of the divine and transcendental nature of our being.

I feel it’s important to interject here that a global community and a one-world-government, are not one and the same.  Throughout history diverse people have managed to more than just “get along”.  Very different cultures, races have prospered together.  Today, more than every before in history, people’s lives are made richer, more enjoyable through experiences of other culture’s food, art, music, dance, science, medicine and more.  We don’t need a one-world government, but we do need people from around to world to share a few basic values.  Such as mutual respect, honesty, fairness.

This moment in history, when the world is “smaller” due to advancements in communication and transportation, and when the world is more vulnerable than ever due to the destructive potential of modern weapons of war, learning how to co-exist, to live in harmony is more imperative than ever.  If all people would adopt a few basic, user-friendly values, we could all enjoy our diverse cultures, experiences, and do so in harmony, rather than in conflict.  It is so logical, so available:  all we have to do is desire it, will it, then act in our own best interests.