Toward a World that Works for Everyone
First posted in 2017. Once Sold Into Prostitution, These Girls Became Lawyers To Bring Justice To Others Like Them Keshav Khanna, Indianwomenblog.org, Aug. 17, 2019 httpss://tinyurl.com/yxkxja6e Survivors of the crime of Commercial Exploitation of Children (CEC) are today aiming to become top-notch lawyers. They have different stories. Some were child brides sold into prostitution by […]
I have (and I wonder if we have as well) many urgent needs, strong desires that I serve endlessly – and without question. An example would be a strong desire for affirmation that’s authentic and not manipulative. I was criticized as a child at the very time when a son wants a father to be […]
I personally don’t have as much time to process vasanas these days as I did a few years ago. I have to make room for speedier measures. And so today I just dug in and asked myself: What is the chief mischief maker? Never mind beating around the bush. Let’s get to the heart of […]
I was feeling strange this morning and so I looked at my emotional field to see what it was I was experiencing. I couldn’t put a name to it. It felt somewhat cold and electric and so I wouldn’t ordinarily be attracted to it. But at the same time, well, it electrified me. It gave […]
I’ve traced this lack of compassion that I feel back to the crib. My arms were tied to the sides of the crib to stop me from scratching as a result of having excema. I was wheeled into the kitchen and left there all night no matter how much I cried. (1) I concluded that […]
Finding the Hope in Hopelessness and How 1+1=One Kathleen Mary Willis, Voice of Freedom.ca, n.d. httpss://voiceoffreedom.ca/sacred-insights-2/ Much of my life I’ve struggled with depression. From that depressive place, I attracted situations of drama. Like attracts like. When I started sitting still — to feel into the pain of my depression — I began to understand […]
After writing this article, I read Narendra Mishra’s reading, to be posted later today. In it, the Divine Mother tells us not to wait for an “event” but to do our work beforehand diligently. She said: “And will there be what you think of as the ‘mother storm’? The answer is yes. But do not […]
I wrote an article the other day and was very pleased with myself. I found myself saying, “Yay, Steve,” and then I mysteriously broke down in tears. I realized at that moment that I’d been starved of validation from my Father as a young child and instead fed a diet of invalidation. The classic criticism […]
Most people would encounter the lessons I’m learning over a gradual period of growing up. The process would be called “maturing.” But, because of dissociation at an early age due to domestic violence, I “matured” only slowly and incompletely. Like many others, I built a constructed self around my disabilities. Scrapper, activist, etc. The only […]
Eric Berne’s ego states are particularly helpful in looking at the operation I’m doing on myself. What Berne meant by “ego state,” I think, would be the same as what we mean by “states of consciousness.” “Ego’” here just means “I.” If I can adapt his terms, I grew up with a bad-parent ego state […]
I turned to enlightened Gestalt therapist John Enright to help me figure out how being right works. However I felt that some of the distinctions he made are so enjoyable and provocative that I decided to share them raw. John made it his his intention to find out what made Fritz Perls such a successful […]
As I reparent myself and make my transition from sad … and mad … to glad, my sensitivity to my feelings increases. I become more aware of feelings that would have just been my “normal” back then. I was one compacted, compounded person. At the same time, I’ve been looking through the scrapbook Dad prepared […]
I can see that I’m on a journey of recovery, as are so many of us. The lessons of the journey seem to be cumulative. The experience of gentleness recently opened a new door of experience for me but it was also the latest in many lessons over time that were showing me the tremendous […]
I felt wretched today – all my friends are away at the moment. I felt lonely, sad, forlorn. Then I wrote a stimulating article and found myself at the end of it saying “Yes!” I immediately saw that what was present in the situation as it existed at the moment was unconscious invalidation (Happy? “Not […]
The Trauma of Toxic Masculinity Jared Yates Sexton, Yes! Magazine, April 19, 2019. httpss://tinyurl.com/y4rjy7nw What really lies beneath the anger and aggression of traditional White masculinity? During the two years I reported from the 2016 campaign trail, I watched stump speeches in cramped union halls and polished addresses to thousands, survived the major conventions, dodged flash […]
