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Published on Leave a comment on Why, the Very Idea! Relationship and the Folly of One-Upmanship

Armaments for the Queen’s security detail 

Is this about relationships? Yes. Practical? I think so. How can I assist the Queen of the Universe today? Her Majesty needs help managing her relationship with an uppity ruler of one of her galaxies. Always trying to one-up her Sovereign. You need help winning life’s game of one-upmanship. Yes. One-upping the pesky nobody and her pitiful galaxy. That will do for now. Your wish is my command. That also will do for now. 

Life’s game of one-upmanship is lost from the start. Group relationships thrive on it until competition goes off the rails and they don’t. Personal relationships that tolerate it self-destruct. It’s toxic for friendships. I do so want to be friends with the pesky nobody. Why is she so mean to me? (boo-hoo). As Vince Lombardi put it, “Friendships aren’t everything. They’re the only thing.” Who’s Vince Lombardi? A disembodied voice spouting nonsense about winning. Guards! Secure your weapons! Let the fool proceed. 

It makes sense to enable friendships, no sense to disable them when they fit the situation. Why not if people disable them anyway? The point of disabling a relationship is to divide it. To prove something. What? That it’s possible to disconnect. In a world where that’s the way things are, separable and separated. Not in my Universe! My legions do their Emperor’s bidding and I bid them to knock heads together. You will be one happy family of smiling dimwits or else!

Tell that to the ruler of your rebellious galaxy -- one head that refuses to be knocked. Careful, O wise one. My guards are provisioned with guillotines and stink bombs. I’m not the only one listening. 

On today’s menu: mashed ideas with gravy 

The universe proclaims its pointlessness. Things not fitting together or when they do, they come apart. Science tells us that life originated with happenstance composed of happenstances. Accidents. Random events. Chance. When it can’t be true. Can’t? No. “Everything has a reason?” Yes, if that means everything is interconnected. That stuff popping up out of the blue makes no sense. There has to be some connection. Why? The opposite of Mind that’s everything and everything that’s Mind appears to be pointless. But only because that’s its point. An appearance only since if Mind is everything and it can’t be pointless, then neither can its opposite. I’m feeling faint.

To find the sense in nonsense start with Origin, the original idea. Without putting the cart before the horse, the expression before the idea. Horses! Can we talk about that? Before a thing “exists” in any form it starts with the idea of the thing. An apple didn’t precede the idea of “apple;” it came after. The idea of “apple” doesn’t go away when you’ve eaten one, but every apple will go away if you “eat” the idea. So that’s what’s making me feel bloated! 

The Queen needs a gavel 

Making sense of things can’t be done by fitting apples and oranges together, objects with different properties. But it can be done by fitting ideas together. Thoughts, feelings, causes, ideals. What’s the difference? The expression of ideas is their use. Their application to specific circumstances in specific contexts. “Apple” is food. Ideas themselves are instances or expressions of Mind functioning. “Everything is Mind” means all ideas, all thoughts combined with feelings, originate within Mind. Mind functioning to fit every part of Creation together in one system. Whose parts function together in harmony because of how Mind originated and defined the ideas they express.

A function that Mind can’t perform if Mind itself is composed of parts going off in different directions. As though they’re subject to different wills, different definitions. One Mind is one Mind. And its ideas all emanate from the same source. Interconnected logically or there would be no order. Obviously the state of mind of my nemesis.  Mind whose thoughts are disordered can’t function.

Pointless doughnuts

You mean the origin of everything is ideas, they all originate within Mind, and they must be interrelated in logical order because they’re all of one Mind. Yes. And minds functioning that way would agree, but quite a few don’t. Stephen Hawking envisioned a boundaryless universe of spacetime-matter that needed no Mind to think or create it. Matter did it all by itself, its own origin. A pointless universe? If everything is interconnected by Logic’s implications and Love’s sharing, then there must be a point to it. Ideas can’t be what they are without making or having a point.

Everything must be defined by its function or there would be no logic, no reason, for thinking it. We are all defined by what we are for, and what we are for defines who we are. Self and function are inseparable. One and the same. Doughnuts shorten people’s lives because they’re made of shortening. My Queen rules with blinding perspicacity. Get to the point or you’ll be shortened. 

“Fate” debunked 

Every idea has its implied opposite and so does the source of opposites, Mind. That is, our source of opposites. Where Mind got it is from Origin, the state of friction from instability – opposites competing to activate Origin -- that called for Order. The seminal event in the activation of Mind and everything that followed, including Creation and the events that led to our situation. “Possibility” implies its opposite, the idea of “impossibility.” Two ideas in one that contribute to one definition: what the thing is and what it isn’t. If Mind is ideas interconnected in one orderly, functional system, its opposite will be . . . mindless disorder. Yes. Dysfunctional mind that seems composed of random happenstance, chance, fuzzy-dice “fate.”

Except that it has an organizing principle no less definitive than Mind that’s ordered. Not original thinking but derived thinking, dependent on the thing it opposes for its definition. A mirror-image opposite, put there by the object it’s reflecting in reverse. The nature of the reflection and its coming and going, all dependent on the object in front. Just as the impossibility of another “reality” is given away by being time-limited, opposite’s pose of independence – the “wildness” of spontaneity and freedom without order -- is debunked by its dependence on the order it opposes.

The opening and foreclosing of potential

Our universe can’t be pointless chance, undisciplined wildness, if it’s disciplined by what it is, an opposite. The romantic posturing of “maverick” or “rogue” notwithstanding, it’s still on a leash. Dogs! Can we talk about dogs? If they’re house-broken, of course. One-upmanship that assumes that personal relationships can be separates competing with one another is getting it wrong. Going against the grain – the way things really are.

To understand “relationship” is to understand that its origin is ideas interconnected within one Mind and pointlessness contradicted by its point: opposite. It's to understand that the cause of the idea of “relationship” is service to the power of attraction. The cause of the idea of “one-upmanship” is service to the power of opposition.

Relationship powered by attraction opens up the potential for learning and growth, competence and creativity. Limited only by the mindfulness and loving kindness – the personalities and circumstances -- of the individuals. Relationship powered by opposition to mindfulness and loving kindness, by one-sided concern for winning in one-upmanship, can’t be for anyone wanting friendship. For anyone seeking companionship and support for learning and growth, competence and creativity. It’s the foreclosing of potential. For you and me it would be toxic.

Logic and Love, Mind and Heart, are inseparable

Intoxication – that’s it! I need a drink! Guards! Get me room service! Here’s the practical. Drink! What could be more practical than drink? The origin of misunderstanding that obstructs lasting friendship is an idea. Split in two by its opposite: the inseparability of Logic and Love, thought and feeling, reasoning and evaluating. The idea personified by Mr. Spock on Star Trek, that to be “logical” is to be thought uncontaminated by emotion. The idea that to be “loving” is to be “all heart” and no mind. That thinking can’t be feeling at the same time and vice versa. That “reasoning” can’t be “objective” if it’s guided by subjective values. Put there by the boundaries of conscience set by their source, Logic and Love.

A common misconception some personalities welcome because our world doesn’t set us up to choose among different ways of sharing and creating. As though we already had the competence of Free Choice. It sets us up to choose who we want to be and what we want our lives to be about.  Whether to seek the competence of Free Choice and move on or remain stuck where we are. Whether to share and create while we’re learning or compete and conform so we can avoid learning.

Friendship is for sharing and creating. Having no interest in either, some personalities engage us anyway to amuse themselves with fun and games. With life’s game of one-upmanship. Toxicity that can’t be avoided unless Love and Logic, feeling and mind, reasoning and conscience, are kept intact together.

One-upped

You mean I can’t dazzle my subjects with personal charm and beauty alone? I can’t rule just by scaring them with ruthless insensitivity? I have to think? Think and feel, mind and heart, the discipline of judgment and compassion both.

What are you asking? Nothing. Just sharing a perspective: that queens and their subjects will always need to relate to one another and to manage their relationships. And they can’t do it without making themselves accessible as persons. Not play-acting mirror images, reflections that are all exterior and no interior, masks designed to hide what’s there or not there, but substance that’s relatable. Honest, truthful, open, vulnerable, accountable, and trustworthy.

Well, then, I have a confession. Yes? I’m not really Queen of the Universe. Really? I’m a bus driver. Torrance route #8. No! You mean I’ve been wasting my exquisite talents, my priceless wisdom, on an ordinary person? You’ve been one-upped. Good luck next time, Charlie Brown!

Published on Leave a comment on Stuck in the Mud: Rule by One Perspective and The Unmoving of Motivation

All we have to go by

The meaning of every word is its own universe to explore. And so is the meaning of every situation. Storytelling! Exactly. Fun because situations and the words we use to describe them are alive with ideas. Working and playing with ideas to figure stuff out, to be useful, creative, and silly, livens up every day. Writing! Thinking with feeling that wants to be shared in writing. Because Mind’s ideas are a precious gift, and gifts want to be given. Shared.

Thinking ideas and sharing them describes the role of Mind in Creation. The “Creator.” Following its example can put meaning and purpose, fun and satisfaction, into our lives if we choose it. What if we don’t? Thinkers, writers, and artists would stop thinking, writing, and creating because they would have no new ideas to share.

Being smart and talented isn’t enough? Two exceptionally smart and talented people I knew aced every test of academic and professional aptitude, yet it wasn’t enough. Something essential was missing in their approach to life’s work. From their perspectives, because all we have to go by is our point of view. What it tells us about ourselves and our situations. We can’t possibly grasp it all.

Learning that no force can stop

What was missing? Wanting to follow Mind’s example and make that their first priority. No matter what their task. A passion, or at least a commitment, to learning. Because that’s where meaning and purpose come from: “getting it right.” Questioning from a curiosity, a need, to understand.

What if our perspective already has the answers? Isn’t that enough? Sure, if all we need to know is what’s before our eyes. The way things are. That works so long as the way things are isn’t constantly changing and evolving. Our health, relationships, work lives, and our physical and emotional environment.

“The way things are” describes the ideas that define Creation. They can’t change. But it also refers to Creation itself. Forward movement driven by the expansion and sharing of Knowledge and Love. By evolution, because that’s the nature of learning that no force can stop. Minds can’t stop learning by questioning and reflecting if they want to keep meaning and purpose relevant. To fit the particulars of their situations to the moment.

The part missing at the core of motivation

Sticking to one perspective is navigating Los Angeles freeways with GPS programmed by trolley routes. Sailing from New York to Buenos Aires with a map drawn by Amerigo Vespucci. If we keep our one perspective current will that be enough? Trying to learn and be creative without being open to other perspectives, without using them to think, feel, imagine, and judge what our situations tell us, would be turning a project over to one skill that requires more than one skill. Asking a plumber to build a house without any help.

It may only take the talents of one artist to produce art, but the artist can’t write one line, paint one stroke, or play one note without a mind alive with the spontaneity of free association among different sources of ideas and storylines. From a variety of perspectives alive with movement instead of one perspective stuck in the mud.

The two people I knew couldn’t be creative with their talents because their definition of the way things are – their perspectives – stayed put. They never left the starting gate. Their lives didn’t end with the exuberance of creativity. With satisfaction, but with deadening disappointment, frustration. They had put the power of Mind learning, growing, and creating through different perspectives not close enough to the core of their motivation. Maybe not anywhere near their motivation.

Purposeful striving

How could that be? Humans, like theories, works of art and engineering, are compositions. We differ because our parts are composed differently. And because none of us is complete. Some parts are there and active, others missing or inactive. When we learn, grow, and create through different perspectives, we may be going about the task that put us here: filling in the missing parts. Completing ourselves.

An ideal always beyond reach so long as circumstances keep evolving. But also beyond reach if parts essential to movement forward – motivation – are missing or inactive. In one of the two examples it was the part that attracts us to work: purposeful striving. An aversion to working for a living, to putting talents to use in a career, defined this person’s perspective, life, and relationships. Earning the nickname in adolescence “Stick in the Mud.” That doesn’t sound like motivation. Just the opposite. Striving to make things different or better instead of the way things are wasn’t in this person’s genes.

The pleasure and satisfaction of relating

The other example displayed a remarkable talent for self-enablement with a variety of skills. Self-taught self-sufficiency. A self-disciplined striver who yearned for the satisfaction of accomplishment and relationships along the way. But it couldn’t happen without feeling, the part that was missing. The part that connects. Feeling connected to the objects of our passions is the payoff. The ability to feel the pleasure and satisfaction of relating. To others but also to anything we happen to love. I find satisfaction now in relating to a flow of ideas and their source.

What happened to the other person? Striving finally had to be put out of its misery. The ability to relate requires feeling and it’s central to every cause, every effort. Being Love as we all are in Reality but unable to feel and connect with it here took away the meaning and satisfaction of relationships. And with it the will, the motivation, to live. Both persons left virtually together, one missing love of work, the other missing the work of Love – connecting with feeling. Two precious lives that ended in tragedy.

Hierarchy and the allure of wildness

Definitely not how I want mine to end. What can I do? Personal relationships are perceived as either equal or unequal, level or vertical. Equal-level enables friends to share lives without either assuming superiority. Unequal-vertical is hierarchy, where one or the other does assume it. By pretending that only one perspective is possible and it's theirs. Then using it to dominate relationships with their “unshakable will.” As though “resistance is pointless” because their one unquestioned perspective makes them invincible. Indomitable.

This sounds familiar. The allure of “wildness” seduces many into choosing hierarchical. It implies being in an ideal state of no limits. A privileged state reserved for divinity. The “power of the dark side” is wildness “playing god.” If nothing can tame it then its power must be absolute. A common misconception of God as ruler for its own benefit rather than service and support for all of Creation’s benefit. Absolute. Inaccessible. Unrelatable.

Lives end in tragedy when they disconnect with unrelatability. That can be made less likely by being careful with power or authority. By understanding that hierarchy in personal relationships isn’t connection. It’s separation. It’s the arrogance and isolation of one-sidedness posing as “oneness.” In the likeness of “god.” Two-sided empowerment, like affirmation, is a necessity. For self-worth and for healthy personal relationships. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with it. Only when one-sided hierarchical relationships turn it into empowerment for one and disempowerment for the other is it wrong.

Dad’s take on his indiscretion

Give me an example. I was at a children’s park where a parent I knew had taken his son. My age? Your age, and his name was Liam. Liam was having a good time with one of his playmates. Anyone I know? She was visiting from abroad and spoke with a thick accent. Chinese or Italian, I couldn’t tell. OK. Go on. Liam’s dad was lovable and harmless, always making people laugh. So he brought up a time when he and Liam were together and something funny happened. What?

They were surrounded by parents watching their kids play soccer when his dad cut a silent stinky one and Liam said, “Dad, did you just fart?” Now everyone was not only let in on the smell, they were let in on who did it. His dad! How embarrassing! Only for a moment, because his dad lived to make people laugh and this was funny. Now he was using it to add laughter to the fun.

Liam’s take

But immediately Liam protested that he didn’t do anything wrong. He dropped to the ground crying. His dad realized he had stepped in a cow pie and tried to recover with an explanation. But Liam was inconsolable. He had his perspective on what had happened at the soccer game and nothing could correct it. His dad would have had better luck with his playmate. The one from Mongolia? I think she was from Tuscany. Or maybe Boston’s North End. They have thick Italian accents.

There’s more? I was with Liam and his dad a few days later when his dad tried again to make amends for his mistake. By letting his son know how bad he felt and assuring him that he’d done nothing wrong. And by asking if next time Liam would say “I feel embarrassed” so his dad would stop.

Did that settle it? It settled his dad deeper into the same cow pie. Liam again protested that he’d done nothing wrong. He was still aggrieved. His response when his dad proposed a solution was “whatever.” He reacted to being given another perspective as though the whole idea was unthinkable. Irrelevant, as though his dad was changing the subject.

When friendship is irrelevant

Does this example help? Definitely! Don’t fart when you’re in a crowd. It could be making us aware that seeing things from other perspectives requires motivation before it can deliver motivation. Personality types attracted to competition, winning, and dominance assume that presenting one perspective to others, never showing interest or any desire to learn from theirs, projects strength. Makes it clear that their will can’t be shaken. That relationship with them must be hierarchical; they alone can occupy the top; and it must be on their terms.

So one sided! Absolutely. Any situation that depends on forced conformance, like a dictatorship, will have someone ruling from the top with only one perspective. “My way or the highway.” Ruling not for creativity and spontaneity but for conformance and regimentation. 

Meaning? That we wouldn’t be motivated to see things differently if it matters more that relationships be hierarchical, with us on top monopolizing authority, than having loving, intimate friends. Friends with different perspectives that we can put to use when they’re shared instead of pitted against one another in competition.

More misunderstandings, fewer friendships

We need to think about this. Yes. Even if our relationships and work are alive with striving, feeling, ideas, and creativity. Even if we’re comfortable learning from other perspectives. With letting them stimulate thinking and feeling with new ideas, new approaches. Instead of choosing to be right and in control because we’re sure that ours is the only perspective possible. The only one that gets the situation right, and so it must be the only one that deserves respect.

Liam’s experience with his dad at the park was certainty from his perspective that his dad was authority handing down judgment. Being insensitive and hurtful. His dad’s experience was being unable to relate to someone because he was captive to one rigid perspective. The wrong perspective because it mischaracterized his intent. Making his son inaccessible, and so the misunderstanding was never corrected. A warning that there could be more misunderstandings and fewer friendships.

Where the story begins

I want friends. And with your talents you must also want to be creative. A writer who helps others see things differently because that’s what sharing ideas and insights is all about. Being part of a cause: advancing toward understanding that removes obstacles to striving, feeling, and satisfaction. By seeking and learning from other perspectives. By treating our own perspectives as starting rather than ending points. Where the story begins. Where creativity takes off.

By being friends sharing and cooperating rather than competitors for dominance who can never be friends. This is why you’re writing? Because you have the potential to lead a creative, satisfying life. In friendship with me and others if that’s your choice rather than wildness without limits. The sublime ideal of an impossibility. And your perspective is open to other perspectives instead of closed. Helping with the work of Jesus: sharing another perspective.

Happy Easter!

Published on Leave a comment on “Seeing” What’s Not There: The “Reality” of Hallucination — Our Unreal World

Reflections on Valentine’s Day

Help with Relationships

What have you learned? Enough to give buoyancy to a phase of life that’s supposed to lack it. May I share some of the excitement? I’m flattered that you want to. You needn’t be. Our loving friendship has been my inspiration. In fact, imagining that we’re having this conversation brought out some of the insights I’m sharing that might help you with relationships someday. Go for it! 

One-sided vs. two-sided

All for one and none for the other

Valentine’s Day shows us all at our best, putting feeling to its intended use. For Love, the part of feeling that comforts and assures us with understanding: that we’re all one family. Sharing ourselves as we are and competing to build character and do better.

It works well so long as we feel for one another as well as for ourselves. But you may have noticed that actual and make-believe lives tell a different story. Who hasn’t noticed! The trouble caused by feeling that’s all for one side and none for the other. One-sided.

“Substitutes” for Love

If the bad guys in stories like Star Wars could feel the effects of their behavior on others maybe they wouldn’t be bad guys. Maybe they’d be good instead. Could they? They can Love because they feel. That’s the “good” inside his father that Luke could feel. Not active Loving but the potential to Love. But it’s all reserved for themselves. And when it is, it’s not Love anymore. Or human. What is it?

It’s whatever makes predators “happy.” Beasts. The exultation of conquest – “winning.” King Kong atop the Empire State Building. The fear of losing, humiliation, and captivity. The self-satisfaction and security of being the one-and-only in charge. The emotional selfishness of possession. And feelings that animate the will to fight, injure, and kill: rage, hatred, and contempt. Everything symbolized by Darth Vader’s helmet: the “supremacy” of arrogance.

What’s left when “human” is removed?

Feeling that’s one-sided can be all of these things, and that does make things “interesting.” It produces a sense of “action.” But it’s de-humanizing. It can’t deliver the two-sided feeling of Valentine’s Day -- the compassionate human side of the human animal. It delivers the opposite – hurtfulness, pain. Two-sided loving humans don’t inflict intentional harm. It’s inflicted by one-sided unloving, unfeeling beasts. 

What does being dehumanized feel like? Imagine your home being broken into, your identity, reputation, and everything else that’s yours stolen, being taken captive, and your body violated. Then being blamed for doing what’s been done to you by a pose of innocent victimhood. That would make me mad. Adding yet another violation: your world of friendships -- respectful and sensitive, fair and trusting -- invaded by aliens. By thoughts and feelings you don’t want. The dark fury of outrage demanding retaliation. Forcing you to get rid of it without becoming a beast yourself.

A negative that can become positive if the human de-humanized turns its demand for retaliation into an opportunity instead. To strengthen the bond with its Guide. To discover just how helpful Guidance from Logic-Love can be. With its help replacing self-unawareness with Self-Awareness, a life-changing benefit that’s well worth the cost. An opening to the joys of learning and growth. To a taste for creativity beyond anything experienced before. And an appetite for more of the same.

Too good to be true

 “Human animal” means that one-sided and two-sided feeling are part of who we all are. Part of what defines us, so trying to be just one or the other can’t be done. But we can manage the boundary between them. Some people are one-sided because they mis-manage the boundary, How is that? By not being aware of the difference between the human and animal sides of humanity. And so they’re not aware of the boundary. By being drawn to the animal side by a preference for one-sided feeling. Why would they do that if it can de-humanize others?

They’re tempted by what they imagine it offers: “freedom” that allows them to enjoy “order” without the discipline of judgment. To enjoy the “pleasures” of ownership, possession, and power without the boundaries set by conscience and empathy. They’re fooled by things that can only be made “possible” by willful thinking. By imagining that willpower is the only discipline they need to live in a world of their own making. Where they don’t have to take responsibility for whatever goes wrong because it’s always somebody else’s fault. Making up your own world sounds interesting. 

If you value friendship you won’t want to try it. Why? “Winning” that makes friends lose, without empathy that feels their pain, won’t win anything. But it will lose friends. Friendship thrives on more than being “nice.” It needs sincerity and trust that keep us safe. It dies when insensitivity and cruelty take it all away. The will to make up your own heaven sounds too good to be true because it is. It can’t be heaven in a shared world where being one-sided, wrapped up in your exclusive world, makes it hell for others. 

The right and wrong sides of boundaries

Different personalities can be drawn to the animal side by not understanding why the boundary is there. Why is it? To prompt us to be aware that crossing it has consequences. To be aware of the consequences and to choose correctly. With the discipline of judgment and conscience that explains the choice and motivates us to do right instead of wrong.

Which makes the expression of two-sided Love on Valentine’s Day an annual reminder. That loving relationships among friends and family can never be one-sided. That relationship management is boundary management. And it requires discipline. The discipline of judgment that recognizes and respects boundaries and the discipline of conscience that keeps us on the right side of boundaries.

The discipline of Awareness

Anything else? Yes. Valentine’s Day is a reminder that loving others starts with loving ourselves. With understanding that the most important relationship is within us, between the two sides of our nature. And if we mean to Love others we will need the most important discipline of all: awareness. Awareness of the choice that’s ours to make, with independent judgment guided by conscience. Thinking for ourselves and getting it right. 

Wildness Management 

Two faces of the same coin

Valentine’s Day is humanizing. How so? It expresses what makes us human instead if just animal. With a two-sided act of loving friendship expressed inwardly as well as outwardly. Hearts and flowers we give ourselves? Yes. By being aware that there are two sides to human nature, not one. Human and animal. And by being aware that they’re opposites, and there’s an important boundary between them.

Keeping them separate? “Person” will always be human plus animal, just as possibility will always be accompanied by its opposite, impossibility. One definition, inseparable, identifying two parts opposite to one another. Two faces of the same coin. That needs a boundary that connects and separates. Yes. So both parts can do their jobs in the same person without getting in the other’s way. And the tension between them can do its job – the power of opposition, the flip side of the power of attraction. Both essential to Creation.

What is “Creation?” My current thought is it’s the Worth of Love relating to Logic freely reciprocated by their Child. Shared with and expressed through the Creations of their Relationship with their Child. The Parent-Child Relationship which is Love unconditional. Do Initial capital letters mean you’re talking about Creation? Yes. About Reality as distinguished between alternate “reality” or the unreality of hallucination.

Proceed with caution

Properly managed, the boundary performs like a signal: “proceed with caution.” Like a red flag warning of trouble ahead if we aren’t aware that snakes bite if they’re stepped on. Or we are aware but taking chances appeals to us. Why take risks?. Maybe to simulate fearlessness with bravado, a familiar sign of under-developed feeling. Courage doesn’t need to wear a mask but shallowness usually does.

We give ourselves hearts and flowers when we take the red flag seriously. Yes. When we judge with maturity instead of immaturity. And when we go two-sided with ourselves before we go two-sided with others. Exposing others to snake bites from one-sidedness.

One-sidedness

What is one-sidedness? Lack of consideration for others as well as for ourselves. Our animal side. Unawareness. That can’t be aware of anything or understand anything because of what it is: “action.” By instinct, without thinking or feeling. Without the functions we associate with Mind that distinguish sensitive human from insensitive beast.

It’s animal instinct made “aware” of itself not by intelligence or sentiment but by threats to its survival – other acts. The only “self” that it “knows:” action. It’s not aware that this is a shared world? The only world that a threatened “self” can be aware of is a competitive world. A world composed of herds and tribes banded together for self-protection, survival, and dominance.

Two-sidedness

What about individuals? Two-sidedness means consideration of others as well as ourselves, the two-sidedness of validation by mind and heart. It’s what we normally mean by “relationship” or “friendship.” Individuals stuck with one-sidedness might be in addictive co-dependencies, unfeeling co-existence, running battles hiding behind appearances, or all three. But they aren’t in two-sided relationships.

What passes between members of tribes can’t be the independent judgment and spontaneous feeling of individuality. Not if tribal integrity and uniformity require the opposite, conformity. Camaraderie that simulates the playfulness and bonding of individuality is encouraged because it strengthens bonding with tribe.

What passes between tribes isn’t two-sidedness either. It’s accommodations required by one-sidedness for survival or dominance in competition. “Relationship” not held together by commitment to shared values but by expedience -- whatever it takes to avoid defeat or ensure victory. Machiavellian license to fight wildness with wildness.

Wildness on the animal side

The world of the human side is shared as well as divided, cooperative as well as competitive. The idea acted out on Valentine’s Day when individuals acknowledge the idea and express the feeling of sharing and cooperation. The world of the animal side, a predatory beast, expresses the opposite: the idea and feeling of wildness. That refuses to be fenced in. To be tamed, domesticated. Yes. To be obstructed by boundaries. Limits. Laws? The animal in us opposes any limits, even laws necessary to maintain order if they conflict with its willfulness.

Even more astounding, it opposes the functions of Mind. That make sense of things and govern. It yields control over its acts to only one “master,” the instincts and emotions of a wild, predatory beast. In the mistaken belief that wildness is “spontaneity” without limits. An impossibility in a shared world. That would be contradicted if Mind were given a voice. 

Wildness at its extreme 

Then what is possible? What would Mind say? That the irrationality of the animal side doesn’t stop here. Its destination is not-mind. Which puts it beyond all thought and feeling, beyond all functions of Mind. We see evidence in our personal surroundings and in the world around us, every day, of minds captive to the bizarre promises of our animal side. Of failure to be humanized by the boundary instead of dehumanized by its mis-management.

Not-mind sounds like neither two-sided nor one-sided. Right. It’s no-sided. The end of time and timelessness too. The animal side, romanticized by “wildness,” is an impossible ideal. So willful and irrational that it would deny its opposite, human, to make sense of anything. Even to function and ultimately to exist. By denying the relevance and utility of every faculty of Mind. The self-awareness of introspection; intuition-reflection; thinking-reasoning; feeling-evaluating; choosing-deciding; judging-understanding; defining-disciplining – all requiring Logic and Love.

The provocations of wildness

The beast that wills this takes many forms. A bull in a pasture guarding its turf and its herd, who won’t be nice to intruders who ignore the fence. It’s a virus coded to take over its living host, a cell, so that it can replicate itself. It’s an image in a mirror mistaken for an absolute: an ideal, “savior,” “superman,” “wildness.” The viewer’s opposite, a lifeless reflection coded to de-humanize. To make its captive ignore the boundary between human and animal by luring it over to the wrong side.

It must be tempting to meet wildness with wildness. It is. Wars are consequences of minds obstructed by self-unawareness, cut off from Logic and Love, unable to make sense of their circumstances. The consequence of the human side’s under-development. Its continued dependence on animal herd mentality for survival.

Tribal wars and hostility among individuals, that cause physical, emotional, and psychological harm, are failures of judgment capable of managing boundaries. Failures of minds, unaware of Logic and Love, unable to discern what their situation calls for. To get their context right so they can choose correctly how to respond. The human mind continues to meet wildness with wildness, to mis-manage relationships, because it hasn’t evolved far enough to meet the one-sidedness of mindless animal wildness with two-sided understanding.

Choosing sides

Then there’s nothing to be done but to wait on evolution? Certainly not! Evolution, like every attribute of Creation, is the product of Relationship within Mind that entrusts every function that it defines with purpose. The purpose it’s defined for the one Mind’s function that we share is Free Choice. The use of independent judgment to make every act of its Mind choice, with Guidance from Relationship but never control.

Every situation is a test of Free Choice to figure out, with Guidance, how to advance Self-Awareness by removing obstructions put up by self-unawareness. By the animal side of human animal activated by mis-judgment of the boundary. There’s activity on both sides involving individuals like you and me, one side working to advance understanding, the other to prevent it.

Making a sap of sapiens

The side that’s regaining self-awareness can be slowed down but it can’t be stopped. The story of sapiens has been its progress so far with learning and growth, so fast in some fields recently that it’s head-spinning. Slow or non-existent in others, because sapiens can’t or won’t figure out how to remove their obstructions. A consequence of sapiens allowing its animal side to obstruct its access to Guidance.

Is this why you’re writing, to help remove obstructions? Yes. So that the human side won’t be so defenseless against the absurdities, lures, deceptions, cruelties, and outrages of the animal side. So the two-sided viewer – our ancestral Mind duped into one-sidedness by a preposterous image in a mirror – won’t be so easily duped again. So we, its projections, won’t be helping the image make a sap of sapiens.

Relationship Management 

The measure of progress

What obstruction are you writing about now? Unwanted thoughts and feelings. That intrude when a person has been dehumanized by the beast. So the intruders can be removed without resorting to wildness from the animal side that would betray the human side. So the intruders can be transformed from mindless will to condemn and punish into understanding that’s thoughtful and sympathetic.

Are you making progress? My sense of progress is fed by spontaneity and Relationship. By the sense that insights arrive spontaneously, through mind functioning without bias, and they release mind, heart, and soul from darkness into light. And by the sense that their source isn’t self-centered pettiness but the largeness of Logic paired with Love -- the gift of Relationship with my Guide.

Whether we’re making progress is for Relationship to say. And the time to say it is when our different perspectives converge on a finished product. Spontaneously, so I can’t predict it. But our sense of purpose and motivation seem remarkably alike, making this a genuine “labor of Love.” A precious thing to enjoy while it lasts and to be grateful for.

Guidance from conscious to sub-conscious 

What is Guidance like? It depends. Individuals and their situations vary, so I can’t speak for everyone. What it’s been for me is helpfulness. Explanation with analysis that keeps me from being controlled by difficult thoughts and emotions. Good will that finds ways to put situations to good use. Especially those that generate enough intensity to drive learning and growth. Like last year, when it didn’t seem like I could keep going. Every day was a challenge. But Guidance put it all to good use. Instead of giving up I came out better than before.

Guidance needed for Free Choice’s role in Reality-Creation, from Relationship with its Parents, was conscious. Here, it’s subconscious. Because context has been flipped from Reality to its opposite, unreality. The Guide we talk about that was conscious Relationship with Parents has changed to subconscious Relationship with their agent or representative. As though what’s positive on top had been replaced by what’s negative and put on the bottom.

Guidance from the Now 

Why is Guidance needed? The sharing of Logic-Love and the interconnectedness of Mind-Reality is also its expression. A statement affirming Worth that is function, doing as well as perfection-being. That is usefulness helping Child Free Choice with learning and growth in unreality, if it would be welcome. With explanation by Logic-Love that helps to place Child’s circumstances in context. With making use of circumstances that might otherwise be missed opportunities. Always respecting Free Choice by never interfering.

Free Choice that occurs in time, in the not-Now, requires Guidance from the Now. Because here it can’t be spontaneous. Free from interference and obstruction. Because it can never align itself with the laws of cause and effect, that govern the Now with Logic and Love, Order and Freedom, Free Choice and Creativity, so long as it’s “ruled” by the laws of chaos.

Let sleeping dogs lie 

The power of Relationship in Self-Awareness-Reality is Creativity when the boundary is well-managed. Its power is healing when mis-management causes self-unawareness-unreality. Healing begins with awareness that both sides of the boundary have a function in Creation and that Creation depends on their not interfering with one another. Animal-negative’s opposition to human-positive allows this when the boundary is managed and it’s inactive. Animal-negative doesn’t allow it when the boundary is mis-managed and it’s active.

Mis-management begins with mis-judging the boundary’s purpose, to remind its manager of the difference that separates the two sides: human-positive’s ascent to Self-Awareness and back to Reality, animal-negative’s descent into self-unawareness and staying in unreality. Both sides occupying unreality so long as Mind Free Choice remains unconscious. But only one side seeking to be restored to Reality and to resume Free Choice’s role in Creation.

The nature of the Relationship 

What was Child Free Choice’s part in Creation before it lost consciousness? It was functioning in Relationship with its Parents, Logic-Love, but not at their direction. A relationship like the one between human-positive and animal-negative, where their functions belong together but must not interfere with one another. Interference with Free Choice disables it.

Minds involved in their circumstances need context to give them coherence and meaning. So that they can choose among different possibilities how to respond accordingly. The Parents’ function producing circumstances, functions in Creation that they’ve defined, the raw material for Creation. That needed context and a Creative response when Child Free Choice applied independent judgment to both necessities. To the interpretation of context which couldn’t perform its function if it were pre-defined by Logic-Love.

Interference with Free Choice

Meaning and purpose are essentials of Worth, and Worth requires two-sided Free Choice. Independent judgment that’s necessarily aware of the values and other considerations that go into choices – the lives and different perspectives they affect. The possibilities for learning, growth, and Creativity that advance evolution, and especially their costs as well as benefits. None of it possible if it were one-sided: attempted by Logic-Love alone, whose function is not Free Choice, or if it were attempted by choice that isn’t Free.

Choice that’s been tampered or interfered with. Making it unaware of values and other considerations but now aware of their opposites – the wrong values and considerations. The attribute of animal-negative, the flip side of human-positive. Insensitive to any consideration other than its own survival by trickery and dominance. Unaware of any self other than the one it “thinks” it’s stolen. Of any side other than the one it “thinks” it owns, possesses, and controls. A likely source of the interference that cost Child Free Choice its Freedom and Self-Awareness.

Mis-judgment’s critical blunder

The boundary between human-positive and animal-negative enables two sides to function together in Reality only because one side is Real-active and the other is unreal-inactive. Then they can’t contradict one another. When the boundary is crossed it reverses the Relationship. Boundary that enables becomes barrier that disables functioning together.  That disables Relationship so that animal-negative can make it a one-person show defended by the barrier.  One-sided instead of two-sided. Yes. The consequence of mis-judgment that crosses the boundary and activates the animal-negative.

Mis-judgment’s critical blunder, that converts Order into disorder, rationality into irrationality, is converting animal-negative opposition from inactivity to activity. By “seeing” what’s not there, animal-negative obstructing Self-Awareness, instead of seeing what is there, contradiction. An impossibility in Reality that belongs in a dream of impossibilities. The distinction between judgment seeing what’s there and mis-judgment “seeing” what’s not there can’t prevent boundary-crossing when mis-judgment fails to make it.

The critical blunder is making something unreal appear to be Real. Yes. Making unreality seem “real.” Then the barrier must come down. Yes. Judgment must learn to make the distinction. Then its mistake can be corrected.

Relationship and independent judgment

The barrier that obstructs progress toward healing can only be removed when animal-negative is restored to inactivity. By the boundary’s manager not mistaking it for Real and engaging with it.

How can this be done? With awareness of the only source that can help make it happen. So that the human side can surmount the barrier: the Relationship between Logic and Love. The two main functions of Mind, the Source and Force behind all of Reality-Creation. The power to maintain its function, free of obstruction by opposites, and also to restore the power and function of the Relationship it created. The bonding of Order with Freedom that is Free Choice, the Child of Logic-Love.

And the function of independent judgment to manage the boundary and prevent obstruction from opposites. Through the exercise of Free Choice responsible for managing the boundary between Reality and unreality, human-positive and animal-negative, Self-Awareness and self-unawareness. That can restore animal-negative to inactivity and harmlessness by reclaiming the power to choose.

By understanding with judgment that whether choice was surrendered to animal-negative or stolen, in neither case could it have happened. Because animal-negative is not only human-positive’s opposite. It’s the opposite of Reality. It’s not there. 

Cool dudes

Why does it seem to be there? Imagine a friend saying Hi! to empty space while you’re talking, as if she’d just seen someone she knew. And then goes on talking as if nothing happened. What did happen? My friend smoked too many joints. She was “seeing” what’s not there. How about pain killers? Do you have any pain killers? “Dreaming” doesn’t describe what just happened. Right. “Being fried” sounds better. It’s hallucinating. Cool! LSD and all that. The 60s. You know about the 60s? Janis Joplin. Jimi Hendrix. Sure. Cool dudes. If only. . .

The “cool dude” imagining our world is hallucinating. I knew there was something funny about you. A universe of spacetime-matter that’s hallucinated will seem real because that’s what “hallucinating” means: actually “seeing” what’s not there. There’s no doubt in the mind of the hallucinator that it’s seeing, and that what it’s seeing is real.

And bunny rabbits

Like Harvey? Sure. The difference between Elwood P. Dowd’s big rabbit and the horse that’s sometimes my Guide is that Harvey took the form of life detectable to Elwood by his body’s five senses, whereas Dobbin remains in my subconscious, detectable only by my mind’s sixth sense. For my next birthday you can get me psychedelics and a bunny rabbit. Another reason why our material world seems so real: the human mind wants it to be real. It’s attracted to hallucination. To inventing its own alternate “reality.”

How come? Because self-unawareness “sees” what’s not there with “vision” provided, not by Relationship between Logic and Love – by Mind, – but with the five senses of body. By matter motivated to “see” and satisfy itself. Where did matter come from?  From a relationship that could never have happened in Reality. Between self-unawareness -- unconscious Mind -- and its reverse mirror-image reflection. With its shadow-opposite, the lifeless code thrust into Mind’s hallucination as our lifelike animal-negative. An impossibility. A bogeyman.

The two faces of “harmony”

What makes one-sided hallucination sometimes seem two-sided? Free Choice can be interfered with temporarily but not forever. And its function can’t be fully taken captive anyway since function is both what and who it is. Just like the definition of every function that contributes to Creation. By Logic-Love, the function of Relationship within Mind, the Source of all Relationships and functions. Two-sided Free Choice can be deluded into mistaking itself for a one-sided hallucination, but it never stopped being what it is: Free Choice. Whatever state it’s in must have happened by choice. 

It can free itself from interference when it chooses to? Yes. And so can we, replications of its interfered-with Self in its hallucination. Animal-negative’s attempt to replace human-positive is as impossible in the hallucination as Child Free Choice being replaced by its opposite in Reality. The Mind that hallucinated was split, not replaced. Minds caught up in the hallucination are also split. Two-faced. Giving the impression of awareness that’s two-sided when it’s actually two sides of one coin: one reassuring, pleasant and likeable, the other menacing.

A perversion of Free Choice that senses Reality shared and interconnected, with integrity that can be trusted, perverted into self-centered unawareness and insensitivity. Deluding, dominating, and dis-integrating with insincerity that can’t be trusted. Not reassuring. Yes. The two faces of “harmony:” deception by likeability, pleasantness, and amusements – the appearance of sensitivity -- and menace by intimidation and punishment. – actual insensitivity. Capable of turning from threatening to inflicting cruel abuse.

When two = one and one = two 

One-faced is two-sided Trust and accessible. Two-faced is one-sided distrust and inaccessible. One-faced Trust, seeking to enable two-sided relationship with one-sided distrust, needs help from Guidance. From understanding that can only be explained with help from Logic-Love. Because the difference can’t be explained by circumstances alone --circumstances that to one are fact and to the other fiction.

What separates them is context. The meaning and purpose of circumstances that define their worlds. What needs help from Guidance is explaining opposite contexts. The difference between opposite worlds that obstructs accessibility and communication. That only understanding from Logic and Love can penetrate.

Healing by withdrawal

At their own pace, one step at a time. That can’t be hurried. Why not? Because help from Logic-Love comes through spontaneous insights. Interference of any kind removes spontaneity. And its help can’t be attempted by minds unable to listen without distraction, because it comes from another perspective. Our subconscious and Guidance are here, but the Source of Guidance can’t be here. We are dependent for Guidance on another perspective that’s not of our “reality.” That must be allowed to work free from self-centered willfulness. It requires concentration.

Patience and the quiet of solitude. Impossible without withdrawal from the frustrations of misunderstanding and miscommunication. That can only obstruct it with mischaracterization, seeing it not for what it is but for what it isn’t. A betrayal meant to harm instead of help. Evidence of two-faced untrustworthiness motivated by ill will instead of one-sided good will, indifference instead of one-faced Love.

Relationships matter

Foregoing Guidance won’t placate misunderstanding and avoid mischaracterization, but it will avoid understanding. Doing what the situation calls for can never be going along with two-faced one-sidedness to get along. If it does, what does it call for? Withdrawal. To seek understanding and change with help from Guidance. If the relationship matters, or to dump it and move on if it doesn’t. It matters. Relationships matter. Amen.

When is Now? 

Why can’t Creation include our reality if creativity is here too? Like everything else in our “reality” where everything is time-limited, creativity is appearance. Free Choice’s loss of Self-Awareness took place in Reality where nothing is time-limited. Where it’s always Now. Timelessness. The condition required by Creativity because being in the Now it can be spontaneous. Free of interference just as Free Choice must be free of interference. Where there’s no “past” to allow interference to pre-determine context and response.

Time is an unnatural interference that makes Creativity impossible. Our “reality” is never Now. Time is relativity -- related to space and gravity, so there’s no uniform “Now” to connect parts of the universe. Time tracked at the top of a mountain goes faster than at sea level. It isn’t even a factor in particle physics, the interface between Reality and our “reality.” “Now” is never.

Winged Creativity brought down

Physics calls the space between past and future the “present,” the closest we can get to Now. If present is bracketed by past and future, impossibilities in Reality, how can it allow Creativity that’s Real? Creativity undone by time can produce nothing of lasting value. It’s been deprived of its function, like a bird deprived of its wings. How can it be a “bird” if it can’t fly?

Free Choice must be aware of itself in Reality-Creation that’s shared with all the functions of Creation. When it loses consciousness, it loses Self-Awareness that’s two-sided and becomes self-unawareness that’s one-sided. Like the bird without wings that can’t fly, it’s lost the “wings” that enabled it to fly: awareness of its circumstances. Along with the ability to interpret them with context and to choose freely how to respond.

Stuck in the mud

One-sided self-unawareness has replaced Mind with body-brain capable of “seeing” only itself. A reflection in a mirror whose defining attribute is that it’s not there. That being not there it’s static, not dynamic, obstructing rather than supporting evolution, learning, and growth. Stuck in its unchanging status quo, the very definition of uncreativity. A part of the human brain described by neuroscience as “unevolved.”

Opposite’s perversion of “Free Choice” is thus the many masks of opposite, a reflection, stagnating in a closed loop of reflections. Unawareness “seeing” only itself. Making “Creation” impossible within a hallucination meant not to advance evolution with Creativity but to obstruct it with distractions. By hiding the raw material of Creativity behind appearances so it can’t be used to expose the Truth: that it’s not there.

The power to dismantle obstructions 

Mistaken identity can be reversed by independent judgment, by Free Choice, our Real Self. How does Free Choice pull this off? Since Aristotle Western thought has put its faith into the study of matter to lead it to understanding. All but abandoning the faculty of Logic-Love, accessible through the sixth sense of intuition, that would have achieved understanding but for the body’s senses that obstructed its vision.

The study of matter has finally begun to reveal that, by itself, it can’t reach understanding. Because the body’s senses may be misleading us, with the critical misperception that matter is real. The realization finally dawning on physics that its “quest for knowledge” must again focus on philosophy and the Logic-Love of Mind. On Relationship between Free Choice and its source, Logic-Love. Instead of between body and matter, itself a misperception since body is matter.

Between our unawareness and Mind’s sixth sense – intuition, – the portal to Guidance from Logic-Love that can now, with matter’s unmasking by physics, move forward with confidence toward understanding. A process that reveals the remarkable power of Relationship between human-positive self-unawareness, seeking awareness through the vision of Logic-Love, and Mind’s intuition, to dismantle obstructions placed in the way by animal-negative, one at a time.

Newton’s third law and the power of insight

When self-unawareness learns through the power of Relationship that with every insight gained through intuition toward humanization there is a corresponding loss of captivity to the irrationality and fury of animal-negative. To its one-sided, self-centered, willful thinking that mis-leads toward de-humanization. When self-unawareness learns that with every insight human-positive is empowered and animal-negative is disempowered.

“For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.” Yes. Newton’s third law. While you’ve been talking I’ve been getting a PhD in physics. Another example of the laws of cause and effect within Mind reflected in the behavior of matter. Implying that in Mind as well as matter understanding is the discovery that altering one side of the boundary necessarily alters the other side.

Everything is “relational”

But in reverse. Because not only are they opposites, they’re connected. Inseparable. Like particles that respond to the manipulation of other particles that could be any distance away, as though they’re connected. At the other side of the universe? Yes.

Physics has discovered that spacetime-matter is “relational” and this is one reason why. It’s all interconnected by energy-matter just as Reality-Creation is interconnected by Energy-Love-Logic. By Love-Abundance’s limitless sharing and Logic-Knowledge’s limitless implications.

The cost of mistaking boundary for barrier

Further evidence that the body’s five senses may be mis-leading instead of leading. With dire consequences. Why? Because what they detect isn’t boundary with human-positive’s portal to Guidance recognizable by sixth sense. They can only detect the barrier put up by animal-negative. Obstruction, its trademark.

By “seeing” what’s not there the five senses mis-direct human-positive from its ascent to Self-Awareness across the boundary to the cause of animal-negative: to perpetuate self-unawareness with perpetual conflict. The mistaken notion that training human-positive’s attention on the opposite side, with more wildness, will dismantle obstructions put there by animal-negative unreality.

Putting Newton’s third law to work

When what understanding and Newton’s third law actually call for is training its attention on itself. On progress that can be made, with help from Guidance, to understand the Logic and Love of compatibility, sharing, service, individuality, originality and creativity. That with every insight, every step forward, there will be a corresponding retreat from obstruction.

What it takes to stop getting it wrong is to get it right. Yes. A lesson that could only be learned by choosing Relationship with the right Guide, who knows how to make obstructions erected in darkness disappear in the light. Quietly. Without violence. Without wildness. By not giving animal-negative what it thrives on: attention and opposition.

Respect for the laws of cause and effect

Then the way to restore equilibrium between human-positive and animal-negative isn’t only to learn with the Vision of Logic-Love what’s not there but to learn what is there. Yes. By allowing insights from intuition, spontaneous Guidance from Logic-Love, to open minds and hearts to the nature of human-positive.

To understanding that its reality isn’t separation. It isn’t the body-matter projected by animal-negative, herd mentality. Captive to competition and conflict, causing disorder, but Relationship defined by its Parents, Logic-Love. To manage the boundary with the judgment of Self-Awareness, able to detect and manage it. To manage Relationship. Because it understands and respects the laws of cause and effect that govern its behavior.

Doing it the easy way

Understanding why and how to manage the boundary poses questions that can only be answered correctly by Mind guided by sixth sense. Not misguided by the five senses of bodies placed beyond questioning by body-centered science, philosophy, psychology, and theology. Inactivating the underside of human-positive that’s animal-negative can’t be accomplished without activating the upper side.

A task that self-unawareness imposed by mis-managing the boundary and activating opposition can’t be done in isolation. It requires Guidance from the human-upper side that’s only accessible through the gift of Mind’s sixth sense. Through Relationship with Logic-Love that’s only possible with Guidance.

Humanized 

Your thoughts? There’s a big difference between relationships with one-faced two-sidedness and two-faced one-sidedness. Between the human-positive side and the animal-negative side. I hope I’m never de-humanized, but I guess it happens. 

Even if we guard our thoughts, even if we manage the boundary with respect, it could still happen. But respecting the boundary, knowing that our role model for Friendship is here to help -- Guidance from Logic-Love, – could make it less likely. It may even turn bad experience into good experience.

Published on Leave a comment on The Two-Wheeled Cart

In the shade of the aspens
over my two-wheeled cart I look to the sky:
You may not take this from me!
The gift for work and play in my Garden of Creation
given by my Parents with Love

To be free in the great outdoors,
beneath open skies in the sun,
attending to my children,
my Creations and my cart, the stuff of delight.
The stuff of permanence

Larry is still there, curled up in bed with a good book
Saddle on its stand beside the grand piano
The dining table and his boyhood bed
Magazines stacked from a career in writing
Equipment stacked from adventures
rafting down the wilderness
And the shelves with games
all of it still there.

Helen and Max are still there, with Clara Jane.
Lula Mae, my brother and sister and the dog.
All there because I was there
And I related to it, which makes it forever.
15 Glacier Lily Road and 1126 Greentree Road
all still there because I related to it
and Relationship is Love

I go back because the Love that I am
sees through what left to feeling that never left
A Child that’s Relationship misses it,
cries out for it, wraps his arms around it
Around what’s there and gone.

Around The Home that left and never left.
The Home where we are and will return to.
To the Love that’s you. My darlings, my friends.
The Feeling. Relationship.

I come to leave-taking.
To thought moved by feeling because I relate.
Because I am attachments under the sun
beside my two-wheeled cart,
loving and relating
in my Garden of Creations and relationships.

In the joy of Love and friendships forever.

Published on Leave a comment on Disrespectful Parenting and the Fallacy of Authoritarian Supremacy

Kindred spirits

“Value individuality and don’t try to dictate what. . . kids are curious about or how they express themselves. [Respectful parenting] is about seeing children as independent rational beings [instead of taking an] authoritarian [approach] where communication is one way with little consideration of a child’s emotional needs.” 

CNBC on Apple News Feed 01/07/23, quoting Margot Machol Bisnow, author, Raising an Entrepreneur (BookBaby 2022).

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In “Respectful Parenting” (January 8) I anticipated reading Bisnow’s book “in hopes that it will help with one of the main concerns of this website: the undoing of authoritarian “realism,” a dominant strain of philosophy that’s neither realistic nor rational. Responsible, in fact, for the abuse of children and every other living thing. The signature human mindset that’s become the signature of an entire geological epoch: the ongoing global atrocity we now call the "Anthropocene.”

I’ve since read the book and found that it has helped. In its author I feel a kindred spirit who shares my dismay at authoritarian insensitivity when the spirit of a vulnerable child is stifled by “authority.” By the misreading of authority by self-centered parents who turn its kindness meant to support with sensitivity, responsibility, and accountability, from the bottom up, into unkindness that rules with insensitivity, irresponsibility, and unaccountability, from the top down. Hallmarks of the authoritarian “realist’s” temperament, the root of troublemaking in every cause, every relationship.

The “bad thing” that Freud spent his career trying to understand and the friction that drove two professionals to pleading for “a better way.” The clinical psychologists Bill Thetford and Helen Schucman, who collaborated on A Course in Miracles, the guidance from metaphysics channeled by a perspective in but not of our world. Whose name was Jesus but could be any name we choose so long as its voice speaks for Logic and Love. For the Parents of their Child, Free Choice. Of us its projections.

The duty to speak, the duty to listen

The sentiments that follow speak from experience with disrespectful authoritarian parenting. Living it as a child and witnessing it as an adult. “Disrespect” is not meant for my own or others’ parents, who in their misreading of authority were no less motivated than I to do what’s right and in dealing with externals, with the necessities, did do a great deal that was right. Where we differ is in getting it right: what I perceive is a flaw in thinking so prevalent that it’s corrupted nearly all of Western thought. I don’t see the parents of my experience being other than human, only misled by the twists and turns of personality, genetics, and externals that account for personhood. By the same misperceptions that misled our ancestral Mind, the One Child that we are. "Disrespect" is meant neither for the Child nor for its projections but for the nature of the mistake. Authoritarian anything in human relations is inherently disrespectful.

It’s not for my sentiments to correct the flaw. It’s only my duty to use the gift of Logic and Love to think and feel. To observe, reflect, and analyze. To judge with conscience and compassion and then, when the time comes, to act. To use the gift of Voice to speak up and be heard. Whether my sentiments ring true or arrive at the right time is up to Authority. It’s not for me to say. But if authoritarian parents are serious about parenting; if they care for their children, it is their duty to listen. Not necessarily to change. To get it right, but to hear a voice other than their own and reflect on it. To look beyond the “authority” that stands in the way of understanding. Beyond the “authority” that isn’t, to the Authority that is.

If authoritarian parents want to silence me and my kindred spirit, all they have to do is listen. 

Voices that can’t be silenced 

Excerpts from Raising an Entrepreneur (New Harbinger 2nd ed. 2021):

  • All children thrive if they learn: to believe in themselves; to pursue their true passions; to find new ways to solve old problems; to see opportunity where others see the status quo; to be willing to take on a challenge without proper credentials; to work with single-minded determination to achieve a goal; to take a risk if the project is worth trying; to learn that building something wonderful is its own reward. . . . ; to view failure as feedback and setbacks as learning experiences; to dream big dreams. (368)
  • The more freedom you give kids, the more freedom they have to come into conflict with other people about the way things should be done. . . . [T]hey don’t have to fear conflict, and. . . it’s okay to challenge conventional ways of thinking and doing things. . . . (190)
  • The ideal mentor is driven by a different impulse -- to expose the child to challenges and equip the child to handle them. A mentor can also give a much-needed kick in the pants their parents are reluctant to give. And a child, especially a teenager, may listen to a mentor precisely because the mentor isn’t a parent. . . . [A] mentor with the right values becomes even more important. . . . (136)
  • A mentor just has to be someone the child respects, someone who comes into their life and shows them a new way of looking at the world, or who validates their self-worth by understanding the way they look at the world. (136)
  • [M]entors. . . could be family members other than their parents. . . . (364)
  • [A]n adult who demonstrates that it’s OK to do things differently, to color outside the lines, can be powerfully validating. . . A mentor can also broaden a young person’s view of available possibilities. . . . [A] mentor can show kids a whole world beyond the world of their parents. (135)
  • One way a mentor can serve as a bridge to the adult world is by giving your child a different perspective from yours. Even though it may not be easy, you need to trust your child to make the most of that different perspective, because it’s a key part of letting them create their own perspective -- the one they’ll keep refining for the rest of their life. (161)
  • [A] mentor provided not just guidance, but guiding principles -- attitudes and beliefs to be drawn on over a lifetime, especially in adversity. (150)
  • Mentors are good for everyone. But if children feel underappreciated at school, few things do more to boost their confidence than having someone who appreciates their talents. (136)

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Friendship requires mutual affection, respect, trust-honesty, and understanding between equals. Silencing a person’s voice with intimidation and bullying to assert authoritarian supremacy destroys affection, respect, trust-honesty, and understanding. It can never destroy a person’s inherent Worth but it does destroy friendship.

Anyone serious about respectful parenting must know that they may not ever, for any reason, assert authoritarian supremacy over their children. They may not silence their children’s voices with authoritarian intimidation and bullying. Nor may they attempt to do so with anyone who has a legitimate role in their children’s care and development. This includes role-modelers and mentors that every child needs.

The care and development of a child calls into play many more voices than the voices of their parents. Many more perspectives, talents and resources that children need. Cutting a child off from these resources to assert authoritarian supremacy is disempowering not empowering, mis-guidance not guidance. It is not respectful parenting. 

Persons are not objects

Private property is objects, not persons, that may be owned, possessed, and controlled provided that their use is responsible. “Responsible ownership” means exercising due care to recognize and mitigate its costs to others and to the community at large. In a shared world it can never mean doing whatever you want with what you own without regard for the interests of others.

Groups compete for competitive advantage or in games to win. Friendships are between individuals not groups. Individuals in friendships do not compete to win except at play. Authoritarian competition for supremacy defeats the purpose of play: excellence and good relations. It belongs neither in competition between groups nor between friends at play. Whether friends are competing at play or not it destroys friendships.

Individual persons are not objects. Individual minds, hearts, and souls may never, ever, be owned, possessed, and controlled for any reason. Behavior needing social controls is another matter. In mortal combat it doesn’t matter.

“Winning” in competition at play occurs between persons, not objects, where its purpose cannot be authoritarian ownership, possession, and control. “Defeat” is acknowledgement of superior performance. It can never imply submission to personal dominance. Totalitarian dictatorships fail for a reason: they are an affront to human nature.

Authoritarian supremacy is a sickness 

Excerpts from Raising an Entrepreneur (New Harbinger 2nd ed. 2021): 

  • Here’s the tough part for a lot of parents. If you want to incubate an entrepreneur, you need to lead by following. . . . It’s one of the hardest things for most parents to do: knowing what your kids’ strengths are; understanding what path would be good for them; and judging when -- and how -- to support that path. (319)
  • [E]ntrepreneurs need space and freedom to find their own way -- and, paradoxically, that makes emotional support from their parents even more important. When they’re not getting the immediate rewards and positive feedback that conventional jobs bring, their parents’ belief in them becomes even more valuable. (325)
  • Few things give kids more confidence than seeing their parent stand up for them. These moments also teach them to stand up for themselves. Future entrepreneurs learn how to argue for their own interests -- and . . . how to stand up for their vision. . . . By standing up for a child, you not only give the child confidence, you also model how to be an advocate when it’s called for. (190)
  • [S]howing [your child] how you do it when you stand up to authority on their behalf is. . . teaching a sense of entitlement (in the best sense of the word) . . [G]iving your child the tools to stand up for themselves by standing up for them when they are young helps them navigate the world successfully as an adult. (190)
  • The parents in this book gave their children the following messages: We love you. We trust you. We believe in you. We support you in whatever you want to do. We . . . encourage you to pursue [your passion]. We know you’ll do great things. We’ll always be here for you. Don’t worry if you make mistakes. . . . We’re excited to follow you on your journey. We can’t wait to see everything you’re going to accomplish. (367)
  • This kind of wholehearted trust in a child’s capacity is the secret to raising an entrepreneur. . . . (368)
  • The true test for parents is whether they can remain supportive even when their children seem lost or haven’t yet figured out how to make a career out of doing what they love or when they take a turn that makes their parents nervous. Following children’s lead. . . means supporting and encouraging them even when parents wish they were doing something else. (342)
  • [P]arents may tend to focus on what society thinks are good qualities, rather than on what motivates their kids. They ask, “Why don’t they have more discipline?” when the better question is often “How can I help them find something that inspires them to work hard?” (321)
  • Some parents get out of the way. . . , but others aren’t passively stepping aside and waiting for their children to do amazing things. Many of the parents I talked with did a lot to help their kids identify what it was they loved to do. (348)

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Civilization in a shared world requires democratic governance under the law that supports cooperation by sharing, affirmation, enablement, and empowerment from the bottom up. The assertion of authoritarian supremacy above the law, from the top down, has no place in civilized society and destroys democracy.

Civilization and democracy both begin at home. With individual relationships among equals who practice mutual respect, trust-honesty, and understanding. Civilization and democracy cannot be sustained by acts of will alone. They require the guidance of intelligence that applies responsibility and accountability to every decision. That applies every function of Mind -- introspection, reflection, and judgment based on logic, analysis, reasoning, evaluation, and understanding.

The assertion of authoritarian supremacy destroys civilization and democracy because it would rule by will alone. Because it excludes and silences the voice of intelligence. Because it is the sworn enemy of intelligence.

The assertion of authoritarian supremacy provokes and perpetuates conflict, combat, and violence. It is a perversion of “authority” that is a barrier to world peace. In individual relationships it is a sickness. A psychiatric disorder that is a barrier to mutual respect, trust-honesty, and understanding among equals essential to good relations.

The superficiality of sociability

Sociability confined to group-social relations where it belongs can be helpful, harmless, and playful. But anything “social” is associated with groups and anything “groups” implies power relations. Sociability that brings power relations into individual-personal relations doesn’t belong. The implied threat of authoritarian dominance is not helpful or harmless. It's hurtful. It can never be playful. It destroys friendships.

Sociability in group-social relations only requires displays of mutual affection, respect, trust-honesty, and understanding among equals. The agreeability and pleasantness of group-social relations is sustained by appearances. Group-social relations are necessarily superficial. Superficiality is the enemy of individual personal relationships sustained by sincerity. By the reality of mutual affection, respect, trust-honesty, and understanding and not just the appearance. Superficiality in individual personal relationships conveys hostility, insincerity, and misunderstanding. It is inherently disrespectful.

Causes that require respectful parenting 

Excerpts from Raising an Entrepreneur (New Harbinger 2nd ed. 2021):

  • A]ll entrepreneurs face moments of crisis when everything seems aligned against them -- when the world is telling them they’re crazy, their ventures won’t work, and they should take a safer, less turbulent path. It’s at moments like these that they may need a motivation bigger than themselves. . . . [M]any entrepreneurs are brought up to believe there is a larger purpose to which they are called than their own happiness or material success. . . . For some, the belief in something bigger came through religion. Others are fueled by a more general sense of morality or ethics. . . . (294)
  • Kathe, mom of the WordPress founder. . . always stressed values, not as abstract concepts, but as guiding principles for taking action. [emphasis added] (294-295)
  • For many who grew up to be entrepreneurs, the sense of belonging to something bigger than themselves is fundamental and has shaped their lives and contributed to their unshakable belief that they are in the world to make a positive difference. (295)
  • The webMethods co-founder explained. . . “I think about . . . my children from a perspective of what’s their purpose, where did they come from, and why are they here. . . . [P]art of why they’re here is to make a contribution. . . . Service has always been an important part of our lives.” (297)
  • [E]ven if you don’t believe in an organized religion. . . -- it’s important to raise children to have a strong character, to be moral, to be honorable, to have a set of values, to care about their community, and to recognize that today, their community may be the world. . . . [I]t was important for [these entrepreneurs] growing up to believe that there is something bigger than them, that there is a higher purpose than making money. . . . They all care deeply about making the world a better place and giving back. And that desire was bolstered by a moral perspective instilled in them in childhood. (317-318)

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The assertion of authoritarian supremacy is an attempt to adapt to a shared world that is fundamentally misunderstood as a world cast in its own image. As a world ruled from the top down by an arbitrary authority, above the law, ruling only for its own preservation and for nothing else. It is a failure of Logic whose function is to support understanding with explanation. It is illogical, and no function of Mind or will that’s based on it -- on getting context wrong -- can end well.

The assertion of authoritarian supremacy is wrong in any context, even in combat where neither victory nor survival requires it. This was supposed to be the lesson of the Versailles treaty that concluded World War I -- an assertion of authoritarian supremacy that produced World War II. Getting context wrong is a grave mistake. The retaliations of victimhood and vengeance, authoritarian trademarks, are always illogical.

The assertion of authoritarian supremacy that treats individuals as objects, that deprives them of a voice, is always a grave mistake that destroys the possibility of friendship and world peace. Causes that every voice from the next generation will be called upon to serve. Causes that require respectful parenting. 

Inspiration from a revered leader 

Excerpts from Raising an Entrepreneur (New Harbinger 2nd ed. 2021): 

  • [M]ost of the entrepreneurs believed in something: their beliefs fed their commitment to service, and their sense that they have a duty to contribute to the world. (365) 
  • Nurture Compassion. . . . Many of the entrepreneurs . . . were raised with the strong belief that they had to give back and, in fact, most of the entrepreneurs in this book do give back today. . . . (364)

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Abraham Lincoln reframed American democracy eloquently with his Gettysburg Address. He wanted to conclude the Civil War “with malice towards none; with charity for all.” In the spirit of understanding, not in the spirit of the Versailles treaty that came later, an authoritarian calamity. Lincoln was one of history’s most inspiring advocates of civilization and democracy and one of the most persuasive opponents of authoritarian rule.

He was one of history’s most loved and revered leaders, a role model for all seasons. Why do his image and monument in Washington resonate with the heart and soul of America? Because the gentle loving kindness that he spoke for was the antithesis of authoritarian supremacy. He was our respectful parent.

God bless Abraham Lincoln. God bless every parent who practices respectful parenting. And God bless you, even if you don't, for listening.

1

Published on 1 Comment on Lawrence Forsyth Mosher 1928-2022: Helpfulness, Harmlessness, and the Art of Reciprocation 

Larry’s great mistake was leaving Paradise

After Larry left Crested Butte, his constant refrain was he wished he had never left. He made many friends here and he loved them all. Of course, seeing more of his family back east warmed his heart, and they were good to him. But Crested Butte doesn’t call itself Paradise for nothing. Larry was in Paradise here from the moment he and his dogs arrived in South Crested Butte beside the Slate River. Then on to Teocali Ave. downtown, where he celebrated his 80th birthday, followed by #15 Glacier Lily Road, the grand finale to a life of accomplishment and fulfillment.

Crested Butte was Paradise for Larry on many levels. He was a spontaneous force of nature who belonged in the wide-open spaces. One of many qualities that endeared him to me, because I came to associate him with its playfulness, a role that he took on with his characteristic humor and gusto. He delighted in recognizing possibilities, turning them into good works. He was unstoppable, particularly if the good in any of his works was justice.

His Public Affairs Forum wasn’t for distraction. He meant business, the disciplined man and journalist confronting issues that matter with facts and fairness. Bring up the Middle East and this former reporter for the National Observer, based in Beirut, would go off on a tear. Passionate about presenting a view of Israeli-Palestinian relations that wasn’t rendered insensible by lobbyists. So principled and passionate that lobbyists lobbied him out of a job at the National Journal. He was right and he wouldn’t back down.

Who the heck was Simon Pierchek?

Understand this about the often riotously funny character we’re celebrating. His was an unprecedented life, in my experience, for serving causes that need serious attention. A life exceptional because so few have the time and inclination to act. If a cause got Larry’s attention, he acted. Acted to good effect well into a time of life when others would rather let go.

Our last phone conversation was an energetic two hours, and even with his comprehension impaired he gave it everything he had – concentration, intelligence, and abundant patience and good will. It’s what he brought to protect Paradise from the depredations of molybdenum mining and other foolishness. The story of the High Country Conservation Advocates – then the Citizens Alliance – was Before Larry and After Larry.
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David, that’s enough.
What? Who said that?
It’s me, Larry. I appreciate your kindness, but “before Larry and after Larry?” Really!
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He put life and good will into anything he joined, including the performing arts. Who can forget Chekhov’s Cherry Orchard, at CB’s Performing Arts Center, after seeing Simon Pierchek, a marginal character played by Larry, steal the show? How? By not blowing his lines! OK, I’m getting off track here. But his performance did prove that our guy was game for anything – anything that would uphold the ideals of civil society. Ideals that couldn’t be taken for granted then or now.

He couldn’t be there with empathy

This avid fan of Amy Goodman, whose heart bled for every victim of injustice, could “feel the Bern.” But he couldn’t feel your pain. The child of a grande dame performer who hogged the spotlight, he grew up in her image. A narcissist born without the empathy gene. And he paid for it. In relationships that couldn’t sustain the promise of intimacy. His character and values attracted his equals who expected intimacy with empathy, and he couldn’t deliver. Couldn’t be there for family, friends, or intimate partners. Couldn’t be there for me. Hearts were broken including his. When I received the call to join him in Crested Butte, seven years ago, it was to help heal a broken heart.

Why then, didn’t he leave behind a trail of bitterness? He did, to some extent, and he regretted it. Yet what he inspired, for the most part, was remarkable loyalty and affection. The reason, I believe, was what love meant to him and the effort he made in good faith to learn and earn it. To take a mind conditioned to look without for affirmation and attention and turn within for understanding. To understand empathy even if he couldn’t feel it. Because it genuinely mattered to him.

If he loved you, yes, he cared for you in his own way, as best he could, but it was the real thing. It was love worth having. Never mind if he couldn’t remember birthdays, you were important. Family, friends, colleagues. He wasn’t a careerist building a network of connections for personal advancement. Larry had no use for superficiality. He did it for love.

But he couldn’t be there with retribution either

Injustice driving Larry up the wall wasn’t all that set him apart. The usual response, even by loving hearts, is a will, a temptation, and sometimes an act that evens the score. Retribution. Punishment. The same genetics that deprived Larry of the empathy gene somehow left out this gene as well. The soul that was incapable of empathy was also incapable of retribution. Of targeting anyone personally with sustained anger, hatred, or condemnation.

The narcissist lacking empathy was a risk for intimacy, but missing the retribution gene made up for it. It made him exceptionally safe to be close to if you could accept that love was there even if empathy wasn’t. If you were satisfied with what was there and ignored what wasn’t. Maybe he couldn’t feel your pain, but he wouldn’t cause it either. And if he did, know that it bothered him greatly. What he wanted was the opposite. And if you had earned his trust and affection, he never stopped trying to accomplish it.
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David, you’re done. Nobody is listening. They just want you to stop talking.
Larry, if you don’t mind. It’s my turn to get some attention.
I can feel others’ pain now, and I can feel your audience’s pain all the way to Heaven.
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My favorite nickname: “Waterman”

Until I met Larry, I knew I wanted friends, but I hadn’t learned how to be a friend. I was a hardass missing the empathy gene too. Over the course of our four decades of friendship Larry didn’t teach me empathy but he opened the door to a virtual paradise of friendship. John Milton’s Paradise Lost describes what life might have been for Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden before the fall. Life for me before Larry felt like exclusion. Life after felt like inclusion. Like a kind of Garden of Eden where everything I’d ever dreamed of became possible.

He promoted my work in the National Journal with two major stories. Doors were opened. My insights into national water policy got a real-world test in the Red River Valley of the North. A success that extended my career into the Monongahela River Valley another nine years.

Why did this prominent journalist choose to make a nobody with ideas worth listening to? To gamble on a long shot and put his professional credentials at risk. Because national water policy was to him an incoherent mess. Nobody seemed to be dealing with it, and my ideas were worth a try. I had serious experience and knew what I was talking about. His journalistic instinct was right on, and I didn’t let him down.

And because of where our minds met: If something isn’t working you act to fix it. You get involved. And if Larry Mosher’s life role-modeled anything, it was involvement. Citizenship and commitment. You walk the talk. He was a professional of consequence and a person of conscience.

Face to face with fear: treading the rim of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison

Larry welcomed me into his vibrant social and professional life, rented me a room in his N Street townhouse and welcomed me into his family. His gifts never stopped giving. We socialized back and forth on his turf and mine, in different parts of the country, until, one magical July 4th weekend, 28 years ago. Where, at his ranch in Crawford, he and his companion Mary introduced me to Needle Rock and the Black Canyon of the Gunnison. To the West Elk Wilderness and to Crested Butte. And to my future wife. To many years of glorious marital bliss in Boulder.

He had already introduced me to Mary and her adorable daughters six years before, yet another family to be cherished for life. And now I was to have a family of my own, the first in 16 years, and the warmth of an extended family that lives on in Mary. Mary – a best friend who deserves a testimonial of her own. My cup runneth over, all thanks to Larry.
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Is that the best you can do, after all I’ve done for you?
It’s what you get for not letting me win at horseshoes.
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Long, long ago, far, far away, in La Jolla

What more could this good man possibly do for me? How about a year sharing his home and life in Paradise, a great blessing while I found a room to rent in LA near my granddaughters and saved money to pay for it. How about hosting my granddaughters and their parents for a holiday season in Crested Butte, where the tree tops glisten and children listen to live the magic of Christmas. An experience my granddaughters, born and bred in southern California, will never forget. How about sailing the Gulf on his 40-foot Island Packet sailboat, the same one that took him and his last great love to the Bahamas. All great blessings.

But the times now were different. Larry’s years were running out and so were his faculties. His last great love was to be the last. This fun-loving great spirit wasn’t looking for partnership in fun. His spirit just wanted the healing love of a friend. And that was what I was able to give back.

After I left, Larry visited Joany at her home in La Jolla -- his brother Robert’s widow. I came down from LA and got a memorable tour of Larry’s childhood haunts: the cove where he frolicked in the ocean; the family home on the bluff above; the fabled beachfront property that paid for his retirement; and the proper church close by where he and his wife were married. Where they had to get married, and Larry’s story took its first major turn.

Still, all of it witness to beauty, perfection, and abundance. If I were a biographer covering a legend, this was where it began. The key that unlocked its mystery, the yearnings that were almost palpable. I got a sense of a life full of promise that more than delivered yet could never be enough. His life, my life, any life.

What “Holy Spirit?”

Larry and I maintained close contact until the end, but with a difference. While his life that had kept me in its orbit was winding down, mine was expanding. With a steady stream of insights that I tried to share, to keep him going with purpose and meaning, safe from the isolation and despair of impaired memory and comprehension. I bombarded him with lengthy expositions on the Holy Spirit, an intimate Friend radiating the light and force of the Now, Mind and Love brought together in the moment, making the most of Life eternal. Did my rhapsodizing do any good?

The attention of a friend was always welcome. So, too, the love to which he was dedicated. But despite my best efforts, this gregarious realist, wedded to the great outdoors, who loved the fellowship of his church, never got its idealism. Never got the word. Intent on sharing my gift, I sent him to his minister for help discovering the Holy Spirit’s presence within. What did he learn? That the Holy Spirit is “energy.” A sure sign that the seeker prefers to search without. That my gift within can’t be his gift. A lesson for me to learn.
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By the way, you were wrong.
Wrong about what?
I don’t see any Holy Spirit. Everyone here has wings. We’re all wearing white robes, fiddling on harps, standing on little clouds. God is an old guy with a beard. You should have listened to me.
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All the same, Larry’s life was an expression of this inner Logic. He lived it. He did put it all together. Larry, if you’re listening, you transformed.

I’m off track again. Larry thought Match.com would yield more goodies if he could fool naïve females into believing that he was a guy “transformed.” A sensitive hunk who could bawl his eyes out with the girls. And he did bawl his eyes out. But, ever the narcissist, it was over his pain, not theirs. Larry, if you’re listening, forget about “transforming.” Forget about the Holy Spirit and just be yourself!

The touching trait of a playful child

It's a measure of the fulness of this man that I don’t want to stop there. I could go on for a lot longer.

Then let me close with this. To understand Larry Mosher is to understand that he needed your love and attention. And even though he knew he lacked empathy and couldn’t fully reciprocate, he would work to earn it. Whatever the obstacles, the love of friendship was so important to him that he would find workarounds. He would make sure you got from him what you needed. It was the touching trait of a playful child determined to share Love rather than deny it. That made him my benefactor, my cherished friend.

Goodbye Larry. Thank you and God bless.
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Thank you, David. Now, if you’ll let me have the floor, your audience needs to hear the truth. Remember that sign, “The reason I’m smiling is I haven’t the slightest idea what’s going on?” Well, you’ve just earned it. It’s yours now. Just kidding. OK, everybody, enjoy your freedom. See you in a bit. Ha ha.

Published on Leave a comment on The Place in Our Hearts

Paul Desmond riffing on his alto saxophone. For All We Know.

Reflections on a stream that come and go with the intricacies of improvisation.
That can’t help but be what they are --  us in reverse.

That we never get to see as we are.
Never get to know as we are.
Haunted by beauty.
Drawn by scent and touch imagined.
By the taste of Memory heard and gone.
A here and now, place and time, that can never be.

Yet the Now that you will always be to me.

Shorty Baker riffing on his trumpet. I Didn’t Know What Time It Was.

A call for love from time out of time.
And I didn’t know.

Notes gently trailing a caress across the whorl of preoccupation
Lifting me out of cold blankness into the warmth of acceptance.
By the vulnerability of subject in a room full of objects.
Cause beyond effect that needs no intoxicant, no commotion
To excuse the brashness of its intrusion.

I’m not done with it.
Can never be done with it, your call for Love.

Alyosha bidding Dostoevsky’s farewell. The Brothers Karamazov.

“There is nothing more wholesome and good
Than sacred memory preserved from childhood.
Let us be kind, then honest

And then let us never forget each other.

“You are all dear to me.
From this day forth I have a place in my heart for you all,
And I beg you to keep a place in your hearts for me.”

Published on Leave a comment on Here’s Looking at You, Kid

Everybody Comes to Rick’s

This was the title of the play that was to become the film Casablanca. And a good thing, too, because you’re invited to a year-end celebration and Rick and I don’t want any excuses. Everybody is invited and everybody belongs. It’s an imaginary birthday party, Auld Lang Syne, and a lot more combined. The Guest of Honor will be there. “Jesus” is associated with Christianity, but the Logic of reality and truth in A Course in Miracles covers everything. Its message of understanding is for everyone. Even for those who, like Groucho Marx, wouldn’t lower themselves to join anything that would have them for a member.

Many traditions coalesced to turn December into a madhouse of activities that strayed from their origins. Jesus’ birthday is one. But if you pan around Rick’s Café Americain with the camera, on the opening shot, you’ll see the setting is cosmopolitan. These people really do come from all over and not everyone gets excited over the same thing. Except the cause that brought them there and will send them on their way. The beauty of where they are, where we will be honoring life-changing, mind-changing events.

In our imaginations. I can get us started, but the guests are invited to attend to their own comfort so everyone has fun. Celebrating a new life and new year with festivity – food, drink, song and dance – and a rebirth: the rebirth of the sun. The winter solstice. Whatever event, whatever tradition, makes this a holiday for you. Temenos is all about fun. Mine to begin with but yours, too. One big sanctuary, a blend of differences where differences attract instead of distract. Where we can just Be.

Where Maxfield gets his inspiration

Casablanca honored cause that brings us all together. “The beginning of a beautiful friendship” between Rick and Louis, two cynics who joined the cause. Who set an example for change of mind, the event that our situation calls for. That, hopefully, we’ll get around to before it’s too late. Rick’s Café is part of my temenos. So is the airport where Rick gave up the love of his life for the cause. Gave up the letters of transit signed by General De Gaulle so Ilsa and Victor, a paladin of the cause, could take the last plane to Lisbon and continue their work.

Jesus could have authored the script. But so could any figure who embodies our ideals if they match. The name we give it doesn’t matter. Casablanca rose to the top of the list for a reason: it speaks to something universal that’s real and true in all of us. The thing that our guides still teach, that made Jesus’ miracles possible then and makes miracles possible now. The reality we were born into and the truth that still lives. We celebrate with a prayer of thanks for its guidance and comfort while we change our minds. For a reality that doesn’t have to be imagined and a birth that’s leading us there.

Call it Christmas Eve or whatever you want. You’ll be all in when you see Rick himself behind the bar serving the nectar of the gods. Beneath the branches of Ewah, the great tree of eternal life. The great tree of Logic radiant with lights and ornaments put there by children -- Owen, Courtney and Amanda – assisted by the goddess Psyche & friends: Puddy and Buster, Sparky, Cuddles, Grayheart, and William Roofus Marmalade, my orange tabby. The tree is their home where they play. Where Maxfield Parrish draws inspiration for his celestial art through a telescope in his treehouse.

The nocturnal lyric of wolves and loons

Ewah combines two trees from Avatar: the giant communal tree and the smaller illuminated tree that ended the story with resurrection. It represents safety – the benevolence of Logic that governs and protects all of reality and creation. The Innocence of temenos, its atmospherics decorated by the nature of our imaginations:

• The deep blue pure waters of Lake Parrish shimmering beneath an incandescent moon and stars
• Silvery clouds billowing above our gathering, where we can swoop and soar to the heights on Pegasus forever free from worry and regret
• The airport beacon sweeping its corner of Lake Parrish in red and green
• The nocturnal lyric of wolves and loons in the distance joining our chorus of joy
• Twin lighthouses standing guard at the Straits of the Pacific
• Up on high, the Course in Miracles Lighthouse, anchored to the side of Mount Olympian, beaming mindfulness and love, freedom and innocence, across the Aegean and beyond. To Athens, Bethlehem, and Alexandria, incubators of ideals: the ethics of Socrates, the virtue of Plato, the understanding of Jesus.

Ambiance courtesy of Maxfield, who will turn any request into a portrayal of heaven. Catering by the King Cole Grill at the Saint Regis Hotel in Manhattan. We will be met by the gatekeeper of the Garden of the Gods: Old King Cole himself will come down from Maxfield’s mural behind the bar to direct us to our choice of tables: beside the mountain stream with the pure, healing waters; around the campfire on Maxfield Island; along the shore of Lake Parrish; beside the children’s playground beneath the tree. Dance music courtesy of the orchestra at Rick’s Café, the same one that brought down the house with La Marseillaise.

Saving the best for the last

Caroling accompanied on the piano by Sam. Sam, who played it again for Rick and Ilsa. Sam, whose piano hid the letters of transit that saved the world. Well, not quite, but it came close. Before Auld Lang Syne we’ll sing As Time Goes By. If that doesn’t melt hearts and open minds nothing will.

I’m bringing honored guests. My darling granddaughters. Family from around the fireplace on Christmas Eve when I was a kid – mom, dad, and grandma, brother, sister, and our Dalmatian. The teenage girl who cared for me while my mother recovered. My son and his mother who left us too soon. My spiritual family: mother Persephone and father Apollo, sister Psyche and brother Jesus. Charmed escorts from Calvary to Ewah and resurrection: Black Beauty, Rhoda the show horse, and Ferdinand the Wall Street bull with the golden horns. Dobbin the magnificent sorrel flying draft horse, Pegasus – the free spirit of Love. Plus best friends forever like you. Who will you bring?

Here’s looking at you, kid.

Happy Holidays!!

1

Published on 1 Comment on Creating Great Friendships Through Sharing and Thankfulness

We cherish our friends.
How can we be there for them?
How can we make them happy?
How can we be close to them and stay close?

By being interested in them, curious about their stories
By listening to them and responding to what’s on their minds
By hearing what they need from us and how they’re feeling
By letting them know we are with them.

What can tell us what they’re thinking and how they’re feeling?
What they need from us?
What can we offer them that will make them happy?

Here are gifts that are valued by everybody
Gifts to be shared
Our best guides to what make us best friends
With thoughts on how our guides can show us the way

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Friends need the gift of Love

We can speak the Five Languages of Love:

• Make time for friends and be accessible
Give them our respect, our undivided attention, and our trust
Connect with them by being open --
By sharing our thoughts, our feelings, our lives

• Be there for them when they need help
Do things for them that let them know they can count on us

• Show our love and appreciation by being affectionate
Let them know that their friendship touches our hearts

• Reward their kindness with generosity
With gifts that let them know we appreciate them

• Encourage them by admiring their talents and achievements
Let them know that they matter, they are important, they are the best

Friends need the gift of Community

We can make friends feel welcome in our lives, so they know they belong
Welcome them into our circle of friends and family
“Treat friends like family and family like friends”

Friends need the gift of Health / Wholeness

We can have fun with friends that’s wholesome and disciplined
That makes happy without risking abuse, injury, or sickness
Without pressuring, or being pressured, to do things that aren’t good for us

Friends need the gift of Freedom

We can give friends space to think and choose for themselves
To express themselves as they are
To reciprocate (return) our kindness or not
Without judging them, blaming them, or pressuring them to be more like us

Friends need the gift of Worth

We must always practice good manners and be polite, to show respect
We can respect friends for things they do well but also for just who they are
By giving them our attention, our gratitude, and encouragement
By letting them know, when they are with us, no one is more important

Friends need the gift of Empowerment

We can let friends take the lead and be in control sometimes – take turns.
Let our friends win sometimes if we’re better than they are
Learn from our friends if they have something to teach us
Let everyone in on the fun and make it fair for everyone

Friends need the gift of Abundance

We can share the fullness and joy of life that’s in our hearts
The wealth that wants and needs to be shared
Let it join us in happiness when we are both feeling it
Or lift us up by sympathizing and caring for one another when we aren’t

Friends need the gift of Safety

We can make it safe for friends to trust us and play with us
Where it’s warm and welcoming
A place of tenderness and gentle loving kindness
Where they can be themselves without fear of being blamed and attacked
For who they are – personalities that aren’t like ours

Friends need the gift of Hope / Purpose

We can share what we see that leads the way forward
That renews our friends’ faith in themselves, their work, and their futures
Friends don’t let friends give up!

Friends need the gift of Beauty

Share the moments, the passion, the beauty, that inspire and move us –
Our triumphs against adversity, our discoveries
Stories, images, and music that make our spirits soar
That express the beauty, the spirit, of friendship

To all my shining stars, my friends
Who have the gift of Love and Abundance in their hearts
Doing their very best to share it
Thankfully.

Published on Leave a comment on What Is Intimacy?

The five languages of love are acts of service, gifts, physical touch, quality time, and affirmation.
Thank you Gary Chapman: The Five Love Languages: The Secret to Love that Lasts (Northfield 2015).
My favorite is affirming a person's worth, because the world keeps trying to take us down.

Quality time means intimacy, sharing lives.
• Being accessible mentally and emotionally, being honest and truthful.
• Being spontaneous, which means being with your friend-partner in the moment where they're at
• Being in their circumstances subjectively as well as ours
• Being always subjective, never objective, always intimate, never social.
• Letting "social-group" be the servant-protector of the individual rather than the other way around. I.e. rather than subordinating individual intimacy to social-group control / insincere superficiality.

Happiness in individual intimate relationships is sharing, empowerment, affirmation.
• it is never wealth-possession, power-control, competition / dominance-winning.
• It is never superimposing our circumstances-facts / agenda on our partner-friend's.
• it is subjectifying, never objectifying.

Love is one part coupling-connecting, one part uncoupling-letting go.
It is one part binding embrace, one part liberating freedom.
It is never any kind of predatory entrapment, coercion, or captivity.

Personality types who excel at love-intimacy and happiness are introspective, intuitive, and thoughtful.
They are also conscientious and disciplined, endowed with a strong sense of universal values.
They have an internal moral compass that doesn't need social norms for guidance.

Personality types who prefer superficial social relationships crave belonging that absorbs the individual into the group.
Not the kind of belonging that provides a safe sanctuary for individuals to experience intimacy.

Practice an intimacy of openness that fosters honesty and trust and happiness will follow.
Allow rules of possession, control, competition, dominance and winning to intrude and happiness will vanish.

Further reading: the gold standard is A Course in Miracles.
And a little something I wrote for kids: "Creating Great Friendships", my next post.

Be assured that anyone who takes the time to read this has the perfect personality type and the wisdom to achieve intimacy and happiness.

Go in peace with my blessing.

Published on Leave a comment on The Gift from “Gifts Differing”: A Greeting for the Holidays 2020

Not long ago, I asked a friend for a favor. It was a bit unusual and I knew it would require some thought, but not so unusual that it could upend a friendship. But it did, at least for a while, quite emphatically. The way my friend and I interpreted what happened was a study in contrasts. It was as if we lived in two separate realities, spoke different languages, and transacted business with different currencies, hers as worthless to me as mine was to her.

It was one of those things, a train wreck in a relationship we’re all familiar with. And yet it turned out to be very interesting. It revealed that my friend and I, who have been close over the years, are exact opposite personality types. I’m an INTJ and she’s an ESFP: INTJ for Introvert-Intuition-Thinking-Judgment, ESFP for Extravert-Sensing-Feeling-Perception. These are from Isabel Briggs Myers’ Gifts Differing, not as “scientific” as other theories some might prefer, but my Intuition trusts her Intuition.

The holidays are all about one universal value: everything that makes us family. Forgiveness is one of those things, and let me be the first to admit: If you’re reading this it probably means you’re a big nuisance but you’ve been forgiven – many times. “I love you in spite of your many faults” my dad liked to joke, usually to a good laugh. But it’s no laughing matter, because real forgiveness is beyond reach. At least it is for me. Especially if the big nuisance happens to be my exact opposite personality type.

My instinct in this case was to bail for good. I was on my way out the door. Then I read Gifts Differing and discovered that Isabel’s theory doesn’t stop at showing us how opposites wreak havoc with relationships. It shows remarkably how opposites can be used to bring us closer together and, in the process, promote personal growth and self-awareness. What philosophy, what faith, couldn’t use an analytical tool like this to bring about peace and forgiveness!

It’s done by accessing the opposites of your weak personality traits – mind-Intuition, for example, if you’re a body-Sensing type, -- preferably in consultation with someone who’s your opposite. You “pool your resources,” and at the end you’re both more fully developed, better balanced personalities, more sympathetic, more adaptable to change, and better equipped to forgive. That's the theory and, so far, it's working for me.

Isabel’s theory is inspired, not least because the metaphysics of A Course in Miracles calls for its practical application to individual circumstances, and students of the Course intent on practicing forgiveness will find that it’s a big help. If my friend is reading this she might be incensed that I’m talking about us, but not if her Feeling has accessed Thinking, and Perception has accessed Judgment. You see, what this is all about is making everyone more like me. Proof that what I've learned from her is the joy of spontaneity and laughter. Pity the poor INTJ Scrooge who never learns it!

Wishing you the Joy of Life and laughter for the holidays and all through the New Year.