Food for "Thought"

I keep coming back to the conclusion that only real change starts in the human brain.

Are far too many of us stuck in our uniquely human ability to churn out repetitive thoughts that are recycled by deeper programming and often come across as a sort of or kind of adolescent worldview? You may feel that way about this question.

Have you noticed how many times you hear “sort of” or “kind of” as a modifier in interviews or discussions. Perhaps it’s tied into the realm of utter uncertainty we all face.

Doesn’t it seem like irony is making a huge comeback? Intelligent people shouting their positions from their solo stages without realizing they are performing in the same farce they are ranting against, and therefore perpetuating it?

THINGS THAT CAME TO LIGHT AND THEN WENT BLACK AGAIN

“Corona is a black light and America is a cum-stained hotel room.” ~Megan Amram

Does anyone remember that quote? Here are some statements to consider as the nation turns once again to presidential electoral politics as salvation:

People are terrified about paying their rent while mountains of wealth are transferred to mega-corporations. Others live in tent communities or sleep on the streets. A large percentage of us have no savings. When we die, many of us will leave a legacy of less than zero as the average debt at the time of death keeps creeping upwards.

Taxpayers fund a military budget of over 800 Billion a year and our elected officials send military aid packages to US allies on an as needed basis. Our defense budget is the most bloated in the world, outspending the next country by at least 3 to 1. By funding Israel we are complicit in the killing of countless Palestinians. The US is funding genocide and ethnic cleansing there as well as spreading its military presence all over the world.

The First Amendment is about protecting free speech, especially important and meaningful when it comes to those with whom we don’t agree. The fundamental question to ask is, are we currently in the process of dismantling this basic human right by censoring the internet?

HEALTH-CARE

In my life, I’ve held many interests, including; theater and film producer, writer, director, actor, hypnotherapist, baker and father, among other things. I’ve also curated the arts and social justice events at my local café as a service to my former community in northern Manhattan. But my actual “day job” is working as a union payroll accountant in the film and television industry. It's how I've provided for my family for many years and how we've been able to receive health benefits. Full disclosure, I'm grateful for the paycheck and the benefits but it's a job I never in a million years thought I'd be doing. For the people in my life who know me well, it’s certainly not "me”, yet I've logged over 50,000 hours in the past 24 plus years.

My health-care benefits are consistent as long as I'm working consistently, even though part of how my industry works is moving from series to series. For example, in the past four years, I’ve worked on the HBO shows; The Staircase, The Penguin and currently, The Gilded Age. For non-union crew, it's a different story. Before the advent of the ACA (Affordable Care Act) aka Obamacare, it was entirely up to the studio or network to decide whether or not they wanted to provide benefits to their non-union workers. Since the bill was passed, it's been a requirement to provide health care for all non-union full-time crew. However, in both cases, before and after, when the job ends, the benefits are terminated and the crew member has the choice to go on a Cobra plan or be left uninsured.

For people who are unemployed, Cobra is prohibitively expensive. The injustice here is that the way the system is set up, it makes it almost impossible for those folks to afford health-care so they more often than not spend a certain amount of time between jobs, uninsured. I remember an email exchange I had with a non-union post production crew member who was wondering about his recourse after being laid off. Unfortunately, I told him, it's Cobra or nothing. The guy was understandably upset because he'll be applying for unemployment which will unlikely afford him the health-care he needs. It's a Catch 22 situation.

If you lose your job you shouldn't lose your health insurance. Even if you hate your job you shouldn't lose your health insurance. Moreso, if you get divorced you shouldn't lose your health insurance. When you turn 26 you shouldn't lose your health insurance. When there's a pandemic, you shouldn't lose your health insurance. You should NEVER lose your health insurance. Period!

I admit, I feel imprisoned by doing a job I hate in order to keep my health insurance. And I also realize that's a form of privilege because I'm fortunate to HAVE health insurance where 87 million people in this country are uninsured or underinsured. The case for Single Payer Socialized Medicine is always prescient. Unfortunately, you're not going to get it with Trump and you're not going to get it with Harris. As I told the crewmember, going out on a limb, maybe risking my job, "here's my two cents, and it's my opinion only, what's crazy about this situation is so many people like you are losing their jobs, and therefore their health plans, which is why we should all be fighting for Medicare For All." Not a very radical idea under the circumstances. And when’s the last time you heard the words: Medicare. For. All?

Co-pays and out of pocket expenses are not part of single payer health care. If we had the choice between single payer and private insurance, why would we ever choose to go out of pocket? Why would we ever choose co-pays. It’s only because there is this thing called the human brain that is susceptible to believing things like, “people love their private insurance”, and other repeated rhetoric that form thoughts they believe are our own. I personally do not like my private health insurance. It’s what I have and it’s better than no insurance but we can do much better.

WHY ON EARTH WOULD ANYONE WANT TO PAY FOR HEALTHCARE IF WE HAD A CHOICE?

The repetitive centrist question, “how are we going to pay for it?”, has evolved into a cosmic joke. Ask yourselves, why is it okay to spend 53% of tax dollars on funding genocide in Gaza and a proxy war with Russia but paying for what is integral to our basic rights - health care, social services, housing and education is ALWAYS questioned? Complacency is how democracy turns into tyranny. I think Plato may have said that.

HUMAN RIGHTS

We need to make sure everyone is taken care of, “made whole”, especially the most vulnerable. If possible, reach down deep, turn your gaze to the people around you, not the privileged but the suffering, the marginalized, the 87 million without adequate healthcare, the people without homes, the people suffering in this landscape of vast debt. There is a huge problem with rot within the political system. This should not go unnoticed by anyone. Forget about Blue and Red for the moment and consider LIFE.

Let’s fight for reality. Sanity saves lives.

Some people learn from destruction, some people learn from creation. Yet they go hand in hand. Crazy wisdom, right?

I spoke to a hypnotherapy client once about shadow work. For me the work is about noticing those parts of us in our deeper programming that emerge in times like this. If you shut your eyes you can feel where it is in our bodies. We can put our hand on that place and inquire. What’s the message? If all thoughts feelings and sensations are messengers, then what can I notice about that feeling of dread? How can that inform me? If my heart rate is rising a bit, if my breathing gets shallower, what’s the message? We can always take that pause and check in. These shadow parts are there to remind us of something. Perhaps we’re tuning into something connecting us to a part of ourselves that needs to be heard. And in our noticing, we may also realize that the shadowy bit is connected to something else, a part of ourselves that requires attention, like a need to connect, like a hunger to shift something. It’s a simple exercise that can bring us closer to ourselves. Yet it’s not always our first choice because it often feels uncomfortable or foreign to us. Noticing the deeper programming and realizing it may not be working for us anymore is a revolutionary shift towards empathy and compassion for ALL suffering.

When over forty thousand people are bombed into their graves and half a million people are sleeping on the street, is there anything more important to consider? And yet, there are people trash talking each other constantly, and it truly feels like so many are frozen in a kind of pathological adolescence. This to me is a mind virus, a million times worse than that flu that once spread around the world. What have you done that helps or support someone you don’t know? Think about it. Does throwing darts at people who question the actual intentions of a Kamala Harris or a Donald Trump feel good? Maybe for a second but then nothing changes.

How can we truly change the world when we can’t even look at another person and see them, really see them. Social media feeds this disconnect but when we are moving through the physical world we have an easier choice. Here’s a suggestion, sometimes transformation begins with simply saying good morning to a complete stranger on the street. The lens turns outward for a moment and the endorphins surge making us feel lighter. If your goal is transformation then it starts with intention and moves from there. If not then sit back, sharpen your choppers, take another stab at the protesters committed to ending the killing in Gaza. Then go watch MSNBC or FOX, or your favorite YouTube podcast, and feel righteous for a moment, maybe tweet something snarky. Meanwhile all the folks out there beyond the couch are still struggling, still suffering. But at least you’re comfortable. For now, anyway.

MENTAL SOVEREIGNTY

“You are not responsible for the programming you picked up in the download years of your childhood but you are 100% responsible for installing the upgrades.” ~unknown author

We need our mental sovereignty more than ever. A constant challenge for me is, don’t fall for false narratives. Stay awake. Russian interference is horseshit, Chinese interference is horseshit. No one is actually voting for Putin or the Ayatollah. Trending words on the internet like “brat” and “demure” are not who you are! The only interference is in your brain. Keep your eyes on the prize. It’s clearer than ever that the establishment doesn’t want us to win so we need to be on our toes at all times.

As we head into a new paradigm (yet again), I think about some useful tools to get us through the turbulence. The stuff all of us may know but perhaps push aside for some kind of magical elixir that will save us from ourselves. True, I do believe there are various magical elixirs available but maybe not in the form that you might think (author says with a wink). But yes, we have the choice to simply sit back and do nothing. After all, action is something that many of us would rather avoid. We could allow things to unfold, sure. But nah. IMHO there are things we can DO.

First thing, FEEL. Reroute, reframe and RECLAIM feeling. Enter back into a relationship with direct experience. Become aware of all the mind tricks that keep us from that – case-making, judgement, analysis, critique and interpretation to name a few. Then when all that thought comes up, and it will, self-correct when necessary, or useful to do so. And then move directly into the realm of feeling, the place where we started back when we crawled around the floor stuffing things into our mouths until the food-givers told us that was BAD and we should spit them out. Let's face it, we've been taught NOT TO FEEL in too many ways to count so let's reclaim the direct route to FEELING. Start by hugging a tree or feeling the warmth of your cup of coffee. Describe it in basic feeling terms. You might find that to be more challenging than you think. After all a tree is a tree, not a good, bad, ugly or beautiful tree. If I asked you to meet me in the park at the ugly tree, we'd never find each other.

I'm discovering more and more that comparison serves very little purpose. It's another form of case-making, of judgement. Our experiences are both unique and universal so there’s really no urgency or need for comparison. We're all in it together and there happens to be a common language that is NON-VERBAL. This is the great equalizer. We don't need to wait for leaders to lead. Leadership is within us all. It begins with a shift of consciousness, by looking through a new lens. We can start doing that before the clock strikes midnight. We can do that right now.

So before you start the pre-recorded case-making, analysis and interpretation, check in with those thoughts, feelings and sensations and simply let them move through you. FYI, thoughts feelings and sensations do not define us. They are weather patterns and are always temporary. Important to remember, always. What we're all born into is connection, spirit, essence. It's always been available to us and right now is no different.

Also, try using simple intentions, five or six words tops. It’s like building a bridge to transformation. And pull in your resources, your teachers and guides, a powerful piece of music or poetry perhaps. This helps us look past all the deep programming, all the propaganda, all the lies we're told by media, politicians, truth-tellers, spiritual teachers, hucksters, and takes us on the direct route to what's meaningful by connecting with those who actually see and hear you - your communities, your families, your friends.

Start with your breath and dropping into your body with awareness. Pay attention. Look into the eyes of love by turning your gaze outward toward the rest of the world. Once you begin committing to this practice, it’s almost guaranteed that genocide will become one hundred percent unacceptable. You will begin to look at those less fortunate than yourself with new eyes. And you will realize that perhaps you shouldn’t believe everything you think because you will hopefully realize that your thoughts are not really your own, they are based in repeated rhetoric and dogma reinforced by a series of emotional charges you learned between the ages of zero and seven,

We're taking off into a new realm of consciousness, a new paradigm. The sun is rising for all of us and we all have the capacity to embrace it. So perhaps this isn't really the late summer of 2024. Antonio Gramsci, the Italian Marxist philosopher, put it this way on January 1, 1916, "I want every morning to be a New Year’s for me. Every day I want to reckon with myself, and every day I want to renew myself. Because it will hurl into the trash all of these dates which have no resonance in our spirit and, if it creates others, they will at least be our own."

Everything is a resource. Every problem or feeling. Every stress or sensation. Every judgement or thought, even the casemaking I talked about above, even the ego, all the so-called negative emotions. When we welcome our resistance we can say, hello. And then, isn’t that interesting? Then we have a choice. Could be salvation. Could be destruction. Make room for the obstacles. They are also our teachers.

I have a new classification for people who feel things deeply. SAF. Sensitive as fuck. For us sensitive as fuck people times like these are totally triggering and the weight of it feels heavy. If this traumatic time has taught me anything so far, it’s reminded me about letting it all crumble to the ground and taking the direct route to my essence, to the grief I feel for the tremendous suffering all around me. Let it all breathe and be and let the hard stuff be my teacher.

“Nothing is ever solved. Solving is an illusion. There are moments of spontaneous brightness, when the mind appears emancipated, but that is mere epiphany.” ~Patti Smith, from Year of the Monkey

WEALTH DISPARITY

The 500,000 plus homeless people in our country are invisible to most of us privileged enough to have a roof over our head. They are especially invisible to the wealthy oligarchs who have taken over our country. The programmed response is that we have a “mental health” issue in this country. No, we have a CLASS issue in this country!

There was woman in my neighborhood named CeCe. She was homeless, an addict, and could be a real pain in the ass. She had a big heart, felt things deeply and had no problem getting up in your face. She loved to dance, sing, and play even though she literally had no voice (she likely had throat or lung cancer). Democracy is the rule of the many. Poor people outnumber the rich. Therefore, democracy is the rule of the poor. This is not a democracy. CeCe died on the street. She had no rights.

These millionaires and billionaires never ask where the money will come from when it comes to wars and hegemony. They never ask how we will pay for prisons and police. But if we ask about housing, healthcare, climate, or college, they sneer and berate. Why is spending taxpayer dollars on defense deemed democratic and spending taxpayer dollars on what matters most to us off the table? Why aren’t we deciding how we spend our tax dollars? We know the answer - it’s because elections are bought and sold by the corporate oligarchy. You know this, I know this, and yet here we are. Again.

Is it okay to have some relief? Is it okay to be okay? When did this file get started? Can we simply say, done with that, not reading that data any longer? When I hear the sound of a dove, I feel safe. That cooing sound centers me, provides comfort, brings me to a place of calm, the true Mother, nurturing angel presence. I have an old print on the wall in my living room, part of a series of block prints by my distant cousin, the French artist Paul Elsas. A dove clutching an olive branch on Noah’s ark, bringing the news of land. I imagine the ark floating on a sea of tears. I close my eyes and picture the ocean representing all suffering, all the tears wept by humans past, present and future. I gasp and then listen for the dove cooing, speaking to the story of not enough, offering an olive branch of peace along with the news, there’s another story out there for you to land on as you traverse this sea of tears. The great Mother wrapping us all up in her arms -- the message is, pay attention. Close your eyes and envision the warmth of this alternative story and let the old story, the insidious programming of our pain, all that data, drift by in the ocean of tears. Watch as how suddenly a rogue wave takes it all and washes it away along with our collective suffering. Watch it go and say goodbye. Goodbye! And then say thank you with supreme gratitude. Thank you! You are not needed any more yet you’ve been worth your weight in gold. So long and thanks for the memories! And our inner voice gives us the gentle reminder that we have experiences yet they needn’t define us.  We have a body but we aren’t our body. We have an asshole but that doesn’t mean we are one. As thoughts, feelings and sensations enter the conscious mind we can inquire, what do they mean about me? What do they mean about others? What do they mean about the world? And we can then close our eyes to let this data drop in and realize the choice to inquire is always available. And perhaps we’ll hear the cooing of the dove, or whatever else spirit might offer us.

Indigenous cultures tend toward animistic earth-based spiritual practices that honor the local environment and elements. This earth-based "shamanism" predates organized religion, making it the earliest expression of spirituality. Tragically, many indigenous peoples around the world who carried the knowledge of these original earth-based rituals and traditions have been killed or colonized over the last five centuries. Although colonization and the domination wrought by expanding kingdoms and empires have existed for thousands of years, the last five hundred years have seen the most brutal destruction of native ways of life in all parts of the world. This colonization has been fueled by the agglomeration of land ownership by European kingdoms, expanding their reach across the world by extracting resources in the form of objects, precious metals, rubber and worst of all -- human beings as slaves. At the same time Christian missionaries arrived in the new colonized lands. Under the guise of education and healthcare they disrupted indigenous traditions and aggressively imposed their belief system on native people. The disregard for indigenous traditions and blatant devastation of earth-based ways of life continue to this day through the unbridled growth of capitalism and its resulting destruction of forests, rivers and mountains where many indigenous peoples live. Thus, many people have been severed from their original ways of tending their connection with one another, their community, and the living earth. ~Françoise Bourzat

Now the Palestinian people are on the chopping block. Very few people I speak to know the actual history of the region and prefer to start history at October 7, 2023. Don’t believe everything you think.

Let’s please please please stop conflating the idea of JOY with empire. The present exists to repair the past and prepare the future.

In the fall I was river watching in Inwood Hill Park. For some reason, hanging on for dear life with clenched jaw, knit brow. The “Hudson” River, so-called by white men, was moving north I think. Seemed slightly confused actually, maybe the tides were turning. I sat on a rock overlooking the water, traffic moving both directions on the “Henry Hudson Parkway” below. The true name of the River is Mahicantuck, meaning the river that flows two ways. I bowed to indigenous wisdom likely imprinted in that very spot, Lenape land, not mine, not yours. Sensing the vigilance they must have once felt, I remembered how the original stewards of this land were steam-rolled by empire, wiped out by genocide. I wept for them and the whole human race who, along the journey of history, succumbed to the narrative of manifest destiny, of empire, the main story of this age of separation and destruction. I too am complicit, having fallen for it, and struggling to awaken. It’s not easy! Those who control the story, the narrative, control everything. I take one step toward truth and three steps back into the collective mind virus because so often the story feels benign even though it’s insidious. I wept for all of us but most of all for those who have suffered the most.

The River keeps flowing despite attempts to pollute it, efforts to divert it, empire building upon its banks doing its best to control it. Yet, I imagine it will be here long after I’m gone, plodding on toward the sea, and perhaps it will grow stronger. I hope so. I hope the Palestinian people and the CeCes of the world survive this awful liminal time.

The real plague is mind, and stories. And it’s clear how stories are either rigid or expansive. Two clear paths. Which path to take? Asleep we choose to embed ourselves in a world of suffering. Awake we create new stories and choose life.

“Now the world's full of trouble
everybody's scared
The landlords are frowning
cupboards are bare
People are scrambling
like dogs for a share
It's cruel and its hard
but it's nothing compared to
what we do to each other
to each other.”

~Mike Scott, The Waterboys

Stop the killing now. Choose life.