Month: February 2021

Freeze

The words are hard to come by this week. I have to admit that it is difficult to watch my fellow Texans not just in pain, but in danger, from nearly 2,000 miles away. That said, I have to first express deep gratitude that my parents, who live in Houston, only lost power for a few hours. Thank God is all I can really say to that. My parents are getting up there (I can hear my Dad now saying that they are not getting up there, they are up there!), My mother in particular has been in a state of compromised health for years now. It’s bad enough that they have been in a state of high risk due to COVID-19, and now this. Also, thankfully, they both recently received their second vaccine shot. So while Texas isn’t quite out of the woods yet, at least they have turned the corner.

You might imagine that I know a whole lot of people in Texas. I do. I haven’t been able to check in with all of them. I know that many were without power and heat for multiple days. Almost all have been without running/potable water and still are. While I haven’t heard any reports from people who I directly know having water damage in their house, I certainly have heard such reports from people with only two degrees of separation, and no doubt I just haven’t heard yet that this has in fact happened to people close to me. This is just to say that my parents were the exception, not the rule. The fallout has been as widespread as anything I have ever seen in Texas… Harvey included. 

One thing that I have found interesting since moving to Vermont is how the persistent trials and tribulations of another place tend to fade into the background. Having spent 50 years of my life in Texas, I know up close and personal what those trials and tribulations are for Texans, and Houstonians in particular. I know the fear and trauma of hurricanes and flooding, of draught, of heat waves, of freezing pipes and roads. I always thought that when such an onslaught was coming that all of my friends who lived elsewhere, indeed people all over the country if not the world, were paying attention and bracing for us out of empathy. 

Now I can say that is only partially true, although it is at least partially true. Yet it is difficult for us to be empathetic to something that is not only so far away, but is also something that we are not and/or have not personally experienced. The human condition in all parts of the world has to respond to challenges, both natural and manmade. There is a certain amount of hardness that comes from just having lived life. It’s the impulse to say “shit happens,” followed by “get over it.” We all have our own lives to attend to, after all. So with our hyper-connectivity, we have what I would call a cursory finger on the pulse of events across the globe. Of course we tend to respond to those that hit closer to home than those that hit on the other side of the globe. 

On the spectrum between fight or flight, I fall squarely on freeze. I mean freeze solid, people. There should be a picture of me next to the explanation of the term “deer in headlights.” I think this is in part because my highly analytical mind is constantly churning an infinite number of scenarios to determine the best course of action (of course combined with a high fear of failure operating in the background). When push comes to shove, I can’t complete the process fast enough to respond in a timely manner. The other part of it has to do with being a highly sensitive person. The inputs themselves can be overwhelming and so deeply emotional that it is hard to to hold. So I freeze instead. 

I have to admit that I feel much safer in a multitude of ways since moving to Vermont, relatively speaking. That isn’t because Vermont doesn’t have its own challenges, it’s because it is consistent in facing them and working hard- and paying the price- to meet them. But I won’t turn this into a political criticism, in spite of the anger that I share with so many of my fellow Texans. I don’t want to invoke the side of me that wants to fry Ted Cruz in the Cancun sun in the face of real, widespread trauma. I have to say here that I am now grateful for our own trauma last Fall. As you may recall, Shannon and I found ourselves in our own situation without power, heat, and water in the face of freezing temperatures for weeks as we desperately scrambled to find a new place to rent for the winter when our first place fell through. I am here to say that the trauma is real. If you haven’t experienced something like this, you can’t even begin to imagine it. I am grateful that I now can. It enables me to be fully empathetic with what Texans are now experiencing. It enables me to stand into it without freezing. 

The thing that we all need to start getting real about is that trauma is being heaped upon trauma. Take Houstonians. Some Houstonians’ houses were flooded in massive flood events in the couple of years leading up to Harvey in 2017, only to have their houses flood again after they had just completed renovations. I literally know people who this happened to. Just going through a hurricane is traumatic, to say nothing of the aftermath. It takes years to get back to normal, and some never recover. Just as Houston was returning to a sense of general normalcy, COVID hits, then social unrest (and remember that George Floyd was a Houstonian), then the Capitol Insurrection, and now this. Nevermind all of the ongoing personal demons that each and every one of us faces. 

Here’s my point: we can’t do this alone. We weren’t designed to. Here’s a bit of straight-talking Texas realness for you: it’s time to drop the rugged individualism bullshit. It’s also time to drop the Us vs. Them bullshit. Any simple observation reveals that none of that is working for anyone. Nor will it. Ever. As I continue to be slow to be reactive, I instead reach for my higher Self. In the process I reach for higher Wisdom, from whatever directions that happens to come. Now that I have set the stage, here are the two things that are speaking to me this week.

The first is Beto, who tirelessly shows up. Nevermind politics. The guy is for real. He is on the ground. He is for everyone at the end, beginning, and middle of every day. Hell, he is for everyone in the middle of the night. Even without an elected position, he is the best leader that Texas has at the moment. If you find yourself empathetic to what Texans are going through right now, consider giving to his fundraising and organizing effort to provide relief:

www.poweredxpeople.org

The next thing is bigger picture than this week’s traumas. This is getting back to that divide between Us vs. Them. We have to heal this divide first and foremost if we have any hopes of surviving, much less thriving. Every single last one of us needs to focus on this. Urgently. I am currently nine chapters into an extraordinary book that I would make every single American read if I could:

Don’t Label Me, by Irshad Manji

Please, please read it. Let’s get on the path together. It’s time we unfreeze and learn to be like flowing water, while accepting that rocks have their rightful place in the world. Want to know what I am talking about? Then read. Wishing you warmth and water wherever you are in the world. 

Verdict

To be honest, I find myself in a quandary these days- half of me pulled toward wanting to fight with all my might for everything that I believe (and love), while the other half of me sits here watching all of the old tired antics unfolding and refusing to engage. In fact it is precisely because I am inhabiting this in between space that I have found it hard to come to this table to write. But instead of waiting until I have it all figured out (which I never will), I’ll do what I intended to do on these pages from the beginning: I’ll share with you openly and honestly my inner workings.

Where to begin? I last wrote in the wake of the Capitol Insurrection. Since that time, as I shared in my last post, I and many of my fellow Princetonians have been reflecting on, discussing, debating, and moving toward action in response to the role my classmate Ted Cruz has played not only in the Insurrection, but also in helping to create the great divide that exists in this country. It would be a mistake to treat the Insurrection in any way as an isolated incident. Rather, it is a clear reflection of exactly where we are. And in that sense, we are all of us- every single last one of us- responsible in some way. Be that as it may, let’s not jump to false equivalencies here when doling out our guilty verdicts. Power, in the currently rudimentary way that we perceive it, matters. The behavior of those who have it therefore bears much more weight than that of those who are struggling for just a little piece of that pie. 

So if you want to know where I stand, I stand for bearing responsibility. We must be accountable for ourselves and to each other. In my ideal world, we each hold ourselves accountable. In fact, I value this principal so highly that it is probably the greatest source of my judginess when I believe that somebody has failed to do so in regards to how they have behaved toward another. By the same token, to hold oneself accountable is the surest way to earn my respect and trust. I can forgive anything and embrace the messiness of humanity so long as we reflect and acknowledge where our thoughts and actions are not reflective of our Higher Being. And to be clear, holding oneself accountable isn’t the same as taking the blame. Again, we are all to blame so far as the blame game goes. It is instead to simply admit that I took part in this in some way, and I am willing to look at that so that we can correct course moving forward. 

Yet that is my ideal world. That is the world of a highly intelligent and evolved species, such as the ones that God describes in Conversations with God. We are nowhere even close to such a state of being (maybe). In the meantime, when others fail to hold themselves accountable, we must do it for them if we have any hopes of ever attaining our Higher Selves. We must do so, not so much as a judgement, but as a course correction that looks something like this: “You were thinking that you are something less than Who You Really Are, and therefore you said or did this thing that is out of sync with your higher truth. We are here to remind you that you are more than what you were believing in that moment, and if you could remember that, you will think and act differently moving forward.” In the case of those who utilized their power to incite the Insurrection, we do have to start this process of holding them to account by first removing their authority over others. 

In the  meantime, I am holding myself to my own standard. I am looking myself in the mirror. That is the very reason that I find myself now hesitating rather than throwing myself full throttle at the jugular (which I happen to be pretty good at). I am slowing down to take a look at what I haven’t been seeing. I am stopping to listen more deeply. I am resisting that urge to reduce “the opposition” to a subhuman creature without a heart or a soul, a highly questionable mind, and an upside down moral code. And as I slow myself down, what I find myself asking is, how do we get out of this mess? How do we dismantle two alternate realities and construct one that expresses the truth about Who We Really Are? 

That’s a very hard question, indeed… because both sides believe beyond the shadow of a doubt that their version of reality is already expressing the (not their) absolute truth, while the other side is absolutely not. I won’t even pretend to know how to extract a person from a cult. I assume there are experts out there in that department, whose insights might prove helpful in this moment. I do believe that we need such help. Yet I will also say that every single last one of us would benefit from a healthy dose of cult brainwashing extraction. If you find that insulting or irritating in some way, then I refer you back to my observations on the fallacies in our collective worldview. The truth is that the source of our divide lies in the fallacies that are foundational to our collective worldview. No amount of business as usual is going to save us now, nor would it be helpful if it did. 

Finding my mind stumped by the question, I am looking elsewhere for answers. This is not to say that I can’t come up with a highly articulate rebuttal aimed at said jugular of, say, Ted Cruz. Oh, I can. My mind has been churning away on that one for years now. I just happen to know that no matter how logical, foolproof, or powerful my argument may be, it won’t work. That is to say, it won’t change Ted’s mind, nor the mind of anyone else who lives in his parallel universe. While I can’t say that I have ever known Ted well, I can say that I have been familiar with his perspective since he was seventeen. Since that time it looks to me like it has not budged, not at all. As far as I can tell, the only thing that is going to change Ted Cruz’s mind is a divine intervention. Until then he will, in my opinion, remain lost and imprisoned within the constructs of his own mind. It is easy to think that he is being willfully evil. I don’t think that is the truth, though. I think he is simply lost and doesn’t know it. His childhood indoctrination was so strong that he was never able to question it, and has hence spent his entire life to date beefing it up. He is in no way exceptional in this regard. 

So I find myself putting the arguments down to give myself some space. In this space I am remembering Who I Really Am. I can’t do that without also remembering Who We All Are. In that space I have been grateful for the voice and guidance of one being in particular these days: Shaman Durek. I have mentioned him in this blog before. I am doing so again because I find what he is focusing on in this very moment to be spot on. Specifically, I consider him to be the Chief Cult Brainwashing Extractionist that we are so desperately in need of. Just this past Wednesday, he addressed perfectly how to overcome our mental traps in his Be Your Own Damn Guru Series which, among other deprogramming, you can find here:

Be Your Own Damn Guru

Specifically look for the BYODG Heart Mapping recording, which isn’t posted yet. Warning: nobody likes to be deprogrammed. Please remember that if you dare to take a look. You may also find it helpful to remember that Shaman Durek’s end game is for each of us to step into Who We Really Are, not for anyone to become a follower of him or of anybody else. The problem being that we have all been programmed to believe that we are something less than what we actually are. Imagine how hard it is to extract somebody from a cult. What is the difference between a cult and any other given worldview? The hard truth is that there is none. Yet we have to have one of these worldview thingies. So my best advice it to choose wisely, keep a close eye on it, and constantly reevaluate whether or not your chosen worldview is serving Who You Really Are. If not, time to let it go.