Spiritual Healing (part one)–Living Life On A Wider Frequency Of Being

Spiritual Healing (part one)

Many of the insights of the saint stem from their experience as sinners—Eric Hoffer.

     What if a real miracle was trying to happen in our lives, but indifference and its favorite dance partner, ignorance, kept us from experiencing it?   Non-collaborative attitudes and unhealed hearts are the foundations for imbalances and chaos in our world and within our personal lives. Those who refuse to look at the toxicities within themselves and within our culture become unconscious and unwitting contributors and supporters of spiritual darkness. Indifference and ignorance spawned hatred threatens to destroy everyone and everything. Tragically, in this age, collective outpourings of love and support for victims of gun violence,  domestic abuse or white supremacist terrorist acts, continue to powerlessly chase after heinous acts, offering only  band-aids to all such cultural arterial wounds.

There are long-term solutions that may be practiced at home.  Through Insight and mindfulness, while living life on a wider frequency of being, our minds and hearts transform, making us much less likely to become the source of suffering for others as we become living examples of loving non-violence in action. Insight plants the seed of the miracle into our minds, and mindfulness is the great gardener of that miracle, resulting in more abundant, healthy crops of happier, more peaceful, loving, and ordered thoughts.  My insight into the Universe and/or myself might be entertaining reading for some, but it does not bring transformative change to others, unless they also develop insight. Yet, insight is not taught as a required class in the school system, so we must be willing and prepared to develop it through our own life experiences.  Our lives must cease becoming disconnected memories, but instead morph into important feedback to our consciousness so that we may reflect upon them and dig deeper into ourselves to uncover our wisdom..

   One of the most significant insights I have made is a direct result of a science class I attended in fourth grade. Mr Hill, our Principal and co-teacher of the fourth-grade class, was going to experiment, and he wanted to teach the students about the power of observation. Each class member was to record everything they observed on a notepad to completely describe what they had witnessed. He had heated a portable electric stove. He then grabbed, with some insulated tongs, a thin sheet of metal and set it on the burner. The metal immediately began to distort in size and became quite disfigured, and the metal no longer looked like it did before. I watched, yet I could not describe what I had just witnessed. I had never seen anything like that before and was struck dumb by it. I saw two kids writing feverishly on either side of me, and in my need to be accepted, “fit in,” and not look stupid, I looked at the two student’s writings and saw how they described the event. I used their expressions to help me to create my descriptions.

   We are responsible for assigning words to that which we observe, yet we are not all skilled like poets or scientists, so it can be a challenge. At an early age, I saw how dependent I was on others to describe events I did not know the words for. As a result, I have seen how the mystery of life can sometimes get overrun by such a secondhand narrative and experience.  Added to this is the family’s need to create order through all of its “shoulds” and “should nots” to establish and maintain control and establish a continuity of reality within its shared story, and we can see that we do not start life as the authors of our destiny.

      When we extrapolate this need to fit in and to belong to all collective gatherings of human life, including religion, politics, family, and society, we can see that blending in, though it may bring a sense of belonging, is the potential foundation for illusion within all such bodies of experience. We all initially buy into the provided narrative, and fill it with our spirit, giving it life within our consciousness.  This takes on immense significance when I consider that I backfilled into my incomplete sense of self the same paradigm of poor self-esteem that my father was misguided by, especially throughout his early life. That same poor self-esteem is familiar to many within our society, motivating us to push ourselves hard and overperform just to feel accepted by ourselves and each other,

   In my junior year in high school, a writing class required me to keep a daily journal and record my insights into myself. The problem was that I needed insight, at least as far as putting into words what the interior nature of my mind and life looked like, and I had very little of it. I had a poor sense of self-esteem, poor body image, and low social intelligence, but I had no narrative to relate to others or myself with around those deficiencies. I did not spend much time describing events happening around me and, instead, listened to others as they described their own experiences, which I either accepted and supported or rejected and judged. But describing the interior dimensions of my being seemed an impossible task. I had to submit something, and in desperation to get a decent grade, I went to a bookstore to find a book to help me ‘look at myself.’

   Hugh Prather had written a book called ‘Notes To Myself,’ and I stumbled upon it and bought it. I was so empty of complete statements about myself and my life that I copied statements from Hugh’s book and tried to ‘personalize’ them so that it would not be evident that I had copied his work. I got my passing grade, felt relieved, and continued on my awkward, highly dysfunctional path through high school. I was near the top of my class and near graduation, yet I was entirely out of touch with most of my classmates and myself. I had hoped that to graduate from high school finally might change, if not end, much of my social anxiety and sense of disconnect. Of course, this could not be further from the Truth. When I entered my freshman year at the University of Portland in 1973, I was lost again, and I had no internal maps to guide me through the complexities of college life. The use of pot, alcohol, and relationships with emotionally diseased people continued in earnest, obscuring any clear vision of my goals, and I constructed many self-destructive roadblocks that impeded all progress.

   As I look back, this verbal and emotional disconnect would have been great stuff to write about in the high school class, but I was living a lie without having the words even to describe it. Telling the Truth to others, let alone to myself, might force me into changes that I could not embrace or consider as possibilities. The absence of personal honesty and insight, the incapacity to create a narrative around it, and the inability to communicate my distress with others doomed me to a deteriorating life experience. This limited my choices so much that for many days and years, I felt trapped in a prison, with interior windows sometimes only opening to Hell. I did not even have an adequate description to communicate my Hell to others.  This is the secret behind the motivation for many mysterious suicides.

   There might be a need for many humbling experiences to bring a person to reject their current dysfunctional and materialistic course. Looking good or seeking acknowledgment from the people we don’t even consider part of our support group, coupled with the draw of the all-too-often empty Capitalistic promise of accumulating millions of dollars, are strong magnets to hold peoples’ attention away from any actual change.

   We can’t buy an actual stairway to heaven. We can’t even rent the steps to Heaven without severely damaging ourselves. There is real work to be done, and Jesus, our guru or our therapist, can not do it for us. We cannot see clearly if our headlights are dirty and it is night. If our mind is cluttered with illusion and materialism and continues to tune out healing feedback, we can not see clearly. We are heading for the ditch or a head-on collision with others if we don’t take care of our consciousness. The culturally proscribed images of career success and a beautiful appearance are materialistic and are merely limited placeholders for our unlimited energy.

   The chasm that exists between us and the other, and us and God, are self-created images and part of the nearly infinite narrative that we, our family, our religion, and our culture created in ignorance and misunderstanding. That chasm is us until we see its unreality. Then, all that we see, and will ever see, unto eternity is the unified self and its infinite expressions of its boundless loving creativity, which “you” and “me” are now a most conscious and active part of. Poor self-esteem ceases when we realize who we are in Spirit and Truth.

“Nevertheless, I tell you the Truth. It is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper (Comforter) will not come to you. I will send him to you “—Jesus of Nazareth.

God (Love, Grandfather, Great Spirit, Higher Power, etc. ) helps, yet cannot help completely those who are unwilling to look at their lives differently.

Let us stop attacking ourselves with poor self-esteem. Let us stop chasing Capitalistic idols. Let us stop practicing religious idolatry.

Let us love ourselves.

Do we get it now?

Enlightenment

If we can awaken from the dream of separation from our true and noble nature, we can be healed, and life’s beauty, awe, mystery, and majesty can predominate. 

With our awakenings, the one true God witnesses life through our eyes. Otherwise, our lives remain dimmed, and we are relegated to a second–hand life experience.

So,

• Why do so many people suffer from poor self-esteem?
• Why is there so much pain, suffering, loneliness, and disillusionment in America?
• Why is America enveloped in such divisive and hateful political discourse?
• Why is there so much disease, mental illness, alcoholism, addiction, suicide, and murder?
• Do you understand that we all have an innate capacity to make dramatic, positive life changes?
• Do you have an intense desire to help yourself and your world?
• Do you know who you are beyond what the family and culture think and what you came to this planet to do?

Don’t you know that your body is the temple of the living God? Don’t you know that you are the light of the world?—Jesus of Nazareth

Who does not want to be a light in their own world?

Do we even know what that question truly implies?

The art world has attempted to capture what an individual living in the light might look like. Over many centuries, we have seen artist’s renditions of saints and sages, with paintings often showing the blessed person as having a golden light about them, usually concentrating around the head.

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Is this “divine light” a natural phenomenon or only an artistic interpretation of that which may not be entirely captured by art, science, religion, and philosophy?

The physiological Truth about humanity is that humans can emit light through bioluminescence, yet that light is not readily witnessed by normal human eyesight. Humans do not innately embody luciferin, which would give us the capacity to glow like fireflies. Yet what about that inner glow that erupts within one’s heart and soul when finally touched by transcendent spiritual power?

This book has presented my evidence for and experience of a power and a life more significant than any limited, personal sense of self. I no longer look to the darkness for the light. I found my light, a light that dispels the darkness of others, their religions and economic philosophies, and the darkness of my historical self.

To find the light of Truth, the controls of the crowd, whether it is the crowd of old thoughts or the crowd that blindly follows others, must be broken. Strange, mystical, exotic, transcendent, and mysterious are some terms used to describe phenomena associated with the discovery of such light and freedom, a spiritual liberation that words struggle to define.

Set your course by the stars, and not by the fading lights of passing ships-—Omar N. Bradley, on QM2.

Theoretical physicists now understand that there are possibilities for alternate universes. Yet, they still need to fully define the opportunities for enhanced connections with the one we reside within. As the 21st century rushes forward, I am saddened that humankind is becoming increasingly dependent on its technology for communication while not concurrently developing the sensitivity to connect with the “energy” that we all share and with which we communicate continuously, albeit mostly unconsciously. Our technology, especially the hand-held media devices that we use to entertain and hypnotize ourselves, only serves to continue the energy of the past without offering alternatives to the present collection of corrupted choices that humanity has seemed eternally resigned to make.

Though able to define relationships and the laws that dictate behavior between all observable and quantum phenomena, science is only now beginning to understand the ramifications of the natural law of our existence, which is “all that we will ever see, unto eternity, is ourselves.” Science provides laws for what we see, yet, unlike enlightened spirituality, provides no laws predicting or supporting what is possible for humanity. Quantum mechanics will not be understood fully until the self-centered perspective towards infinity is replaced with the understanding that the collective and the individual are present in each of us, in each moment of existence. Ultimately, science and religion, medicine and technology, will all be united as manifestations of mankind’s expression of true being, and then the miraculous potential of a healed collective consciousness will be evident to all.

The impacts that we all have upon each other are not yet fully understood, yet prayer, meditation, and mindfulness prepare the mind for the unknown, where all true creation springs from. Because of the nature of consciousness itself, it is a much more collaborative effort being a human, and any other form of conscious life on this planet, than our minimally conscious minds understand now.

It is incredible how much of the ego is devoted to being recognized when there was a shortage of that recognition very early in life. A desperate call for love created our ego in a world that has not yet learned how to love. And our world is comprised of over eight billion human egos.

The most significant question remains: why care, or why bother? Our universe’s sacredness and sanctity depend on our recognition of who we are and how we express our understanding of that connection. Therein lies the absolute necessity that members of the human race seek true enlightenment.

If we can’t drill down to the foundation of our world and our problems and find and replace the foundation, there is little long-term hope for us.

If the desire for liberation from our deteriorating society’s damaging and fatal illusions is great, we are ready for our transformation. By letting go of the societal controls that imprison us in an outdated image of ourselves and the unrealistic and unhealthy expectations of others, we become ready to travel onto new paths of consciousness and to a new era of transcendence in our lives.

Why create and nurture a belief in some unknown God or savior, which is only just another idea in an unawakened mind, when we can live a life immersed in the beauty, awe, and love available to a mind liberated from its bondage to selfish fantasies and unhealed sufferings?

Are we ready to let go of the controls?

What is the difference between believing that we can fly and spreading our wings and flying?

BELIEF 

God is our eternal path and needs no belief in any concept of it. Yet, we must learn to cultivate and practice the actual presence of our own unique, innate connection to the mystery behind the name “God” until our life blossoms into the divine flower that it truly is.

Live life fully and wholeheartedly, keeping one’s eyes and ears open to the mystery of the moment and listening deep within our hearts for our true mission.

Religion is institutionalized ignorance of our true nature, only pointing to historical interpretations from others. As the experience of the Trump era shows, the collective racism, immorality, and unethical behavior of America’s Christian understanding shows an institutionalized disease within its body of thought and its shared narratives.

Our self-image is quite similar, being our memory’s institutionalized historical ignorance of our potential for freedom. Like our Christian understanding, our ethics and morals remain based upon past wounding rather than upon the higher ideals that are attainable through enhanced self-awareness and healing.

Therein lies the challenge and the opportunity for enlightenment.

What would Jesus do?

He went into the desert and faced his version of satan; He worked out his salvation.

He would want you to do the same.

The things that I do, you shall do, and even greater things—-Jesus of Nazareth (John 14:12)

No teacher may bring to us our freedom; it is our work that gets us there.

What will we do?

Men have created, maintained, and sustained our civilization for thousands of years. And, toxic masculinity with its most oppressive spawn, PATRIARCHY, has established most of the rules of engagement for all of us in the world during this epoch. Patriarchy sets the rules for our religions and our economic systems.

Trauma, immense trauma, has characterized man’s domination over nature and each other. Even our most innocent of beings, both human and animal, are persecuted. Our families are now one of the most significant sources for the spread of trauma. The children now even try to traumatize their parents once they become adults. It is all unfortunate. There is so much work to be done here.

Concurrently, It is incredible to note the preponderance of teachings that continue to emanate from the male component of the human race. Toxic masculinity creates an oppressive reality, and then those who have a measure of healing from it attempt to offer to the rest of us solutions for our release.

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We need more empowered women to stand up and be counted. Our world will only come back into balance once our feminine nature’s divine aspects are embraced as an integral part of ourselves.

The human race is like a bird with two wings, male and female. If one is broken, the bird can’t fly.

Will we remain hypnotized by more “mans-plaining” from ministers, avatars, gurus, therapists, and religious texts?

Should we remain a sheep in another shepherd’s flock?

Should we become a shepherd of our own flock?

Or do we become a liberated human being?

It is our choice.

For liberation, there must be the deepest of desires.

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We must be vigilant in protecting ourselves from the oppressive forces of our economic philosophies. Capitalist economics has monetized the resources of our planet and our human soul. And, in a most oppressive, distressing turn of events, Capitalism and American Politics have become married to Christianity so that all of the evil inherent within the unawakened elements of this triumvirate has created a world-threatening menace. We all have witnessed its catastrophic effects on our planet and each other’s health.

Lao Tzu briefly comments on these seemingly changeless forces, as the following story indicates. Lao Tzu was walking with his disciples, and they came to a forest where hundreds of carpenters were cutting trees because a grand palace was being built. So the whole forest had been almost cut, but only one tree was standing there, a big tree with thousands of branches. Lao Tzu asked his disciples to go and inquire why this tree had not been cut yet when the whole forest had been cut and was deserted.

The disciples went, and they asked the carpenters,

“Why have you not cut this tree?”

The carpenters said,

“You cannot make anything out of it because every branch has so many knots in it. Nothing’s straight. You cannot make pillars out of it. You cannot make furniture out of it. You cannot use it as fuel because the smoke is so dangerous to the eyes – you almost go blind. This tree is absolutely useless. That’s why.”

They came back to tell Lao Tzu, who then laughed and said:

“Be like this tree. If you want to survive in this world be like this tree – absolutely useless. Then nobody will harm you. If you are straight you will be cut, you will become furniture in somebody’s house. If you are beautiful you will be sold in the market, you will become a commodity. Be like this tree, absolutely useless. Then nobody can harm you. And you will grow big and vast, and thousands of people can find shade under you.”

Lao Tzu has a logic altogether different from the conditioned mind. :

Be the last. Move in the world as if you are not. Remain unknown. Don’t try to be the first. Otherwise, you will be competed against. Don’t try to prove your worth. There is no need. Remain useless and enjoy.

To understand him is to find that he is the most practical on a deeper layer of understanding than most people can recognize. Life is to enjoy and celebrate and not to become solely a servant to the needs of others. Life is more like a song or poetry than a commodity in the market; it should be like a flower by the side of the road, flowering for nobody in particular, sending its fragrance to the winds, just enjoying itself, just being itself.

We will be used if we succeed in being very clever and useful. If we try to be very practical, somewhere or other, we will be harnessed because the world needs our functionality, needing us to become just another “somebody.”

What is more problematic and traumatizing than a nobody being forced to become a somebody, a somebody that we don’t want to be?

Drop all these ideas. If we want to be a poem, a song, a flower, or any other manifestation of our creative Spirit, then forget how others see us and what value we may have to them. Do not despair about embracing the energy of a nobody. Some of the most influential people in our world are “nobodies” who have been assigned the role of a “somebody” by our culture. Those who remember to remain a “nobody” and remain humble internally are the greatest collaborators and healers.

While civilization encourages all of us to travel on its competitive superhighway to its image of a “somebody’, our neglected spiritual nature silently attempts to create a path back to where we can become a humble “nobody” again.

Who, or what, will we listen to?

The ultimate trauma to the human Spirit is to be somebody we aren’t.

We die of fatigue created through the endless parading around of our new, self-deceptive image, an image easily discounted by the innocent child within us, should we become quiet enough to listen to our essence.

No need to hurry.  No need to sparkle.  No need to be anyone but ourselves.—Virginia Woolf

Self-deception takes on added importance and danger in the mirror of relationships. Only crazy-making communication can result from exchanges between our illusions of self.

As Jesus stated:

My kingdom is not of this world.

Remain true to ourselves.

Be ourselves.

We will find what we are looking for if we sincerely seek the Truth of who we are.

When we find our authentic selves, the trauma and suffering of our human condition are seen for what it is.

And, we can finally consciously decide as to what, or who, we shall serve:

Somebody, or

NOBODY.

Serving somebody else’s agenda keeps us on the same historical path.

Serving NOBODY places us squarely on the path back to the Garden of Eden, and we begin our Hero’s Journey back to our true nature.

Accepting that the world can do fine without us allows us to put down the burden of being corrective heroes and concentrate on absorbing the journey of being alive.—Mark Nepo.

What is the essence of enlightenment? Enlightenment might be similar to the process of metamorphosis, which brings forth the butterfly from the caterpillar. If the butterfly could talk, it would likely speak about its new freedom and the ability to fly rather than its previous form of life sliding over the dirt. Yet, the only life that the butterfly arose from was with ground dwellers, where together they created all of the past stories. Could you imagine that butterfly returning and telling his caterpillar friends about the potential for a new life and what the “ground dwellers” might say in response? How about

“get lost, you were never one of us, anyway?”

or

“well, it must be nice for you to fly, but it is just not for me right now?”

or

“have you heard about the great tasty leaves that parsley plant has?”

These are three potential responses from those who think that change is threatening, unnecessary, irrelevant, or impossible for themselves. Enlightenment is not for everybody; it is for nobody.

New life is available to all, yet I won’t devote too many words to that. The word will forever remain a shadow, cast by the light built into the divine heart of humankind, as it tries to define the “undefinable.” Yet, if the heart is in the right place, the words formed and delivered will become more attuned to and resonant with the energies pointing to the healing of self and the other.

“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern.”

― William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

All that we now see, or will ever see, unto eternity, is our version of our Self.

How will we see ourselves today?

That vision, our vision, limited or limitless, determines the quality of our life experience.

And if we are on life’s healing path, that vision directly impacts the world in wondrous and sometimes miraculous ways.

There is no greater joy in the universe than finding our authentic selves.

We will find what we are looking for.

What have you found so far?

Are you your authentic self? Are we?

Liberation is not an idea but a living reality for those who have found what their heart was genuinely looking for.

It is time to make our waves MATTER! (Quantum physicists will love this pun!

More than once, certain members of our human race have had mountain top experiences, where true insight has been gained into understanding life, love, and both the ephemeral and eternal natures or aspects of reality, or That One. That One becomes the source for all future understanding and engagement with the world.

• That One saw the unity of all creation and how all systems of thought tend to separate us from each other rather than unite.
• That One saw how the limits of love shared were typically tribal in nature and rarely extended beyond the imaginary boundaries of their perceived communities.
• That One saw how organized religion had become a tool for the political powers of the day and no longer existed to serve the needs of the Spirit but instead to follow the dictates of those male power figures who inaccurately, and sometimes falsely, interpret the scriptures to control people, and arrange selfish outcomes.
• That One saw how the rich and powerful within the religion used its Truth to dominate and control others.
• That One saw these religious power figures monetize their brethren to see how their “flock” could bring them wealth through superstitious tithing or offerings to their “God.”
• That One saw that the poorest in Spirit occupied the most fertile ground for healing yet were the most separated from any benefits of their religion.
• That One saw that the religious power of the day was corrupt beyond repair.
• That One saw that all sense of religion needed to be “born again.”

That One came down from the mountaintop to bring the good news to the people that they did not need their religion anymore to keep them philosophically imprisoned.

That One then advised the world:

If their “religion” does not allow for them to love another as themself, then discard those dark aspects of their religion, honor the underlying Spirit of love, and affirm the dignity and value of the human being through the healed human heart (which is the source of all true religion).

That might mean removing the log from our own eyes (even if the log is our very own religion) before attempting to remove the splinter from another.

• It means stop monetizing humanity for business purposes.
• It also means separating the Church from the State.
• It means taking personal inventory, and when wrong, promptly admit it!
• It means lying, cheating, stealing, destroying, murder, greed, selfishness, destroying the animal and plant kingdom, and the like are antithetical to the Spirit of love, which has created this universe. Therefore, they are unacceptable patterns of behavior that are only reserved for those who have chosen to stay asleep.

You know who That One is because That One lives today, and it has never been just the Buddha or Jesus.

• That One has existed since the beginnings of the illusion of self and other and the illusions created by competing philosophies.
• That One has the voice for God, Truth, Love, and Life, bubbling up inside their hearts, just waiting to be listened to and obeyed.
• That One understands the difficulties in bringing Truth and Love to the masses because the masses is where corruption of thought gets institutionalized and normalized. Instead, That One opts to bring it to humanity one person at a time.

Please listen within yourself.

Tune out all others, no matter how well-intentioned they may appear to be.

Be yourself!

When we touch ourselves with deep awareness, we touch everything.

Set out, pilgrim. Set out into the freedom and the wandering. Find your people. God is much bigger, wilder, more generous, and more wonderful than you imagined. – Sarah Bessey

I have attempted to “capture lightning in a bottle” by articulating this message. May we never despair of our faltering attempts to reach this infinite energy and express its love and wisdom. To have a better life, we must access new parts of our infinite self and travel on new paths of understanding. A primary law of consciousness is that “we find what we are looking for,” so make sure to look for what we want and not fall victim to the suggestions of others who don’t always have our best interests at heart.

Do you have your best interests at heart?

Does your “creator” have your best interests at heart?

Do you understand that you and your creator are ONE?

Do you understand how immense of a being you truly are?

Once we understand the Truth, the closer we get to our life’s meaning, the disturbing revelation that we have just been dreaming becomes our healed understanding.

Dream on, or strive for awakening; it is our choice.

The Buddha was asked:

What is your religion?

He then stated: 

I AM AWAKE.

The salvation of the world and of ourselves depends upon our decision to be either the dreaming, walking dead, or the awake.

I no longer run in packs of “wannabees” or “somebodies.”

I am no longer walking and dreaming in my sleep.

I am not Jesus, I am not the Buddha, I am not Mohammed.

Like millions of other human beings,

I AM AWAKENING

 

I AM ( world tour version)

I am all waters, the rivers, and the bays

I am the infinite ocean from which all my children are birthed, live, love, and play.

 

I am the dolphin and whale; I am the mangrove and sand-lined shores,

I am the waves crashing against rocks that photographers adore.

 

I am the wind and the sun and all warm, soothing breezes,

I am even our allergy-inspired, most raucous cleansing sneeze!

 

I am the blue sky, the weather changes, and the gathering of clouds,

I am all lightning storms appearing so dangerous and loud 

 

I am the bird’s call, its flight, and the wind beneath its wings,

I am all music and its Spirit that makes our hearts soar and sing.

 

I am the brightest of all mornings, yet I am also the cloudiest of all days,

I am also that altar within, upon which mankind prays and PREYS.

 

I am the grief, the pain, and the sorrow,

I am the most bottomless well of hope from which all eternally borrow.

 

I am the COVID, bronchitis, and pneumonia; I am the movement toward health

I am the healing balm that works mysteriously in stealth.

 

I am our lifetimes; I am our bodies and our breaths,

I am all of the suffering and the blessed last moment of our deaths.

 

I am the death of the false self that leads to the only true heaven,

Our denial of this Truth leads to channel two news reports at eleven.

 

I am the Biden’s and the Harris’s, I am the Desantis’s and the Trumps,

I am love’s warrior, and I am also hate’s chumps!

 

I am the boisterous protests, and I am the crowd made quiet,

I can even be found witnessing the white supremacist riots!

 

I am the wealthy, the hurt, the oppressed, and the poor,

I am your past, present, and future until we all are no more!

 

I am the Cretians, Egyptians, and Africans of times old, recent, and new,

I am all civilization ruins and the ever-evolving life that regrew.

 

I am the mind and the end to its lonely thoughts,

I am the hearts-loving web in which we are miraculously caught.

 

I am the Christian, the Hindu, the Muslim, and the Jew,

I am an Atheist and a Buddhist; you never thought that you knew.

 

I am the sacred, the mediocre, and even the profane,

I am the source of spiritual treasure; resisting me only adds to life’s pain.

 

I am not the movement of our thoughts while clinging to concepts of time,

I am emerging from all shadows as we reach for the sublime.

 

What is my name, and where is my home place?

Being ONE is to see me in every suffering and smiling being’s face.

In honor of all of the innocent oppressed, bullied, victimized, traumatized, gassed, misogynist, persecuted, marginalized, neglected, abused, murdered, alienated, and institutionalized human beings overrun by the principles of toxic masculinity in its almost infinite varieties of forms. Toxic masculinity, toxic fatherhood, and toxic religion are cultural and historical impediments to achieving and maintaining happiness and good health.