I do not believe that the mother of Jesus, Mary, a woman declared “immaculate” by the Catholic Church, was spotless or non-condemnable by the standards with which men, particularly high ranking religious clerics, have traditionally judged women.
I believe this highly evolved woman’s spotlessness rested in her fearless trust in God, and unique lack of self loathing.
In other words, Mary was never subject to brainwashing by anyone, including those in “authority” over her, even as a young child. I believe she never believed the lie that so many of us do, that she was somehow separate from God, by nature. She accepted an angel’s directive that she would bear God himself in her body precisely because she recognized the Divine already within, and the Divine Person from Whom she herself must have originated, because she was aware her own image was a reflection of that Divine.
Capabilities for self awareness have been shown to be associated with the frontal lobe in the human brain, which is also associated in some spiritual languages with the All Seeing Eye, and a heightened state of evolved consciousness. Mary has been equated with wisdom, pondering, and knowing since antiquity, which makes her depiction in highly symbolic iconic imagery with a broad forehead, and strong, broad shoulders very appropriate.
I believe that the biblical Mary was actually the prototype of brilliant, strong women that later in church history would be burnt at the stake for Knowing – for knowing – in effect “too much”, that is, their own self worth. They knew that God never intended “worth” to be limited to the physical act of reproduction, or the supporting roles women play for male “leaders”, or even sacrificing for their own children. This made these highly spiritual and enlightened women, like Joan of Arc, dangerously powerful, in fact the only thing, sometimes, that corrupt, brute men (who would abuse them and their children) seemed to also intuit, could destroy them.
And with good reason.
In scripture, Mary is depicted as the Woman in Revelation, conquering multi headed beasts, creatures that could be said to represent these ever divisive, mutually corrupted Powers of Man.
In one of the last books of the Bible, you find this woman protecting the child of God in her arms from earthly fraud and deception, fleeing with him from unjust powers, material empires and institutions of mankind, to a place that symbolizes a safe state of enlightenment, where God it seems, will provide for all of his children directly.
And it only makes sense that Mary’s soul was this perfect pattern type of the wisdom and maternal, protective “Nature” of God.
It only makes sense that her Son’s soul represented God’s Expression, or “Word”.
It only makes sense that the Maternal Nature of Divinity would recognize each of us also as a universal Christ, especially when and where, through no fault of our own or their own, our own self doubting, error and fear ridden parents fail us.
As the story goes, once upon Jesus’ incarnation, he took on all of his physical, material or human nature from a woman, who outside of time, was the very incarnated, Nature of God, that Wisdom that danced and played like beautiful music, alongside heaven’s riverbanks.
Of course for most of us “mere” mortals, who are susceptible to brainwashing by the dark fog and confusion of earth, it is really hard to comprehend these beautiful mysteries, deeper understandings of Genesis, and parable-like stories of human incarnation and evolution, let alone capture the infinitely wise and loving Nature of God “in a Word”.
For me it was difficult enough just to roll out of bed this morning, let alone charge up my laptop, and wire myself with enough caffeine to translate inspiration into expression, and record what I felt God had inspired me to write during the night. I have certainly come to believe it is the greatest challenge of my own spiritual evolution to “reunite” this notion of love, insight, knowledge, wisdom and will – with power, expression, action and word.
It is now past midnight.
Yes, we mortals, both men and women (except for The Woman not subject to brainwashing, and Jesus) seem to have swallowed the lie that we are “mere”, meant to stay “mere”, and can’t possibly really be anything “more”. Most of us are merely existing, while working only to stay in a state out of crisis in which we are barely alive, because to live more fully is too scary, at best.
The earthly realm gives us the false impression that strength and empathy are necessarily separate, as well as power and gentleness, vulnerability and fearlessness, and compassion and victory.
The systems of the world have divided us, creating countless apocalyptic monsters, or multi headed serpents that are very convincing, and appear as if real. I count among them the notion of “good” people and “bad” people, opposite, but equally wrong extremes – and false dichotomies like left versus right. Women suffer under men who behave heartless, misogynist, and egotistical or quickly lose respect for the man who appears too apathetic to defend anyone, including himself. Many men at first may think they want the submissive, subservient type woman, who thinks this is grace, and won’t allow herself, to even think for herself. Other men will spend their lives arguing with the woman who uses her often superior intelligence and insight – to manipulate and control him.
Why do humans assume we cannot escape double binds? I say we must first realize the double bind (like the perceived inequality, or perceived unworthiness of God) is not real. It’s one of those lies strewn into our perceptions of reality, so subtly, so cleverly, that we often mistake it for a benign and nutritious apple, dangling from a tree, that will keep us alive if we just take a bite.
We have forgotten Heaven, our wholeness there, and how this is mysteriously linked to our “fall” into a subterranean land, the separation of mankind into two genders, then the birth of a woman, born “spotless” and free. We don’t remember that we are the very children of God, because we now see only that which we assume to be true (often what we fear) and subsequently perceive.
I think the key to realizing once again our spiritual wholeness and freedom (and I am not speaking here about the reunion in peace of men with women, but the reunion of each person with their true soul self) lies in this concept of painstakingly undoing our own indoctrinations, “errors”, assumptions and fears, things that can create purgatory or even hell for ourselves and others on earth.
Yin was never meant to be separate from yang, not in a woman, and neither in a man.
For if God the Father could be compared to a mother hen with a brood of chicks, a woman brilliant with the sun could exist – feminine, fearless, assertive and bold – and this woman could give birth to the paradox of a miracle-working male human child , who conquers death itself with his own vulnerability and crucifixion on a cross, why then can’t there be men, strong, brave and courageous enough to embrace emotions like love and human empathy, rather than suppressing them, and women who with their bold intelligence, insight and intuitive abilities lead in strength and achieve victory as well?
For this return to Eden I pray, and that every day be a New Eve, or “New Eve’s Birthday”.
For this, I believe, is the true future and evolution of mankind.
Recently I listened to an author describe how his interior guides dictated a book, that he published successfully, shortly thereafter.
Sometimes my bodily pain is so severe, I can’t even imagine having the energy to write, unless the words themselves are provided like this – and I am practically handed the pen. Automatic writing has happened to me before, and it never fails to astonish, for the language received tends to be very cryptic, beautiful, and full of meaning, even when I feel by myself I am not.
I must have whispered prayers in the night that I would receive another ready-made composition of this sort.
Shortly after 8:00 a.m., I awoke, my clairaudience turned on. Prose started to flow from somewhere inside of me, without effort, and I grabbed a pen off the nightstand to secure the words on paper, before they evaporated like a dream, from my mind.
In reviewing what I wrote, it was, of course, like discovering and reading it for the first time. I realized that “cupboard” must refer to my heart, and glass “bottle” – the body – which contains and limits the soul, until it is released through death, or perhaps enlightenment. I found God’s use of culinary allegories with me entirely fitting, and more than a little entertaining in parts. It made me want smile.
“Onions” are what my mother planted to keep animals out of her garden, but could also mean distractions that keep people from finding out the truth. I have uploaded pictures of my actual, open-faced cupboards, which I found ready and waiting, as if just to illustrate this piece.
I am calling it Autobiography, because I received it from a Source with Whom I am quite familiar, but One that I also recognize as the Voice that resides within each of us, and some call the Christ.
And I share them, these few, intuited words below, because I feel they were meant for me to share, like a glass from just such an open cupboard… or open heart.
Happy Valentine’s Day.
I am taking off a lifetime of pain
When I was twenty years old the dam broke the colors colliding, like an off-put canvas Household items lined up, like cracked pots to take with me
The visions had ceased All around me the pain, the stares
What does it take to believe in a miracle? they asked with a grin
Finding themselves shoeless, on my path
Don’t go away The cupboards will burn The dishes will fly
Please, place your onions at the door
When Spring came the rains had stopped and everyone cheered
Like a hen getting out of a truck I didn’t even know how to drive
Laughing, they killed me some more
White paper lined the floor like parchment with his portrait and portfolio
Shut the door The cops aren’t coming anymore
In June the news came of a city on a hill glistening with radiance
How do they make those little cakes that stand up like needles on their edge?
Further more,
the door’s shut so how can it bleed?
A raptor,
a pigeon
and a bird
He sees what he knows like glass in a pan
What are you thinking my child?
I see you and I love you I was always with you my child The tears flow and this time they are tears of joy
Walk away from the pain Walk away from those you love But don’t walk away from me
For I am the one who started it all with a bottle of love and a plan laid out like cards that can’t fail
The bottle has been broken but the love is limitless like a magic trick designed to catch your deceivers
Put it away in your cupboard like spices on a rack Use it liberally wherever you go
In the end you will see that was all that mattered
It contains seeds like nutmeg that grow rampant in the rain in the snow
Wherever you go I am always with you in your heart
That pale moonlight
at about a month ago
how bad the food tasted
Daddy thought the young side was chirping The young side didn’t chirp
Great, at seventeen… the young side didn’t count
Is there anything?
Not having a will, I didn’t raise your son
I didn’t tell him to just confirm the good in you
There was a mason jar Finding it, I cried
Jump
Experience Life
Having free bodies, we never realize what we lost
It’s amazing how the time flies
Frank was a personable guy He flunked law school, but he liked to play He got killed in high school
They listed him as MIA
Anywhere you lay your head is home
I’ll always be there…
watching over you.
There’s something special about old houses, whether it’s the nooks and crannies hidden beneath the stairs, the familiar sound of one’s tread on the floor, or a gigantic, flowering lilac bush, encroaching upon a porch with a swing where you sit in the summer time, drinking iced tea from a tumbler.
But the first old house I lived in was in West Point, NY, when I was a little girl, and my fondest memories of it are in winter.
Often I’d be curled up with a favorite book (I re-read the Chronicles of Narnia so many times, the books to my set cracked apart into separate chunks) and looking out the giant expanse of windows in the “sun” room, praying for snow.
Yes, I loved snow, and I prayed for it, because we lived in a valley often neglected for the peaks of the mountains in which it sat, peaks frequently graced and made resplendent in white.
But sometimes God complied with a little girl’s wish, and granted not just the black mountain bear or fox but me as well, some snow in which to play.
I haven’t thought of that old house as much, or been reminded of it as much as I have been since I’ve moved into my own little cottage, which is over a hundred years old.
Yes, it will be the oddest thing, not just the colonial structure of the current home, which reminds me of the one in my childhood, but the heaviness of a door, or the unusual twist in a cellar passage way. And it won’t be so much the public history, but the remembered, intuited, or imagined stories, that will kind of belong to a place, which has become a sacred sanctuary – set apart from the rest of the world.
So the other day at the cottage, after a snow storm in the present, I was walking my dogs, and the way the snow had accumulated upon the large evergreen bushes running alongside the house, had created a fluffy, white stretch of roof top (with meandering open spaces and tunnels beneath) which the dogs wanted to explore. This gave me a familiar, excited feeling, as if I was a child again.
It’s always the simplest things – the beauty of nature, the noticed patterns and symbolism that take me back home, or make me realize, with a spirit of gratitude, that I am home.
Suddenly I recalled playing with a childhood friend that I may not have remembered much, or even ever again, if not for this sudden rush of nostalgia, and the reminder of snow tunnels beneath shrubbery, having explored similar ones with this playmate, outside that old house I used to call home at West Point, NY.
Those were days of great joy, and I don’t recall wondering once, if my all-providing father fretted over the inevitable problems that must have been associated with older homes, of which this military housing consisted.
Back then, I didn’t see the elongated windows of the sunroom through which I manifested snow as “drafty”, and outside I didn’t see overgrown shrubbery, needing to be cut down come spring, to regimented standard.
I just saw marvelous long, drippy icicles, bedecking windows and rooflines like garland, and mysterious igloo-type tunnels in which I could hide, beneath gnarled, ancient shrubbery so old – it created a sense of mystery. I saw outside-rooms created out of nature in which we could play house, or secret passage way, or create a story of our own making to which mother nature had already provided the fodder.
Who notices the most important things, adults or children, I wonder?
And when we find ourselves noticing odd or shall I say – pausing for beautifully mysterious things – in adulthood, or noticing how the present can be like a teaching echo of the past, is it then that we have really come of age, and read the patterns of our life correctly?
For I do not think it just coincidence that in a time when I am more healed or at peace, having given my own need for home and sanctuary precedence, that I recall a time in my childhood in which I had a father who took care of draft and danger, leaving me free to explore and create, while never leaving the perimeters of a safe haven.
For is God not a God who does just the same, as my father did then?
And is this world not just like a very old house?
Designed to make us recall, our even more permanent, and infinitely magical, home in heaven?
Sometimes in an author we recognize a voice, startlingly familiar, as if angels have guided their pen to page… tap, tap. I find myself engrossed in Adele’s book, feeling honored that she would “share” her inner thoughts with me. I want to take her words in slowly and ponder them all, for I was meant to read this. Adele’s style of writing is one in which the flow of words, although seemingly random, form beautiful, rhythmic patterns, like the movement of water in a stream.
This smacks familiar to me.
It is a voice through channels unexpected, that reminds me of home.
And thy own soul a sword shall pierce, that, out of many hearts, thoughts may be revealed.Luke 2:35
We are rescued by those whom we have rescued. The saved become the saviors of their saviors.
– Dean Koontz, The Darkest Evening of the Year
Melissa Flemings, who has worked with refugees, claims in a TED Radio Hour segment that the victims of war can hold the key to lasting peace. She believes for this to happen the stories of survivors must be heard.
Recently I took part in a research study with regard to OIF and OEF veterans that was designed to examine how a vet’s post traumatic stress syndrome affects present and past relationship partners. Psychiatrists are now discovering that the failure of military systems to provide effective deprogramming to help veterans resolve war trauma is resulting in widespread PTSD in their “dependents” as well, as if wives, husbands, children, and even romantic partners are also traumatized war survivors.
Seems incorrectly treated or untreated PTSD in combat vets is contagious, and secondary victims now have their own war stories to tell.
Though stress disorders may be somewhat “contagious” in general, combat vets and those that love them are uniquely susceptible to this emerging PTSD epidemic.
I think it’s a big mistake to assume that this is ocurring because combat-related PTSD (what used to be called battle fatigue) is somehow by nature far worse than any other form of PTSD. Stress disorders are worse and going viral among the military population because this country keeps its soldiers ready for deployment by medical suppression of symptoms and emotions, utilizing anti-depressants, anti-anxieties and stigma propaganda.
Stress disorders are worse and going viral among the military population because military entities largely do not make use of cognitive therapies known world-wide to help heal PTSD.
Let me reiterate:
Our veteran services largely do not promote cognitive therapiesknown world-wide to help heal PTSD.
Trigger normalization in particular, not avoidance of benign triggers, and detachment from all abusive authority figures, whether it be from disordered parents (preventing infantile regression) or from those very broken systems (military or governmental) who by nature continue to place in harm’s way but won’t set free, is necessary for a vet, like all trauma survivors, to adjust to normal life. As well, one traumatized must relearn the trauma to which one has been exposed and how the conscious and unconscious mind relates to it. One must unlearn what one has learned wrongly.
Why would psychology be anything different for a soldier? Are we not all human beings with the same basic, human needs?
If vets want effective help they have to realize they need it, it’s out there, and obtain it on their own (like the rest of us) but typically will not do so because they place unconditional trust in systems for which they were, for lack of a better word, brainwashed to be expendible.
And what disturbs me the most is that military authorities and strategists are aware of this. They know the law of war is the exact opposite of the laws of love and life, and that our government’s lack of psychological accountability is killing vets, their loved ones and families, but are doing nothing about it. Encouraging the use of maintanance strategies such as yoga or dissociative meditation is not the answer. Relaxation therapies are not the same thing as providing combat vets with grounding strategies and effective, corrective, cognitive, mental exercise tools that they really need. Couching the argument in terms of dollars spent on ill-designed military or veteran medical programs urgently in need of reform, not more dollars, is a glaringly obvious, intentional diversion to anyone familiar with the means to overcome PTSD, who will notice effective therapies and instruction noteably lacking, and in reality, not even being promoted within the veteran medical community.
To make matters even worse, war is different now.
The enemy is different now.
We are different now.
Because today’s war is terrorism.
I believe terrorists’ placing of their own innocent women and children in harm’s way and using them as human explosives has contributed to returning vets misidentifying their own loved ones as emotional liabilities, being triggered by them, and mistaking them for the enemy. Having to watch one’s friends being sent directly into harm’s way without being allowed to do anything to help save them just reinforces this. Who will turn on who, and who will abandon who first for this “greater”, terrifying cause?
In America, trauma related disorders are epidemic, while those who have the power to shape public opinion impose volatile mental manipulations on those unitiated in the self-serving brokeness of our political, military and medical systems. In our country we now have powerful leaders who actually suggest disproportionate untrustworthiness and potential for invasion, criminality and violence in all persons of certain nationalities. These politicians promote enmity towards those that speak out and warn against the dangers of their own fear mongering and racism.
Those who warn against the dangers of enabling PTSD in combat vets are likewise blamed for our veteran’s inability to recover from PTSD.
Americans are pressured by veteran “activists” to stop setting off celebratory fireworks on the fourth of July, and are wrongly taught to walk on eggshells around anyone traumatized from active duty. These kinds of behaviors would not only normalize a disorder, PTSD, they do nothing to help non-deployed veterans express their emotions and normalize life – while actually encouraging an uneducated public to view the combat vet as helpless and inherently more dangerous to himself or others.
None the less, some veteran groups continue to encourage vets to blame those who are simply out enjoying life, and healthily living it. Now it’s those who live life who are untrustworthy, and the pathology that must not be denied accomodation.
And while flashbacks and panic attacks are a normal response to unresolved trauma, normalizing refusal to resolve trauma, and normalizing refusal to separate from by-nature abusive authority figures that cause PTSD in the first place, while wrongly blaming other innocents for what vets are going through, is not.
What could be a more irresponsible thing to do to our vets and the families vets will, if no one gives them the information and tools they really need to heal, ultimately abandon?
People don’t get trauma disorders simply because they have been exposed to trauma.
They get PTSD because they have been lied to, indoctrinated or brainwashed in some manner by an authority figure about trauma. They have been incorrectly taught (in some manner, through some kind of system, familial or otherwise) that trauma or abuse equals love, duty or obligation. The victim knows deep down inside what they’ve subconsciously learned is not true, and this makes them feel out of control. The symptoms of PTSD are just the body’s way of letting the conscious state know there is something that must be revisited and relearned correctly, so that they can heal and enjoy life again.
As Yoda said, you must unlearn what you have learned.
But what that is that must be relearned correctly is usually the last thing that will occur to a victim of PTSD, especially if he or she tries to dissociate, meditate, medicate or suppress symptoms away. And although the last thing that occurs to the PTSD victim is that in some manner they have been scammed, it is always true that in some manner they have been scammed, and typically, once the person figures out how and why, they are well on the road to recovery. Quite honestly, they are usually blaming themselves for something they need to correctly blame on someone or something else.
Examples of healable PTSD and the authority figures that unjustly impose it include the following:
A father beats or molests his son, teaching the innocent child he deserves and needs to dispense physical abuse to become a man, and if the child objects or tells on the father, the father will beat the boy’s mother and siblings as well, placing the child in a double bind.
An emotionally suppressed Cluster A single mother teaches that manipulation and emotional absence is maternal or feminine love, and that it is her son’s job, even when grown, to protect or save such a mother from exposure. If the adult offspring manages to separate from the false mother, or finds an adult woman who loves them in a healthy manner, such a mother will verbally or emotionally punish the adult son, and scapegoat the healthy relationship partner.
A drill sergeant teaches (commonly male) soldiers it is their job to “save” those in a dependent position (commonly women and children), but showing emotion for the victims it is their job to save is discouraged, because emotions make a soldier vulnerable. And if the victim is the enemy’s race, the authoritative sergeant teaches that those victims are expendible. This is because secondary victims could be being used as human weapons. Therefore a US soldier must be on guard against any innocent or ill-used it is their job to save. Soldiers have been taught to be willing to kill or abandon those whom they would in other circumstances protect or love.
Yet military authorities will never teach vets it’s time to drop their guard against innocent victims so that the soldier can get on with love and life. They are much like Manchurian candidates brainwashed with a mental disorder that only works in a war zone.
And these same military “authorities”, that with “good” intentions inevitably “lie” on the battle field about the expendibility of innocent human life, will send vets to continue to standguard at the funeral of a soldier who has died in the line of duty.
This may be a beautiful, even admirable and touching token of gratitude towards the deceased soldier and their grieving family, but it wrongly implies that loyalty to a by-nature abusive system (even after death) is the law of love. And considering the suicide rates of soldiers with PTSD and the increasing rates of suicide among military family members including children, it smacks of way too little too late. It will continue to appear this way to self aware individuals until military authorities provide a surviving soldier and their families the correct cognitive therapy and effective deprogramming tools necessary to have a normal life, which would involve learning how to drop one’s guard, and perhaps leaving the war lifestyle behind them entirely.
The situations I have described are classic psychological double binds that destroy unaware victims from within if they are not revisited, and the laws of love and life are not relearned correctly and properly restored.
PTSD victims typically will keep choosing new abusive pattern types (an abusive job, an abusive spouse, etcetera) in a desperate effort to finally “win” love and security where love and security can never be found, because it is not in the nature of that entity to provide it.
People with PTSD will continue to do this until they realize separation, ideally a “no contact” policy (not loyalty to by-nature abusive entities) and rethinking personal trauma is what really sets people free and allows one to bond with other free innocents, which is necessary for life.
Moreover, since all human beings are equals and the words we use determine how we think, the military should reconsider referring to spouses and their children as dependents. For the indoctrinated soldier, his or her recovery often depends upon accepting effective treatment through the love, insistence and zero tolerance policies of loved ones, for this sort of thing is not going to come from Veterans Affairs.
War is complex, but life is simple. To live life healthily one must be willing to love and be loved.
It follows we must use proportionate force to help one another, by providing truth, physical defense when able, and caring for and being present for all human beings, when the other, be they a man or a woman, is suffering or has had an injustice imposed upon them.
But no one human disproportionately one gender, should be taught it is his or her job and responsibility to “save” all other human beings, as if man is God. And though human empathy and gender equality may be a liability on the battlefield, it is necessary for love and life.
This timeless lesson is taught by biology, but it has also been emphasized in the language and reflections of various religions throughout the centuries. I would think Christians (who still consititute a large proportion of our Armed Forces) would take both heed and comfort that a savior already died and rose again so that humans would choose love and life. One would think that all thinking people could agree that one can believe in a strong military defense, but no one should really be “pro war”.
G. K. Chesterton was emphasizing this when he spoke of “the true soldier (who) fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.”
Yet I have seen American civilians who have survived horrific traumas of their own, such as domestic violence and rape, or who suffered severe child abuse at the hands of their own parents or a clergy member (also abandoned or retraumatized by our own systems) get ridiculed and demoralized by combat vets for correctly comparing their resultant stress disorders, when they tried to reach out and share with these vets the information they need to recover, as I am attempting to do today. Fearmongers and stigma propagandists are very good at dividing good people, genders, families, and misdirecting attention away from the military and government entities abandoning our vets that society should be holding accountable.
I say it’s about time someone let the cat out of the bag, if not for our soldiers’ sake, for the sake of the country, those they went to war to defend, not harm, and for the sake of those they will inevitably, pre-emptively abandon, who are mostly innocent women and children, if everyone continues to keep looking the other way.
For how is military training just if we permanently brainwash all human vulnerability out of the man, and destroy his capacity for love, trust, human empathy and bonding?
How is military training just if it does not allow those who have tried to save and defend us – to be saved and defended by us – when they return home?
Wouldn’t that mean then, that terrorism has won?
I have written this piece for all combat vets but especially with men in mind because men have been lied to, and wrongly taught, not just by the military, that vulnerability and healthy expression of emotions (necessary for healing from PTSD) including the processing of just anger and grief, is weak, unmanly, socially unacceptable, unhealthy, or a sign that one lacks “decorum”.
The just military man still tends to say things like “How can I help others, if I don’t calmly put my own oxygen mask on first?” as if he is the savior of the world.
Then he swallows his pain and the lies that are slowly eroding his stomach, like magical bullets that will somehow suppress the truth from popping back up, or from being visibly written across his forehead.
Women tend to act instantaneously and with passion, but this doesn’t mean women don’t think and consider facts first, like those written on the backs of medicine bottles, noting side effects of which their husbands preferred to remain ignorant. Women have been pondering uncomfortable facts for thousands of years, knowing action and proportionate expression of emotion is not only allowable in real life, but necessary.
Women know men’s oxygen masks aren’t working right and are instead slowly exuding something more immobilizing and poisonous than mustard gas. This is because they themselves are commonly the very victims abandoned by men’s ineffective strategizies. And this is why the just woman, the good mother, will immediately, intuitively and automatically give of her own life force (not a man’s oxygen mask) breathing directly into the mouth of a dying child.
I say if helpless children are dying or their lives are being destroyed, it’s because they didn’t have parents or villagers of both genders willing to do the same.
It is not an inconsequential fact that men, particularly heterosexual alpha males, tend to seek counsel only from other men, regardless of credentials, rather than from intelligent and intuitive women that, because of this empathic nature, can help, as if it’s men’s job to protect women, despite women being their own equals, from hearing or bearing the truth. These men seem to think women, who by nature are life bearers and in that sense paradoxically both stronger, wiser and more vulnerable than men all at the same time, haven’t been noticing the destructive nature of men’s physically domineering (but ironically more impotent) strength all along.
And whether you like his politics or not, whether you liked his opponent or not, most mental health practitioners do not think it benign that the president of this country is a man who actually degraded a women publicly just for menstruating and got away with it. Our leader and current military commander-in-chief is a man who Harvard psychiatrists even publicly warned as narcissistic and potentially sociopathic, precisely because he has demonstrable contempt for the vulnerable and those who suffer, as if to feel and express human empathy or endure pain makes you weak, or someone who thinks with your emotions and not your head. Most significant in my opinion, is that Donald Trump’s election lent a dangerous social acceptance and perceived credibility to having an emotionally void, might makes right, bullying mentality.
He was actually cheered on, even though the war mentality, believing that only winning matters, is the hallmark sign of sociopathy.
Now we have volatile, reactionary, war-like polarization sweeping the nation. Nowhere is this reflected more clearly than in the fragmentation and division we see by way of social media. Brute expression and behavior is lauded rather than reasoned arguments based in critical thinking ability. The mental health of the nation and families are at risk moreso than ever recently before, and gender relations have been dangerously compromised.
But let me make this clear.
This piece is not written to blame everything on or scapegoat the president. Neither is it written to condemn our military leaders personally. This piece is not written to knock the brotherhood and bond often felt by those who fought side by side in battle.
Our military, whose interests and directives, although not always 100% humanitarian, has defended our nation and freed many foreign citizens from abusive, terrorist regimes.
Many of our young people join the military in fact, to find order and meaning in life, after suffering emotionally void or abusive childhoods. Internationally leading cognitive therapists and neuro-linguistic programming experts believe the most severe cases of combat-related PTSD are really CPTSD, with war being the secondary trauma to childhood neglect.
I write this piece only to remind vets that man’s systems including the military, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and all systems within the government, are self-referential. Systems exist so that systems work (read: stay in existence) not so that you and I stay in existence. Systems are not designed to save you from them. Therefore systems are the blue falcon or more crudely put, the buddy or cluster fuck. Systems see you as the expendable and they do not exist to serve the laws of love. We must hold them accountable if not for ourselves, for the sake of others whom they might harm.
Only humans can do this because only humans have hearts and souls.
And as human individuals, we have choices to make in life. We must take accountability for our actions – yes – but also our inaction, refusal to communicate with one another, inertia, emotional and voice suppression, the freeze response in PTSD, and self-imposed blindness that is putting a lid on an already boiling pot, causing us to dissociate, become less human, and making us part of the monster.
Are we going to serve love and life by facing, expressing and sharing our grief and pain (not dangerously suppressing it) and being there for our loved ones, ultimately finding joy?
Are we going to hold broken or ill designed systems accountable for what they are incorrectly doing to veterans and their families?
Are we going to serve war and death by trying to make ourselves as “invulnerable” as drones to everything and everyone around us except those disordered systems, while punishing the innocent for being healthily human, those who scream out when they are in pain, or laugh when they are happy?
Or are we going to punish people who have often survived equally traumatic, private wars of their own?
I say no, for the answer is clear, very clear, and should have been perceived and acknowledged the first time an American child commited suicide because Daddy came home from war and couldn’t love him anymore.
Healing, for the returning combat vet (like all civilians who have gone through a living hell) depends upon a willingness to detach from all abusive authority figures and relations, jobs and systems, and a willingness to let a healthy love, not a war mentality, save them. This holds true for their families as well, and receiving what is necessary to get on with life (knowledge of and access to correct cognitive tools) is the soldier’s and his or her family’s earned right.
Since systems, which by nature place human beings in double binds are abusive, victims (both military and civilian) must bond with each other, and stop identifying with and relating war systems to Almighty God.
For in war, vulnerability gets people killed.
But in life, only the vulnerable can help save the powerful – from themselves.
you sat on a fence waiting watching your options fall, like a chandeliercome crashing down from great heights
you sat on a fence thinking you were protecting them while you served as a slave to the man
frozen in February, you sold Sarah to the naysayers, to the crooks, and to the liars
for suffering too much
you mistook her for the enemy because you mistook yourself for the physician, the savior and master
you honor the old woman instead whoshot you in the head without making a sound, while cutting your skin for a doll
and calling Sarah jealous
like a spell caster fashioning admirers some sell their own gifts and lie about love
men think it is their job to save the world so they say semper fi
to their own image and to men who don’t love them
women think it is their job to save their own sons, so they bury them alive in basements of funeral homes
clatter, clatter against a fence post I saw your body wrung, a broken walking stick with the body of a crustacean
only when the just man leaps
will he hear Sarah’s screams, will he find that it’s his own plane on fire but she has placed invisible nets waiting
only when the tide brings in not dead bodies and debris but the truth one has hushed in self-bottled silence
will chains unravel love float,
and pearls rise on the waves
for only those
who make themselves small
and trust in the power of love
not war
walk, on invisible waters
