Women, Don't Buy into Barriers

This came up on my memories. Still same sentiment.

2018

I wrote this last night after watching the news. Instead of railing against how the news is presented, I write. :) The picture is me at 13! :

 I like hearing about women who ignore the idea that the world is stacked against them. Women who do what they want regardless of what others think. Women who do not listen to the rhetoric that says women have been discriminated against, who act as if this is not the case, who venture into all worlds with the expectation that they can do anything, and see no barriers, only opportunities. This was ingrained into me by my father.

There were blocks in front of me in the early 80s when I became a stockbroker. I tried to join Rotary but was told they weren't ready for a woman member, I was chased around a desk from a groping manager; I have stories, but making those stories into a victim's story is devolving. I just chalked it up to the idiot behavior of a few. Mostly the men in my life have been great, and working in an industry with so many men has been a blast.

It seems like we're going into another round of hearing women are victimized. One of the ways we fight this is by moving past the perceived barriers, don't believe in them.
Those who choose to point at the reasons why they can't succeed, won't. Those who barrel on through regardless, just may change the world.

Create Peace in all the Division

 

              Photo by Loverna Journey on Unsplash

Much like most of you I have friends and family members who cover the spectrum of beliefs and ideologies. Intelligent people I know and respect who think so differently from each other on so many topics: politically, on health, fiscally, socially and more. I watch and hear the confusion people are feeling trying to understand this wide diversity among people close to us.

Look how confusing it is in our world today.

•  We have multiple information outlets with experts of prestigious backgrounds voicing disparate 'truths' on whatever topic you pick, from what drugs are effective, to when to open schools, and whether to trust the safety of wearing masks and more, just on the virus alone!
•  A continuous stream of 'breaking', alarming news.
•  Social media rife with torrents of angry rants, condemnation of others, as well as horrific stories of unimaginable atrocities to people, children and animals.
• Widely diverse news stories showing the information from an unbiased view (where?) all the way to extreme bias.
• An increasing number of conspiracy theorists gaining in popularity among all demographics
• Increasing violence in the streets of large cities and very little coverage of it on mainstream media.

             And no one takes responsibility for this. We hear the cry; it is the evil media's fault; they are the villain here. It is the politician's fault; no, the 'other party's' fault. You can find stories to validate whatever it is you are inclined to believe. Then you can feel justified in your judgments, your opinions, and 'know' you are right and others are wrong. Even the pandemic, of which we are in the middle of, is worse, or not nearly as bad, as the different sources say.

            Let's stop for a moment and look at where our judgments come from. In our modern world we have this gigantic compilation of all the egoic thoughts represented on the internet. Like a global brain, mass consciousness is suspended in the Ethernet, holding all good, bad and indifferent indiscriminately.

             We don't know how to handle all of this information overload. We spent a few million years living in small clans, knowing an infinitesimal bit about the greater world around us. We went on instinct, our guts, and our emotions, observing others near us, understanding what kept us safe, and had to stay focused on finding food and surviving.

            Now most of us don't need to worry about getting enough food, or a safe place to sleep. With our time we can spend it coming up with new ways to live and entertain ourselves day after day after day.

            So, where are we now? We work toward what constitutes a good life and how we want to be, and we gather with those who agree with us, but find many in our sphere don't, and low and behold we find millions of others disagree. Then others sometimes hold back on discussing topics, or quietly separate from us, or they may argue with us, or even get enraged!  

            The truth is we all are creating our own individual worlds from our own consciousness. Our own minds. We absorb—consume is a better word—all the information coming into our senses. We react with a combination of judgments, reactions and ensuing emotions. We base all our assumptions and beliefs on our history. Our ego is like an operating system that has learned about the world since our birth. This is where our judgments come from.

            We couldn't survive without it.

            But almost all of our suffering is caused by the ego. Our thoughts about a situation, and our feeling that we are powerless to fix it, drop a blinder in front of us, blocking a way out of the suffering. We don't see the suffering coming from inside our minds but blame everything outside of us. We become open to explanations served by conspiracy theories.  We reinforce this suffering by talking to our friends about how terrible everything is. We all do this to some extent, and it is so hard not to. Yet it holds us away from our sense of inner peace.

            We can learn to 'see' the deeper reality below all of this created chaos by being anchored in the unchanging, omniscient, omnipresent source; use your own words here: God, The Unmanifest, Source. Let's see how.

            We have another 'mind' besides the ego; that is our higher consciousness. That part of us that nudges and whispers when we stop to look within; when we take a moment to listen, actually connecting to our source. Pause, be mindful, meditate, be present, these are all suggestions to hop beyond the judgmental mind's suffering.

            No matter what is going on in your own world right now—you may be experiencing difficulties or illness—in this moment, you are sitting there reading these words and you are OK. The sun will still rise tomorrow. All that really exists is this moment, right now. Stop burdening yourself with worrying about the whole world. It's futile. Worrying about all the other people who think differently from you won't change anything. Worrying about the newscaster who said something incorrect, the politician who said something awful, the latest numbers on the virus, the violence and natural disasters, will not help anything.

            Create love in your heart. Find a way to seek to understand the hearts of others. That’s all. Then you are moving from ego to love. And as always, the more people who seek love and understanding will change the world.

 

 Kasey at the foot of a Statue of Gandhi in London

Resolving the racial divide and racism

 

There are many terrific ideas being proposed to help our culture include more equality, from improving education, to assigning more mental health professionals to work with the police, and taking to the streets to bring awareness and express dissatisfaction. Most are old ideas. I've watched this struggle since I can remember; in the 1960s and 70s there was a similar upheaval for change and healing of the racial disparity. There was much talk and action to address it.  Yet here we are, circling back, realizing how our efforts have failed. Why? 

One reason is our piecemeal approach, so many programs that affect only a few people. Or ideas like Head Start; an honest effort, but didn't address the real problem. And equating throwing more money as a solution to problems. More food stamps, more welfare, more school lunches. While much of it is necessary, this still doesn't address the problem. Legislating to stop discrimination is nice but doesn't address the problem. Pulling down Confederate statues may help emotionally, but will never address the problem.

 Just as a rising tide lifts all boats, lifting the entire society to become more aware, more conscious is the only real solution.

 It is the only one that doesn't continue to slap band aids on a cultural problem.  If we continue to be focused on the symptoms and not the cause, we will never get there. And it isn't the easiest, but it is possible.

 What we need to stop doing:

•          Stop ostracizing and punishing those who are acting out for or against changes. For using trigger words, for using hateful speech. They're acting out of ignorance and reflexive fear, and they may not learn anything if they are always disregarded as human beings and not heard. This helps no one.
•          Stop mindlessly spending money on our problems. The lack of effectiveness and waste in government spending is disgraceful. We have a multitude of programs at every level of government with little to no progress to show.
•          Stop talking and look for positive actions.

 

What we need to start doing:

•          Send good communicators out into the communities. Mental health experts, compassionate conflict resolution experts, educators, and elected officials with the objective of listening, problem solving, and coming up with creative and thoughtful ideas to discover our commonalities and working on our communities together.
•          Develop a program that will be taught in all schools that includes conflict resolution, problem solving, stress management, and some type of mindful practice that allows inner reflection and growth in awareness. There are schools across the country doing this now but they are few and far between.
•          Develop a better plan to help the lowest socioeconomic sectors stop the perpetuation of staying in poverty generation to generation.
•          Prison reform. A thoughtful plan to bring the non-violent offenders into programs that increase their success in life through education, problem solving etc.

 By raising awareness, or consciousness in a significant number of people in society, systemic problems like racism will wane naturally because we grow in self-reflection, empathy, and broader perspectives. With compassion and care for everyone, we will all rise.

We Are All Brainwashed

Why are we so surprised when someone acts badly, horribly? There have always been people who do so. Why do we expect others to change and behave because we tell them to or think they should?

     When people we like say unfortunate things we excuse them, when people we disapprove of say unfortunate things we say, "See, see how awful that person is?"

     Our whole law and order system is based on the premise that we have no control over ourselves and will purposely do bad things if we are allowed to, but not if there is a law against it. Huh?

     We keep expecting military, police and others in the line of danger to control themselves, even after teaching them how to harm and kill others. Are we giving them skills to increase their insight, judgment, and self-control?

     Why do we hoard toilet paper? Why do selfless acts, people doing the 'right' thing, bring so much attention?

     There is so much going on, originating from our primitive past and evolution, to our states of awareness or consciousness. The great majority of us don't get up and plan to do harmful things one day. We expect people to behave because most of us tend to follow the rules, use care and make decisions not to harm without even thinking about it.

     But we are emotional beings, and when we are tripped emotionally by fear, real or imagined, our primitive part of our brain, the reptilian brain, hijacks our rational, more evolved brain. When fear sets in and takes hold, our basic survival reflexes take over, and our thoughts go from reasonable to "I won't have any toilet paper!".  More seriously, when fearing our existence could be extinguished, the root of all fear.

     And we have the media and social sites stoking the flames over and over and over causing more brains to go into survival mode. It is like an inflammation of society. It is the old adage, what you pay attention to grows.

     What is the answer? What I have always maintained; enough of us having the intention to raise our consciousness, our awareness. We can learn how to subdue the primitive brain and not allow this knee-jerk reaction of fear.  There is a profound amount of research now to support the myriad benefits of conditioning our minds with meditation, yoga and other mindful practices, and understanding how to attain wellbeing, which includes health, happiness and prosperity. If enough of us do this it will raise the mass consciousness perhaps to the point where we will begin to see clearly the causes of these outbursts we see on the news, like the woman in the park who called the police on a black man just telling her to leash her dog, or more dire acts of violence such as the policeman who killed a black man in custody. It is more than prejudice, it is low consciousness, which doesn’t suppress a primitive response such as fear, apathy and other ignorant reactions that can lead to cruelty. (Noted, a black person seeing what happens to other black people when confronted by a bad policeman, will feel fear. To ask someone in this situation to not feel that way in this present day is ridiculous.)

     We are all brainwashed in that we all are prejudice. We grow up with our family of origin's beliefs, our communities, our culture's and the beliefs of those who we chose to be around, right or wrong. Then, we have layers added from the media, internet and Hollywood images. We seek out validation of our own opinions and surely, we find them. It is mostly unconscious.

     We think we are right and others who disagree with us are wrong. That is prejudice. All sides of an issue have varying degrees of validity. It takes maturity to see another's viewpoint. To see their hurt behind their harmful words and actions. To see their fear in the violent acts. To see their desperation in their hateful speech or destructive actions. It isn't easy.

     To be open-minded doesn't come naturally; it takes intention and effort, it takes introspection. 

     The miracle is how our society functions as good as it does most of the time. The great majority of police and military act with honor and conscientiousness. Most of the protests are peaceful and productive. Most drivers are driving carefully. Most people, given the opportunity, will not steal. Most people show kindness daily. And this isn't because of our man-made laws, it is because of consciousness.

     When I saw a white policeman kneel beside the protesters, and another wrapping his arms around one, a lump formed in my throat. Then, I saw more police talking of the great need for real conversation between the black community and police departments. And I now see a small light emerging. Growth. Will it be fanned instead of more of the grief and anger? Will we now listen to each other and move to the next level of awareness with love and kindness?