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Category Archives: Compassion

Some Thoughts On Guns

15 Thursday Jun 2017

Posted by in Compassion, Conspiracies, Emotional Intelligence, Guns, Hate, Memorial, Middle Way, Open mind, Patriotism, Politics

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I wrote the following essay one year ago yesterday…

— — —

Some thoughts on guns. (It’s not what you think)

I grew up in a home with guns, and I was taught respect for them. That respect was extended from the real ones to the fake one. Those who grew up in a responsible gun home know what those rules are, my job is not to go into them right now. Nevertheless, they are essential.

And so, I had set of snazzy cap guns. I also had a little Daisy single pump BB gun. When we went shooting with my father we would use a .22 mostly. And as we proved our ability to be trusted, and to physically handle larger caliber weapons, we were allowed to do so while under supervision. I’m pretty sure I still have a bruise from the first time I was allowed to shoot a muzzle loader.

When I finally reached the age at which I was allowed to go hunting with my father, I got myself all oranged up, I was handed a 16 gauge shotgun and other essentials, and off we went.

At some point during that day it hit me what I was doing. I was only around 12 years old, I was carrying a powerful weapon and I was trying to kill something. It was an epiphany of sorts for me. I still love venison, but I never went hunting again.

I also didn’t write off guns. I had been brought up around them in such a way that I accepted that they were simply something that was in this world. Just like pencils and shovels. They are simply tools.

I do not like or dislike gun owners, nor do I feel either way about those who dislike guns. Everyone is entitled to their own position and feelings. As long as it’s theirs and theirs alone. But that’s where the problem starts.

What I do not like are organizations like the NRA who hide behind laws, assume a rigid public position, obfuscate the truth, and subtly dictate public opinion.

Here is a prime example: There is a saying the NRA are quite fond of that goes like this: “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people!” At its essence this saying is true. The insinuation being that a person bent on killing could just as easily do so with a shovel to the head, or a pencil in the jugular. The intent comes from the individual, the tool is inanimate without the person. People do the killing.

But there’s another saying that the NRA is fond of, and it’s somewhat different. This one says: “Guns save lives!”

Do you see the problem yet?

Guns can’t be credited with saving lives, but absolved of killing people at the same time. They are still just a tool. If someone with a gun saves a life, then that person just saved a life… they just happened to use a gun to do it. They could just have well done it with a can of pepper spray, or a well aimed Moe Howard poke to the eyes.

And so the truth is that people kill people. And it is also true that people save lives.

So what’s the real problem? It’s not the guns. It’s not the mental health system. It’s not the anti-gun movement. It’s not religious nuts. It’s money, and its politics. It’s fear, and it’s organizations like the NRA.

Gun sales skyrocket not by slick marketing campaigns like cars and snack foods do, they rise in relation to national fear. Notice what happens anytime a liberal gets in a seat of power… Rumors begin to circulate that they’re coming for your guns. This kind of campaign works particularly well via social media where it’s easy to hit the “Forward” button without having to check the facts. Look at what happened to gun sales when Barack Obama was elected President, there was an explosion in weapon and ammo sales! And yet, the president never said a word about guns or gun control for years. Yet social media was full of insinuations and rumors that this socialist black Muslim dictator was going to take your guns, your rights, and your freedom.

And the fear rose, as did the gun sales. All the while the Second Amendment remained untouched and unchallenged. And hunters and housewives could still get an AK-47.

If you mix that kind of fear and paranoia with firearms, things begin to get dangerous. And if you add in the lack of respect, education, and basic safety for those same weapons, well then you get a perfect storm for destruction. There’s only one component left for detonation.

The media. The media is the secret ingredient to America’s gun violence.

It’s the media that starts AND causes the chain reaction in a multitude of ways. It’s no secret that they judge a story’s level of importance with the saying “If it bleeds, it leads!” When a mass shooting occurs, it’s the media who race each other to be the first to air a retrospective on the killer: Name, Religion, Family, Upbringing… Make sure to zoom in on a sepia-tone shot of the killer with a look of defiance or hate on his face.

The focus on ratings has so blinded the entire industry that they now have to actually avoid the direct correlation between their “in depth” coverage of the killers and the rising tide of victims.

And so the problem starts with the money and gun sales. It gestates with the lobbying power that the NRA wields. Dripping in cash, they swat at naysayers with a rolled up copy of the Second Amendment. The problem, then gets fed and nurtured with the fiction and lies of social media. Only to emerge, fully formed, in all its complexities, as a single deadly act. Each facet of which is so unique and overwhelming that they alone are capable of producing and sustaining entire conversations, each one distracting the public in a thousand different directions.

All the while we struggle, argue, cry and fight, looking for the circle’s beginning that we’re sure is there somewhere.

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The Dark Tunnel

25 Thursday May 2017

Posted by in Change, Compassion, Depression, Ego, Emotional Intelligence, Hate, Meditation, Mental Health, Middle Way, Spirituality

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If you or someone close to you has ever experienced depression, then you know it’s not a joke. And I’m not talking about just a bad mood or a bout of the blues here. No, I’m talking about that debilitating 1,000-pound cloak of self-loathing and uselessness that settles down for a long, long stay. So, if you, or someone you love has experienced it, then you know it’s a very real, very powerful thing. You also know that it can destroy anyone, or anything, in its path.

At best, your relationships can suffer. Unfortunately, many of them just fall apart and end. Even the best of friends can only take so much before they have to save themselves. It’s not what they want to do. But since their sense of self-preservation is so much healthier than the sufferer’s, they want to help, but regrettably, end up having to save themselves.

Jobs are, at best, difficult to hold down. Sometimes if you are lucky enough to have a job that doesn’t require you to interact with too many people, you can hide for a while. But, because the lack of motivation gets stacked higher and higher with layers of bland apathy, even the most essential jobs begin to feel menial and pointless. And of course, none of this is good for long-term employment.

Sleep is either a constant friend that offers hours of relief and seclusion, protecting you like a fur-lined leather cloak with outfacing spikes. Or, if you are really cursed, sleep becomes a fleeting joke. A whispered promise of escape that is always just out of reach, waving to you from the far banks of some distant river.

And then there’s always the food problem. For many, there’s really no point to eating since they don’t have anything remotely resembling an appetite anyway, even for their most favorite dishes. And with that, of course, comes the weight loss, the ill-fitting clothes, and the omnipresent questions about your well-being. That is, unless you are the type who gets their comfort from food, and lots of it. For those, a normal serving size doesn’t exist. The only question they have is, “How much you got?” This self-imposed-prison is all around them. It lurks in the daily nourishment we take for granted. For them though, food is like a rogue tiger – large, fierce, powerful, and stealthy. And fighting against it only seems to prolong the inevitable.

And the thing is, this kind of depression doesn’t lift on its own, and it can hit almost out of nowhere. I say almost because I firmly believe that if you dig deep enough, with enough tools, you are bound to find a source… or even many sources.

For whatever reason though, we depressives actually seek to make things worse for ourselves. We begin listening to sad, depressing, or angry music. We keep our feelings to ourselves, our noble goal is to try not to spread our mood to others. Yet, even by those very same actions, we reveal to everyone precisely what our mood is. And then of course, someone reaches out to help… and if we even bother to acknowledge their offer, it’s only to turn it down. But when no one offers, we’re offended and sullen.

Even though there are probably a number of ways to get out of this deep funk, by virtue of our thoughts, actions, and body language, we almost guarantee that the only thing that will help us, sits squarely on our own shoulders. And that, is both a blessing and a curse.

There are ways though. Stay in touch for some posts on solutions, very soon. 

Saṃsāra

15 Saturday Apr 2017

Posted by in Change, Compassion, Ego, Emotional Intelligence, Human, Middle Way, Open mind, Politics, Spirituality

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When I originally set out to write this blog I did so knowing that it would never be done on any regular schedule. I also knew it shouldn’t be singular in its scope. One of the reasons I refused to be bound by those kinds of boundaries was because I saw the problems I have had with structure when I had started other blogs, or when I wrote for various publications with deadlines. And one thing had become crystal clear to me from those experiences: Being locked into a single topic, or timetable is the quickest way to destroy creativity. Inspiration can’t be shoehorned into a schedule. In fact, inspiration was to be The Middle Way’s only guiding principle.

My mistake began when I selfishly assumed that since this is my blog, I could write about whatever the hell I wanted to. And while that’s true to some extent, there’s an inherent problem with that assumption. The cycle of the written word isn’t complete until it has been read, therefore the writer is no more important than the reader in this format.

And so, The Middle Way suddenly took a sharp left turn, and went political for a while. The problem is that when people subscribe to a blog that professes to be focused on spiritual principles and the path of least resistance, they probably didn’t do so hoping to see if someone figured out a way to make politics a means to that end. Not to mention there’s no shortage of political bloggers in this world, so my adding to the vitriol instead of offering a solution was nothing short of base treachery. For that, I feel I owe many of my readers an apology.

Most of us spend our days in Saṃsāra without being aware of it. Once we begin to seek enlightenment, we find that our suffering is at its most palpable just prior to our awakening. For myself, I find that when my mind is finally able to break the surface, only then am I able to observe out of what destructive cycles I had been reacting.

And it’s that that realization that lead me to this post. Because, awake or asleep, there’s one thing I know for sure. Going forward, most of us are going to need ways to accept the things we can’t change, to courage and presence of mind to change the things we can, and the knowledge and compassion to know the difference.

Srinivas Kuchibhotla

26 Sunday Feb 2017

Posted by in Compassion, Ego, Hate, Human, Memorial, Middle Way, Patriotism, Politics, Race, Terrorism, Trump-Hole

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When Srinivas Kuchibhotla was shot the other day, it was by an angry, drunken American man, screaming “Get out of my Country!” While this story has been in the news somewhat, it’s not a headline. Trump skipping the Correspondence Dinner is, but not a white guy murdering an immigrant. But, let me ask you this, do you honestly think if the roles were reversed that it wouldn’t be a HUGE headline?

Apparently Mr. Kuchibhotl’s wife was concerned about staying in America too, because of the surge in violence lately. But he assured her by saying “Good thing happen in America!”  By most definitions, this sounds like the kind of immigrant you want coming in your country, even by conservative standards.

In fact, Donald Trump has repeatedly talked about attracting these very kinds of immigrants!  “People that love us and want to love our country and will end up loving our country are allowed in.”, Trump croons. It seems like Srinivas Kuchibhotla was exactly this kind of guy Trump asked for. And he was murdered for it.

And now, the very same President won’t call this a hate crime. He won’t even consider the possibility that his own stance on immigration contributed to the killing at all.

Orwellian or Freudian?

13 Friday Jan 2017

Posted by in Compassion, Dingleberries, Ego, Emotional Intelligence, Hate, Human, Middle Way, Open mind, Patriotism, Politics, Terrorism, Trump-Hole

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Seriously, this is painful and frustrating to watch. Trump says he’s a smart guy and doesn’t need repetitive security briefings every day because he’s “too busy to hear the same thing over and over.” But honestly the only thing we know for sure that Trump is actually doing lately is getting pissed off about personal slights on his character and taking to Twitter in the early morning hours to complain and threaten.

Back in the days when he was the one casting aspersions on the sitting president, he complained that Obama wasn’t responding. Of course the reason was the man was busy with much larger issues than defending himself against foolish character attacks.

The president will always be a target and can’t be this easily distracted. Each time this comes up, he rhetorically asks “why shouldn’t I be able to defend myself?”  The answer is that the job of the president is so large and all-encompassing that defending himself from petty attacks is no longer his job!

He wants to appear as a tough guy and a powerful leader. But the problem is that any first year psychology student can see that his posturing is nothing more over-compensating for his own feelings of inadequacy. Trump’s unknown-knowns are blatantly obvious to the rest of the world, yet hidden from himself due to a lifetime’s worth of trying to measure up that only served to distract Donald from his own true nature. 

11 Wednesday Jan 2017

Posted by in Change, Compassion, Dingleberries, Ego, Emotional Intelligence, Hate, Human, Middle Way, Open mind, Patriotism, Politics, Sameness, Spirituality, Terrorism, Trump-Hole

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As this election fiasco continues to unfold, I am trying my damndest to reserve judgement until there is more known evidence. It’s not easy.

Today Donald Trump finally admitted that he “thinks it was Russia” that hacked the DNC.

Yesterday, James Comey was asked about a possible investigation into Trump having covert ties to Russia. His reply was laughably hypocritical:  “I would never comment on investigations, whether we have one or not, in an open forum like this”.  If only he had taken that position a little earlier. 

Everything will come out eventually, of that I have no doubt. It’s getting harder and harder to ignore the direction things are going though. This is going to be incredibly damaging to the country, regardless of the outcome, of that I am sure.

My biggest concern right now is the tone that is escalating between Americans because of everything that is happening. I see Trump’s supporters yelling for people to “get over it” and calling others derogatory names, widening the gap further between themselves and others. I see the Anti-Trump movement gathering steam and passing along meme after meme, assuring their opposition that “they will never forgive them for voting for hate and racism”, increasing the rift as well.

Donald Trump is unusually gifted at creating division among people. His position as president-elect is already allowing that gift to flourish almost completely unchecked, and he hasn’t even taken office yet! If we aren’t careful it will tear this country apart.

Start small: Buy a friend a cup of coffee even though they voted for another candidate than you did. The next time someone you know attacks someone on social media for their political beliefs, ask them how their kids are instead. Or, even better, suggest they talk about something else so that we don’t end up hating each other.

No one person is going to help us heal, just as it’s no one person attacking. These are your friends. They’d still be your friends if you didn’t know their politics.

Stop. Think. Breathe. We all want the country to still be here when this is over. 

Hey, you can’t pee there! It’s against the law !!!

01 Sunday Jan 2017

Posted by in Compassion, Dingleberries, Ego, Emotional Intelligence, Hate, Human, Kids, Middle Way, Open mind, Patriotism, Politics, Sameness, Sex, Terrorism

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It seems to me that laws like North Carolina’s Bathroom Bill are stupid on so many levels that the people who drafted them are the worst kind of dumb. They believe they’re smart because they have letters after their name, even though they go out of their way to punish anyone who doesn’t agree with how they think the world should work. They hide behind what they claim to be God’s law, but feel the need to add on a few of man’s laws… just in case.

“In case of what?” you ask. Well, if someone identifies as a particular gender there is a very good chance that is reflected in how they look, right? So it’s going to be difficult for a closed-minded bigot to tell who is what. Therefore, they need to write laws to protect themselves from their biggest fear: Getting too drunk and having sex with a person who isn’t who they thought they were!

The other part that is so frustrating is that the people who are writing and enforcing these laws belong to the party of less government… *wink wink*. They use the very thing they swear to limit in order to expand their reach and seek control of a world that is changing around them. Many of these lawmakers probably grew up in households that thought Easy Rider had a happy ending. So stopping others from being different is the real family business they’ve inherited. It’s a business that’s driven by Fear and Hate, while masquerading as Christianity and Patriotism, but embodying neither.

Naïve Realism & Emptiness

20 Sunday Nov 2016

Posted by in Compassion, Dingleberries, Ego, Emotional Intelligence, Hate, Human, Middle Way, Open mind, Politics, Sameness, Spirituality

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So you know those friends of yours who are convinced they’re right and you’re wrong this election?

Or… you know how you think half of your friends are idiots these days. 

———–

The Problem

In social psychology, naïve realism is the human tendency to believe that we see the world around us objectively, and that people who disagree with us must be uninformed, irrational, or biased. Naïve realism provides a theoretical basis for several other cognitive biases, which are systematic errors in thinking and decision-making. These include the false consensus effect, actor-observer bias, bias blind spot, and fundamental attribution error, among others.

———–

The Solution

http://www.lamayeshe.com/article/karma-and-emptiness

What Is The Middle Way?

11 Friday Nov 2016

Posted by in Change, Compassion, Ego, Emotional Intelligence, Hate, Human, Middle Way, Open mind, Politics, Sameness, Spirituality

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I’ve received a lot of messages from readers who think my last post is saying that it’s okay to let the hate flourish. I’m not. 

The Middle Way was originally started as a place for me to explore how to navigate a life that is full of extremes. The term “The Middle Way” is what The Buddha called his path. He was raised as a prince and lived in opulence. He abandoned that life and went to live as an ascetic. Neither brought him enlightenment, because the extremes cloud our perception of how things really are. When he sought a middle way, he realized this was his path to nirvana.

I am guilty of veering off the rails politically lately and giving a false sense of where I originally intended this blog to come from. But ultimately it’s about the deeper work. It’s not about throwing out the baby with the bath water. It’s about knowing there is a human beneath all of the hate.

The challenge is always to look at your own thinking and beliefs. It’s about wondering how Ghandi defeated an empire without violence, or why the Dalai Lama never says a word of condemnation against the Chinese people. It’s about how to find internal peace, and not have to live in fear and anger. It’s not easy work, and it’s not for everybody. The ego rears up when challenged. Fear says not to look behind that door.

If you are looking for a place to gather and hate “the other side”, this isn’t your room. If you are looking for a way to let go of the anger and the fear, to be okay on the inside no matter what the circumstances, then please, come back and read. 

Thoughtful commentary, a day or two later.

11 Friday Nov 2016

Posted by in Change, Compassion, Ego, Emotional Intelligence, Human, Middle Way, Open mind, Politics, Sameness, Spirituality

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I’ve had quite a few people say they figured I would be far more vocal online after this election. The truth is that I didn’t really trust myself right away. I wanted to process and reflect before writing. In my opinion, there is nothing less appealing than reading knee-jerk after knee-jerk post, all driven by fear and anger. So I have been making notes, and drafting in my head… here goes.

This morning I was browsing the headlines and I was flabbergasted at how much bullshit the media are peddling right now. And I’m not a media conspiracy guy either, but it was disturbing to watch them try to deconstruct this election and attempt to paint a picture points of failure in their ability to get this one right.

It seems like right now they are mostly focused on what was missed in the polling, or what all this means for each special interest group (i.e. women, Muslims, latinos, etc.). What I didn’t see were stories that explored some of the real contributing factors, such as the press themselves. 

I did t see stories on the DNC, Wassermann Shultz, and the rest of the Democratic Party who decided that they owed a debt to HRC and decided to “tweak” the primaries in order to edge Bernie Sanders out, and “nudge” Hillary Clinton in because she had been promised another shot at the crown after her surprise loss to Obama eight years ago. 

I didn’t see stories about how Bernie was consistently filling 30,000 seat arenas, but got little to no media coverage until he it got so obvious that he couldn’t be ignored any longer.

I also didn’t see stories about how the Democratic Superdelegates ignored the will of their constituents in order to prop up the candidate that they thought was “the best qualified”, regardless of the fact that, poll after poll said Bernie was really the one to beat.

I didn’t see stories about how the major media outlets fell for Trump’s ruse and willingly gave him unlimited press coverage to his circus of a campaign, which essentially equated to free unlimited political advertising.

I also didn’t see stories about how such a racist, misogynistic, and xenophobic candidate was elected only a mere three years after the Supreme Court struck down the Voting Rights act. Or how hundreds of polling places across the country were shut down out of “necessity” prior to this election cycle, and how oddly most of them were in low income and minority areas. Or about the other types of voter discrimination that suddenly began to pop up as people began to discover they had been wiped from the voting rolls in districts across the country. And let’s not forget those voter ID laws that were put into effect to counteract the often touted, mostly imaginary, threat of voter fraud in this country. A threat that has proven to be nothing more than an veiled attempt to disenfranchise low income voters who have trouble easily gaining access to the proper identification.

And of course, there were the gaps in the endless polls they conducted, especially the “shame gap”. That was the gap people fell into if they didn’t want to advertise their support of Trump out of the initial fear of being branded a racist. I personally know a few Trump supporters who stayed quiet for this very reason, they wanted what he was selling but didn’t want to broadcast how much they wanted to get rid of  “those damn immigrants”. I also know a few who are now excited their children will know a white president for the first time in their lives (I know, I don’t get this one either. Last time I checked, Hillary Clinton was white, for that matter so was Bernie. I’m guessing it might have more to do with the preferential treatment white people hope to get under a President Trump).

Now, the other related news stories are the huge amounts of people who are upset and protesting across the country. I’m ambivalent here. I completely understand the anger, and the need to protest. However, there was only one way to win against Trump on Election Day, and many people didn’t like the choice. But, no one can say they weren’t warned against the danger of protest votes, joke votes and write-ins. I can’t stand Hillary Clinton, I have never liked her. But I was sufficiently scared enough of a President Trump, and did my utmost to work against him. Even going so far as to hold my nose and vote for a candidate I did not want to be president. Why? Because I felt that she was a “known evil”. That is to say, she is corrupt in all of the normal ways. Whereas Trump’s willingness to paint entire ethnic and cultural groups with such a broad brush of hate and blame that I felt I had to do what I could to keep him out of the The White House, and that included voting for someone I didn’t want to support. I’m not proud of who I voted for. I feel like I let myself down to some extent, but I also feel like I took one for the team. I also feel like I’ve earned to right to complain. Because I ended up disliking each candidate so much, this election ended up being about the math. So, as far as I was concerned, if you didn’t want Trump to end up as president then the only way to stop him was to vote for the one candidate who had a chance at defeating him. If it was about something different for you, I respect that.

I’ve always been a pragmatist, and now is no exception. In fact, I think pragmatism is pretty darn handy right now. I know what I have the ability to change in this world, and also what I can’t. Yes, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote. But that’s not the system we have. Our constitution gave us the electoral college, and as much as Democrats haven’t been big fans of it lately, if the results of this the 2000 election had been reversed I have no doubt that the Democrats would be crowing about the wisdom of the founders and the Republicans would be crying about the popular vote.

Despite everything progressives say about diversity and the importance of an open mind, it has always struck me as ironic that they aren’t willing to accept racists, misogynists, and xenophobes into the big tent. Why preach diversity and practice exclusion? I’ve always felt that it’s very easy to talk about having an open mind and accepting people if you like them and their values. But doesn’t the test of a truly open mind come when your values are challenged? Isn’t true acceptance really only practiced when you are trying to accept that which you don’t agree with? I mean, it’s not too tough to accept the good stuff, but I really have work to do in order to accept the things I dislike or oppose. We can behave the same way we were treated for the last eight years, or we can actually start the change with us. It will take work. And it’s almost all an inside job.

So, here’s the challenge, and it’s not what you think.

If you were infuriated at how the Republican lead Congress dug their heels in and blocked everything they could, ask yourself if you are comfortable becoming that kind of person. If you are, then more power to you. However, if you are looking for something better in this world, then try to be the better person here. Be the ethical one, the moral one. One thing for sure is that what drew most people to Bernie was his integrity. No one can deny he has that to spare. And sometimes watching him get attacked during the primaries was tough, because he didn’t “fight back” they way people wanted him to. But that was also what made him Bernie. That’s what gave him the “lead us out of the desert” leadership quality that inspired such devotion in his followers. Integrity is difficult to cultivate. It takes practice that can only be performed under pressure.

I know that taking the high road can be painful, partially because it doesn’t offer instant gratification. In fact, it can feel like you’re being a complete pushover with no satisfaction. But in the end, morality is in the long game, and real karma happens over eons.

We can’t work for peace and equality by practicing hate and division, no matter how deserving the opposition.