Grief

In my nursing class this morning we discussed the subject of what loss is and the grief process. The developmental reactions to change shift over time and are different at different time of our lives. A man in his fifties, such as myself with nothing tangible to show for his life, is vulnerable to any sudden or gradual loss of function, status, or connection. In my life occupational stressors related to unemployment underemployment and lack of actual right livelihood have left me with feelings of despair and depression. Coupled with the underlying pressure of mounting student debts with no chance foreseen or anticipated to alleviate them creates a sense of hopelessness and an urge to give up.
We watched a video about how our suffering may be ignored or overlooked by others and I related to it personally even though, to the best of my knowledge, I am not terminally ill.(sic) The joy which eludes me is a threat to my overcoming the sadness and sense that I am pursuing a path that is not my heart's work. So why can't I accept that any job is better than no job and any work that pays the piper is a worthy avocation?
These questions are core to my present dysthymic existence. It takes me out of my best perspective on life and makes me dysfunctional at best. At some point I will shift and find a way out of this but this morning all I can do is write a little bit about my feelings. I know keeping this inside will not alleviate my depression but I also have a sense of shame that after all the time I have spent in therapy and school and in life in general I can't overcome this mid-life crisis. The term maladaptive grief is apropos for my extended
sadness. In a "bootstraps" society, I am bootless. I have a new ally in my quest for acceptance of my "self" you know and don't know very well. She is very quiet. Not my ally my "self". It is complicated to say the least. A diagnosis of gender dysphoria as my best friend brought home for me to analyze is something I never considered that it might be more complicated than merely being gay or bisexual. It may be also at the root of my inability to accept myself and inevitably the cause of my lack of trusting enough to share this with anyone I know.
It doesn't matter what I share as long as I am true to that self and not to the ego which will be shed before the bardo. I am grateful to those who have tried to help me overcome my karma and accept my dharma. I am also grateful for the patience to stay around and keep attempting to do my best here in this cycle of existence.

A letter to a young man

Dear fellow traveler:

You asked me to write some thoughts and advice as I am now expected to know how to avoid the pains of reconciling the spirit in me and the artificial boundaries imposed by Patriarchal religious institutions. In my case I believed my acts of self-destruction were rebelling against the moral dictates of sobriety, chasteness, and self-control. I was fortunate to encounter a spiritual community created by two drag queens and a PhD candidate who wanted to help those stricken by HIV. These people saw the value of people caring about people in a healthy community. The therapy I received was probably what saved my life. They saw themselves in my story though at the time, I had no idea why I felt as I did. I know now that my path has taken these turns because I have never lost that core value taught by a rabbi of seeing that each of us is capable of being a source of healing or a source of suffering. The conflict comes when religion comes between me and God and tells me I am not part of "God's chosen family" if I am a queer. God must be a just a little queer also if my physical being was made in his/her image.

I must have been good at keeping secrets because I could never admit to my gender dysphoria and also had filed a certain event of my early childhood as a "consensual encounter." Not until after my father's passing in 1995 did my sub-conscious allow the event to resurface. Cloaked in metaphor I wrote a poem about a "little boy in a cave".
Bundled up in my string of serial monogamous relationships and alcoholism was the guilty shame of my religious upbringing which told me my desires were wrong and my internalized homophobia was a source of depression and self-loathing. After getting the monkeys off my back I still had a deep need to find a spiritual outlet and practice. Finding a therapist who had experienced the same wounding taught me that we all are healers and we are all spiritual beings. I began to study Buddhism in earnest hoping to be liberated from the bondage of Christian religion and a more universal approach to compassion. I met Mat Fox in 1999 in Oakland. He was ex-communicated from the Roman Catholic Church for teaching liberation theology in Central American during the time when Father Romero was assassinated in El Salvador.
He taught me the value of creation cosmology and non-violence in envisioning a new order.
He is also a promoter of deep ecumenism and the integration of the ancient ways with the Wisdom tradition of Sophia. Not anything like the teachings of the temperance minded Evangelical Christians. Inside the spirit still sought meaning and found ritual celebration and body prayer to be a way to reintegrate spirit and creation into my life. So the question becomes "what are the most worthwhile ways to express the cosmic Christ?"
Service to mankind. The reckoning with a society still coming to grips with a minority that is of course of a different set of drives and yet we have the same desire to be happy and free from suffering. If the dominant majority denies this similarity there is oppression. If I do this for them it is oppression internalized and I am doing the work of the Inquisitor/Inquisition which under a new name still exists to this very day.
I guess my first advice is to find a suitable community which treats you fairly and justly and who will stand up for your right to freedom. Support in the quest for understanding of the Powers that inflict suffering by allowing oppression and discrimination and hopefully finding ways to transcend this false premise and create a new paradigm based upon the true teachings of Jesus St Francis and the other mystics like us who try to bring us deeper into the realm of the divine nature of this dimension.
The second thing is to realize our deepest wounds can be our greatest teachers. I have known the pain of separation from the things I love because I could not find a reason for the seeming injustice in the world. Battling the causes of poverty hunger racism and ignorance if I could just not worry about getting baited or attacked because I am not
acceptable to the self-appointed Mullahs and Self-righteous homophobes who want to burn me like the witches of the Inquisition. If I carry the religious message to the world I have no hope of making anything but more of the same thinking that put me on the therapy couch for many years.
It is a battle for control of the minds of men. Religion creates an all-or-nothing mentality. Get it right this is your last chance before hell and thereby creating more suffering by teaching intolerance and hatred. Which are the artifacts of hell that the devil left behind when he was cast away. The Christians are great at casting things out. About 2/3 of humanity which are non-Christian are deemed suitable for conversion or "death by patriot" reincarnations of the crusading warrior of the middle ages. We haven't evolved that far it still is an operational method to oppress and subdue the poor the weak and the pagan(read GBLT). It also allows the inequity to go on unabated.
So how do I make myself better at defending all my relations?
By being true to what I have learned about my own life. We are all born and all will die. In the middle lies the bardo and what we do with our minds/story is what is really our work of taking care of each other. As the healers have taught me I try to make a little less pain and suffering by being creative caring and taking only what I need and sharing what has been freely given to me.My experience strength and hope.

Neptune and Pluto

The deep areas of our earth consciousness are ruptured. Hardening of the arteries forced to put out the essence of the crust through a tiny opening with no liner. Drilling with no casing. Almost a metaphor for having unsefe sex in an unsafe region and now denying this is harmful or that it might have been prevented by us. We want it all. About three planets worth. This big blue marble is also ruptured and so the fingers get wagged asses are threatened and who is to blame? The last great generation who fought and died and invented all the methods of our ingenuity were deeply invested in this enterprise. Now no one can say, "what the f*ck? Grandma, what did you do?"
BP probing the outer shelf with our uncircumcised drill-bit the metaphorical penis of the once virile British Empire. What happens when the crust fractures and cracks? We are soon to find out. Literally or metaphorically.
We just didn't want to have to pick cotton anymore. (It looks like we may have one more chance.) The earth gave it to us. The means. Here is what happens when we trust the next thing as the solution. The post modern solution. We asked for a reliable source of heat and luxury. What did we get? Planet with dead zones all over it. Gotta clean house and then dump the dustpan in the river/ocean earth.
We are connected to this, yet each new threat of mass extinction leaves us still asleep or heavily drugged. How else could we be here? So the outer planets work on us and we reckon how we used our one wild and precious life and by design our planet. Or are we culpable for what we did?

Depression’s Upside - NYTimes.com

This article gives some insight into what is now the leading cause of disability in the US I have had my share of "down time" in my life. According to some of the psychiatrists and anthropologists, the role of depression is to defer some brain activities to allow focus in a time of distraction. The explanation fits as a reason for social withdrawal and rumination in depressives.
The debate is over whether medications really resolve what is a cognitive style and that relapse after DC-ing medications are 71% after one year. Cognitive therapy has a much lower relapse 31% rate. The pertinent argument against this is that there are certain organic causes for depression that are not amenable to talk therapy.
The research of Redfield-Jamison on artists and scientists and correlation to depression is that they are nine times as likely to have depression. The iron grip that it can have on one's mind is a call to change in spite of the odds. It also serves to bring the brain to keep itself in the working memory and not be distracted by food sex or pleasure seeking behavior.As painful as this can be, the isolation can bring about a deep analytical form of thought that allows for complexity to be understood. Writers also test higher rates of depression. The solitude necessary for the production of literature come from these states. The danger is romanticizing the disease. It kills in the form of suicide which increases as we approach maggothood.

I still think my life would not have been the same without the effects of this melancholic illness. I was "soulful" even as a teenager(sic)and my moods have been at times difficult as evidenced by work vs education curve. The denial of this is generational. Men are evolving to deal with the complexities of a post-modern society but not without paying a heavy cost. Symbolic violence, as manifested in video games and video wars, leaves a certain proportion unable to cope with the psychic loss of power while uncoupling from nature. Biotechnology allows us to play God and our minds are using our cleverness in ways that are deeply painful to some. I feel this my empathy has emerged as how I am coping with the black dog. Taking anti-depressants did not take away my deep craving for meaning nor did they bring me the ever elusive joy. Hard work, dedication, and perserverance(the great Protestant values) are the sources of greatest satisfaction. As the symptomology describes, the accomplishments are easily lost in the murky fog of depressive illness. Self-loathing dispair and ego-loss are defenses against having to defend oneself against attack after injury. The self-deprecation that make up the comic routines of stand-up performers come from deep pain of seeing life too realistically and amusing to others which is another effect of depression in the world.

I think the necessity of exercise in multi-disiplinary therapy is important in changing the brian's seritonin levels which are not discussed in this article. It may be that diet and stress response style are also key factors, hence once more I reiterate the theme of sensitivity and therefore empathic tendencies in the population.


Depression’s Upside - NYTimes.com

What Is a Man?

Today I got to look at my life. I recognize my reluctance to stay with anything that isn't enjoyable and my cycles of inspiration and defeat which happen every 9-10 years. This one as the last out a sense that doing this now would alleviate my pain of existence. Relationship a combination of passion familiarity and commitment. A few years here a few there and a life is gone and none of these still exists. As Johnny Cash sang,"You are someone else and I am still right here." this stage of the bardo with it's powerlessness and solitude due to my lack of social skills and resistance to accept my fate as a man who refuses to be a man. The grief I feel is just a recycling of past. If I do not have an illness then it is my fault. If I am lazy or stubborn to not try any more to live the dream which I have never quite felt I deserved. So what is a man? In this society he is judged by his job. A job is that necessity that provides for his loved ones or it doesn't. If I remember what it was like to work it was lost after I left Heppner in 1980. That's a long time to run away from yourself. A man without a job is hardly worth anything. If I was in prison at least I would know why I was there. I am still not sure why I am here. The sentence was life. I serve now till death. As do all. We are all on death row.

Suicide Bombers

I opened an email from an old friend retired marine and fellow skeptic of the great vision called the American Dream. It linked to the suicide note and final blogging of Joseph Andrew Stack who self-immolated himself via Cessna and IRS fusion. His pound of flesh he gave away was futile and, to a non-western perspective, just throwing a dead body on the heap he was destined to end up on anyway. His choice was to have one thing he could not be denied. In a time where a man is no longer valued if he can't work, even if it is because he chooses not to take a job someone else will do for less than he does.Which makes America great. It is this necessity to have a good paying job and the lack thereof signifying the endemic injustice now evident in the recession. Stack blamed the IRS or government in general. I have known first hand the pain of losing a job and all that it provides and the stress it creates not only for the worker but also his family and community. No longer welcome in the marketplace of mankind only indebtedness and indentured servitude. We all serve this beast to one degree or another whether through docility, complicity, or acceptance because the system may work for us, so it's OK. It didn't work for Joe. It is not a totality of the American Dream, only the way the masculine has been perverted. What Barbie did for Womankind, GI Joe and Wall Street Ken have done for Mankind. It is our Jihad. As men we lurk behind TV sets and sports while slowly dying inside. Or is it just me? I see a different reason this guy couldn't face life. It wasn't the IRS but it may be injustice nevertheless. So when will we wake up? When will men stop being greedy and beating their wives killing innocent people through industrial warfare against our endless fears, an enemy we haven't a chance of defeating. These men don't want to live with any sense of the connection to their selfishness and its' effect on the rest of the world. This suicide was not a terrorist act. It was an act of cowardice by a man enveloped in fear and powerlessness in a nation where powerless men are worthless.
He was a software engineer and he couldn't program his way into the American Dream.
Application Failure. Happy defragging Mr Stark.

Spermarche

The word of the day is spermarche the masculine marker of sexual maturity. The first ejaculation. The time about 12.5 years of age. The boys know how to make it happen mostly through reading which is how I learned about peristalsis and the ejaculatory duct. I learned that before spermarche the testes enlarge as does the penis so this explains the attention young men partake upon their burgeoning organs. The difference between (one difference) spermarche and menarche is that the girls get assistance dealing with their problem in a much more public and understated acceptance whereas boys don't raise their hands in social studies to announce they are having a speriod. Is it just me or do we need to bring males up to a higher consciousness about this rite of passage? I am so happy to have learned this new word. I may re-take the GRE to see if it is on the vocabulary section. Thank you Psychology 237.

Existentialism

With the reminder I will have to deal with a family I never created all those who came before me. I never wanted to play house. I never wanted to have to think about how twisted society makes a person. We complain about helping the poor but no problem killing them if they are close to our "enemy". I feel I am collateral damage in this culture of teabags and Jesus of the Taliban and the GOP. Hate sells tickets racism sells votes fear sells guns and lies sell everything. How can I make meaning of these paradoxical coincidences. I realized I am trying to fit in to a culture that denies I exist at all. I deny my own self out of a perverted sense of self-preservation. Saving for what? a better day to die perhaps because today is not very much of what I want anymore.When I finish it will not be any better. A good job? for who? My family is trying to assist my survival. If I had faith perhaps I might as Johnny Cash said,"I would find myself. I would find a way." I have to go to elemental level to remember my nature. Mostly H, just like the stars. Even they get burned out. How about that?

Why We Suffer

I am not sure exactly how to state this. My best friend just informed me that she is soon to be headed for maggot food. A recent measure in SF granted her the right to get health insurance through the city's program. Her first blood work in a long time indicated advanced lymphoma. She has been a musician all her life and as a musician never received unemployment or other things. She will never get a cent of her SSI she paid the last 37 years.
I guess what I want to say beyond my shock is that the dialogue over medical insurance is such an injustice in a country with such wealth and creativity we must defer to the greedy and the ignorant who think because they have what they need every one else can just wait until the people who own most of everything are ready to give back what they stole from us.
If you ask them they are an oppressed minority.They do not want you to know how their ancestors raped and pillaged and then hid behind religion and class barriers until through the complicity of the schools, the church, and the state masked the true nature of their wealth. Name names? Morgan, Stanley, Sutter,Bush etc.
The very same people stealing from another generation of Americans.
She never apologized for the truth she held as true. That we are here to take care of each other not to ignore the injustices of poverty war and capitalism. I will miss her dearly not merely because she died prematurely, a crime in itself, but because what she believed in universal health care as defined in SF would signal her death.
We will not know how we are to die for the most part.Only that we will surely die.
This fact is danced around by creating families who carry our genetics onward as we evolve as humans. The awareness of the fragility of life though shocking at times is necessary to live life fully. I am fully aware now that my best friend of ten years will soon be leaving her body and going on with music and friendships as her only legacy. I am grateful to be a part of this. I am not grateful for a system that ignores our obligation to care for all our citizens not just wealthy ones with good corporate or government jobs or those old enough or young enough to qualify for what should be a right. As should be housing education and medical care. We call ourselves "the greatest country on earth" how can the neglect of 50 million people be "great"? In the bardo we all wait for a new paradigm where the last vestiges of the agricultural/evangelical movement are stomped into a bitter gruel to be fed to our pigs.

Introduction

Hello this is my newest blog I am starting this to document materials I have discovered while enrolled at BMCC Hermiston and taking psychology 237: human growth and development.The title comes from a dharma lecture I heard from Gary Snyder regarding the bardo state. A buddhist term meaning a place between worlds specifically between death and rebirth but there is also a bardo between birth and death. I will cover this one here. I also thought of using from womb to tomb or heading for the compost pile;a primer for leaving a clean corpse.