Updating you on What I’ve Been Up to:

I am now certified in Somatic Experiencing and in Integral Somatic Psychology, schools of practice I consider the leading edge of trauma healing techniques and understandings.  For those of you who don’t relate to the word ‘trauma’, these are the approaches that heal anxiety, panic, depression, rage issues, feeling trapped in indecision or lack of motivation, i.e. symptoms of a nervous system wired in ‘fight, flight, freeze’.

I was getting more calls from people seeking the services that I could take on in my practice, and also calls from people who couldn’t afford private practice.  I collaborated with Greenwich Jewish Family Services to offer their therapists a 9 cec training in the techniques, and launched a 6 session group with two of the therapists to continue the training, and those two therapists are now running an ongoing group (call JFS for info).

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In this Day, civil rights is poised to make a leap, through the tremendous energy and involvement of activists in the Black Lives Matter movement.  We are and have been in the middle of the greatest grassroots movement in history, under many banners, climate change, womens’ march, million man march, ending mass incarceration, the fight against unsafe gmos in our food supply, LGBQTI rights, labor rights, livable wage, healthcare, housing, and so much more.  Sounds complicated, but make the policies that address the well-being of the Black single mom, and you will have addressed the issues that correct the larger umbrella of social justice issues.

So for me, there is absolute solidarity in moving towards a more just, compassionate, and thriving, world, even as we work out our best strategies and individual differences.

For a while, there was a #BLM encampment in my town (Stamford, CT), and I am a strong supporter, actually I feel #BLM is supporting me in my life long mission!  However, ‘disband the police’, is not a slogan that I align with, even though the demands behind that slogan are ones I support.

I support helping police departments rid themselves of their dysfunctions, some self-imposed, and some that we impose upon them.  We have placed issues like under-age drinking, that had all along been handled in the domain of the ‘family’, or acting out in school historically handled in the family and educational domains, into the criminal justice domain; domestic violence, suicide threats, and mental health crises that belong in the mental health domain,  addiction that belongs in the substance abuse domains, homelessness that belongs in the housing domain, have all been put in the criminal domain, having the police to respond to as first responders.  In so doing we have made of Americans 25% of the world prison population when we only comprise 4% of the world population.  We need to relieve our police of having to handle issues that are beyond their expertise, and have mental health and social workers be the first responders to these situations, with police when needed as escort, but not as the primary interventionist.

As I walked away from the encampment, I saw a lone man, carrying a sign, walking on mission towards the encampment.  The sign read ‘End Violence,  Fund The Police’.  It hurt my heart.  Was he a police officer? Was he the father of a police officer?  Was he the brother of a police officer who has cancer now from coming to the rescue in 9/11?  Or who was part of the call to  a school shooting? Or of any of the so many calls to police to come to the rescue?  I am so grateful for our police, I have no wish to be hurting the dignity of so many of our police officers.

However, I see that it is the police culture itself, that insists that we identify our massive number of police officers with the sadistic and racist murderers among them.  I am a psychotherapist, when it makes the papers that a psychotherapist, or a doctor, or a teacher, has sexually assaulted a child, our associations don’t stand united behind that person; indeed we are as horrified as the general public of the perversion of trust.  But when a video shows a police officer in pathological cruelty murdering a Black person, the union and the department itself, stands up in defense of the sick act and perpetrator.

I think forcing your good police officers to have to stand behind an obviously sadistic murderer among them, is a disservice to the good officer’s integrity, and to the integrity of the department.  I imagine many police officers are in therapy trying to extricate themselves psychologically from what their department is insisting they stand behind.

So police officers, take a knee, join the movement, to make the changes in the police culture, that would free you of having to identify with the pathological  sadists among you, and allow you to join in the effort to leave in your hands what belongs in the criminal domain, and relieve you of what is best served in other domains.  Let’s work together on figuring that out.

I was born in the fifties. I was a child in a time when police were community police, not militia.  A police officer would take a drunk teenager to his home and talk to his parents, not arrest him and threaten the parents with arrest even though they weren’t aware of his drinking, as is the practice now (we the public are responsible for having made the current laws).  Police uniforms were something of pride, not the militarization that today makes police appear as an enemy rather than protector of the community.   We as community members need our friendly, committed to community well-being, police back.  And I believe our police need that ‘we’re all on the same side’ serving the community feeling back as well.

The moment of devastating crises calls for us to generate a more compassionate, just, and thriving world.  Are you in??  I hope so.  I hope we are ALL IN.

Sandra Eagle

Stamford CT

https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/opinion/article/Opinion-Inviting-community-unity-with-police-in-15545319.php

I am a licensed social worker, and by law mandated to report child abuse I am aware of.  When a report of suspected child abuse is made, the current practice is to immediately remove the child, and its siblings, from the home.  The belief is that if the parents have an abusive mindset, that the other  children are also not safe in their hands.  An investigation is done, interventions made, and the children are not returned to their parents unsupervised until the Department of Children and Families determines that the parents have, through the interventions, become parents who can keep their children safe.

Personally, I don’t agree that removing the children immediately, always, is the best approach, as in many cases the children are more traumatized by the separation from parents and each other, than by the reported abuse.  Indeed in 1979-81 I worked under a grant experimental program in NYC, to see if interventions could be successful while leaving the child in the home, in families where a multi-disciplinary team made an assessment that the child would be safe from further abuse in doing so.  However, I am not aware of such an approach being adopted in NYC or in CT where I now live, and I do know that the practice of immediate removal is the prevailing practice across the country.

Therefore, as a mandated reporter I here report Sarah Fabian, the DOJ lawyer who has defended the policy of denying migrant children soap, toothbrushes or toothpaste, kept for weeks in clothes they’ve peed in or are otherwise filthy, and made to sleep on cement floors (including babies) as ‘legal’, arguing that the Flores Settlement that mandates that children in U.S. custody be kept in ‘safe and sanitary conditions’ doesn’t specify they must be afforded soap, toothbrushes, toothpaste, clean clothes, and the ability  to sleep, i.e. beds.

If Sarah Fabian needs a law to specify that ‘sanitary’ means showers with soap and water, the ability to brush their teeth, and have their clothes clean of filth, then any children in her home would be unsafe, and should immediately be removed, until Ms. Fabian can go through a re-education process.  Also, anyone who witnesses serious abuse of a child and allows it to happen is also prosecutable, so I report all legislators who are supporting this policy, indeed who are not actively fighting it, as equally unsafe in their parental ideology and their children need to also be immediately removed.  If in doing so, suddenly a whole lot of our people in power reverse their stands and acknowledge that sleep, and hygiene, fundamentally define safe and sanitary, 1. Then let them end the atrocity, and 2. Then we know clearly that shocking ignorance was not the source of the abuse, rather it is a hate crime based in racism.  President Trump, William Barr, Kirstjen Nielsen, and all the others responsible, need to be immediately arrested for the serial, life-threatening, and in some cases fatal, abuse of children, along with the kidnapping of thousands of children that they have no way of returning to their parents.  President Trump and his accomplices need to be tried for crimes against humanity.

I’m not alone in the demand to stop the abuse, and hold the government accountable.  On July 12, Lights For Liberty, a call to all Americans to band together to end the atrocities, is holding vigils around the country and at the detention sites so that all of us can come together and end the torture of children in our hands.  Hug your kids, and your grand kids, and come join us, lightsforliberty.org

I am grateful for the #metoo movement. I believe it is doing a lot to expose the tragic prevalence of sexual assault and resultant trauma. I believe it has helped many women and men and children in their journey of healing.

Professionally, I am a psychotherapist, and have long known of the devastation the too often prevailing mindthink of ‘power-over’ (whether the power is physical, psychological, or financial) in violating sexual boundaries. It is shocking to me how little the brutality and terror involved is understood. For me that lack of understanding is dangerous. It allows the mindthink to happen in plain view, i.e. I viewed the Kavanaugh hearings as 12 white men witnessing Kavanaugh’s forcing silence on his victim instead of the one witness the victim spoke of watching the original attack, and in that way continues to normalize it. It also allows for the non-predator to be denounced for that which is neither an act of power-over, nor terrifying, such as the condemnation and ultimate resignation of the great Senator Franken, for having a photo taken the intention of which was clearly buffoonery.

I believe that the #metoo movement is one of the movements of our time that has the possibility of creating an evolutionary leap in our culture and in our world, or of just being a trend in calling out the other, that limits its own role in calling in the paradigm shift called for in our time.

For the #metoo movement to be true to its mission of ending Violence Against Women, we as women would have to first acknowledge our complicity in both the mindthink and the acts of violence against women, by our support of war. Indeed, war is the large scale rape, maiming, and murder of women and children and men, until the suffering is crippling enough to have a country capitulate to the predator nation’s demands. War is the ultimate belief and act that violence gives you rights.

Mine is not a radical new idea. From the greek comedy of women demanding peace, Lysistrata, written in 411BC, to the award winning 2008 documentary ‘Pray The Devil Back To Hell’ about the Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace, womens movements refusing to support war is not new. What is shocking is how silenced the movements are as evidenced by our own present day negation of the establishment of Mother’s Day. The Mother’s Day Proclamation was written in 1870 by Julia Ward Howe, (author of The Battle Hymn of The Republic, who after witnessing the horror of war became) one of the leaders of a movement of pacifists. LOOK how relevant its call is today:

“Arise, then… women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts,
whether our baptism be that of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies.
Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage,
for caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country
to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.

From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own.
It says: Disarm, Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.
Blood does not wipe out dishonor,
nor violence vindicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
at the summons of war,
let women now leave all that may be left of home
for a great and earnest day of council.

Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them then solemnly take council with each other as to the means
whereby the great human family can live in peace,
each bearing after his own kind the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
but of God.

In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask
that a general congress of women, without limit of nationality,
may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient,
and at the earliest period consistent with its objects,
to promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
the amicable settlement of international questions,
the great and general interests of peace.“

~ Julia Ward Howe

Did you know this about the establishment of Mother’s Day? Likely not, as it has become a commercialized holiday about cards and flowers and acknowledging your mother for mothering you. The #metoo movement runs the same risk of losing it’s original intent, if it stays at the shallow end of calling out others without us believers taking responsibility for our own role in perpetuating violence.

Today women are rising up in one of the greatest grassroots movements in history, to influence how we are governed. From Momsrising.org (social justice), moms across America (eliminating unsafe/untested gmos from our food supply), Emerge (women to run for office) moms out front (climate change), the Women’s March, to a plethora of other women’s movements, women are waking up from the hypnosis of letting the policies that govern the well-being of ourselves and our families be somebody else’s (a politician’s job vs. my job).

As women, let us lead the way in ending the use of violence as a ‘solution’ to a relational issue, yes between individuals, and between nations. Eliminating the mindthink ‘violence makes me right’, takes the eradication of that mindthink from all of us.

Sandra Eagle, L.C.S.W. Transformational Psychotherapy

I’m a psychotherapist with a mind-body-spirit approach. I have over 40 years experience with techniques from both the psychotherapeutic and consciousness traditions to promote breakthrough and well-being in my clients. I draw from CBT, DBT, Hoffman process, psychosynthesis, psychoanalysis, family systems, addictions work, subpersonality work,and also help clients tap into information under the radar of usual consciousness through hypnosis, past-life regression, breathwork journeying, and other deep meditative states.

However, to tap the tremendous healing opportunities offered by the information stored in the body, I use EMDR, and Somatic Experiencing. I want to talk today about the cutting edge work of Somatic Experiencing, a field of psychological intervention developed by Peter Levine Ph.D.

We think of ourselves as having one brain but functionally we have three. The front brain or frontal cortex is the brain of clear thinking, analysis, inspired thought. The mid brain or limbic brain processes emotions. The back brain, called the mammalian brain becase it is the brain all mammals have, is an amazing emergency response system that releases high levels of 18 different hormones when the tiger is running at us, i.e. when we perceive we are in danger. It is the brain that would allow the mom once in a lifetime to be able to pick up the volkswagen because the baby is stuck under it. Our life and death survival is the domain of this brain.

However, once the danger is over, those levels have to come down, or they attack our immunology, our respiratory, digestive, and reproductive systems, the fascia around the muscles and so much more. Also to the extent our back brain is activated we cannot access the front brain, so children witnessing violence or going to bed hungry often show up in school as ‘low IQ’ but it has nothing to do with IQ, it is that they cannot focus, or concentrate, or take in information, the functions of the front brain.

We don’t have tigers in Fairfield County, and probably not in whatever county you are reading this article in. For humans our back brain is activated when we are attacked but also by our own ‘attack thoughts’, such as ‘I’ll never make enough money, I’ll probably lose my job, fail that test, trust people and they’ll stab you in the back’ etc. So even when the danger is over, or when the threat is more emotional or psychological than life threatening, our holding attack thoughts keeps the levels from releasing, keep the levels perpetually high. These high levels are a dysregulation of our Central Nervous System.

Somatic Experiencing sees most of our symptoms as reflections of a dysregulated CNS, and indeed healing happens when CNS regulates, and when resiliency is restored to the CNS.

Since physical sensations in the body are reflections of the dysregulation, they are also the entry points to working to heal thedysregulation. There are ways to work with the actual physical sensations in the body, to trigger regulation of the CNS, and that is what the interventions of Somatic Experiencing are about. I use the techniques in the work with my clients, and they are techniques that the client can learn and do for themselves. In this way we learn to experience the body as the partner in thriving that it is to us. Instead of staying away from uncomfortable sensations we learn to go toward them in a way that releases injuries to trust and to self-esteem, which expands our capacity for living a spirited life.

I feel that my incorporation of metaphysical principle, the best of what I’ve garnered from the psychotherapeutic schools, and this awareness of how to work with the Central Nervous System, to move out of fight/flight/freeze responses embedded in our approach to life and the way we feel about ourselves, makes defines a mind-body-spirit approach. I also see each of us as existing in the context of community. Whatever issues we have, betrayal, despair, resentment, negative relationships, depression, isolation, etc. are issues in the collective. ‘When I heal, I do not heal alone’ is metaphysical principal. Through various meditational techniques, I help the client see that when they reach the level of consciousness where they’ve mastered an issue, i.e. dissolved that issue, that is their contribution to the consciousness of the collective. Thus the work addresses mind-body-spirit and also our belonging in relationship to the community, our relevant life.

Yes, the women are watching the message of the senate judiciary committee, and soon of the full senate; and so are the Men. The sexual abuse of women is epidemic in America. One in four girls are sexually abused (under 18y/o – Dr. Ford is one of those girls), and so are one in six boys. The atrocity reaches beyond your profile of the vulnerable: one out of six woman soldiers in the Iraq and Afghani wars were raped by their fellow servicemen, and so were one in six military men. Yes this is a women’s issue to be addressed, but it is not exclusively a women’s issue, it is also a boy and man issue. When we solve the issue of violence against women and girls we will have solved the issue of violence against men and boys.

What is sadistic/bully-rape mentality? It is the willingness to use my power as a force to overcome your Will, overcome your objections or fight, to my having my way with you. It is using power-over to violence you, inflict harm on you.

Playing out in the theatre of the confirmation hearings we witness Brett Kavanaugh, who according to Dr. Blasey-Ford, forced himself sexually on her, holding his hand over her mouth to silence her screams, with one man watching and participating in the past, now with us as witness, again using his power to silence her, this time with 11 men watching and participating. The 11 white republican men on the senate judiciary committee are proudly parading their rape-bully mentality. They have used their power, to illegitimately withhold information about Kavanaugh’s sadistic record from the process and from the American people, to structure only 5 minutes of questioning from the senators interested in the Truth, and knowing that Dr. Ford has received death threats they’ve made sure to increase the threat to her life by having illegitimately refused to involve the FBI.

Well of course we have a rape culture, these senators embody the mind-think, and are the architects of misogynistic, and sadistic, legislation. They are in this hearing looking to further institutionalize rape-bully mentality, confirming Kavanaugh as their hope to reverse women’s rights, restrict individual freedom, and to make it impossible to hold them or Trump accountable for crimes.

Many of us are waking up from the brainwashing that anything is ‘political’, and therefor the politicians’ job to handle’ – that has rendered us impotent second-class citizens in our own governance. ‘Political’ is an illusion: nothing is a ‘political’ issue, all things are human issues.

The awakening is evidenced in the hundreds of thousands of organizations of ordinary people standing up to take charge of the policy-making that affects our lives and our families. MomRising.org (anti-poverty/broad), Mom’s Demand Action (gun laws,) Carry The Future (refugees,) Mothers Out Front (climate,) Moms Across America (anti-unsafe gmos), are a few examples of women stepping up to define these as human issues, family issues, our business, not someone else’s job.

If the women’s movement is to succeed in bringing in a new paradigm – where violence is no longer acceptable, I believe this is our moment. This hearing that is happening now, for all the world to seeates the opportunity for a tipping point, the tipping point most of us are despairing for as we watch..

The solution is not sourced in the ‘political’ domain, for the problem is not a ‘political’ one, it is a spiritual one, a human one. What we see are people who are processing in a dysfunctional way, each having abandoned his sense of himself as a unique human being, with a heart and soul to process through, and is now defining himself fundamentally as a ‘party’, i.e. I source my decisions from groupmind, not from my own integrity. They are operating not from seeking the Truth, but from the ‘concept’ of White Male Supremacy, engineering a world that profits and is ruled by the few, who define themselves as Superior and others as Inferior, and who are on mission to keep the masses so overwhelmed with survival needs, and so without recourse, that their power will continue unchecked.. When their concept has problems, such as with climate change, they lie, ignore science, at tje ex[emse of lives and destruction, rather than give up their concept. No learning happens. They simply blame and scapegoat. This dysfunctional way of processing is known as the ‘Addictive Process’, and has been well-studied. They believe because they are afflicted with this diseased way of functioning that everyone who is a democrat is, and frame this as democrats vs republicans, but this is not what we are seeing. We are seeing people who are ruled by the Addictive process and people who are feeling through the heart. Each of us moment to moment can be processing addictively rather than from moment to moment processing from the heart/mind/body, i.e. from ‘concept rather than attunement, using power-over instead of ‘in-relationship-with’, relying on blame/scapegoating rather than learning.

For the women’s movement, and especially through the door of the #MeToo movement to succeed in bringing in a paradigm change, we must be aware of, and eradicate our own addictive processing. To be a stand for the Reverence for Life, we first have to acknowledge our complicity in the mindthink of violence, in condoning and supporting the exponential violence of War. Horrific numbers of women, girls, boys, men, are literally raped in war, and the entire mindthink that because I have greater weapons I can murder and maim you to get my way with you, defines sadism/rape mentality.

This is not a new thought.

Perhaps you know that the Mother’s Day proclamation was written by Julia Ward Howe and her movement of women pacifists saying they would no longer condone sending their children to kill the children of other mothers as a way of resolving conflict. Those women risked their lives, and our society has sold it to us as a Hallmark holiday, and we still refuse to create a department of Peace, insist we put all our resources into a dept of War.

This is our moment. We are the ones we have been waiting for. Lobby your legislators as loud and insistently as you can. Join an organization devoted to Good. Vote for the people who are rising as people – as moms, teachers, firefighters, veterans, etc to take charge of our too diseased legislature, and return the purpose of legislation to making a thriving, compassionate, and just world. Yes right now they are rising through the democratic party, but they are not rising as ‘democrats’ but as individuals, and they are rising with an awareness of the soul-corruption of giving up your integrity to identify as a ‘party.

Sandra Eagle, LCSW has over 40 years study and practice as a psychotherapist in the principles and techniques of thriving, and is also a lobbyist with an anti-poverty organization. Ms. Eagle runs short-term groups for the Women and Men seeking to have a breakthrough in personal well-being, and in relevancy to what’s going on in our time. .

Arindam Dey/Getty Images

An Indian tubercolosis patient sits in a bed at a government hospital in Agartala on March 24 on World Tubercolosis Day. There is no vaccine for TB, although there are some in the pipeline, it requires funding. Public health nurses are at extreme risk for contracting the disease, and most states have cut their budgets for staffing public health nurses, e.g. Massachusetts used to have six public health nurses who could treat TB, it now only has one.

One in three people are infected with the Mycobacterium Tuberculosis, and 10 percent of those infected will become sick with Tuberculosis sometime in their lives. The rest have latent TB, and do not develop the disease. However, the disease can become active when the person’s immune system is compromised. That we currently have an epidemic of diabetes for instance, leaves us at risk for spiking a TB epidemic here in the United States. The year 2015 saw a 17 percent increase in Connecticut cases the first increase in 23 years. In the United States, TB treatment averages $17,000 per case, while treatment of multi-drug resistant TB (MDRTB) averages $282,000 — (XDR —extensively drug resistant) $482,000.

If you include productivity losses that number increase to $621,000. Clearly our state budgets would be overwhelmed by having to treat MDR TB here. It costs an average of $5,000 to treat MDRTB overseas, and $100-200 to treat drug-sensitive TB. It is imperative that we contain and overcome the plague abroad. There is no vaccine for TB, although there are some in the pipeline, it requires funding. Public health nurses are at extreme risk for contracting the disease, and most states have cut their budgets for staffing public health nurses, e.g. Massachusetts used to have six public health nurses who could treat TB, it now only has one.

Do not feel bad if you are one of many Americans who’ve been brainwashed to believe 10-25 percent of our budget goes to foreign aid, the fact is foreign aid is less than 1 percent of our budget. Do not feel bad if you’ve thought of foreign aid as charity or altruistic sacrifice, when indeed it is an important part of our defense, commerce, and keeping deadly pandemics off our shores. Thus, military leaders and secretaries of state often advocate for the foreign aid budget because greater health, primary education, and overcoming dire poverty, makes the recipient countries stronger allies. The U.S. Commerce department has historically written letters of support, as the development in these countries now has them make up 50 percent of our export trade. However, It is imperative that we awake from the myth, and understand the nature of foreign aid and the bipartisan strategy it has been to keep America strong, as the proposed 30 percent (!) cuts create an immediate risk of triggering an epidemic of tuberculosis in our country that we do not have the resources to handle.

About 4,900 people die from TB every day, and 25,000 people a day are sickened with it. Treatment for drug-responsive TB is a course of injections with the patient suffering nausea and pain. MDRTB can take one and a half to over two years of treatment and that kind of agonizing symptoms of the disease and the treatment, many patients are left with nerve damage.

Trump may be ignorant of the risk, but USAID and world leaders are not. TB has now surpassed AIDS as the leading infectious killer. Under U.S. leadership The United States has implemented the “National Action Plan for Combatting Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis,” and the global community has committed to end the TB epidemic by 2030. Three major innovations promise to turn the tide.

1. The first new antibiotic in 40 years has been introduced. Bedaquiline (aka BDQ) increases a person’s chance of survival from 50-80 percent.

2. A molecular diagnostic machine has been developed, called Expert that can accurately determine from a sample of sputum whether it is TB or multi-drug resistant TB, including in those who have HIV/ AIDS, and have the results within two hours, as opposed to the slow process of diagnosis that has historically sent people home to wait for results, having them spread the disease, and often the very poor don’t have means of returning for the results or treatment. People tested can be started on treatment immediately, reducing the spread of the disease to others, and increasing the chances of survival for the patient. This is a huge advance and USAID is helping countries buy the machine.

3. A smarter version of treatment now reduces the average course of treatment from two years to nine months.

The Plan cannot move forward without funding. Vaccines in the pipeline cannot get developed without funding. The United States will lose a fortune in monies, Americans will suffer and die, our health care costs will increase astronomically, our commerce will suffer, and we will weaken our allies, bringing the plague here, at a time we are already experiencing increases in the incidence of TB here. A “cut” is supposed to save us money, this is one that will overwhelm our resources.

We need to call our members of Congress, and ask them to fight any cuts to our foreign aid budget. Specifically, regarding TB, we need to ask our representatives to submit a formal appropriations request form for the USAID TB account to Representatives Mike Rogers and Nita Lowey, and Senators Lindsey Graham and Patrick Leahy, as chairs and ranking members of the respective State and Foreign Operations Subcommittee of Appropriations for $450 million for FY 2018 for our bilateral TB efforts, and a request for $1.475 billion for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Malaria, and TB. These amounts are in keeping with work that has been going on for decades, that is succeeding in our seeing results such as an end to death by AIDS and an end to in utero transmission of AIDS, and that are part of a strategy to rid the world of the TB pandemic by 2030.

Sandra Eagle of Stamford is a member of Results (results.org) an anti-poverty movement.

Despair is spiritual way-pointer.  It is the Gargoyle placed before the Way to your personal Nirvana, to repel you who are not yet ready to distinguish between gold and fool’s gold.

Take a closer look at despair. Notice it comes paired.  We despair about something. What is the ‘pair’ your des-pair is dis-sing?  Perhaps you despair over not having enough money, or looks, or health, or over a compulsive habit, or a troubling relationship.  Whatever the ‘object’ of your despair, it is something you have long ‘objected’ to in your self/life and have not found a way ‘out’.  Despair is the emotion that comes up around feeling you can’t find your way ‘out’: you’re stuck with this undesirable issue.

Because the issue persists, you begin to experience it as part of your ‘identity’, an inextricable & undesirable part of your nature, shame begins to build around it, making it even more painful, even more entrenched in your psyche as a personal defect.

That’s the Gargoyle’s effect on us, but it is not the Truth about Who You are, and Who You Are Here To Become.  You have a Purpose in Being Here.  There are many expressions of your Purpose, many pieces to it.  But the key to having your life unfold along the trajectory of your Highest Evolutionary Possibility as opposed to a diminished one, lies in mastering the core issue you were born to master.  How do you recognize what that is?

It’s the issue your Despair is pointing you to:  relentlessly, stubbornly, persistently, pointing toJ

What we refer to as an ‘issue’ is an incorrect mindthink that has corrupted energy into a destructive force.  This darkened energy has been around for millennia and is part of what is diminishing our existence into survival rather than the thriving that is our birthright.  This darkened energy is now hosted by me.  That’s the bad news that as spiritually foolish we accept as a prison sentence.  The possibility is to recognize that my contribution to the salvation of the world, lies in lifting the incorrect mindthink, and liberating the energy to be a constructive force.

This is not an academic endeavor, but a personal path of transformation.  It begins with seeing your despair as an ally, in its pointing you to the specific incorrect mindthink you are here to correct, and to correct by shifting your perspective within yourself, and cultivating the mindthink, skills, activities, and habits to master the issue at the heart of your stuckness.

Questions for your contemplation:

1. What is the ‘problem’ I despair about most deeply?
2. Close your eyes: scan how many people on the planet share this ‘problem’? think of all the situations people are in that might bring up this same problem.
3. Would the world be a better place if we could all be more masterful of this problem?
4. Are you Willing to invite in a Shift in Perception that holds this ‘problem’ as the PhD mastery course your Essence is asking you to take?
5. Are you Willing to invite in the shifts in perception that are calling for your attention in highlighting that your current perception, your current way of holding this problem, is the cause of your suffering?
6. “I seek a future different from my past” is A Course In Miracles principle I find helpful.

How do I help you cultivate ‘direct knowing’?

I say in the welcome on my website: There are two aspects that define our experience.

The first is Essence – aptitudes, talents, temperament, the intrinsic qualities that make up my uniqueness. This is the area of matters of the Soul, of the Who-I-Am, the ever-unfolding Self. Access to this information is direct, intuitive, felt. The second is Ego: those thoughts and skills that we learn in order to survive. Where matters of essence are part of the eternal, the skills of ego respect the time-space continuum. Where matters of Essence are intrinsic, the skills of ego must be practiced and developed.

We can process ego matters through usual conversation, usual thinking.

Matters of Essence? How do we tap into, cultivate our awareness of, and relationship to, the ‘intrinsic’? This is the realm of non-ordinary states of consciousness. The more common understanding of meditation is the sitting practice of stilling the mind, and this alone can open that access. However in psycho-spiritual work, and in the vast field of meditative and wisdom traditions, there are infinite ways to tap into that state of consciousness, e.g. guided meditations, somatic experiencing, psychosynthesis, family constellation work, hypnosis, breathwork journeying, shamanic experiences, (to name a few), all offer ways to induce altered states of consciousness that open our direct knowing.

We are in a moment in time that calls for an evolutionary leap. Although by definition we can’t know the details of what is yet to evolve, we do know that this next leap is a leap in consciousness becoming aware of itself as the creator of human reality. Although intellectually we understand that everything made by man, both physical and attitudinal, starts as an idea, and manifests into reality by the effort and behaviors we put behind that idea, we continue to live as if we are victims of our reality and in denial that we co-create the reality we live in.

The awareness of non-ordinary states of consciousness as the key to direct knowing, and to opening us to our next evolutionary leap is spreading as evidenced in the renaissance we are in of the use of psychedelics e.g. psilocybin, LSD, mdma, and shamanic plant medicines, e.g. ayahuasca, ibogaine, for healing, and personal growth. These medicines that for decades have been banned from research in the U.S. are now being found to have tremendous potential in healing the rampant PTSD and epidemic in suicides (e.g. those who served in the Iraq and Afghani wars died by their own hand 25:1 compared to those killed by enemy fire) and mental illness that we find ourselves in.

Given the sheer numbers of individuals suffering from mental illness and addiction, and the families devastated by it, I absolutely believe in the value of opening up the use of these medicines by healing professionals, and applaud the work of the Multi-disciplinary Association of Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), in driving that research effort in the U.S.

However, I am committed to spreading the awareness that we have an inborn facility to access non-ordinary states of consciousness, a facility that has been studied and practiced for millennia by wisdom schools, indigenous and shamanic practices, energy/chakra modalities, and the mystical teachings within all religions. It is a facility that is finding a contemporary face in practices coming out of psycho-spiritual schools on the cutting edge of generating an evolutionary culture.

My hope is to help you cultivate a repertoire of ways, or a way that works for you, to tap in to the information and robust energy held in the ever-creating, ever-unfolding, Miracle of Aliveness you are an embodiment of. The Who-You-Are-Here-To-Become is the river ever flowing “while (the Allen Saunders quote immortalized by John Lennon’s song) you’re busy making other plans”.