{"id":70184,"date":"2013-09-14T04:27:04","date_gmt":"2013-09-14T08:27:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=70184"},"modified":"2013-09-14T04:27:04","modified_gmt":"2013-09-14T08:27:04","slug":"what-works","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/by-judith-gayle-2\/what-works\/","title":{"rendered":"What Works"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Fires and floods and wars, oh my. We live in anxious times. ‘News’ agencies that embellish their delivery with talking heads and looped commentary do little to inform us, and next to nothing to sooth us. If we dare agree this is infotainment, not news, it can rightly be categorized as a “horror” format these days, delivering dread, dismay and nasty shocks with a smile and a wink. Yes, fires and floods and murders and frauds and don’t-expect-help-anytime-soon, political gridlock, oh my.<\/p>\n

\"Political Watching clips of the raging waters in Colorado and the Seaside Park inferno in New Jersey I was reminded how immediate life has become these days. I doubt that those caught in the adrenal overload of flood or fire today care what’s going on in the Middle East or even about the stonewall in a\u00a0belligerent Congress<\/a>\u00a0(at least until it votes on withholding FEMA funding or shuts down government, as it threatens to do next week.) The reality of those caught in emergency is very personal, and their future, if viewed through the lens of similar disasters we’ve been tracking for over a decade, consists of one long slog through the red-tape of insurance carriers, disaster relief and political SNAFU.<\/p>\n

Thanks to our computers and 24\/7 cable channels, we can live their heartbreak in every painful detail even as it occurs. Thank you, intertubes, you have changed our lives forever. The good old days of “film in the can” on its way to our newspapers and newscasters for tomorrow’s headlines appear as antiquated as oil lamps and corsets. Only time will tell if supercharging our ability to know what’s going on in the world has been for the better. What we know for sure is that it’s certainly been hell on our collective nervous system.<\/p>\n

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It’s impossible to avoid the correlation between the glut of information and the use of psychotropic drugs, the dissolution of government systems and the disillusionment of the population at large, but what’s to do? Anything that scares the bejeezus out of us, that shakes our confidence in our ability to cope, is going to create anxiety.<\/p>\n

We know what to do in the long-term: activism, community involvement, factual education and awareness of issues. We must support only those things that support our good, boycott what doesn’t, and take care of ourselves physically and emotionally, but the daily assaults on our peace of mind take a toll. Is there a short-term remedy, besides ignoring televised news and substantive websites? Pulling the covers over our heads isn’t a workable plan.<\/p>\n

I doubt that anyone reading this has not sustained some kind of personal challenge or life-changing event in the last few years. If you’re out of your teens, you may remember when life wasn’t coming at us this quickly, when chaotic energy wasn’t the norm and there was time between challenging events, not only to deal with all the details but also to recoup a bit of energy for whatever came next.<\/p>\n

These days, it’s about prioritizing those things we can deal with and letting the rest go until we can get to them, reducing existence to a kind of personalized short-hand. We’ve become first responders for our own lives and those of the ones we love and care for, and if that’s not enough, when we look out the window to see what’s happening in the world, we see fully as much emergency around us.<\/p>\n

For instance, the recent breakthrough in international cooperation between Syria as championed by Putin and America as facilitated by Kerry is both welcome and increasingly fragile. According to the United Nations report, both Assad’s army and some of the rebel factions that oppose them are guilty of torture and atrocities, hence, war crimes. When I read about the\u00a0UN report in Mother Jones<\/a>\u00a0I thought about Assad’s insistence (to Charlie Rose) that those opposing his regime are terrorists, essentially deserving of their fate.<\/p>\n

Then I thought of the hell I caught back in 2001 when I wrote that one man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist. Here in America, turns out one man’s whistleblower is also another man’s terrorist, not to mention tree huggers, animal and environmental activists and peaceful protesters. Perhaps it’s time to redefine the word itself and rethink our relationship to it. While we’re at it, let’s review “right” and “wrong” in a world shifting its priorities.<\/p>\n

Still, no amount of even-handed analysis is going to make Syria a probable vacation spot for the family. In that Mother Jones article, a blogger-response reminded me of a quote from former CIA agent, Bob Baer, who said: “If you want a serious interrogation, you send a prisoner to Jordan. If you want them to be tortured, you send them to Syria. If you want someone to disappear – never to see them again – you send them to Egypt.”<\/p>\n

Torture, these days, is in the eye of the beholder. Here in the US of A, if you’re in favor of serious interrogation, you applaud stop-and-frisk, support multi-billion- dollar, unconstitutional surveillance techniques and approve the end of\u00a0habeas corpus<\/em>. If you want torture, you ignore unfair foreclosure practices that put people out on the street to live in their car and then refuse them emergency assistance and food stamps because they have no permanent address, then report them to the cops who taze them for being hysterical in public. If you want them to disappear, you make sure they get that third strike that permanently reduces them to a number and delivers them into the churning bowels of the prison-industrial complex.<\/p>\n

The remarkable part of all this is that there is a percentage of Americans who not only helped put that reality in place but fight to keep it there, and that’s just the hegemony here at home; our poor treatment of nationals in their own countries is infamous. This nation is also capable of doing good in the world and often does, although saying so at the moment can get you into a fist fight, but frankly, almost anything can. Indeed, the energies this week seemed configured to give us a continuing tutorial in combat and warfare.<\/p>\n

Everyone I spoke to had a disquieting personal story to tell, some event that put them at sword-point with another and that knocked them off balance by the depth of their emotions. Welcome to the immersion of Venus in the intense waters of Scorpio, where we can experience the throb of our deepest emotions and sensitized nature all the way down to our toenails and fingertips. In dialogue, the challenge is to make sure we’re offering an open hand and not a closed fist, even as we are seemingly met with disagreement and threat, but only if you want to step off the merry-go-round.<\/p>\n

We are able to stand up for ourselves without battle stance when we remember our common humanity and spiritual intent. At our most sane moment we are not railing against all we deem wrong or pounding the table in favor of all we consider right, but are instead seeking to find that thing that WORKS for the whole of us, that resolves our situation with dignity and compassion. The relief we all felt last weekend when the Syrian crisis seemed to find possible resolution is a prime example of how good it feels to release our need to throw rocks at one another.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, several days into that process the main players continue to gather rocks, quietly piling them up them behind them, even as we continue to hope for a positive outcome. Kerry and his Russian counterpart cannot agree on the particulars, although Kerry has called the continuing talks “productive.” Meanwhile, Assad’s operatives are accused of scrambling to disperse their chemical stores to as many as fifty separate sites, making discovery and disposal all the more difficult, while Assad himself refuses to cooperate unless the U.S. stops arming his enemies. And naturally, the CIA is making sure the rebels have their share of weapons even as the Russians continue to supply the Syrian government.<\/p>\n

The rock piles grow higher, the rhetoric grows sharper, and the elephant in the room is, as usual, Israel, who wouldn’t give up their white phosphorous or their unacknowledged nukes on a bet, and Iran, who has no intention to stop working toward the same nuclear energy other countries enjoy. Clearly, our workable solution can only occur if we really WANT it to work.<\/p>\n

The larger truth hangs over our heads, unspoken. It’s time to get rid of ALL such weapons: ours, theirs, everybody’s nightmare developed in think tanks and laboratories that can no longer plead — as they did in the 1940s — naivety about the consequence of their use.\u00a0A Course in Miracles<\/em>\u00a0asserts that humans have no capacity to make accurate judgments, lacking the larger picture. As with suicide, weapons can make a disaster of a temporary situation. History proves it so.<\/p>\n

As Eric points out, this is a critical time in our becoming, a historical moment we will look back on with awe, and for all of us, it hasn’t been easy to find respite from our cynicism or discouragement. My advice to those who have brought me their stories of anxiety or attack this week has been to stay in the moment as best they can, to get back to their center as quickly as possible. We are all tap dancing as fast as we can and we need to stay sharp.<\/p>\n

Most of us have some ritual that comforts us and reminds us that we are more than simply humans sharing a planet. Whatever our religious belief or spiritual practice, we are accustomed to entering that space through some trigger mechanism we’ve developed over time. This is the moment to create a short-cut to that feeling, if you haven’t already. Each of us must determine how to do that, how to get back into balance quickly. To recreate our emotional stability, we must begin to do that several times a day.<\/p>\n

The world is very present with us now, the politics very brittle, our patience stretched and resources thinned. We need to find what works for each of us, what brings us back into sanity and peace and possibility with the snap of our fingers. We can be knocked over by the depth of our emotions, by harsh words and projections, by unwelcome circumstances that impact us on physical as well as ethereal levels. We need to refine our ability to get our act together in an eye-blink, renew our point of peace, and establish our ability to respond thoughtfully to our circumstances rather than simply react.<\/p>\n

What brings us to that point of balance may be a mantra, a prayer, an affirmation or some ritualized movement like a mudra. It might include incense, music, dance or meditation. It might be a scent or sentence. The point is that whatever works to bring us into balance is not something to do only in the morning before we face the world or at night before we enter sleep; it’s something we would be wise to streamline because we will need it several times a day.<\/p>\n

We need to keep reminding ourselves that not only do we know what to do next, but that we’re capable of doing it without harming ourselves or others. We have the capacity to shake off the toxins of other people’s belief systems, neutralize the fears they spread and trigger within us. We can, essentially, master our humanity while remembering our divinity — walking and chewing gum at the same time — and that is a powerful gift to those we deal with on a daily basis, as well as the vibration of the entire planet. This week, find that thing that works to bring you back into your core self, your spiritual balance.<\/p>\n

Practice finding that sweet spot quickly and effortlessly. In some quarters this is called being in the world but not of it. \u00a0ACIM<\/em>\u00a0tells us that we can be right or we can be happy. When we find that place that works for us and everyone else, that place where we’re happy and even happier not to have to hold up our rightness, we’ve changed not only our own magnetic resonance but the world’s. The more we live from that centered place of peace, the easier you, I and the planet can breathe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves Fires and floods and wars, oh my. We live in anxious times. ‘News’ agencies that embellish their delivery with talking heads and looped commentary do little to inform us, and next to nothing to sooth us. If we dare agree this is infotainment, not news, it can rightly be … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[1744],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70184"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70184"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70184\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}