The Gist of My Argument

Although I have been working on this problem for a number of years have not been able to put it into words that found a large audience. I have never been able to reach a large number of people at one time. But I know that I have been helped by one person at a time over a long period of time. Imagine placing yourself in the double circle within the inner circle.  Now imagine having a person behind you to help you see what is going on in your circle and help you find your thoughts about the whole issue of being in group.  You can privately discuss with him or her what is happening to you.  You can focus on what you are feeling which is probably anxiety.  But you do not know for sure what is making you anxious.  Is it the strangeness of the group or is it the strangeness of your thoughts?   So you depend on this person to help you understand your world in the group.  You have placed your trust in this person because the format of the group is asking you to place a trust in the person  behind you.  Now you have gained additional strength of having more eyes and ears focused on the issues.  This is very simple but it can be very demanding and very doubt raising.  Everything flows from  how you begin to feel the presence of the person behind you and their support of you.   As a group goes on you will get your turn to reverse the experience and be in support of them.  This is a dramatic change in perspective and hopefully will help you move in and out being supported and then being able to be of support. 

But there is a further unfolding.  If your ego is in command and running your life  you will probably seek out the best supportive person rather than understanding that all the people there are available to support you; but it is not a contest.  So this is in no way a hierarchy but rather an experiment in learning to go deeper than your own ego and trust a process of accepting support simply on the basis of the sincerity of that support.   But you must trust your own willingness and openness to recognize sincerity. 

I missed posting yesterday because I was paying more attention to the pain in my feet than to problem  at hand.  Sometimes pain takes over consciousness and runs everything else off.  Today I will attend a chronic pain seminar at the Senior Center.  Meanwhile someone in a meeting took me up with the the decision to make contact with the Islamic Center.  I was very grateful because I would rather go with someone rather than alone.  Both he and I are studying how to go about the contact with the Islamic Center.

  Taking Care Of Each Other

I promised myself that I would blog daily hoping something useful would come out of all of this.   Writing is such a chore.  But I am still working on what the fabric is.  I expect to see the Warden of FSP tomorrow.  I hope to visit with a friend who works there. In spite of advice to the contrary I still hope that I can get this program of the Double Circle to correctional officers.

 I took a friend to the doctor yesterday and I mention this because of the sequence of events.  Of course he had tried several other people first which is understandable because I am not that  accommodating.   Nevertheless he told me that he had to see a doctor in Lady of theLakes but the doctor could see him sooner if he went to Ocala.  He first had to get an MRI of his neck which was the  source of a great deal of pain.  We got there in time and the doctor saw him and told him that he could not relieve his pain except with a prescription because he had a large metastatic tumor in his neck along the spinal cord.    So he was referred to a radiation oncologist and will soon see such a person probably in Gainesville.  We are so fragmented but, when you stop and think about it, if we did have wholeness. it might be much more efficient.  If we are more efficient then we would even need less people to do all the dumb things that they are doing.    And some of the things are not even the so dumb so I should not  be cynical. Ultimately we will just be taking care of each other and allow the machines and computers and the virtual reality gadgets to operate the planet.  Perhaps we should have been taking better care of each other all along.  So I will return to my study of David Bohm. He is free and readily available on YouTube.    Give it a look and tell me what you see..

Consciousness

       What am I conscious of?  It is moment to moment  awareness.  It can move systematically or subtly but it is always changing.   But do I have an underlying unconsciousness that guides me?   For that I must totally immerse myself;  but the range moves frighteningly from dog in  heat to an image of Jesus.   At the moment I am trying to focus on what my resting consciousness is.   Do I have a resting consciousness or restless consciousness?  There are some research which indicates that men cycled through a sexual waxing and waning every 90 days.  I have not ever  kept count. Thank God the roller coaster is slowing down because of aging and more aging.

Last week, Louis my son, sent me  a text about David Bohm  who apparently passed in 1992 but has created a great deal of recent discussion through his talks with Krishnamurti  and others.  The thing that caught me was the talk about fragmentation and wholeness.  He believed since the 1970s that we are fragmenting to our ultimate peril and should be seeking wholeness.  Several long talks by Bohm and others are readily available on YouTube.  I will let you decide whether to look into it.  But I could not avoid it because I now realize why I have been going to AA, the Presbyterian Church, and the Catholic Church on a regular basis.  I certainly have felt the fragmentation as psychiatry has come apart.  I felt the fragmentation  in my own life.  So I have been looking for Wholeness  with a  capital W.   yesterday I told my a group that I was going to go by the Islamic center  and seek common prayer unless somebody stop me.  Nobody stopped me.  So I am committed.