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.

Something good came  out of my blog experience yesterday.  I went to bed early and was able to go to sleep and throughout the night I continued to dream about riding around in the police patrol car and talking with the policeman in such a way that I think it might have helped him to slow down and give slack to some of his intensity.    Sometimes when I try to stay awake too late I go into a deep layer of sleep that lacks good dreams but last night was good dreaming and good dream work.

Slowing Things Down

     Something has come up which I need to report and  invite discussion . Yesterday, a young black man was shot to death while sitting in his car.  His killer was a white police officer.   But the striking thing to me was the rhythmic speed of the event.  On the one hand the officer  seemed  to be in fast forward while we could see that the young black man was shot was nearly dead already.   But the girlfriend sitting to the right of the victim was talking to the officer in slow measured tones.  It was as though she knew that the officer was not in control and was trying to bring him into focus and slow him down.  But the officer continued to point his weapon at the nearly dead victim though the officer was visibly shaking.  It was as if the officer was speeded up in his mind and was unable to slow himself down. But the girl in the passenger side of the car was trying very carefully, and, I think thoughtfully, to slow the officer down.  I suspect that the victim who was searching for his registration was speeded up as well but I did not see that firsthand.  The video will be shown over and over on television. So you might look at it, if you have the stomach for that sort of thing, and tell me what you conclusion you reach. It appears that there is a problem in the rhythm and speed of the event. I have talked to a few people who were puzzled to the extent that they wondered if there was something staged but it also seemed surreal.

     Baseball has a reputation for many people as being slow and dull; but in most cases both the pitcher and the batter are trying to slow themselves down so as to be able to focus cleanly on what they are doing.  If they allow themselves too much of the intensity of the moment they will not be able to focus and slow down.  You may notice the pitcher adjusting his cap repeatedly as well is fiddling with this necklace and adjusting his sleeves in his jersey and scraping his foot on the mound until occasional baseball watcher is pretty well bored by the process. But at this point the pitcher has slowed down enough to pitch effectively.   Then it is the batters routine to adjust and readjust his batting gloves with each swing and stare blindly at the bat for a moment before finally looking at the pitcher.  He may ask for time and step out of the batter's box only to step right back in.  Who knows what this is all about except people know baseball?  They know that the batter is also trying to slow himself down.

     Now, with help, we may come up with a scenario for officers in prisons or in the street to find ways that they can slow themselves down as well as slowing down the person they are engaging in an encounter and possible arrest.  I can think of no situation in which a speeding up of this process will improve the thinking and right action of either the officer or the person facing arrest.  

     And I also wonder about myself.  I am finding that I am spending a lot of attention to slowing myself down.  In the last few months I no longer listen to the sound on television but only to the picture.  The sound seems to be happening too fast; people are talking too fast and the scenes are often changing too fast.  I find myself in prayer trying to solve the problem through repetition of prayer.  I favor slow music most of the time. For over a year I return over and over to a Philip Glass composition, The Visitors, because it always helps me to slow down.

      In looking through the glass darkly (which are vague memories as alcohol memories seem to be) I remember in my drinking days that my notion was that the troubled state of mind was between drinking episodes but things seemed relaxed while the alcohol was still in me.  So I drank to slow things down only to find them speeding up again. So the expedient but irrational answer was to drink fairly continuously.

     I am looking for resources to develop scenarios that might help correctional officers and other law enforcement people find methods for slowing themselves down.  That could prevent a disaster.  That might also tell them something about whether their alcohol consumption or other drug use might be contributing to their dilemma about how to conduct themselves in an emergency situation. 

     But we need some structure and trying to find a way to do this.  This morning at Lisa's Café everyone was talking at the same time and I did not come away with very much but I did feel tremendous affection for all of the folks at Lisa’s Cafe.  It was like puppies in a pile.   At first the Double Circle Group will not be nearly as much fun as puppies in a pile; but it is a learning process.  The two circles balance each other and the two people who are supporting each other find they can complement each other's ego and awareness.  We can see some of the field of view of our partner in the other circle can see the how we might act in their situation.   Just after I began writing this, I heard that Sadie Darnell the Sheriff of Alachua County had decided to place deputies on patrol in pairs.  

I have decided to write a workbook in support of the power of the double circle.  This is quite an undertaking and do not have the immediate energy for it but I will find.  To begin with I need to interview people who are either correctional officers or have direct knowledge of the correctional officers work.  Interviews will not be structured but open-ended.  I would like to start with a few assistant wardens and hopefully work my way through Capt.'s lieutenants sergeants and officers.

The double circle group is officially begun.  For the time being I will handle the blog and the meetings and  sales through my own personal efforts.  this will keep things within the bottom-up philosophy and also save a lot of money.  I have been worn promoters  cost tons of money.  So the plan is as follows:

 1.  distribute up to 400 remaining books to people who will contact other people.

 2.  I gave books to people as the Queen of Peace church who seem responsive and I will continue to work on that prospect

3.  will find a way to get books to the correctional officers in the hopes that they will attend a meeting at Alachua Presbyterian Church or set up a meeting in their area.

 4. I hope to get a chance to meet with the staff at UCI.

5.  I have been informed that there is a Catholic medical society  in Gainesville I might be interested in meeting with.

6.  I plan on taking the book to Meridian as well as physicians recovery network.