35 The Consciousness of Phil

        I don’t like to finish anything. The discussion of consciousness has gone on for a year. The animals have been patient and continue their discussions about consciousness. But they have not gone into the cave of subconscious. So, let us join them and find out why. My consciousness can wait.

                           Waiting at the station, waiting for my train.

        Myrtle, the turtle pled her case first. “My legs got heavy and even Hooie felt heavy on my back.”

        “I don’t want to put the blame on Myrtle because there was a screaming NO in my mind,” hooted Hooie, the barn owl.

        Mary, the facilitator, crooned with care,” We should tighten our circle and give Mom Nature a chance to enter and speak to us from within our hearts.”

        BillyG bleated, “Think about what Free, the butterfly said and Leda, the dragonfly buzzed in. They both completed their evolution millions of years before these people-humans began.”

        “I guess that’s why we are here. As I look around the circle all of us have completed the evolution of our species.” Sang Coqui, the frog. “But I should not have spoken from the outer circle.”

        “We can and should become a single circle now because we have all learned how to be supportive of each other,” said Mary, in her wisdom.

        “Their brains have gotten big and now they fly back and forth every day. Where did they get those planes?”, barked Bosco, the border collie.

        King suddenly called out, “Going into the cave of subconscious is like catching Mom Nature on the john. It would be too embarrassing.”

        “That’s a good point. Mom Nature deserves respect and privacy. She must do her thinking on the john,” Mira the sloth pled. “But that is not the point. I am either fearful of the cave of subconscious or it is just taboo.”

        “We need to find out why we are all so afraid of the cave of subconscious,” spoke Shazam, the parrot. “Taboo is something we shy away from instinctively, so we should just leave that alone. My hunch is that it is something far more complex but workable.”

        “I think we are stuck. I, for one don’t believe, for an instant, that it would be wise to go deep into that cave", said Andi, the osprey, “When humans developed a big brain, they also found that they could talk to themselves and get answers. They foolishly thought that they were talking to God. They went right past Mom Nature without any shame or doubt.”  

        BillyG bleated, “That makes a lot of sense. People who I do admire have a monkey on their back. That is why I butt them in the fanny; to get the monkey off their back. When I do butt them, they turn and yell at me. And the monkey goes free.”

        “If they would just feel the monkey and reach up and pet the monkey,” Cesar, the iguana mumbled.

        Milvus, the black kite, squawked, “You have just said what may turn out to be the most important utterance of in our group in months. Please elaborate”

To be continued

  

34 The Hours - Interlude Poem

(while consciousness gathers)

The Hours

Waiting at the station, waiting for my train.

When will life come, and what will they serve?

Listening to the music, helps to explain

Thought about life, and what was deserved

Still haunts me, was life a silly drain?

If I can imagine anything at all

 in the last of my hours

Sense will be made just short of enthrall

We are all family mine always ours

Boarding the train I carry y’all’s shawl

Suggested listening:  The Hours by Philip Glass

33 The Consciousness of Compassion

by Katt Morris

  I am very grateful that a last minute contribution to our blog came from Katt Morris. Katt’s story about her mom is very dear to me. It’s quite a few years since I’ve seen her but in the interim I have seen much evidence on Facebook that she has become an expert at ‘grandmaing’

       
        I was born in South Texas, the youngest, my parents & 4 siblings were from a small town in Georgia, near Savannah. Racism was a part of life in my Mom’s family, I had older cousins that were proud holders of their KKK membership, the “N” word was as popular as the word hello.
        Every Summer we went to GA to spend 2 weeks with my mom’s sisters & brothers. When I was around 8, my cousin asked me why I never said nigger & I told him that I wasn’t allowed to curse, he laughed his ass off & couldn’t wait to tell my cousins what I said. From that point on, I was called a “N” lover, all Summer long, it was the joke of the Summer. My Mother taught us, more like drilled it into our heads, that we were NOT better than anyone else. In a family of southern-born racists, she stepped out of the cycle & taught us that “we are all God’s children.” She told stories of how they would sneak down to the black church on Sundays & hide outside under the windows to listen to the singing. They were dirt poor growing up because my grandfather was an alcoholic who spent half his paycheck before he got home from the bar on Friday nights.
         That & 7 kids to feed kept them in the poor-house. Everybody always said that my Mom was the most like her Mother, who I never knew. The first Liberal that I ever knew, LOL, now the family says I’m the most like my Mom. The house I grew up in was a few miles from the Mexican border & right down the street from the rail-road tracks.
         One weekend a young couple with 2 small children came up to our back door wanting a drink of water from the hose out back. My mom went inside & made them sandwiches and jars of ice tea. The next weekend another family stopped by, Momma made sandwiches & gave their little girl some clothes that we had grown out of. During that summer, we could always count on several families stopping by, Momma would have several lunch bags packed.
        We had a visitor from Immigration stop by one day to warn my Mom to stop feeding the “wet-backs.” She was so sad when she had to shut the back door & not answer it when they knocked. Soon they stopped coming. “But by the Grace of God, U aren’t one of those children” I can still hear her say.
        When I asked her why my cousins hated black people she told me that some people were taught to hate & judge others to elevate their own worth. What a thing for her to say, after all, it was her own beloved family she was talking about. “They just don’t know no better” she would say as a lame excuse. It’s all so stupid, this judgement over the color of someone’s skin. There are good people & their are monsters out there, skin color has nothing to do with it, “Some people are just taught to hate,” and I think she was spot on.

32 Surrender Interlude IV

       I was born in Biloxi Mississippi in 1933 and moved with my parents to Englewood Florida at age three and have since lived in Homestead, Stuart, Jackson and Natchez Mississippi, Gainesville, and now Ormond Beach for the past year and a half with my son Saint Michael[1].

       Although I am 36 years sober, I am not serene every day. So, I go to meetings daily.  I was active in Gainesville AA but only entered Alcoholics Anonymous because I was told to go to daily meetings or else. My mentor, Roger Goetz, told me to go to daily meetings. He was the head of Physicians Recovery Network for Florida. He died shortly thereafter after, so I was never given permission to stop going to daily meetings.

         I did not think of myself as a low-bottom alcoholic and therefore, through faulty reasoning remained on the sidelines for far too many years. To this day I firmly believe that the average man in the street understands alcoholism far better than the average psychiatrist. Most psychiatrists avoid the issue of personality, but AA directly recognizes character defects and sets out to remedy our core self through reaching to a Higher Power.

         The turning point in my life was a combination of a colleague, Doug Gamble and several patients who entered our psychiatric practice in Gainesville who came to therapy groups with deep understanding of person to person spiritual relationship. They had a deep feeling for a higher power and they came to us from Alcoholics Anonymous. Doug held fast to AA even through unsuccessful treatment for lung cancer.

         I began to wake up.

         The person who had the most profound effect on my spiritual path was Dorothy who had many years sobriety. Because of dementia and COPD members of the Gainesville Group would visit her, because she was homebound, often over a period of several years. She was brought to a final meeting at the Eyeopener Group, and talked about her spiritual state and the peace she felt.

        So, in her final meeting, three weeks before she passed, she gave comfort and faith to us.  Few atheist, I suppose, could have done that. God was within her, and we could feel it even though she had no idea of what day it was.

        In the usual psychiatric practice, the very ill are separated from those who are less so. But in AA the most severely ill are brought close to the group and healing happens through God’s grace and the spiritual presence of each other.

       While the nation has floundered and spent billions with its war on drugs, during my years AA has quietly absorbed those with drug problems because AA, through countless group conscience meetings, realized that drug addicts weave in and out of alcohol throughout their lifetime.

        Though I have spent countless hours in church including Catholic, Presbyterian, and Unitarian I have felt renewed spiritually in AA much more than in most churches. I know of priests and ministers who have found AA and usually they are not awarded the princely congregations.

Perhaps, everything is working out.  As we meet today there are many small churches that are kept alive through money from AA rentals. What a curious blessing.

       During the ten year period that I was working in crisis stabilization in Florida State Prison and Union Correctional Institution (Raiford), my Gainesville AA group continued to minister physically to Dorothy as she spiritually ministered to them. Shortly after I began work at FSP, I had a heart attack and was dealt a triple bypass.                  

        When I returned to work, the inmates I was supposed to be treating would offer me spiritual comfort. So these black guys who had been in solitary confinement for years and years, brought me out of self-pity without wanting any credit or special favor. Why?  In my humble opinion, there is an unseen and sacred force among most black folks. They lead into a conversation with their heart, in contrast to most white folks who lead into a conversation with their mind

                In the classroom in the sixth grade I followed the leader. Jimmy was bright, confident and I looked to him for courage. But I identified with the kids in the back of the class who were just hiding out. Today I identify with newcomers and those who are struggling with relapse feelings.  My choice is to remain sober and feel the strength of the circle here in this room and out there in the circle of life.

         In this morning’s AA meeting there was another birthday celebration. I will have to digress a bit with a story. I believed that I had to leave general practice in Mississippi even though my wife and children were deeply rooted in Natchez. It was a struggle to pry them loose from the friendly ground of Mississippi, but we finally came to Gainesville. I could not even mention my own loss to the family because it was my idea to come to Hotel Florida where no one seemed loving. Since the tenth grade I had wanted to become a psychiatrist and could no longer hold the urge back. We finally all found friends and became Floridians. To this day I miss Mississippi.

         I was never really certain of what I missed about Mississippi and Natchez. Even though I was born in Biloxi I did not miss that town. When I came to Ormond Beach about a year and a half ago I would usually get a hug from a black woman who was not even from Mississippi. But the hug had the warmth of love. I was raised by a black woman as my mother returned to work when I was two weeks old. My children were raised by a black woman who lived-in five nights a week. My medical practice was organized by a black woman on a minute by minute basis for 10 years. We were not always kissed by our black nannies, but we were always given a strong hug of love; and I felt it deeply.

           Only love makes prejudice go way. 

       

        

       

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[1] My son, Michael, has saved me from my mistakes more than once.