Friendship

Please keep in mind that all the really important things come from the bottom. Even though those at the top appear to be making decisions they are actually riding a very unstable wave which we at the bottom control. It is time for we at the bottom to share our strength and our hope. Our combined consciousness controls the world. We just  have to figure a way to act in concert. It is called Consilience.

EO Wilson has recently written a book called Consilience. David Bohm wrote about fragmentation and how we needed to come together in small groups to achieve a consensus. However in the late 1930s Bill Wilson had already found consilience through listening attentively rather than intentively and there is a big difference between those two adverbs. But he was dealing with people who had reached the bottom and knew they were on the bottom. The ego button was hit and was reset. In my opinion that's the reason it all came together. Now we are struggling even in AA with talk talk talk about God. Again in my opinion God is a verb. We have all been speaking in the recent years with many many nouns and too few verbs. This nut who is now at the top found that he could speak in verbs and win us all over(I.e bomb, deport, fire, deal, and grab.......

Rabbi Cooper wrote a book a few years ago called God is a verb. Mike G  has a copy that I gave him last year.

The book that I am struggling with right now is by Peter Breggin and he contends that human evolution has been driven by shame, guilt and anxiety whether drunk or sober. Too often those who have never been drunk play with other peoples shame guilt and anxiety and drive them up a wall. But simply put…………. recovery from shame guilt and anxiety is done through the verb WORK. But cleverly disguised sides are chosen and the game is called politics. 

But what about friendship; what is friendship?  When two people meet each other in the middle as friends they essentially left their ego at home. Ordinarily in everyday life we are going about with a shield in front of us. We carry it everywhere. But friends don’t use the shield with each other. They are not afraid of harm. So friends meet each other at the bottom. It’s a very creative time. And then these two friends can join up with the others and the nectar of relationship ensues. Not so easy but oh so much a treasure.

The Boost Beyond Ego                   

I have not written in my blog since I've been here in Ormond Beach. I feel almost like a Tarpon Springs sponge. I will wring out some of that sponge and tell you what I've learned here.

One: I have really been blessed to be able to live with Michael.

Two: The Early Ducks Group is a phenomenal batch of folks who share their strength and experience in such a way that one feels gratified to be a human being.

Three: Although the fishing has been mostly fishing and not catching the scenery is so beautiful that it's hard to be disappointed.

Four: For myself at least I have discovered that it is much more important for me to be useful than to be happy (if I have to make a choice).

Five: in order to be useful I will venture back to Gainesville as often as my health allows to participate in the Double Circle Group. The accidental discovery of this configuration is well beyond me. It is certainly a method for placing people heart to heart, soul to soul and find that you can give each other the boost beyond ego. How afraid we all are of closeness but how much we yearn for intimacy without the bondage of self or sex.

Six: I will now seek the only path that I know to gain spiritual strength; and that path is so obvious; so hard for me to see...........i must simply shut my ego down and open myself to thee.

      TRANSITIONING

DS is taking care of business and I am released from the bondage of worrying about his future my attention turns toward what the bottom up is all about. I've tried to read about it but I don't find any nuggets.  I am looking for the main theme in the bottom . In spite of notable men like Trump and Napoleon the bottom keeps us glued to reality. John Irving for instance writes about outliers. In the world according to Garp he writes about a feminist mother who has no interest in sex but commits rape. I don't see how we survive as a people if we are about outliers, pundits, presidents, and popes.  When I talk to people about bottom up processing their eyes glaze over. Even one of my former colleagues didn't know what bottom up processing was. I have to find a way to get peoples eyes to light up because when we work hard  as ordinary people things get better. I have spent an entire lifetime foolishly hoping for a better leadership and failed to find it.  But I am fearful that the bottom is being poisoned by detritus sprinkling down from above. We are so depressed as a People that one in six Americans are taking A prescription drug for depression or anxiety. Another bunch are continuing to smoke cigarettes  and drink fast quantities of whiskey and another bunch is trying to find the perfect killer weed. It is called killer weed because it keeps us from worrying about anything important and laughing about everything that we see around us.

So I think in AA I have found the bottom and hope to find out how they process and how they can help us to find our way.

Winding Down and Winding Up

There is no joy in closing this chapter of my life.  But one has to make certain decisions with regard to mental competency and simple physical ability.  I think that many people including myself avoid making decisions and then fate makes the decision for us.  So I hope I have made this decision to move to Ormond Beach and place myself in the care of my son Michael soon enough to avoid the interfering of fate. 

Certainly feel welcome here with Michael.  He helped me put up pictures today, and I feel at home.  I have been to three AA meetings at the early ducks group  and have felt welcomed there as well.   We have been to the beach twice see the sunrise.  Some folks in my AA group took me to breakfast so I am getting to know them.   I have not decided whether to write again but will certainly be watching Gator basketball.   I am planning on resuming my reading daily and have begun dig into Peter Breggin's recent book; Guilt  Shame and Anxiety.  This is a treatise on what  Breggin calls negative  legacy emotions.   Although one reader  calls this a new theory it was well outlined many decades ago in the AA literature.   But I consider it well worth reading.   I would like everyone to know that the Power of the Double Circle profited by $22.38  according to Amazon. (paid ad)

 Over the next few months I will try to speak to the paradoxical relationship between depression and sadness.  This will be a firsthand account as it is been at first very depressing to think of leaving Gainesville but now I find that sadness does began to take its place in my emotions and depression does not seem to hold much water. 

Seeking Consilience

Consilience is the linking together of principles from different disciplines especially when forming a comprehensive theory

     With some degree of trepidation I am placing the cart before the horse in “seeking consilience”; but I have  titled this piece before fully working out the details of the theory.  However, I hope that this will be an interactive effort, as I will be seeking help from others in developing a comprehensive theory.  It is a somewhat defensive posture rather than a fully fleshed out theory.  So the defense is a defense against psychiatry, as we know it today.  Psychiatry is now seen as a medical specialty with the main thrust as an effort to correct chemical imbalance through medication.  Because of monetary imperatives psychiatry has taken the road of big Pharma and no longer is seen as an effort to comprehend and administer healing to the human personality.  To put it bluntly the human personality has been experienced as too complex to be given  a DSM value or a code number for medical diagnosis.

Since our book was written (The Power of the Double Circle) I have studied David Bohm, a physicist, who has written about fragmentation in society.  He died a few years ago and hoped to develop small groups to work on the issue of fragmentation.  My own take on his concept of fragmentation is that in our historical acceleration our ego has outrun our “heart” or those deeper centers of the brain that seek wholeness. Bohm believed that we could seek wholeness through small group process. To be candid I need to experience many more group sessions to arrive fully at Bohm's conclusion.  However I do share his concerns about fragmentation.  It can certainly be seen in the way in which you are ignored after many years of speaking out about the excesses and deceptions within psychiatry and the pharmacological giants.  In my opinion, David Bohm was seeking consilience when he opened the door of fragmentation as a pan- societal problem. So we need the help of many, in my opinion. Sometime in the distant past I sought enlightenment from those above me in rank and from writing that bore the stamp of approval from the establishment. But now I seek truth  from the bottom as  have come to believe that is where the unfiltered knowledge of the centuries of trial and error lie. It lies quietly at the bottom of the sea within the genome of us all in a collected sunrise. Knowledge that comes from the soul of us all.

So I too see our problem as fragmentation rather than party against party, state against state, nation against nation, and sometimes friend against friend as the elan vitale is depleted from our soul. This soul depletion is a product of our ego running ahead of the rest of our being and this is distorting our reality.