A New Day

I know when people think about abuse they usually think about physical abuse, but psychological abuse is such a powerfully damaging system of pain that it can’t be overlooked. Just like with physical abuse it robs the victim of their power…makes them feel like there is nothing in the world they can do to overcome their situation. It’s not because they aren’t strong enough to hit back…but because they aren’t good enough to win if they do. They aren’t smart enough, or talented enough, or good enough…they have no hope of ever being more than the nothing they were when they were born.

Psychological abuse is a gift that keeps on giving. Even after you leave your abuser…in my case it’s my dad…the internal dialogue continues. The voice in your head reminding you that you really are not good enough, that you are destine to fail plays like a tape over and over again. I remember times throughout my life when I fell short and I would admonish myself: “of course I screwed this up, I always screw things up”, “why am I so stupid”, “I hate myself for being how I am”. I would say really negative things about myself and people around me would tell me I am too hard on myself and then my dad would say I wasn’t hard enough on myself and I took his words to heart and would beat myself up more.

It’s made for a lifetime of feeling unworthy. Unworthy of love, happiness, success…and so even though I have those things I don’t feel like I deserve them. I have begun to see how that lack of self esteem has driven the choices in my life and caused me to interact with people from my abuse rather that from my power. It’s caused a lot of damage in my life…and it means that my abuser is still hurting me after years of being away from him.

In 2011 I have decided that I am taking my life back. I am going to break this cycle of negativity and pain. I am going to learn to love myself and live life from Joy instead of sadness. I am going be whole and happy. I don’t expect it to be overnight and I know it’s going to be painful at times and may even lead me into new directions in my life, but I have decided to choose me and let that path open up to me and follow it wherever it leads.

Matters of the Heart

Love is so strange and intangible but we do crazy things to find it, to live it and to keep it. Movies, books, poems and prose all portray different versions proverbial Love. Yet somehow once we “find it” we let all of that longing go. We start to take it for granted, assuming that because the person who is in our bed at night says they love us they actually do. Taking something so precious, so sought after, for granted…we hurt each other, lie to one another, abuse one another…while still claiming love is the anchor to this unhealthy interaction.

That is, in fact, what happened to me. I have been in a very long relationship. A “loving” relationship where things got turned on their head. Love became anger, anger became abuse…not physical but emotional, and then it became lonely…desolate from the inside out. Being a busy person I filled the time in my head with things to distract me from what had become a very sad existence. I got very busy with work. I was going to make a lot of money and leave my relationship and stand on my own. I was going to conquer my isolation through mental greatness, self awareness and achievement.

It didn’t work…busy busy busy and it didn’t work. Achieving became chasing. I did accomplish a lot and I learned a ton about myself. I mean I learned I am an extremely strong person for example. I learned that I can do way more then I ever thought I could and I found God. I am grateful for all of these things. None of them filled the gap of my loneliness or gave me the way out I was hoping for. Nothing I did took to place of the Love I thought I had. I was left with work, anger and sadness.

At first…before I gave up on my relationship I fought for it. I fought him to bring him back to me. I wanted him to see me and understand me. He couldn’t, he was too angry about his past…ghosts I couldn’t free him from…demons he was so accustomed to he had no way to release them and accepted no offers of help for. Instead he turned on me for trying to pry open the doors he’d locked himself behind in his mind.

Part of our relationship for a long time was him telling me about “how women are” that if they are overweight or have kids or are too old no one will ever love them. My life had been spent hearing the similar words from my dad. I had no reason to believe that what they were saying was untrue. I wasn’t worthy of love no matter what I accomplished, no matter how passionate I was…I would always fall short. I found comfort in my relationship with God because with God I never felt that I came up short. In my loneliness I turned to God and I prayed for someone to come into my life who could just love me for me.

The internet became a refuge from the anger and loneliness in my life. I found “friends” there, people who at least through their electronic devices seemed to hear and understand me. As I got more involved in my online worlds I started to connect with people who I knew felt the same things I did. It was through my online connections that I reconnected with my first love. A man I knew as a boy.

We dated for a couple of years a looooong time ago. It was my first true love relationship…with all the messiness that implies. Being young is great…you know everything and don’t have a clue. We really did love one another but we were too young to make it work. Possessiveness, ambition, jealously, misguided notions about how life really is and about what is important all got in the way. It ended badly and left a permanent mark. When I fell in love again it was a few years later and with a man who was the opposite of my first love. Not artistic or musical, extremely tough, fighter not a lover type. That is the man I married.

When I reconnected with my first love, it was so easy to talk to him again. Our painful past so far behind us, so much life lived away from that point in time. It was so nice to reconnect with him again…the things that brought us together in the first place were still there, the things that tore us apart long gone through fully lived lives. It was so easy to fall for him again…and fall I did. So did he.

It seemed like it was both slow and fast. I had actually gotten to the point where I was ready to live in a loveless marriage for the rest of my life. I would just work and play at online connections and not take it anywhere, certainly not go looking for something. I wasn’t worthy of love…we all knew that. But he…saw it in me…the lonely and the sad. He asked what happened to me…wondered where “I” went. It was so easy to talk to him, to be open with him…he knew me and he loved me. At first it was from what we shared from the past but then it turned out out lives had mirrored one each others. We both married very emotionally distant people who had hard lives. We both felt alone in our relationships, although his had all ready ended. We connected over mutual pasts, similar paths and now over the same visions and dreams for the future. We had both prayed for a True Love and it seemed our prayers had been answered.

Finally, after talking everyday for a couple of months we had the chance to see each other again. Ten days. It was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. Our first night together was one of rediscovery. The scents of the past, the taste of familiar form…but different. The feeling of electricity from fingertips to flesh…so much desire but also a closeness…something very whole and home. We surrounded one another with love and passion, curiosity and knowing. After having felt so dead inside for so long I was alive again. It was so…

Ten days. Ten days of just love and affection. Of possibilities outside of my lonely, empty space. Ten very magical days. People saw us together and felt the love we feel for one another. They wanted to be around us…they would talk to us to keep us lingering in their world a while so they could be near our warmth and love. It was wonderful.

When I got home I was ready to leave my “old life” for the promise of my “new life”. My husband took the news in stride, just as I knew he would. He told me it was for the best, that he knew I could be happier with someone else, that he needed a trophy wife to be happy, that he wasn’t capable of love the way I needed, that as long as he can see our daughter he’s fine. I told him about the other man, we were making plans to be together, that I love him. Then my husband broke.

He broke, he told me he loved me, that he was just trying to be tough because that’s what’s expected of “men”. He told me he knows he did this to me, broke me inside…hurt me and was cruel. He wants me to stay to work it out. I said yes, because I felt like I had to. I loved him for a long time before anger consumed our relationship, we have a daughter together, a life. I said yes…and now I feel so much more lost and confused.

I had moved on in my head to another man, I planned a life with him. I love my husband, at least I think I do…I can’t feel anything right now. He’s being the man I always wanted him to be…and I am just numb and shocked. I didn’t think he loved me, at all. I am torn…love, life, obligation, family. I don’t know up from down and I don’t know what I am supposed to do now. I don’t feel anything except sad and I don’t know why.

I don’t know how this story ends. This is the first time I have externalized it…put it all out into writing. I am used to making really touch decisions, but I am not sure what kind of emotional boot camp gets you ready for this kind of turmoil. I know I’ll get through it and I will live with whatever decision I come to. Of all the people in the world who would find themselves in this position, I never ever thought it would be me.

Revelation

I was talking to a friend yesterday who is opening a retreat center. She hopes to be able to help and support people who find themselves in the midst of major energy shifts, such as Kundalini Awakenings, as they deal with the fallout of awareness. She was talking to a Buddhist about her plans and he wasn’t very receptive to it, mostly because of her readiness to express emotions.

Now I know my friend very well and while she does have emotional moments, she’s generally not one to go blubbering in public in front of virtual strangers. But, one of her many “gifts” is to be a mirror for people and reflect back their issues to them. This man has an issue with emotion and so she was very emotional when she spoke to him. If you aren’t clear when you are around her, whatever is poking around under the surface will present itself, without fail.

My chat with her about her experience got me thinking about emotions though, and how they play out in this “process” of growing awareness. I realized that emotions are as much emanations of our beings as we are of the higher consciousness. That Love is the “first” emotion, and all other emotions radiate out of that one whole feeling. When we are in alignment, the emotions we feel radiate out of that Love and then dissolve back into it when we are through feeling whatever it is we just felt. That’s the whole calm of enlightenment.

I know that doesn’t sound like a very big revelation, but it is, it’s huge in fact, at least for me. The most difficult part of my own process has been trying to understand how emotions play into the higher levels of consciousness. I thought for a long time that detachment was a state of emotionlessness. A sort of sociopath who chats up God. I just didn’t get it. Brilliantly it was shown to me in every way you can imagine, and I just didn’t get it. I do now and it’s pretty amazing to consider.

In a lot of the meditative traditions emotions and attachment are presented as things we need to do away with in order to achieve true enlightenment. I always had a problem with that idea actually…that in order to know true enlightenment you have to act nothing like a person, not be all here in the world like everyone else. It doesn’t make sense to me that God would go through all the trouble of making everything and give people the ability to realize their true nature, but it’s on the condition you abandon everything meaningful to you in this form. It seems like a silly and meaningless process…leave oneness to be in form only to shun all things form so you can remember where it was you came from…and are going back to in just a few short years.

What I see now is that’s not the case at all. It’s not that you don’t feel any emotion, it’s that you feel all emotions through the divine expression of the Love you actually are. So your feelings are like individual states of being that radiate out from the whole of the Love that you are. It’s so simple and so elegant.

I can’t tell you with words how powerful Love is. It’s “the” power…it’s creation itself. As I write this I am in awe of the beauty and simplicity of the system we live in and through. Love is the answer. Love isn’t just infatuation or the feeling you have when you get married, although those are very tangible manifestations of it. Love is radiant and ever-present in every single one of us. It’s what we build civilizations with and homes, lives. It’s what we truly are.

When I was a kid I did a lot of automatic writing. It was one of my first modes of contact with my higher consciousness. I would be given a word like Emmanuel or Tetragrammaton and then have to go figure out what it meant. Sometimes it too years to figure out what something meant and some stuff I am still working on. After a many years of figuring stuff out I stopped getting a lot of messages and started getting just one “Love”. I so didn’t get it. I am looking at it now and can’t believe I didn’t see it.

Saying that Love can change the world is no understatement. We are Love…it’s what we are made of. When we recognize that, it frees that whole emotion/state of being to radiate out from within us, it transforms the people around us. It opens their hearts, it exposes them to who they truly are. I am looking at times when I have been that radiant, and the effect it had on others. Most people can’t conceive of that kind of feeling and their reaction to it can be very strong. Anger, sadness, giddiness, laughter, fear, joy.

I remember a time when I was “shiny” almost all the time and I was out to dinner with a friend. There was a couple with their baby there. The baby looked at me and began to giggle and laugh…and wave. The parents were all embarrassed, but it was adorable. I walked outside with my friend after we ate to take in the view and the baby began to cry…the parents brought the baby outside just to calm her down. It was charming…the Love I felt for that child and the Love I felt from that child was so tangible. Even then though, I didn’t get it. Heck I didn’t even realize I was that shiny.

Today I get it. I am so excited about it too. I have been looking for this piece of the puzzle for so long and it turns out I had it all along. So do you. You are that…you are Love. We are radiant, amazing beings who have the power to change the world just by seeing things as they actually are. As you read this it’s my intention that you being to feel the Love you have within you. That you become more aware, if only for a moment, of just how amazing you actually are.

Things as the really are

So as I said before, I have meditated a lot, and saw things as they really are, or God. It was a very interesting experience. I perceive things through the filter of the Mystical Kabbalah or Tree of Life. I think it’s a very elegant way to understand, as best we can, how the universe is strung together…how we come into being and then interact with the world around us. I mean that in every way…physically, psychically, empathically, multidimensionally.

The simplest way to explain the Kabbalah is that there are 10 Sepherot or nodes through which the formless travels on it’s way to becoming form. Each Sepherot has qualities that are expressed at the highest order of magnitude or “good” and the lowest or “bad”. In the journey from formless to form each being picks up various levels of each attribute to form their tendencies in this world. Each individual then has the ability to transcend their tendencies and in doing so they move “up” the Sepherot. Thereby they achieve higher levels of awareness and also reaching greater potentials in form. That is to say they can do things like remote view or experience clairvoyance and other “gifts”. These are all actually normal aspects of human experience but we get trapped in our perception that form is final and it skews our ability to tap into that part of ourselves.

It should also be noted that being aware of certain abilities doesn’t mean you are more or less than any other human being, it just means you have a different perspective through which you see the world. It’s interesting how it works…you have to trust creation itself, and surrender to become more aware. It’s possible to raise your awareness without surrender but things go screwy when you do.

When I went to the highest level of awareness I have known so far, I saw how it all works…based on my perception of how it all works . We are always in communication with the divine consciousness. We are always “one” with creation itself. There’s no way not to be…it’s not possible…it’s like saying a finger isn’t part of your body. Our thoughts, fears, dreams, feelings, hopes, pain are all always being transmitted into the soup of the divine. Like attracts like. The law of attraction…”the secret”…is true..so are a lot of other things. But when we think about something, intend something, pray for something…we send impulses through the cosmic nervous system. The system responds by drawing to us the tools we need to manifest or create that which we intended.

So why don’t we always get our way? Well for a lot of reasons, first and foremost, people tend to be inconsistent in their wishes and intentions. Second there are a lot of beings out there pulling for their intentions to be realized and sometimes they are a cross purposes…so something else shakes out that doesn’t look like what you imagined. Also there are systems at work that simply function as they do in any body…life and death are those functions and they just occur. There are also pools of like-mindedness that can “out-pull” or “out-magnetize” the will or desire of an individual. It’s possible to overcome that but it takes a little doing. Finally, sometimes the answer is just no…it’s not the time or the place.

I know none of this sounds like I saw God, although I have a few times in my life…since I was a kid. This latest experience was the wholeness of the being of God, expressed as love, creative potential, unending compassion, gentleness, knowing, being everything. I can’t put words to it…I just knew after that everything is okay. What I found after that was I didn’t need to ask all the questions I had asked before. It’s okay…everything is just fine. The natural reaction to that is how can everything be fine when clearly it’s not, people are suffering, the world is in chaos, etcetera.

Well the short answer is, we create our world. We set systems of inequality and power in place through the need to regulate and manage human activity and those systems combined with our own nature…expressed in it’s “lowest” forms tend toward behavior that results in undesirable outcomes for a lot of individuals. In Buddhist traditions that’s the “suffering”…the struggle to be survive, be happy, be secure, to ensure the form experience is the best it can be for “you”. The problem with that struggle is that “you” are part of “me”…our awareness at the lower levels doesn’t let us see that we are bound to one another in this experience. We suffer together, we struggle together, we transcend together. By creating systems that perpetuate suffering and struggle we all suffer and struggle. I know that sounds familiar…it’s not new. That because the Truth, things as they really are, is known to us. It’s been told to us since people sprouted up on the planet. We choose to ignore it and we continue to suffer.

One note to be aware of…there’s a lot of talk of the shift that’s coming. There’s a lot of interpretations of what it means…because everyone has a different filter of perception, but it is coming (it’s a short and long term process in terms of human life spans) and it is around awareness. Allowing the perpetuation of the higher levels of conscious awareness to move forward while the denser forms become denser still…losing the ability to “reach up” as it were. How that will look in form I am not sure…I have caught glimpses and it’s messy from a human experience standpoint though.

We are in an interesting time. The reign of freewill, experiencing our birthright and all that it implies. As information becomes available and our baser selves are given carte blanche through the internet and mass media, now is a good time to mind your mind. Choose your thoughts, choose your “good”, because it’s through those choices you raise your vibration. Now is a good time to start to do that.

There’s more to how things really are, of course. I’ll weave that into another post. For now it’s time to end this one.

Namaste, Cheers, Have a Nice Day
Catz

Back in the Saddle Again

I did my first real meditation in a long time this morning. Now there are a lot of ways people meditate. There are a couple of ways I do it. One is very “chatty” the other is very silent. This morning was chatty.

Many years ago I took a class with a friend of mine called “Vibronics”. I never cared for the name but it was a very interesting class about light and sound as healing tools, but not Reiki. I didn’t know it at the time, but it’s a very Kabbalic system of energy work and it’s extremely powerful.

I used many of the tools I learned in that class in my chatty meditation. I start by grounding from my feet into the core of the Earth. Now a friend of mine told me she sees the core as crystal rather than iron because of the higher vibrations of consciousness the Earth is moving into, so I use that visualization. I see a shaft of white light go from my feet to the crystal center of the planet.

Next I move into my chakras. There’s a lot of great information about chakras, their location and function all over the net so I won’t go into that here. I focus on each one of my charkas…checking it’s rotation and clarity. I pull in cleansing energy to each chakra. When I first started out I used to imagine a little cleaning crew coming in and scrubbing my chakras clean. Now I use light energy.

One of the most amazing things in the world…and possibly the universe..is of being aware of Chi as it moves through your body. It is vital life force and when you feel it, you know you are very much alive and connected to the world around you.

What I find when I am in a state of awareness of the energy flows in my body I am able to connect to my higher self. The part of me that “knows” how this story goes. That knowing self tempers the ego self. The part of me that wants to be in complete control over how this goes. My tempered ego seems to be a temporary state. I am working to change that by holding the intension that I see myself as I actually am. The Truth shall set you free. Seeing myself as God sees me is the goal. Feeling the love of life itself.

I have had moments like that actually…really amazing moments. I experienced Oneness and it wasn’t at all what I thought it would be. It’s whole and complete, content and calm…which is what I thought it would be. But it’s also like a six legged puppy running down a hill at full speed with two legs that don’t work. Oneness is just that…it’s everything…E V E R Y T H I N G. We are that…we are everything. I know that’s a hard thing to fathom. I have experienced it and it’s a hard thing for me to fathom.

As hard as things get, we are beloved. Every single human being is loved beyond measure by creation itself. We are never alone. That love gives us so much power in our world. We are  the creators of civilization as well as it’s destroyers. We are spectacular. The ego has such a hard time hearing that and accepting it.

It’s a funny thing. The ego is afraid of the separation from God that being human brings…duality. So it drives people to seek God, find answers and remember what it was like to feel whole with God. Once you find that, it flips out again, afraid of what knowing the Truth will bring. God is love and there’s nothing to fear. Life is a gift.

I think that’s about all the rambling I can do for one morning. It’s a little disjointed as I reread it but I expect as I do more meditating things will become clearer .

Retracing my steps…

I had the pleasure of talking to a friend from my past last night who reminded me of a person I used to be. The past several years of my life have really been so interesting it’s hard to imagine the journey I have been on. It’s been a lifetime of spiritual awakening and devastating reality. It’s quite the combination.

What I am learning through this process is that ego is a very powerful aspect of the human experience and it truly holds us in this place. My friend started to read passages from a book of a person sharing their experiences on the road to “enlightenment”. I have had every experience that was written in the book. I have seen my past lives, every soul I have ever been. I have seen the karma from those past lives burned away. I have felt the unyielding force of Kundalini exploding in my body. I have seen God…and a few other things as well.

After all of that, I don’t feel enlightened. I am not even sure what that means. I do feel a deep sense of security about the afterlife and all that follows, I am not afraid of what lies beyond the form I walk in. I am having a lot more trouble with the here and now. Integrating this profound awareness into the day to day.

The trouble is being caused by my ego. What’s so interesting is my ego isn’t aware of my profound knowledge. It is, instead, driven by fear. It’s afraid of not having enough money, of what people think, of how I look, of having enough love, of facing tough situations. The ego is in a state of near panic about everything, especially when stacked up against the deep and abiding love God holds for every living being throughout the Universe.

We are emanations of that love. Our egos are so twisted up by how life seems to be going we can’t even feel that deep and constant love. That includes me. I forget…my ego gets all demanding and scared and then it makes it hard to hear anything but what it has to say. That is why meditation is so important. because it brings your awareness of the Truth forward and holds your ego in place. Let’s it keep perspective.

So many interesting things have happened over the past five years that in some ways seemed to conspire to drive me to the greatest spiritual heights while as the same time pushing me off center…keeping my ego very much alive and in play. So much so that a couple of years ago I actually stopped meditating. I know what I know…everything is fine and I was pretty content to call it a day on the spirituality front.

Today I am going back onto the path I started when I was four. I am not sure if that path leads to enlightenment or not. I am hoping it leads to balance. A place where my profound understanding manages my ego’s fear, anger and desire to control things I simply cannot control. I know that whoever reads this blog, as I go through this process of retracing my steps, will get from it what they need. I will start to put down my experiences as I meditate and as I reconnect with my true self once again. I’ll also share stories about how I got here…some of the interesting things that have happened over the past few years. I probably spout off from time to time about things that interest me too…like my other posts. But this blog is going to be a lot more active at least for the time being while I re-remember who I am.

Namaste
Catz

Infrequent but insightful?

I am a terrible blogger. I just want to spout off from time to time. This is one of those times though. I just read a 10 page…omg…article on a woman trying to improve her “not so bad” marriage (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/06/magazine/06marriage-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&em). She and her husband were cruising along after 9 years of marriage and she was afraid of a rut and so she … and her weirdly willing husband started going through what can only be described as A LOT of marriage counseling.

When I was 19 I was in college and I took psych 101. Now I r a smart girl, on some Wednesdays, and I started talking to my teacher about some of my thoughts on how to track and document emotional responses to certain situations that seemed to appeal to him…and so he began to talk. He talked like a person to me…about his own emotional experiences and what tracking them might mean. THAT is when I decided that the art of psychology is one in which you spend too much time in your own head.

This relationship article was like that. Diving into water people told you not to swim in. This sort of thing is relative. The woman writing the article seems honest and genuine, she described a situation in which two people who love each other came together to make a life, skated over the deeper stuff for a good while but eventually it starts to become like an itchy scab…so you start to pick.

I know everyone has to walk their walk, but however hard your walk is, someone else is walking barefoot over rougher terrain. I read how her husband cooked compulsively and worked out while she took care of their kids…they both work successfully from home. He’s got an S&M bent and didn’t want to taint their marriage so he never fully brought game to the bedroom and she felt it and she focused on the kids and he felt neglected so he … cooked.

While I appreciate the pitfalls of poor communication and secrets kept to make the relationship work…part of me wants to tell this chick to shut up and sit the fuck down. Lamenting overly loving parents on his side, and her white bread upbringing and subsequent rejection of affection on the other, omfg…shuuuuut up.

Not that I don’t sympathize with her boredom with a man who…cooks…  There are women who can’t get educated in this world, who’s gender marks them for sexual slavery, mutilation and earmarks them for persecution for showing their hair or holding a thought in their head. There are women and men, who…as loving as they are..have been beaten up, raped and emotionally ravaged. Within the confines of “working it out” men and women both will endure mountains of crap.

I totally understand the apathy that builds between people over time…but holy crap pull your head out. If it took you until 40 to realize that the Cinderella story was a FAIRY TALE…then count your blessings.

Be grateful for every moment of every day…and sort your crap…and suck it up. Screw therapy…deal. Seriously…if you get to live to 40 and think that the dream is real…then you have lived a truly charmed life…and apparently don’t ever look up from it. You don’t see the horrors in the world…you write for the NYT and you don’t watch any news reports done by Christiane Amanpour??

…Takes a deep breath… I sincerely hope this somewhat lost woman works out the almost serious issues in her relationship and I look forward to her blazing insights in preserving WASPiness as we know it (she’s helping to write a book on marriage counseling)…but honestly, know when it’s ok to be..okay.

Remember the curse, “May you live in interesting times”.

Jaycee Lee Dugard…all the news that’s fit to buy.

I just read a story in the LA Times about how reporters are paying people for any information they may have on Jaycee Lee Dugard. (Media Outlets Paying for Information).  Really????

To begin with…even before pay-to-dish was on the table….I had mixed feelings about how this story should be covered. There’s no question that finding Ms Dugard is a story, but really, isn’t that end of it?  I have been thinking all week about how this poor woman has gone through this intense, horrible ordeal…only to be saved and fed directly into a media circus. So far the family has actually done a good job of keeping the curtains closed but you know their phone is ringing off the hook and camera people are hiding in the bushes. This family must be left time to heal. Can you imagine going through this terrible thing and then have the world descend upon you to ask stupid questions “can you tell us what it was like?” (um, no you have to frame of reference) or “did they hurt you?” (um, yes I was held for 18 years by a couple of lunatics)?

When did all of this become everyone’s business?

I mean honestly. People will say things like “well we want to understand how this guy thinks”. He’s  nut, so unless you are a nut too, you aren’t going to understand how he thinks. “We want to know where the flaws in the system are”. We do know, our public services are underfunded, the staff are overworked and people who work with felons and the mentally ill see warning signs in every person they deal with, so overlooking the obvious happens…a lot.

There are solid stories that news agencies could pursue as a result of this woman’s ordeal. Stories on local communities and groups are working with the mentally ill and in particular sex offenders (is castration really cruel and unusual given what these guys do to girls, boys and women?). Maybe examining different programs to see what works and what doesn’t. Stories that go over missing person’s cases to bring a fresh eye and our current sense of collective awareness together to maybe see if a few other missing people can’t be found. These aren’t the stories of earth shaking headlines but they are the stories of the communities we live in.

I also have an issue with accidental fame. Something happens to you in your life and all of a sudden you are on the CNNMSNBCABCCBSBBCAP network. I have a degree in Journalism. I am a huge fan of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and honestly believe the good things that come from exposing dark secrets are important. Freedom of the press is tantamount to keeping the government honest (yeah I know it’s an oxymoron but we’ll save that for another post). But when did freedom of the press surpass all other tenets of a civilized society? The intention of including freedom of the press in the Constitution was to ensure the press could freely report on what the government was up to. So that things like water-boarding in Guantanamo could NEVER happen, at least not without public scrutiny. It certainly wasn’t intended to set the private lives of individuals who have never done anything except be a victim, be stupid, have too many kids or not wear their underpants up in headlines for all the world to see.

Presently the press is abusing their right to print at the expense of all other freedoms and rights that people have and it’s created an era of media insanity. It seems to me that by abusing their power, they are putting it at risk. Many media people are willing to break the law to get their news and it’s likely to result in regulation of how news is gotten. Even if it doesn’t people are getting hurt by what these folks are willing to do to get the story. The lady who had Dugard’s girls over for a birthday party had her facebook hacked so reporters could grab the pictures no one is willing to give them. A couple of months ago two reporters checked Brooke Shields’ grandmother out of her nursing home to get a story from her. They are lucky they didn’t get put in jail for kidnapping. That kind of behavior is unacceptable. I fully support freedom of the press and am thinking that there need to be some guidelines, at least on how news is gathered.

I understand the bind media outlets are in, if they don’t scoop a story someone else will. The scoop drives viewership which is what gets advertisers on board to pay the bills. Whatever news we are getting is put into what is called “the news hole”. That’s the space left over after all the ads have been sold. Stories of psycho kidnappers fit nicely into the hole.

What doesn’t fit so nicely are stories of the girls all over the world who are held captive or simply sold by their families into the sex trade as slaves or worse…and no one is looking for them. I know of a guy who won’t go to Vegas anymore for his whores because it’s cheaper to take a whoring trip to Taiwan…three whores for the price of one in Vegas…and age isn’t an issue. The girls around the world who are sold into the sex trade suffer as horrible an ordeal as Ms. Dugard has endured, but it’s not a story we like. There’s no “happy ending”. There’s no single bad guy. With the Dugard story we can remain above it somehow…looking in on these unfortunate souls, tsking the system for failing while gathering all the sordid details…but we put our own psychological spin on it so we don’t feel quite so voyeuristic and once we had our fill of the story, we can all move on, fat and happy with being “in the know”, and content knowing the Dugard’s will sort it out. We can talk about it like it’s rare…not really part of “our” lives. Whoring-in-Taiwan guy is more systemic…he represents the darkness within everyday people. He’s not some psycho, he’s nice, he has a job and a house, he’s got friends and has BBQs. He’s one of “us”. That isn’t a story we like to read.

But I digress…back to why paying for the scoop is a bad idea. Okay, not that I am cynical or anything but, given the current state of the economy and the hunger of news agencies to fill their holes, it seems to me that there’s more incentive to give the news people what they want regardless of it’s basis in reality. I know it’s hard to believe, but people will lie for money. People will also lie for fame…and with news agencies buying stories, they are giving people both. We aren’t talking grand scale, “get my own reality show so I can meet the girl of my murderous dreams” kind of fame, but maybe two to seven of the allotted 15 minutes kind of fame. For some people flashfame and the money to pay a looming mortgage, or even a buy a new xbox is enough to say anything to the “news” agency that is willing to pay.

Maybe journalists just don’t give a crap about the truth anymore. They certainly don’t seem to give a crap about the people they report on. I grew up believing in the higher standard. Not really expecting people to always achieve it but to always reach for it. Sometimes I feel like people have stopped reaching. The Preamble of the Constitution starts out with “We the People…” we are the people, this is our world and our society. We create it by how we act in it. If news standards are set by the best practices of the National Enquirer, then maybe it’s time to just turn it off. We can choose a higher standard for ourselves, and not because we have to or our mom told us to, but because we want to.

The Michael Jackson Post Production

I watched bits and pieces of Michael Jackson’s funeral today. It makes me wonder if it’s possible for humans to ever be happy or feel good about themselves. Michael Jackson is like the over the top, larger than life version of “superstars” everywhere. From the stories surrounding his life, his family, Michael Jackson didn’t have an easy time of it growing up. But his talent transcended those issues. He was truly an entertainer who touched the whole world.

What is remarkable is that even with all of that adoration and ability, Michael Jackson seemed like someone always looking for something else. He had voids to fill. He changed everything about himself. He reconstructed his entire being. Even if he did have a skin condition, he had his entire face rebuilt. For his home he created a land outside of time and place where the  real world could be the land that was far far away. He had everything…everything….talent, money, love in abundance….regardless of what his family may have done to him he was clearly loved by so many people. Not just adoring fans, but he obviously had people close to him who loved him very much. But so much of his story seems tragic. Going broke, addicted to drugs, botched surgeries, being devoured by media, questions about his mental state through much of his adult life, and of course the allegations of inappropriate relationships with kids. For all of the amazing things Michael Jackson did, most people see the sadness that drove so much of his life.

Michael Jackson’s “bittersweet” tale is one we hear again and again. People who have “everything” and they are still so unhappy. Look at the Hollywood Girls Gone Wild set, or Marilyn Monroe and Elvis. The list of the tragic and hip is a mile long.

So it begs the question, what will make people happy?

I have a few possible answers, but I am not sure that people can be genuinely happy over distance. So for what it’s worth, here are my thoughts on the subject:

First I think you have to really like yourself and accept yourself for who you are…and then do the same thing for other people. You don’t have to like everything everyone does or not have standards for yourself and others but you do have to accept the humanity of falling short. We all do it….but in acceptance there’s Grace.

I think we need to really forgive people who hurt us…and let go of those hurts. You know when you are playing a video game and you get hit with something like poison and your player gets sicker and sicker…I think that’s what holding onto the past does to people. It’s poison. Living in what was doesn’t let you experience what you have right now, it’s like allowing yourself to be robbed.

I also think people need to get real. No more Never-Never Land…it’s called Never Land because it’s never going to happen. Don’t live in  KeepDeludingYourself Land and hope it somehow is going to start to look like the fantasy in your mind. Keep the princes and princesses in the fairy tales where they belong. Get real with yourself and what your expectations are from other people. This goes back to the first thing I typed…like yourself. You have to be ok in your own head before you can share the space with anyone else.

Have faith. You have to have something to give it up to. God, Jesus, Mohammed, the Spirit of the Trees, the rock you found at the beach….trust that there’s something in the universe that’s functioning out of your control and that you can lean on it. Some people might say that’s not keeping it real, but the case could be made that assuming we know everything isn’t realistic at all. In terms of being happy, being able to turn to your faith is a great way to lighten the load when things get hard. Helps keep balance when everything seems off balance.

I don’t know that doing all of these things will make a person happy…or even content. I think we are more dynamic than that. I don’t think there’s a perfect state. People talk about zen as the ideal for that. Having read some of Buddha’s writings it seems to me that it was more about controlling your emotions and then restricting your environment to the point where you don’t get riled. Christianity has a similar flavor, avoidance as a means of self control. It’s not a bad model…I mean if you don’t want to be tempted, don’t go into the whorehouse. But that’s not the same as choosing how you want things to be.

Deciding what you want your world to look like is the final piece, then make it happen to the best of your ability. I think part of the appeal of MMOPRGs is that it’s a do over in a way. Especially SL, where you get to make the world you “want” instead of the one you live in. Without those other bits in place though, most people just make a mess that looks very much like their real world. It’s the old “no matter where you go, there you are”. So find a way to be happy with yourself and you’ll be happy where ever you are.

I hope that Michael Jackson is finally happy where ever he is and that the love people are pouring out to him can spill over onto the people he leaves behind. Seems like that would be the best gift all of that talent could bring the world.

Is SL a dying fad?

“Is SL a fad that is on the way out?” is the conversation I had with a friend today. He’s one of the growing number of people I have talked to who liked SL at first but then found it kind of meh over distance. In all honesty SL isn’t like some of the big online games like WoW where you go on quests and attend festivals, and sure there’s a lot of mayhem, but you can be something like a mage or a healer so your hack-factor is less. But for a lot of people creating a second life has a certain appeal…at least until you mess it up to the point where it looks a lot like RL.

The thing that prompted the conversation is that the sim my club is on is closing. The owners are leaving SL. They are a real world  software development company who created an inworld university to teach people about SL, teach them to build and script, there’s even a sandbox. They marketed their software…antivirus software…inworld to everyone who dropped in.

The sim is very popular, it’s listed in Hot Spots almost constantly and they have been in SL for nearly three years. Why are they leaving? Because SL’s population isn’t growing or changing. From a marketing stand point, it’s a stagnant marketplace. Which may explain why the Gossip Girls Sim that was sponsored by Warner Brothers closed as of July 1. There’s still a fan sim for GG but it’s not funded by a marketing machine like WB. At present Linden Lab’s great plan to fix this is making a largely PG virtual world that’s more conducive to luring businesses in.

I was reading a blog today that was saying that SL’s business model doesn’t rely on making money off of their premium accounts (that is accounts that residents pay for). They are in the business of selling servers, sims…islands within SL that individuals and businesses “own” while they are in SL to do use for personal or business uses…all according to the TOS, of course. SL servers are spendy so LL’s best bet is to sell servers to businesses, the government and educational facilities. Which is fine but there’s not much in it for residents. In order to support their model there’s discussion about pulling the plug on the stipend they offer residents (300L or around $1 a week).

From where I stand, we are looking at SL becoming a 3D online advertising platform…so kinda like TV except there won’t be any of those pesky television shows to break up the ads. Sure there will be some art and some educational stuff but…going back to PGSL, only so long as LL approves…wooohooo.

So…I am curious to know what other people think. Do you think that SL is a fad that is going the way of big sunglasses and skinny jeans? Or is SL growing into itself and finding it’s marketshare in the ever changing world of MMORPGs, social networks and online media advertisers?