I’m re-reading Cave in the Snow by Vicki MacKenzie.  It’s about Tenzin Palmo who spent 12 years in a cave in the Himalayas at 13, 000 feet.  

Now I locate a documentary on her. My choice is the book but this gives a taste.

This morning, I listened to a Sensory Awareness leading by Mariela Valdez.  She played different styles of music and we noticed our response.  I changed immediately with the music, marching, flowing, rocking, then, then when she played a cowboy song, I remembered lying flat on the table prepared for radiation.  They always played music, usually soothing, but one day, I’d been carefully arranged for the machine and cowboy music came on and I couldn’t stop moving which stopped the process. Set-up began again.  It showed me the power of music. I was taken away from a machine to ride slung low in the saddle feeling space and sky around and in me.

After going through chemotherapy, I’ve rarely been able to handle the stimulation of music, but today I responded with pure delight.

I’m aware we’re in the Jewish Holy Days, and Etty Hillesum comes to mind.  Born in 1914, she was a Dutch author who wrote of her religious awakening and the persecutions of Jewish people in Amsterdam during the German occupation.  

In 1943 she was deported and killed in Auschwitz concentration camp.

Here are some of her words.

Sometimes the most important thing in a whole day is the rest we take between two deep breaths, or the turning inwards in prayer for five short minutes.

I do believe it is possible to create, even without ever writing a word or painting a picture, by simply molding one’s inner life. And that too is a deed.

“Slowly but surely I have been soaking Rilke up these last few months: the man, his work and his life. And that is probably the only right way with literature, with study, with people or with anything else: to let it all soak in, to let it all mature slowly inside you until it has become a part of yourself. That, too, is a growing process. Everything is a growing process. And in between, emotions and sensations that strike you like lightning. But still the most important thing is the organic process of growing.” 

“A large group of us were crowded into the Gestapo hall, and at that moment the circumstances of all our lives were the same. All of us occupied the same space, the men behind the desk no less than those about to be questioned. What distinguished each of us was only our inner attitude.” 

I continue to see it’s about feeling within to cultivate how we meet what comes.  Peace!

Crispness in the air and I feel like bobbing for apples.  Birds are singing, and despite the dire news I feel the beauty of nature and life.  I keep rising at 2 in the morning to meditate.  It’s as though I need to process all that’s happening in between dreams.

I just learned Ruth Bader Ginsberg has passed on. She fought so hard, gave so much. This is beautiful to read right now, through sorrow and tears.

My driver’s license is up for renewal and because I’m now over 70, I need to go in for a written test.  I’ve taken the on-line ones, and feel primed, so today is the day.  I go on-line to make an appointment.  I see that because of covid, I have a one year extension and can’t make an appointment online.  Hmmm!  Why not put it off until the new year?  It works for me. 

Today I’m entranced with the Diving Bell Spider that breathes underwater by capturing a bubble of air.

Martin Buber, a religious philosopher, wrote that “Play is the cultivation of the possible.”

I wonder if long ago spiders were playing and wondered, “what if?” and so now they inhabit another place to be.  Where now might I cultivate expanded ways to be and breathe?  

 I promoted the BBC show The Century of the Self in my last post.

Today I was invited to complete a ten minute on-line survey evaluating my local hospital.  It’s being rebuilt and the architect is now considering the interior, and they wanted to know what I, and others of course, thought of the interior as it’s been.

I was given a list of adjectives – calm, unsettling, agitating, peaceful, like that.

Part of me thought well, it’s a hospital so yes, a bit unsettling when I’ve been there, but through the questions I saw what they could do, since now, it’s being re-done, to make it a more peaceful, calming, and supportive experience.

I’m glad the survey was anonymous and on-line since in person I might not have been so critical and direct.  I remembered back to a freshman psychology class at UCLA where one requirement was to participate in experiments.  I learned how we want to fit in, so we will tend to agree with the group, or at least be influenced by it, unless perhaps we are an 8 on the Enneagram, the Challenger.

Of course I’d never heard of The Enneagram at the time.  I’m said to be a 2.  Relationship is a priority with me.

Anyway, The Century of the Self emphasizes corporate, and now political emphasis, on using focus groups as to how to lead and direct us in a certain way.

Thinking about it, I recalled one focus group I participated in.  About 16 subscribers to Ode magazine, now called The Intelligent Optimist, gathered in a room in a high-rise building in San Francisco. There was a see-through mirror on one side and a leader in the room.  We were there to discuss how to keep Ode magazine alive.  They needed advertising.  What would we discerning, obviously intelligent, environmentally conscious readers consider acceptable?  

It became a bit of a rout as each person seemed to want to outclass the other as to how little they consumed, and how amazingly superior they were in the way of conservation and preservation.  Advertising couldn’t reach us because we needed nothing. We were immune to ads and suggestion. I can feel the energy of self-righteousness even now and this was many years ago.

You would have thought we all walked there in foot coverings made of bark.  I had taken the ferry but my shoes were leather.  Oh, my!  

The Century of the Self ends with Robert Reich speaking.  He says we need a leader.  Governments can’t be run by the whim of the moment.  A focus group may say railroads aren’t the most important thing to them, and then, the railroad breaks down, and yes, it is.

We need a wider vision, a compassionate vision that honors that, yes, of course, we are all individuals, and we are in this together on one planet which is stretching its wings as we look out to the moon, Mars, Venus, and the stars.

On another note, Dan Coats points out in an opinion piece today that we have to ensure this election is fair.  Too much has happened for most of us to trust the process.  He suggests: 

The most important part of an effective response is to finally, at long last, forge a genuinely bipartisan effort to save our democracy, rejecting the vicious partisanship that has disabled and destabilized government for too long. If we cannot find common ground now, on this core issue at the very heart of our endangered system, we never will.

Our key goal should be reassurance. We must firmly, unambiguously reassure all Americans that their vote will be counted, that it will matter, that the people’s will expressed through their votes will not be questioned and will be respected and accepted. I propose that Congress creates a new mechanism to help accomplish this purpose. It should create a supremely high-level bipartisan and nonpartisan commission to oversee the election. This commission would not circumvent existing electoral reporting systems or those that tabulate, evaluate or certify the results. But it would monitor those mechanisms and confirm for the public that the laws and regulations governing them have been scrupulously and expeditiously followed — or that violations have been exposed and dealt with — without political prejudice and without regard to political interests of either party.

Also, this commission would be responsible for monitoring those forces that seek to harm our electoral system through interference, fraud, disinformation or other distortions. These would be exposed to the American people in a timely manner and referred to appropriate law enforcement agencies and national security entities.

Such a commission must be composed of national leaders personally committed — by oath — to put partisan politics aside even in the midst of an electoral contest of such importance. They would accept as a personal moral responsibility to put the integrity and fairness of the election process above everything else, making public reassurance their goal.

Commission members undertaking this high, historic responsibility should come from both parties and could include congressional leaders, current and former governors, “elder statespersons,” former national security leaders, perhaps the former Supreme Court justices David Souter and Anthony Kennedy, and business leaders from social media companies.

The whole column is here: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/17/opinion/2020-election-voting.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

Last night I watched a show I highly recommend: The Century of the Self.

My sons have often asked me how we went from the idealism of the 60’s to what followed so that we’re living on a planet suffering from racism, injustice, and man-made manipulation and climate change.

The show helps me understand.  It’s four hours. I planned to watch over four nights but I was hooked and couldn’t stop.  

One thing that surprised me is how young Bill and Hillary Clinton look, like children, and they were idealistic until the midterm elections shut them down.  Tony Blair and Margaret Thatcher also look, and are, young.  Bill was 46 when he took office, Obama 47, and Kennedy 43.  Reagan was 69 and Trump 70.  

The Freud family and Ronald Reagan do not come off well.  The 1954 horrific manipulation of the U.S. in Guatemala is painfully sobering. The U.S. as controlled by corporations has a lot to answer for. How do we combat psychological warfare?

Reagan made it okay to not be compassionate.  We’re seeing that now with Trump.  

Anyway, it’s a four hour history of the 20th century with wonderful footage from the past, some of which I know. Now, in this century, we know we’re manipulated by social media, and yet, do we turn it off? Many of us connect through it. Can we override the dark side?

I believe, properly monitored, it allows us to connect with those we might not otherwise meet. I remember the first Gulf war. I live in a relatively homogenous political arena, but my oldest son was going on the internet and interacting with people with different beliefs. He heard other “sides” of the issue, and interacted with those who were there.

I think of the chemical elements and how they come together. What a gift it is that hydrogen and oxygen open to each other and bond to give us water, and with water, life. What about sodium and chloride coming together to make salt? Can’t we come together and open our bonds to create what separately we might not be able to imagine?

On another note, I woke from a dream of my mother.  She was here, or so it seemed, and I woke missing her with the same ache of when she passed fifteen years ago.  Is she still here?   Well, in me, of course, but I felt as though I could simply open a window and reach out and she’d be there/here to touch.  It was a sad way to wake, and perhaps it represents all the tears that accumulate with a long life as we surrender to receive what comes.