How can this be happening? Just when you think nothing can get any worse with that horrible, evil man who is our president, he descends deeper into a hell the world has to cope with.
Of course, those fleeing torture and death… they definitely have it worse than many of us… directly affected by the sweeping executive order that slams the door of salvation in their faces.
Does This Make You Sick? Cry? Want to DO Something?
5-year old Omran Daqneesh
Tonight at JFK Airport
How can these horrible “christian” people and lawmakers turn their backs on human suffering? I cannot wrap my head around any kind of logic they could conjure. Pro-life? Fucking pigs. What about the children who are dying waiting to enter our country? The women being raped and tortured in refugee camps? Men, hopeless, feeling useless and powerless.
I wish I had answers. I suppose letting our representatives know how we feel? They don’t give one shit. No one has the cajones to stand up against that fascist dictator we now have “leading” our country.
Thank you Canada, Germany and France for stepping up and saying they will accept those trapped in American red tape. Strangling red tape.
My heart feels like it is going to fall out on the floor, I am in so much distress over what is going on. All I can do is write my feelings, trying to see through the tears, knowing I am not alone dealing with this disgusting, horrid man.
I have no hallucinations this morning, but am filled with energy. I am a Kon Mari fool, pulling out drawers, yanking out things to throw away, wiping them down with baby wipes. Putting things back in neatly. Moving on to the next. And the next. And next.
I hope when I come down I don’t find I’ve thrown the wrong things out. (I did that once before… threw out a slew of eye make-up… from Sephora, no less. It still stings.)
It feels so good to be full of energy after yesterday’s suck-fest.
Disclaimer: I am not a war reporter and am culling information from a variety of sources, mostly American, all in English. If I am sharing incorrect information and you have better or more accurate sources, please let me know. I am trying to learn more as this horror continues unfolding.
My Heart is Breaking (Massive Understatement)
I can barely breathe as I write this. But it has to come out, even if there are a million tears on the keyboard and Kleenex surrounding the computer.
I am horrified beyond belief… beyond even words… about the bombing of the convoy carrying food, aid and medical supplies to Aleppo… which has been isolated by attacks/bombs/struggles between so many factions of governments and military organizations I cannot even remotely keep up with it all.
The exact convoy attacked as they prepared to deliver aid to Aleppo.
I am lost as to what to do with this pain in my heart. I sat sobbing, rocking myself, wailing and streaming incoherent words friends on the phone. One helped me catch my breath by breathing with me. But what does that do to help the world?
And then our black lives… do they matter to ANYONE?!
Weltschmerz is the depressing feeling you get when comparing the actual state of the world to the picture you have in your head of how the world should be, and knowing that the picture in your head can never exist.
What does Weltschmerz literally translate to?
Weltschmerz is a compound noun made from the words Welt (world) and Schmerz (pain). It therefore translates to ‘world pain’.
What is the nearest English equivalent to Weltschmerz?
World-weariness. It is also sometimes compared to a state of depression.
I’ve personalized the iconic photo below of the stunned-shocked Omran Daqneesh from a few days ago as a representation of the feeling that’s been growing in my heart for many months now, often threatening to drown out the real-life world I live in. The past few days have been increasingly difficult to plow through as I feel more and more helpless to do… or change… one thing going on around me.
As I write around the Web, I keep being asked, “What can I do to help?” I’ve gathered some well-known (and hopefully properly-run) organizations we might find a way to assist. Obviously, this list will not be complete or exhaustive, but it’s a beginning. I wish I could have helping agency connection links to all the conflicts/wars/evil around the world, but this post would run on forevermore.
While I crouch filled with rocks, I will try to do even a grain of sand’s worth of love for those in excruciating pain and circumstances.
Ways to Help in Syria
WARNING: I need to preface this with, as I searched, I came up with sites extremely negative and even violently angry about every one of the following organizations. I have been warned that ISIS is pervasive online and I saw that clearly during my research. When researching individual organizations, be aware of the hate out there in the Netiverse.
SAMS Foundation – SAMS Foundation is a nonprofit humanitarian organization established in 2007. Its volunteer physicians deliver direct medical care in Syria, Jordan, Turkey, and Lebanon. Charitable gifts are tax-deductible.
The White Helmets – “When the bombs rain down, the Syrian Civil Defence rushes in. In a place where public services no longer function these unarmed volunteers risk their lives to help anyone in need – regardless of their religion or politics.”
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières – “We help people worldwide where the need is greatest, delivering emergency medical aid to people affected by conflict, epidemics, disasters, or exclusion from health care.”
Islamic Relief Syria – “Whoever saved a life, it would be as if they saved the life of all mankind.” (Qur’an 5:32)
The UN Refugee Agency – “USA for UNHCR helps to save, protect and rebuild the lives of millions of refugees and others forced to flee their homes due to violence and conflict.”
As you can imagine, the list is exhaustive, so I encourage you to Search: “How Can I Help Refugees” or “How Can I Help <fill in the Conflict here>” You can even Search: “How Can I Help Refugees Without Money”
Lastly, SPEAK UP! I know it is heart-wrenching to look at the images, to imagine the horror these people are going through, but we cannot look the other way any longer.
I have quietly sat on the sidelines, watching the world pass me by, feeling like a really old cranky woman.
Scarily, I can relate to some of the dotard supporters.
I wonder if being Politically Correct has not gone too far. Way too far.
Crazy Making!
Some of the things that make me shake my head in bafflement:
the ever-morphing gender names
the ease with which to transition
kids medically and surgically transitioning
how one can “be” a she/her in the morning, a they at lunchtime and a he/him by sunset… and how anger feels justified if someone misgenders the person
how people quash free speech in the angry alt-right
how stupid the president is… and no one is stopping the crazy-making behaviors before he kills all of us
how easily people lie (myself included)
how men really are led around by their cocks (blame my sex work job for that one)
how transwomen insist they were not acculturated into the male world growing up and insist on crashing women-only spaces
how people lobby to make Disney characters gay or lesbian
how the word “fat” is the nastiest epithet someone can call another person
how the more I know about Islam, the less I respect it
how “christians” in the US have become the most hateful people on earth (so much for cultivating new christians through love and kindness)
how stupid people can be not understanding kneeling for the National Anthem – they are purposefully being angry just to annoy those of us who believe Black Lives Matter
how a “snowflake” is now an epithet instead of a lovely geometric design
how “The Wall” is quietly being built and people just sit and watch
how Flint, MI still doesn’t have clean water (that legacy is going to haunt us for eons)
how Puerto Rico is being treated like shit because they are brown people and how Americans bloody well know it and don’t care in the least
That In the Heights in Australia was shamed into not being performed amidst accusations of whitewashing when they did their best to fill the actor slots with People of Color
I was tempted to defend myself (I use PC terms when I can, I am not prejudiced against these folks, etc.), but I am leaving this piece to speak for itself.
Thank Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir for the Craft for this vomiting of things I have been too afraid to say out loud. He tells writers to “Be brave!” and write the things that are the most difficult to say.
“I know how jarring it may be to hear a non-white person, or maybe anyone, even say the words “white people,” as it can take on a pejorative connotation. That’s fine. This isn’t always comfortable to have to say, but that doesn’t make it any less true, necessary, or timely.”
The challenge is for white people (myself included) to stand UP, (and kneel DOWN), speak UP and stop being complicit in the systematic and so-deeply-ingrained-whites-don’t-even-see-it-anymore prejudice and hate against People of Color.
“Sorry, but not sorry, you’re going to have to take a side. And yes, you have to do it now.”
The United States has always had a divide between races. But now, with the dotard “president,” it has become a chasm, one that grows more visible and wider with each new tweet. White people just cannot keep their… OUR… mouths shut anymore. We have kept silent and turned our backs for far too many decades.
Blacks are being killed by the police nearly every day. Latinx are being confiscated from their homes, from schools, their places of employment and even in hospitals and churches. Muslims are accused of violence simply because of their religion… one many of us do not understand (myself included), but the harassment and death threats are just not what the United States was founded to represent. All of this in order to fulfill the dotard’s horrific ideas… and plans… to rid the country of anyone not white.
“It’s very likely, and understandable if you feel this is unfair, this is inconvenient, it’s frustrating, it’s difficult, it’s embarrassing, it’s going to alienate you from people you know, love, work with, watch the game with.”
Too fucking bad. SPEAK UP! Speak for those who get killed when they open their mouths, receive death threats when they kneel at a football game (exercising their First Amendment exquisitely). We whites cannot leave Black & Brown people hanging out there alone anymore.
I read an article yesterday (that I cannot find again for anything) where a Black Medical Resident was leaving work after a more-than-30-hour shift in the Emergency Room and a white man in a car started screaming the N-word at him, over and over again. He added some other racist epithets, but mostly it was the N-word. He said the white man was laughing so hard at his hilarity the doctor thought he would have to give him aid when he finally collapsed in hysteria.
While that part is gross enough, the part that was the most offensive to him (and me) is the whites in the parking lot who said NOTHING.
NOTHING.
He said they skittered away, trying not to get involved.
What the holy fuck, white people!
SAY SOMETHING! SCREAM BACK!
Yeah, I know… they might have a gun. If they do, they do. You are supporting/protecting/showing love for another human being that is in the line of fire. If you believe in a God, He will surely reward you for speaking up.
“That’s privilege. Someone once said, “when you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.” This is a taste of equality.”
It’s tough to say something when we are so used to just walking on. We cannot just walk by anymore.
WE CANNOT IGNORE THE ISSUE ANYMORE.
WE HAVE TO SPEAK UP!
OPEN YOUR MOUTHS, WHITE FOLKS!
SCREAM when others simply cannot or are hoarse from doing so.
I have this vision of the Oval Office having “FUCK FUCK SHIT FUCK”s bouncing off the walls like molecules pinging in boiling water.
It is not uncommon for that now-golden-hued room to hear expletives, but I’m betting that as the days unroll with the word “Russia” in each sentence, the “Shit, fuck, damn’s” have been accelerating and getting progressively louder. (And amusing side note: When searching “trump White House expletives,” the suggestions at the bottom of the page all had Bannon’s name in them. Hilarious… and expected.)
For 100 days, I cried and wrung my hands in terror that someone in the White House would accidentally (or on purpose) hit The Red Button and our world would be annihilated.
During those first 100 days, with every stroke of the president’s pen that removed women and children’s rights, that signed away our natural resources so the rich could get richer, that created enormous doses of xenophobia, Islamophobia, racism, ordering the confiscation and deportation of people struggling to stay alive and on and on and on… and with every bizarre cabinet appointment, my heart broke and despair settled in.
I was directed by my doctors to stop watching the news because all it did was submerge me deeper into depression. I was joined by millions of others who had the new PTSD diagnosis called President Trump Stress Disorder, our nation’s leader now holding the distinction of being the first president to have an anxiety disorder named after him.
An epidemic is sweeping the nation, causing sufferers to experience feelings of hopeless doom, certain annihilation and cataclysmic collapse. It’s an existential plague manifesting itself by enveloping the stricken in a black cloud of despairing suicidal thoughts. The malady that is striking down innocent citizens left and lefter is … the Presidency of Donald J. Trump. It is literally making people sick.
>100 Days
But now, with the variety of Russian headlines intertwined with you all in that Oval Office, I am glued to the TV, the real news, (what you call the “fake news,”) and I sit on the edge of my seat waiting for the next delicious morsel of information.
Instead of my being unable to sleep, now it is your turn to toss and turn all night, worrying about your futures. I, on the other hand, am finally able to sleep soundly.
And every morning since Day 100, I wake up smiling again.
As you read through this and the articles I’ve shared, one of the most important things is to breathe and let go of any stress/tension you feel building because of the instructions. You do not… WILL not… be doing everything at once, so allowing yourself grace for the learning and ongoing practice (the Be-ing) of Mindfulness is really good for your spirit. Even I work at Mindfulness. Even Buddhist Monks practice (the act of learning a new skill) Mindfulness. There is no “end” to show you have completed the task for the rest of your life, no test at some tangible end. It is an ongoing experience like breathing. Seeing it as the waves in the ocean can help a lot… they come and go, unbidden, but in a rhythm that does not cease.
So it is with Mindfulness.
There are several avenues to Mindfulness. It seems each teacher has a different way of explaining how to do it. What ends up happening is we take bits and pieces from the ones that resonate, creating our own unique style. If one person’s description makes no sense, look at the next and see if that adds to your own need for information.
The Path to Mindfulness…
…is Meditation.
There is no Mindfulness without Meditation,
nor is there Meditation without Mindfulness.
Even as I said there is no end goal, there are pieces that are required (and that word can be stressful, but you will see in a moment it does not need to be). I could have put any number of these pieces together in another order, but it makes no difference as I explain because they super-impose themselves onto each other. So, in no particular order:
The “Goal” of Meditation (the Definition of Mindfulness)
The purpose of a (Stillness) Meditation session, one path into Mindfulness, is to empty one’s mind, bringing your thoughts directly to your breathing. Sounds like such a simple concept, but takes a lifetime of practice that never ends (like the ocean’s waves).
It is this attention to breath that we do in our private Meditation sessions, that we also do when we are walking down the street, when someone annoys the crap out of us, when we are scared or anxious or angry. Or when we are changing a diaper, showering ourselves or sitting and reading a book.
While it can seem like its own activity at first, taking a lot of concentration while ignoring the actual life activity at hand, it quickly becomes a soft hum in the background of our waking lives.
Even doing it (as we learn) for a very short time gives immense relief from difficulties going on around us. It brings us back to “our Center”; that which is Divine in us all. For you, that might be Allah.
Note: As you read, you will see there are a variety of types of Meditation. Typically, new folks concentrate on Mindfulness Meditation and Stillness Meditation… mostly those two combined. There is another you might find helpful that I love, and that is Guided Meditation. When I struggle with doing a solo practice, Guided Meditation often helps me to let go of the pain. There are an endless supply of Free Guided Meditations both in regular Google searches or on YouTube, Amazon Music, in Amazon Prime (tv) and Netflix. Do not think too hard on the other kinds of Meditation at the moment, just the 3 I mentioned above.
Non-Judgment
Non-Judgment is a main cornerstone of Mindfulness. I am sure you have a certain definition in your mind about what non-judgment entails. With Meditation, it takes on a broader meaning.
As you Meditate (which I will elaborate on in a moment), you’ll find your head filled with thoughts. THIS IS NORMAL! We all have our heads just stuffed full of thoughts, feelings and plans. Do not ever ever ever berate yourself for having random thoughts floating through your mind as you learn, try and practice meditation. We all have them! Forever. There is never a time thoughts are not flowing through our heads. Not even for the most practiced of Monks, ALL of us have this experience when Meditating.
Especially in the beginning, people can get very frustrated with this phenomenon, this “intrusion” of thoughts, disturbing our practice of Meditation.
The opposite, however, is true; without the thoughts, one would not have the Meditation to practice. Recognizing them is exactly what is supposed to happen! The moment you recognize a stray thought, that is the exact moment you have become Mindful. It might only last that second, but you have, for that fleeting moment, been Mindful. So beautiful!
When you recognize the random thought in your mind, instead of seeing them as annoying or terribly distracting, it serves us much more to… see the thought/feeling… say hello to it… even hold it for a moment if you need to… and then set it free to float away once again. I see the thoughts as clouds or soap bubbles floating around, some coming closer, others stay far away. As they come into my direct attention, those are the ones I admire, then release, returning to my breath.
You will, as all of us have, sometimes spend your entire Meditation session in thought. Thinking, planning, saying, “When is this over!?” to yourself. I encourage just shaking your head and laughing about how intrusive your thoughts have been and try again in a awhile.
It is the ebb and flow of thoughts, their presentation, your recognition, then their release, moving back to breath, that is the very definition of Mindfulness Meditation.
Time to Practice
Muslim Students in Srinagar
You will read in most places that your Meditation should be at least 20 minutes long. 20 minutes can seem extremely daunting at first, so just shoot for 2-3 minutes and gradually, at your own pace, work your way up to 20 minutes. It could take a year to get there. Who cares!? This is your walk, no one else’s.
At least once each day, you will set aside a minimum of 10 minutes, even if you are only doing 3 minutes, setting the scene in your body and mind walks you towards the actual breathing. Those minutes are without the TV on, without answering your phone and hoping you have no one knocking at the door. If there are interruptions you have no control over, just start again when you can. No judgment, no getting angry at the interruption or person who knocked. A gentle thought of love towards them moves your practice forward.
Making time for Meditation can seem daunting at first, but if you are able to recognize the ritual as a great few minutes of Self-Love, you will soon grow to welcome the time apart from your harried life.
Timing Your Session
I’ve found several wonderful free apps for Meditation Timers. Most are bells, chimes or gongs, but there are some with music as well. Googling “Meditation Timers” brings up many choices. I have one on my computer and one on my phone.
An amusing, pretty universal, action seems to happen, especially as we are learning our way around these practices. We all seem to be intensely curious about 1) how long we have been doing the Mindfulness (thereby dragging us right out of it!) and 2) how much more time we have before we are finished. Time either flies or is interminably long. While non-judgment is important, do your best to recognize the urge to open your eyes to see the time as one of those stray and passing thoughts. This does get easier with time.
I found removing my watch and turning the clock around helpful at first, depending only on the timer. Otherwise I was half inside and half with one eye on the clock. Not so peaceful.
Where Are the Benefits Already?
In the beginning, many, many, if not most, of us find great resistance to practicing Meditation. We often look for any distraction we can find to avoid it. THIS IS ABSOLUTELY NORMAL and, I believe, a required part of the process.
Suhba Fellowship In Istanbul, Turkey
Recognizing the resistance, chuckling to yourself, then doing the Meditation, is an enormous success and one to be very proud of. Each time you cross this hurdle, you remove some of the future struggle towards practicing.
Just like there is no end to practicing, no end to the intrusion of thoughts, so too is there no delineation between practicing and Mindfulness having an effect on your behavior and life. The first time you sit quietly, breathing, you have already created a monumental shift in your Universe. There may be moments of recognition (“Oh! I breathed instead of wanting to throw a book at the wall!”), but more often, the effects are subtle and cumulative. One day, you will realize things have shifted and you will probably think, “Wow! When did that happen?”
It happened when you sat quietly that first day. It’s happening this very second as you read through what I have written!
Onward Ho!
I will share a couple of articles about HOW to actually do the breathing and practice Meditation. Those are the technical parts. I wanted to share with you my own learning curve specifically so you could see what the possibilities were, but mostly, that this is an amorphous experience and to not expect any concrete outcome. Ah, but those things along with monumental changes in your life.
Does this make sense? I would be shocked if any of it did!
I love all of you so very much. Have fun with your new activity, your new thoughts, your changes in behavior and allow utter confusion to wash over you at times. It is absolutely normal… you are absolutely normal… well, actually, I think you are absolutely amazing!
If you ever have questions or want to share your thoughts or experiences, feel free to talk or write to me.
There are hundreds of demonstrative and how-to videos on YouTube. Any Google search of “Mindfulness Meditation,” “MBSR,” or “Guided Meditation” will bring up a zillion for you.
Navelgazing Writer 