The Election and Peacefulness

I have not prepared a message for this week. Accept my apologies. We are under the threat of wildfires and my focus has been on preparing the house and grounds to resist fires as much as possible. It also has been focused on preparing the “stuff” we will need to take in case we receive an announcement to evacuate. Of course, we hope it never comes to that.

I received an email today from a very good friend about remaining peaceful and spiritual in the face of this election cycle. I am simply going to attach that article for your perusal. It is wonderfully stated and powerful. It is How You Can Find the Good in a Nasty Election Cycle by Kelly McGonigal, as published by Daily Good – News That Inspires.

Although these messages are mostly for me, thanks for listening to me and getting to know me – warts and all. As always, feel free to forward this message to your friends, family, and those accompanying you on your spiritual journey.

Don

#1 Nov 2016

Copyright 2016

How You Can Find the Good in a Nasty Election Cycle by Kelly McGonigal

Do you believe that people are basically good?

For many of us, this election is making that a tougher question than it used to be. I teach and study compassion. I see the good in others for a living. In fact, you could say that both my professional niche and my greatest personal refuge is "finding the good.' And yet, this election is testing my capacity to trust in basic goodness.

I'm not alone in this struggle. It seems as though everyone I talk to has a story about a low point in this election cycle. Many of them are feeling moral distress--that potent combination of moral outrage, worrying about harm that may be done, and feeling powerless to do anything about it.

For some, the low point was watching one of the debates. For others, warnings of a rigged election. For me, it was a video from the New York Times called "Unfiltered Voices from Donald Trump's Crowds.' I watched fellow Americans shout [...] Each outburst [derogatory comments about minorities and the other candidate] seemed to be a euphoric release, as if the speaker were setting free some previously suppressed self to say, "Here's who I really am!'

People aren't just frustrated, irritated, or anxious about whether their candidate is going to win. More than anything else, this election is eroding social trust. As one of my colleagues put it, there's a "degradation of our collective sense of common humanity.' More than one person has told me that as offensive memes flooded their Facebook feeds, they were left unsure of who their "friends' really were. Even faith in our democratic system has collapsed. According to a Politico poll, thirty percent of voters are not confident that their vote will be counted. The loss of trust doesn't extend just to other Americans. I've heard from many students and friends who have lost trust in themselves, alarmed by the depths of their own rage, judgment, and disgust. The election has revealed a side of themselves they don't recognize, leaving their own basic goodness in doubt.

I can't help but wonder: Is it possible that this is who we really are?

Of course, you don't need me to tell you that this is a stressful election. According to a Harris poll conducted for the American Psychological Association, 52 percent of American adults say that the presidential election is a very or somewhat significant source of stress. For registered voters, that number is even higher--55 percent of registered Democrats and 59 percent of Republicans. No demographic seems to be spared, with all ages, genders, races, and ethnicities reporting high levels of election stress.

While I've seen these statistics cited by others, most commentaries treat election stress like ordinary, everyday stress. The American Psychological Association recommends turning off

on Netflix. The Washington Post pointed readers to emergency election meditations that will help you breathe through your angst if you get triggered by a Facebook post.

This kind of advice isn't bad if you're seeking temporary stress relief. But what if your goal is not just to feel better, but to keep your faith in humanity strong? What if your anxiety isn't just about you alone, but the well-being of everyone around you?

Because let's be clear: The stress we're feeling about this election can have profound effects on our individual and collective well-being. Psychologist Michael Poulin, director of the Stress, Coping, and Prosocial Engagement lab at the University at Buffalo, NY, has studied the effect of social trust and mistrust on physical and mental well-being. In one 2015 study of adults in 87 countries, agreeing with the statement "Most people can be trusted' was consistently linked to greater life satisfaction, happiness, and health. In contrast, mistrust was universally linked to distress and poor health.

UCLA stress researcher Steve Cole has found that social trust can even affect mental and physical health through changes in gene expression. People's responses to statements like "People are basically good' and "Our society is a good place, or is becoming a better place, for all people' are linked to genetic profiles that can either protect against, or increase the  risk of, everything from depression to heart disease. As social trust goes down, proinflammatory genes become upregulated, and risk goes up. This election may be changing us at a cellular level, creating what Cole calls a "molecular memory' of moral distress.

Moral distress is no ordinary stress, and preserving social trust requires more than just taking a bath, watching comedies, or even meditating. Rather than turn to the usual stress-reduction strategies of distraction and self-soothing, it's important to recognize what makes this election's stress so toxic--and what we can do to turn that poison into good medicine. For ourselves, and for others.

This requires more than mindfulness. It calls for heartfulness--the courage to stay engaged, with an open heart and a determination to hold onto your faith in what connects us. In this spirit, I offer three strategies for transforming moral distress into moral courage, moral elevation, and compassion.

1.  Do something

·       More on Stress & Politics

·       Joshua Greene explains how to close the gap between "us" and "them." Find out how to talk with your kids about Donald Trump.

·       Learn about what research into power tells us about Hillary Clinton.

·       Jeremy Adam Smith explains how science helps us find the good in ourselves and humanity. Kelly McGonigal reveals how stress can bring people together.

Think about what matters most to you in this election. Then, if you are eligible, vote. Vote whether  you  think  your  individual  vote  matters  or  not.  Vote  strategically,  vote       your _______ Do not fall prey to what compassion researchers call "psuedoinefficacy'--the sense that because you can't do everything by yourself, that nothing you do matters. Nobody's individual vote matters. That's not how voting works. Your vote matters as part of a collective. Ask yourself, "What if nobody like me, who cares about what I care about, voted  in this election?' If you don't like the answer to that question, vote. If you aren't eligible to vote, volunteer.

Now extend this mindset of collective participation to any action you can take that is in line with your deeply held values. You don't have to do it all. As you take committed action, look around. Notice that you are not alone. This is bigger than you. And also, it needs you. This is how you practice moral courage.

2.  Look for the good

Are there destructive forces as well as virtue in all of us? Yes, of course. That's the complexity of human nature. But this election has obscured the latter while highlighting the former. For your mental health, you need to restore some balance. One antidote to moral distress is moral elevation: witnessing the good in others.

How do you find the good? One resource I've turned to is NPR's Storycorps. Since the summer, they've  been  sharing  a  weekly  series  of  audio  and  video  stories  called #WhoWeAre. As Storycorps describes it, #WhoWeAre is "a series of real-life stories told by everyday Americans that speak to our best selves. Stories that amplify love over hate and empathy over fear. Stories that build bridges of understanding between people and help us recognize our shared humanity.'

Research shows that stories like this don't just make us feel better--they also help us feel awe, gratitude, and self-transcendence. One 2015 study found that watching a video that inspired moral elevation increased feelings of common humanity and connection to others, including members of so-called "out groups.' Another study found that for people suffering from depression, moral elevation increased their hope and reduced their sadness, anxiety, and loneliness.

How else can you give yourself the good medicine of moral elevation? In everyday life, look for, notice, and appreciate acts of virtue. Make it a goal to witness compassion, character, and courage. When you do, savor the feeling of being uplifted. Be present for the experience. Let it soak into your cells and remind your DNA that there is good in the world. Tell the story to someone else, so that it might inspire them.

3.  Be the good

·       Practices for Compassion

·       Learn loving-kindness meditation.

·       Try letting go of anger through compassion. Discover how to cultivate a sense of shared identity.

·       Look for ways to make an immediate difference in your community. Be the source point of themselves. Your impact may be far greater than you imagine.

I'm currently teaching a Science of Compassion course, and last week's assignment was to share a story of a time you received or witnessed compassion. One thing that struck me, as I read story after story, is how much opportunity there is in everyday life to change someone else's experience with relatively little investment. Doing so can hold meaning for that person far beyond what we would imagine when we made the gesture.

Some of my students shared stories from decades ago. The acts of kindness were so small, they might barely have registered in the do-gooder's consciousness. One such story  involved nothing more than letting a young woman skip the line for a restroom. Another example was a driver who slowed down to ask a stranger if she was OK after falling on the sidewalk. One student described having an upsetting cell phone conversation while waiting for a train. After he hung up, a stranger boarding the train said to him, "I really hope your day gets better.' Students wrote about how they would recall experiences like these when they wanted to restore their faith in humanity, or feel renewed by strength and hope.

I'm also in the middle of teaching an eight-week compassion meditation course at Stanford Hospital, and next week's lesson is on common humanity. The meditation practice we'll be learning is simple: Contemplate the human being or group who is triggering your judgment, disgust, anger, fear, or contempt, and remind yourself, "Just like me, this person wishes to be happy and free from suffering. In this way, we are no different.'

If you've been distressed by this election, remember that you aren't alone. There are countless others who also feel that despair. When you remember this, decide to be the antidote to someone else's moral distress. In ways you may never know, your small acts of kindness could reverberate in the lives of others long past this election cycle.

Another Perspective On Perception

I have discussed perception a lot in these messages. I do that, in part, because it is so central to A Course In Miracles (ACIM). In fact, ACIM defines our change in perception as our Atonement. It is effected by the Holy Spirit – not by an act of willpower on our part – only when we are truly open and willing to see things, events and people differently. Perception is also very central to recovery and the achievement of serenity in Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). Members of the AA Fellowship will not talk about how you go about changing your old-thinking perceptions. Rather, they will tell you, as they told me, to focus only on today – don’t drink, go to a meeting, share openly and honestly, talk to your sponsor, work the steps, pray to your Higher Power, and the rest of your life is none of your business. Doing this earnestly, you will come to discover that your compulsion to drink has melted away, serenity and joy have begun creeping into your life, and your perception of the world is changing.

In a small book given to me by a friend [What Color Socks Does God Wear, Doug Bennett, 2015] the author discusses, among other things, how we developed our perceptions and why they are so difficult to change. He comes at this from the perspective of science and logic. It was very interesting reading.

“How do we learn from our reality? Isn’t reality just what is ‘out there,’ the stuff that we walk around in and bump into once in a while? Let’s look at how that works.

“We perceive our environment, what we think of as reality, with our senses. [Karl Pribram, eminent neuroscientist, psychologist and philosopher, who postulated that we humans think in holograms] proposed that the process we … use to perceive things involves memory of learned experience. In Pribram’s model we take in information from our environment through our senses and convert it to holograms. Those little holograms are taken to our memory, where we retrieve something from our memory that matches the input information. That retrieved information is projected back out of the receiving sensory organ and forms what we see or otherwise perceive.

“This means that everything we perceive is learned,” [p. 35]

So, what if I haven’t learned it yet? Does that mean I wouldn’t “see” anything? The answer is “yes!”  I remember reading of the Spanish explorer’s conquest of the Aztecs of Central America, who maintained constant “watchers” for potential enemies. Why didn’t they “see” or report the square-rigged sailing ships of the 16^th century Spanish ships as they moved close to shore? The Aztec watchers had no frame of reference for these massive forms “floating” on the sea. Early reports indicated they had reported large, slow-moving clouds floating above the ocean. That’s all. When they began to see men disembark, they thought they were gods who came from the clouds. The watchers simply didn’t see “traditional” enemies. There was nothing alarming to report.

We know what eventually happened.

Bennett goes on to describe how, as we learned these initial experiences, it wasn’t just the physical perception that we learned. Each physical perception was accompanied by meaning and feeling reactions, as well. When we “see” something, the meaning and feeling reactions occur at the very same time as the physical perception. When you see a snake out of the corner of your eye, the registering of the sight of the snake, the fear we learned from that initial experience, and the jumping-out-of-the-way all occur simultaneously. They were all learned together. In Bennett’s words, they form a perception packet of information – the object itself, the feelings, and the associated physical reaction. It is this “packet” we recognize, project outward, and then respond to.

“There are several apparently different aspects to our learned responses. To give them all a convenient handle I have invented something I call a perception packet. I am not proposing that such things really exist. This is just a way to explain the process. Imagine that for each situation in our life we have a little packet, a perception packet. Every time we encounter that situation or that person or thing, we look up the packet for that situation, open it up and it tells us what we have encountered, how to feel, and what to do in that situation.” [p. 38]

ACIM and AA alike teach what I see reflects primarily only who I think I am. If I am essentially angry, I will perceive anger in almost every situation or person. I will be wary, fearful, untrusting, or tentative. If I am essentially open-minded and trusting, that’s what I will perceive. If I’m on the lookout for a quick mark, I will see everyone else looking to take advantage of me. ACIM states what we perceive is merely a reflection of our own thoughts. AA says it much more simply: If you spot it you got it.

As I’ve stated before, “I have to understand, on a visceral level, who the “Me” or “I” really is when I am speaking or thinking. The “I” that says to myself, “I really need a newer, more reliable car” is a different “I” than the one that says to my Holy Spirit, “I can’t do this anymore; help me perceive things the way You see them.”

Although these messages are mostly for me, thanks for listening to me and getting to know me – warts and all. As always, feel free to forward this message to your friends, family, and those accompanying you on your spiritual journey.

Don

#1 Sep 2016

Copyright 2016

My Thoughts About Me, Myself and I

I have learned, during the past several years to imagine my thoughts as leaves floating on a stream.  Having a wet weather creek that runs through our property has helped me with this imagery. “Oh! Here comes one. Watch it float by. Oh! Here comes another one. It’s floating by as well. Look at this big yellow one. Wow, look at that orange one! Have a nice day, leaves.”

I recently heard a similar idea in an AA meeting: “The thoughts running through my head are like trains coming in and out of Grand Central Station. The trains come in, pause, and leave for somewhere else. Just because I see these trains come and go does not mean that I have to hop on and ride each one of them.”

I have thoughts that seem to come from nowhere. They stay with me until another thought – also coming from nowhere – takes its place. It is constant. Relentless. Unending. Like the leaves in my stream. But, I don’t have to grab one, bring it back, chew on it and make it my Now. But, often I do. That act disrupts my serenity.

I learned in AA that my thoughts, if taken seriously and acted upon, may very well  lead me to conclude I can have one, little drink. Just every once in a while. It won’t hurt me. I don’t have to tell anyone. Old-timers told me – “Your thoughts and your feelings are not REAL things. They are not reliable. They can change in an instant. They are very, very fickle and they don’t give a damn about you. Alcohol is a disease – cunning, baffling and powerful. So, Donnie, don’t drink today, pray, go to a meeting, share honestly and help someone. Do not listen to or act on your thoughts until you check it out with another person. Do this just for today, and remember, the rest of your life is none of your business.”

A Course in Miracles (ACIM) tells me much the same thing. Early in my study of the Course, I summarized important (to me) concepts from the first 30 Lessons in the Workbook for Students. I put this summary on one page of text as a quick “cheat sheet” for myself. This one-pager opens with:

“My mind is preoccupied with past thoughts. I see nothing as it is now.   "The one wholly true thought I can hold about the past is that it is not here."

“Since I see only the past, my thoughts do not mean anything; I am upset because I am seeing something that is not there; my thoughts are merely images I have made. I only see what I am looking for. If my mind is preoccupied with the past – and all thoughts about the past are thoughts or images about illusions, and all I see is a projection of my thoughts – where does that leave what I am "seeing?" Nowhere! I am seeing reflections of my memories of an image or illusion. When I am picturing the past or anticipating the future, my mind is actually blank, because it is not thinking. It is only remembering my memories of an illusion.

“This idea totally engulfs my Ego in fear – if all that my Ego is showing me is meaningless, then I (and my illusionary world) are meaningless. My only option is to let God define my world and me. That is even more scary! It feels more "natural" to make my own meaning – with myself and my concerns at the center. If I let God make my meaning, then I have to believe that I, and all the things I value and fought for (including those things I believe are right and just), might be lost.

“This reality scares the bejeezus out of me, which puts me in a state of fear, rationalization, defensiveness, justification, projection, or disbelief – tools I use to protect "my" world. When I use these "tools," I am feeling like a victim/potential-victim/victor, all of which means that I am vulnerable and open to attack – believing what I see is true reality! Using my own past experience/learning to guide me is to continue to make my own meaning out of the world. By not doing this allows my Spirit Guide to speak to me and take His rightful place in my awareness.”

Today, when aware of my thoughts, it is critically important that I do not give them the weight of truth for me. Certainly, I have learned not to act on these thoughts, but, more importantly, not to give voice to them either. I try not to suppress my thoughts or feelings. But to begin talking about them – and hearing my own voice state them – seems to give those thoughts more power and substance. At least, in my mind, if I recognize these egoic thoughts for what they are, I have the opportunity to simply say to them: “Have a nice day. Bye.”

Then, I need do nothing except to still my mind by focusing on hearing the whispers of my Holy Spirit rather than all my egoic voices. I can remember I am not my body – nor am I my thoughts. I am an already-loved eternal spirit currently having a human experience.

As I stated last week, “I have to understand, on a visceral level, who the “Me” or “I” really is when I am speaking or thinking. The “I” that says to myself, “I really need a newer, more reliable car” is a different “I” than the one that says to my Holy Spirit, “I can’t do this anymore. Help me perceive things the way You see them.”

Although these messages are mostly for me, thanks for listening to me and getting to know me – warts and all. As always, feel free to forward this message to your friends, family, and those accompanying you on your spiritual journey.

Don

#2 May 2016

Copyright 2016