Category: Personal

I haven’t been posting much lately.  It’s not personal to Dharmakarma. I enjoy it here. Just had life (and death) intrude.  Not looking for sympathy and am not putting this on the front page as it is personal, but do have a story to share for those few (if any) who might wonder where I’ve gone.

About year ago, a dear friend lost her father. She was unable to adequately mourn because, at the time, she was being treated rather badly by some maniacs who’d decided they didn’t like her political positions (which, btw, mirror my own). I moved in with her, as a friend, at first, because I was concerned for her. That friendship grew with my admiration at her ability to handle hardship. There are some people in this world who are simply special.  She is one of them and I love her dearly. However, I did not entirely understand the pain she was experiencing, partly because she handled it so well. Now, through a loss of my own, I’ve come to understand and realise that my support for my friend had been inadequate.

More below the fold…

The Director of my leadership group wants to fix us. We aren’t exactly broken as a group just flawed. To that end she has been sending us to extra training courses and among them was some based in the Myers-Briggs approach which subjects one to a series of questions and then based on that four dominant patterns emerge that help explain a broadly based personality. The idea is that if you understand the foundations of another’s dominant influences on personality you might have less conflict and communicate more precisely and communicate in a way that is tailored to maximize success.

Or not. But I am saving money for a retirement that will never happen and my annual review is coming up so like the rest of the herd I ambled along. Twenty years from now if we have a health care system all of the nurses taking care of you will be shuffling along on walkers. The questions consisted of things like,”I like when people are friendly to me” and “I enjoy being invited to parties.”

I ended up being an INTP.

INTP

Seek to develop logical explanations for everything that interests them. Theoretical and abstract, interested more in ideas than in social interaction. Quiet, contained, flexible, and adaptable. Have unusual ability to focus in depth to solve problems in their area of interest. Skeptical, sometimes critical, always analytical

I scored directly in the middle on the Extroversion/Introversion spectrum but with some additional exercises and probing from the trainer we decided that while I have a job the requires extroversion and I can hang with the extroverts, I spend a lot of time living in my head and being around large groups of people doesn’t interest me. The one person in my leadership group who really fucking annoys me is an extreme extrovert who cannot shut up. We tangled that day because he made a racist comment and the whole group rolled their eyes when I called him on it. They were annoyed that he said it and annoyed that I was compelled to comment and concerned a discussion would cut into break time. Social revolutions should be formulated in short manageable bursts so nobody misses their break or favorite reality show.

Doesn’t happen often anymore, but there have always been times when “things” start to overflow, when life just gets too full, when the psychic levees and dikes that I’ve built and maintained over 50-odd (some, very odd) years simply aren’t going to hold.  Y’all welcomed me here….so you asked for it.

I am visually impaired, what the state of Texas considers blind, but with a small field of vision that to most people means I’m not really blind.  This was the result of an act of violence committed against me by a sociopath.  A person who believed themselves entitled to their anger, their grievances, their hurts and most of all entitled to live a life based on the false assumption that nothing and no one counted above their own self absorption.  I have nothing to do with such people these days, something that is actually easier to do in real life than here.

Being a tough cookie I fully expected that I would surmount this newest obstacle.  What I didn’t know was that my very way of thinking had to readjust in order to make the changes required for making a life as a blind person.  Being tough just frankly was not enough.  I was going to need to find in myself something more than courage and a stubborn insistence on moving forward.

There was no aspect of my life that was not impacted.  I had to learn new ways of doing what I had always done.  There are things, like driving, that I knew I would never do again.  For everything else my only limitation was refusing to learn how to do it without sight.  I would control the outcome, good or bad, completely through the choices I made.

I had wonderful help, I was fortunate enough to be a Texan with the full support of the Texas Commission For the Blind to face all this.  My first hurdle was simply mobility, getting around in a world I suddenly could not see much of.  That turned out to be a three-year-long training exercise before I was fully confident of my ability to go where I wanted when I wanted on my own terms.  But I got there.

The second life-altering change I had to make was to acknowledge all those messy emotions that go along with such an experience.  My first caseworker with the Commission read me like an open book, a disconcerting thing that blind people do and I suspect the reason people are so afraid of us.  She insisted to me that I must grieve what I had lost and I must acknowledge those feelings or I would ultimately undo all the other work I was being so successful at.  Her suggestion to me was that I set a timer for five minutes, be private and have my pity party and then when the bell goes off be done with it for a while.  It was the best advice I’ve ever gotten in my life.

Throwing a pity party for yourself requires some thought.  I found it important to have a plan of action for when it was over, what I was going to do and how to get started.  The most difficult though is the commitment to actually feeling your emotions, not thinking about them, or writing about them, but actually allowing yourself to experience the whole of your feelings.  That’s where the five minute limit comes in, we don’t actually any of us have more than five minutes of original thought and besides that five minutes can get long when our emotions are not what we want them to be.  What I discovered practicing this is that once I acknowledged and welcomed my feelings they became much more trusting that I would honor them in my decisions and they stayed out of them.  By embracing all my feelings, good and bad, I was able to use my rational mind for problem solving.

My caseworker’s point that any one dimensional solution to a multi dimensional problem is destined to fail.  No one thing that I did, or service that was provided to me by the Commission, helped me to survive being blinded; it took many things all working together.

I did not “get over” being blind, although I can say that there are people in this world insensitive enough to say and apparently mean such a thing.  What I did do though was get with, embrace and accept the new reality that is my life.

My feelings about that are addressed, privately, in my own pity party.  What that does for me is to allow me to go forward in action and make choices that are not directed by those feelings.  They get their hearing and they certainly can be a factor, but they damn sure don’t run the show and for that I am truly grateful.

Do I lack patience with people who won’t deal with their feelings privately and use and embrace them instead of inflicting them on the wider world?  In a word-YES.  It doesn’t need to be done publicly and it doesn’t work as well as simply facing and owning our feelings for ourselves.

So, please folks would you leave me off the invitation list for your pity party?  

I am visually impaired, what the state of Texas considers blind, but with a small field of vision that to most people means I am not really blind.  This was the result of an act of violence committed against me by a sociopath.  A person who believed themselves entitled to their anger, their grievances, their hurts and most of all entitled to live a life based on the false assumption that nothing and no one besides themselves counted above their own self absorption.  I have nothing to do with such people these days, something that is actually easier to do in real life than here.

Being a tough cookie I fully expected that I would surmount this, newest, obstacle.  What I didn’t know was that my very way of thinking had to readjust in order to make the changes required for making a life under these very new circumstances.  Being tough just frankly was not enough.  I was going to need to find in myself something more than courage and a stubborn insistence on moving forward.

There was no aspect to my life that was not impacted and I came to understand that only the choices I made would determine whether the outcome was good or bad.

I had wonderful help, I was fortunate to be a Texan with the full support of the Texas Commission For the Blind to face all these changed circumstances.  My first hurdle was simply mobility, getting around in a world I suddenly could not see very much of.  That turned out to be a three year long training exercise before I was fully confident of my ability to go where I wanted to go when I wanted on my own terms.  But I got there.

The second life altering change I had to make was to acknowledge all those messy emotions that go along with such a life changing experience.  My first caseworker with the Commission read me like an open book, a disconcerting thing that blind people do and I suspect the reason people are so afraid of us.  She insisted to me that I must grieve what I had lost and I must acknowledge those feelings or I would ultimately undo all the other work I was being so successful at.  Her suggestion to me was that I set a timer for five minutes, be private and have my pity party and then when the bell goes off be done with it for a while.  It was the best advice I have ever gotten in my life.

There are some things that need to be addressed to be successful at it.  The main one to me was the stunning realization that I didn’t have more than five minutes worth of original material.  Any longer and I was repeating myself and wasting good time I could be using for a better purpose.  The other was realizing that it was a whole lot like expecting to smoke pot and get something done.  You can, provided you decide before you get high what you’re going to do and how you’re going to get started.  Then you can just do it and not blow your buzz.  Same thing with a pity party, be prepared and then be busy.  The healing comes along in reverse proportion to losing your buzz, it builds rather than decreases.

My caseworker’s point was that any one dimensional solution to a multi dimensional problem is destined to fail.  No one thing that I did, no service that was provided to me by the Commission helped me to survive being blinded; it took many things all working together.

I did not “get over” being blinded, although I can say that there are people in world insensitive enough to actually say and apparently mean such a thing.  What I did do though was get with, embrace and accept the new reality that is my life.  

My feelings about that are addressed, privately, in a pity party.  What that does for me is allow me to go forward in action and make choices that are not directed by those feelings.  They get their hearing and they certainly can be a factor, but they damn sure don’t run the show and for that I am truly grateful.

Do I lack patience with people who won’t deal with their feelings privately and use and embrace them instead of inflicting them on the wider world?  In a word-YES.  It doesn’t need to be done like that and it doesn’t actually work as well that way.

So, please folks would you leave me off the invitation list for your pity party.

I’ve written here before about some of my dreams.  Here in which I was shown the Manhattan skyline in 1997 and  told that This Will Not Last.  And here in which I was given a glimpse of an American response to the Chinese – I hesitate to say threat, but maybe growth – huge growth – will do.

I apologize if this sounds crazy or if this offends.  These dreams may sound prophetic, and I may sound presumptuous to think them so.  Who am I to receive messages?  But some of the dreams I’ve had have spoken to me, down to the core, and have changed not just how I look at my life and my future, but how I live my life.  And how I see the future for all of us.  Me, you, the Chinese, the Mayans, my grandchildren, my dogs.  We’re all connected you know.

So here goes . . .  I’m going to relate only the dreams that have had a major impact on me. I’ll do this chronologically, and then (if I get to it) go back to talk about what I think the dreams mean.

When I was eighteen, I dreamed that the stars moved around in the sky very fast, a clear blue sky, and spelled out the words “NOW, Be in Rome”.  That woke me up and I had no idea what it meant.  At first, in my Southern Baptist turned Calvinist Presbyterian upbringing, I listened to see if my college roommate was still there, breathing in her bed across the room – or if other souls were ascending to heaven.  I had no idea what this dream meant for years, still am not sure.  But several years later, in talking about this dream with a close friend, he reminded me that I was a lawyer, that the seat of our legal system was Rome, and maybe the dream was telling me that that was where I needed to be in that point in my life.

I did not have another “speaking to me” dream again for nearly 30 years.  Then, in 1994, four years after my mother died, (killed horribly in a car accident – my father was driving –  when she was just 72), I had a long involved dream in which I was in a house with lot’s of folks, sort of camping out.  A friend came in saying “Did you see them?”  I go out and see arrows (spaceships?) headed to the earth.  In spite of this impending threat, there was a feeling of, even giddy, anticipation by some of the folks in the house (including my friend the Mad Kossack, sitting on a couch in a bright yellow shirt, with two other musicians).  In going around talking to others in the house I stopped by three people who had a little board with a spinner, (like a Richard Simmons diet wheel?)  saying “We’ve got to get back to the diet three cycles ago.”

Then the phone rang and my mother’s voice was there (in the dream), very strong, saying my name and “You know that I am here don’t you.”  It was the first time my mother had appeared in  my dreams since she had died.  But her voice was unmistakable and shocked me so much I almost woke up.  But the next thing I knew, in my dream, was that I was in my bed back in the room I grew up in, then the covers pulled me very fast under the bed and there I heard my father’s voice, in a very small feeble voice, calling my name, over and over, as if asking for help.  Just a few months later he had a series of heart attacks, and then a massive stroke.  I spent the next year of my life taking care of him, helping him to learn to walk and talk all over again, and then going with him into his death.

I write about that year with my father some in This Will Not Last, which is the next dream (it was really a vision in a meditation) chronologically.  For a year or so after this dream/vision, in my hour long Quaker meditations, I would receive messages (from my spiritual guides) about the future. “Save the Seed.” “Buy a Boat.” were the first two.  I had about 12 or 13 messages in all. I wrote them down in a little yellow notebook that I have somehow misplaced, but am confident that I can find.

Then the Chinese blurb.

Then, about six months ago, I had probably the strangest dream of all.  I dreamed I was in a graveyard at night.  Deep dark night, midnight.  I had the feeling that it was a graveyard in Central America, probably Guatemala (I’ve been to Guatemala.  We’ve got a good friend who leads a tour to Guatemala, which he calls the “Day of the Dead” tour, not the tour I’ve been on though.)

In my dream I, along with other people, am kneeling in front of a small headstone.  We’re all kneeling in front of small headstones.  Off to the left, behind me, in the periphery of my vision, is my son.  In front of me just beyond the headstone and a little to the right is a friend with flowing white hair.  She is telling me “You’re not kneeling down low enough.  You need to go all the way down.  You need to touch your head to the ground.”  This, with me on my knees bowing.  When my head did finally touch the ground, I had the immediate sensation that my head was suddenly wrapped tightly like a turban.  A small Mayan woman had attached herself to my head. And I could not get her loose.  I was upset because, as I said in the dream, I have to take my son for a job interview the next morning.

Next, I was in a bed sleeping, with the Mayan woman still attached to my head.  My son was in the corner of the room.  When I woke up, my son stood up and he was a beautiful young woman, in her early thirties and he/she said on leaving the room, “I can go to the job interview on my own.”

And then the Mayan woman unattached herself from my head and I got up.

So what does all this tell me . . about me . . about the future?

Some is pretty self-explanatory.  (This Will Not Last or the Chinese and the couch potatoes).  The Be in Rome dream I’ve explained and, at least for now, am satisfied with thinking it was a message related to my legal career, as I’ve had the privilege as a lawyer to do a lot of good stuff (class actions establishing rights to certain benefits under federal Medicaid statute, due process rights for welfare recipients, rights to equal protection for domestic violence victims, saving a wetlands).

Throughout my career I’ve felt the tug of the law and at other times the tug away from it.  I talk about this some in This Will Not Last.   I’ve spent the last seven years or so learning and doing environmental protection law.  I  think the message from the Mayan woman is that now I need to get back to the Earth.  And I think this is a message for all of us.  We need to go back to simpler ways of living, a simpler diet (3 cycles ago?), appreciation of the Earth, and not this civilized construct we’ve imposed upon it.  (Live more like the Mayans?).   Understand that we are all of one, a part of nature, not separate from it.  And I suspect there may be something more of the female than the male in this future.