10 THINGS TIME HAS TAUGHT ME

1. Most of our life is spent chasing false goals and worshipping false ideals. The day you realise that is the day you really start to live.
2. You really, truly cannot please all of the people all of the time. Please yourself first and your loved ones second, everyone else is busy pleasing themselves anyway, trust me.
3. Fighting the ageing process is like trying to catch the wind. Go with it, enjoy it. Your body is changing, but it always has been. Don’t waste time trying to reverse that, instead change your mindset to see the beauty in the new.
4. Nobody is perfect and nobody is truly happy with their lot. When that sinks in you are free of comparison and free of judgement. It’s truly liberating.
5. No one really sees what you do right, everyone sees what you do wrong. When that becomes clear to you, you will start doing things for the right reason and you will start having so much more fun.
6. You will regret the years you spent berating your looks, the sooner you can make peace with the vessel your soul lives in, the better. Your body is amazing and important but it does not define you.
7. Your health is obviously important but stress, fear and worry are far more damaging than any delicious food or drink you may deny yourself. Happiness and peace are the best medicine.
8. Who will remember you and for what, become important factors as you age. Your love and your wisdom will live on far longer than any material thing you can pass down. Tell your stories, they can travel farther than you can imagine.
9. We are not here for long but if you are living against the wind it can feel like a life-sentence. Life should not feel like a chore, it should feel like an adventure.
10. Always, always, drink the good champagne and use the things you keep for ‘best’. Tomorrow is guaranteed to no one. Today is a gift that’s why we call it the present. Eat, Drink & Be Merry.

Donna Ashworth
From ‘to the women’: https://tinyurl.com/ye9f93zd

Artist : Bernadett Bagyinka

art #poetry #womensupportingwomen #wildwomen #time #midlife #ageing #wisdomquotes

From a historical perspective, I think the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade is the beginning of the end for organized Christianity.

It’s been branded now by it’s extreme right wing, the same way Islam is struggling with its radical right. Hindus get whacky too, so do Jews, it’s not the religion, it’s the whacky extremist psychology that gloms onto it and twists it up to their pathological needs.

But it’s bad for marketing Christianity, to be branded by the intolerance of the extreme far-right. That’s not what Jesus said. He didn’t say “Thou shalt judge people.” They don’t listen.

That’s unfortunate.

I’m not thinking now, I’m thinking to our children, and then to theirs (and really, then to theirs). I’m a trans-generational trauma guy, I watch as it moves through us.

I suspect our children are going to reject the narcissistic pathogen more and more, and their children will even more. Power, control, and domination, I don’t think our children’s children will like it.

I think they’ll want to be free to decide on their lives. The current “conservative” position is not tenable.

Trump has destroyed the “Republican” party, I don’t think it will ever recover once the dust clears on the historical line. Trump has destroyed democracy. I think Christianity may struggle as well.

We need to decide majority-rules rights now. Vote.

I don’t think the Culture Wars of the early 21st century are going to help church recruitment with our children, and their children – I don’t think “thou shalt judge thy neighbor” is gonna fly.

Things change from cause-and-effect, but that’s not the end of it. Everything changes on context, change the context, change the event. Is that transformation of now to the next possible or impossible?

The context needs to support the event, da Vinci has a helicopter in the 1480s, so what. He has to wait for everyone to catch up. Context allows the event, the mind cannot know what it cannot yet grasp.

The problem is, the information you need you can’t ever grasp because it’s not graspable information, it flows through the fingers like sand leaving your hands wonderfully empty.

Jesus said “don’t judge each other” – they say judge each other.

Jesus said “love” – they say hate.

I think they’re confused. They now represent the brand for marketing. That’s deeply unfortunate.

Religion v. Secular – Roe v. Wade. Who gets to decide when “life” begins and when a person has rights? They do, I guess, because they have achieved the power to dominate and control others to match their beliefs.

That’s not what he said to do.

Trump is a grotesque – a being empty of soul, their love eviscerated by narcissistic pathology collapsed into a black-hole of itself. He corrupts everything he touches, he’s corrupted Christianity.

But he’s just a symptom, a call to the like-minded, the pied-piper of the pathology… come join me… they came to his call.

They are exposed now. Before they were hidden everywhere among us. Now they’re exposed everywhere among us. Zuckerberg’s Meta has banned discussion of Roe v. Wade.

Good luck with that – this will divide our nation – Free-Choice states and No-Choice states – neighbor against neighbor. Majority rules on rights – vote.

You have no rights except those you are willing to defend. Everything is parallel process right now – there – here.

To reveal that which is hidden – in us. It’s called self-reflective insight, it’s a executive function of the frontal lobe.

Craig Childress, Psy.D.
Clinical Psychologist, CA PSY 18857

Helen_Keller described listening to music

Here’s how she describes listening to #Beethoven’s “Ninth Symphony” over the radio, Helen Keller wrote the following letter to the New York Symphony Orchestra in March 1924.

Dear Friends:

I have the joy of being able to tell you that, though deaf and blind, I spent a glorious hour last night listening over the radio to Beethoven’s “Ninth Symphony.” I do not mean to say that I “heard” the music in the sense that other people heard it; and I do not know whether I can make you understand how it was possible for me to derive pleasure from the symphony. It was a great surprise to myself. I had been reading in my magazine for the blind of the happiness that the radio was bringing to the sightless everywhere. I was delighted to know that the blind had gained a new source of enjoyment; but I did not dream that I could have any part in their joy. Last night, when the family was listening to your wonderful rendering of the immortal symphony someone suggested that I put my hand on the receiver and see if I could get any of the vibrations. He unscrewed the cap, and I lightly touched the sensitive diaphragm. What was my amazement to discover that I could feel, not only the vibration, but also the impassioned rhythm, the throb and the urge of the music! The intertwined and intermingling vibrations from different instruments enchanted me. I could actually distinguish the cornets, the roil of the drums, deep-toned violas and violins singing in exquisite unison. How the lovely speech of the violins flowed and plowed over the deepest tones of the other instruments! When the human voices leaped up thrilling from the surge of harmony, I recognized them instantly as voices more ecstatic, upcurving swift and flame-like, until my heart almost stood still. The women’s voices seemed an embodiment of all the angelic voices rushing in a harmonious flood of beautiful and inspiring sound. The great chorus throbbed against my fingers with poignant pause and flow. Then all the instruments and voices together burst forth – an ocean of heavenly vibration – and died away like winds when the atom is spent, ending in a delicate shower of sweet notes.

Of course this was not “hearing,” but I do know that the tones and harmonies conveyed to me moods of great beauty and majesty. I also sense, or thought I did, the tender sounds of nature that sing into my hand-swaying reeds and winds and the murmur of streams. I have never been so enraptured before by a multitude of tone-vibrations.

As I listened, with darkness and melody, shadow and sound filling all the room, I could not help remembering that the great composer who poured forth such a flood of sweetness into the world was deaf like myself. I marveled at the power of his quenchless spirit by which out of his pain he wrought such joy for others – and there I sat, feeling with my hand the magnificent symphony which broke like a sea upon the silent shores of his soul and mine.

The Auricle, Vol. II, No. 6, March 1924. American Foundation for the Blind, Helen Keller Archives.