Archive for the ‘Healing’ Category

Suicide crosses all economic and sociological boundaries. No one is immune by nature of their family ties nor is anyone to blame.  In fact, suicide knows no boundaries. This painful fact is most recently evidenced by the suicide death of Matthew Warren, the youngest son of Pastor Rick Warren, mega-church founder and author of the best-selling book “The Purpose Driven Life.”

It seems almost a cruel irony that a man who inspired so many to find purpose and meaning in their own lives must now tragically face an inability to gift that same purpose to his own child. This tragedy is not a failing on the part of Pastor Warren. It is the sad but very real outcome of an individual’s inability to find hope and meaning in the midst of suffering.

I know. I tried to commit suicide at age 24 and have spent decades since building a rich, full and meaningful life. However, since that fateful day, I have periodically been challenged with those same thoughts that caused me to choose attempted suicide all those years ago.

The difference in how I have since dealt with those thoughts is by learning to override them through an understanding that the only constant is change. Therefore, no matter how bleak the present moment may seem, I know that I can trust in the fact that it will pass and change will come.  I also developed an ever-growing sense of self-worth by facing, and overcoming,  life challenges…starting small and working my way up to ever-increasing accomplishments.

I have read that Matthew Warren was described as “an incredibly kind, gentle and compassionate young man whose sweet spirit was encouragement and comfort to many.” How I empathize.

We live in a fast-paced, often-times alienated-from-one-another world due to technological advancements and misplaced values. The more sensitive, caring and perceptive one is of the pain of others, the more challenging it can be to exist under such circumstances. It seems the most gifted, the most artistic, the most remarkable individuals in human history have suffered the greatest emotional turmoil. Perhaps this is the price of truly understanding and feeling our connectedness to one another. I do not yet have this answer.

What I do know is that hope and trust in the ability to survive and prosper are tied to experiences of competency. The more often an individual is able to experience autonomy combined with accomplishment the more likely they are to be able to emotionally and intellectually weather the storms of clouded thinking that see suffering as permanent and suicide as an option.

To schedule Carole Gold to speak to your group, organization or school on attempted suicide and effective ways to overcome negative thinking click here.

I don’t know why he did it. No one does. It was a tragic and senseless act by a troubled soul.  I wept as did the Nation and as we each try to find some fact, some new information that could perhaps bring something resembling meaning to the chaos I am certain of one thing.

Hatred and further polarization are inappropriate and destructive responses. Whether media personalities or politicians… family members, friends or co-workers…“coming at each other” over gun control is to wildly miss the point. Only a world that has lost its moral and value-based compass could have strayed as far from Truth and harmony as we have strayed.

It’s about so much more than guns. That is precisely what we will try to avoid. We will try and tie it all up in a political package aimed at curbing assault weapons rather than accepting personal responsibility for how we have abdicated doing what is right when confronted with the opportunity to do what is expedient.

We have shunned putting forth the time to be parents to instead turn the children over to be influenced by technology. We have avoided living lives that establish standards that would then give us the right to demand the same of our elected leaders. We have failed to provide decent facilities and care for the mentally ill. We have determined the success of our personal lives by our incomes rather than our degree of inner peace, and that of the Nation by its Moody’s credit rating rather than its citizens proliferation of compassion. We have neglected to revere life in all its forms thus destroying at will that which is inconvenient or burdensome. We have lost the patience to allow our lives to unfold in harmony with natural rhythms and, by so doing, misplaced conscience as we took what we wanted when we wanted it without regard for consequence. We belittle and mock our own inner connection to the Divine while falling prostrate at the feet of material false idols.

There is no President, no legislation, and no committee to see about all the ways in which we have erred and rebelliously refused to self-correct. For in the end, this is what it has come down to. Self-correction. For if we do not use this moment, this tragedy, this waste of human life to stop the hatred, name calling and polarization… to awaken to our Oneness… then it will be too late to Self-correct.

We will have moved beyond any remedy conceivable by our limited capacities and inflated egos to turn the tide of self-destruction. If that should happen, the correction will come from a place outside of our understanding and may God have mercy on us.

Awaken now. Stop the separation now. Take responsibility now. Feel your humanity now. There is only One of Us.

What I do to you I do to myself. What I think of you I think of myself. What I wish for you I bring upon myself.

This is law and it is incontrovertible.

I live in two worlds…the physical and the metaphysical. We all do to some extent. The physical world is what we can see, hear, smell, touch and sometime prove with objective means. It is a world evaluated and acted upon by our Conscious Mind. The metaphysical world is less easily defined but no less real. It is comprised of the branch of philosophy that treats the underlying theoretical principles of a subject.  It studies the relation of universals to particulars, and the teleological doctrine of causation. Its scope is broad enough to include the theologian, the philosopher, the mystic, and the fortune teller.

Some people, like myself, acknowledge and live in both of these worlds in a more or less balanced degree.  It wasn’t always so for me but I have worked deliberately, and at times accidentally, to achieve that balance…that harmony.

Others, such as Nikolai Tesla physicist and futurist best known for his contributions to the design of alternating current (AC) electrical supply system said, “The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence.”

So what is our resistance to that beginning?  What is our fear around opening up to the unknown? Again, Tesla leads us in the direction of the answer. “If the genius of invention was to reveal tomorrow the secret of immortality, of eternal beauty and youth, for which all humanity is aching, the same inexorable agents which prevent a mass from changing suddenly its velocity would likewise resist the force of the new knowledge until time gradually modifies human thought.”

We are living in a time when such “genius of invention” is opening up new ways of perceiving the physical and the non-physical, relating to one another and healing the body. We are being gifted the opportunity to open the heart frequency to receive more enlightened information than the mind frequency has the capacity to receive.  But remember what Tesla said about the resistance “mass” puts up to “sudden changes in its velocity.”  We humans are mass and as such, are not immune to the natural actions and reactions of matter.  However, the Universal Laws of Change and Movement that affect all matter also subject us to that “gradual wearing down” of resistance Tesla identified.

Nature is The Answer because it holds all the answers. I live by the same desire that drove Tesla when he said, “The desire that guides me in all I do is the desire to harness the forces of nature to the service of mankind.”

Dogs cannot see color but colors exists to all who can see them.  There are worlds around and within us operating under the same Universal Laws that apply to the reality science studies and relentlessly pursues. If you want to know those worlds, if you want to see where others cannot, relinquish the grasp your mind has on the physical world and open your heart to those worlds that are beyond its grasp.

 

I had many people reach out to me today via email and phone calls to express their disappointment, frustration, depression, anxiety, and even anger over the re-election of President Obama. I have responded in the same way to each of them. Since their range of emotions is likely indicative of all those who supported Governor Romney, let me share my response here for those of you who feel similarly.

There are no accidents. Life has a plan even when we lack our own or fail to recognize the grander one. I see profound meaning and glorious potential in what has occurred.

The Torah, the first five books of Moses, has God on occasion calling the Israelites a “stiff-necked people.” By that is meant that they can be, and at times were, resistant to following Divine Guidance.  I think the word applies to our culture here in the United States.

For quite some time, certainly for the past 50 years, years, we’ve lost our way in terms of prioritizing our values. We became too materialistic, too impatient, too disrespectful of life for both the unborn and the elderly, too condescending to Nature, and too lacking in compassion for our fellow citizens. We look to the state and the federal government to do what is ours to do. We’ve abdicated personal responsibility in so many ways that we’ve forgotten how, and why, to do things for ourselves.

Such behavior is inconsistent with all the great religions of the world and so we have become a stiff-necked people.  Where there is abdication there always follows consequences. That’s the bad news.

The good news is that as government continues to grow and more and more people become externally reliant rather than self-reliant, and the freedom that comes with personal responsibility is eroded to the point that all people feel the constricting arms of dependency…we will awaken. When that occurs, we will have the opportunity to pay the price for the personal liberty we thought we could bargain for nothing. It is good news though.  Such a payment is always worth it and, yes assuredly, there is literally Light at the end of this tunnel.

For those of us already awake, it will be a smoother ride knowing that Divine Providence is driving and has a plan. For those unawakened, the ride will not be without its treacherous moments for a stiff neck takes a greater hit than one that has bent itself to the Will of God.

There is neither rhyme nor reason as to how the November 6^th Presidential election turned out as it did. There will be a variety of hindsight quarterbacking with a variety of causes. Some will say money and a machine bought the win while others that the Republicans had the wrong VP candidate in Paul Ryan. The one certainty is that this is a Nation divided and that division is deep and seemingly irreconcilable.

That certainty is the only thing that matters and it needs to be our unwavering focus.

Abraham Lincoln said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” Former Soviet Union Premiere Nikita Khrushchev knew it when he said, “You Americans are so gullible. No, you won’t accept communism outright; but we’ll keep feeding you small doses of Socialism until you will finally wake up and find that you already have communism. We won’t have to fight you; we will so weaken your economy until you fall like overripe fruit into our hands.” Russian foreign policy expert and former KGB analyst Igor Panarin knew it when he predicted economic, financial and demographic trends will provoke a political and social crisis in the U.S. When the going gets tough, he said, wealthier states will withhold funds from the federal government and effectively secede from the union. Social unrest up to and including a civil war will follow. The U.S. will then split along ethnic lines, and foreign powers will move in.

No? Listen to the Obama supporter who, during the campaign, expressed that she was supporting Obama because “I never thought this day would happen. I won’t have to worry about putting gas in my car…I won’t have to worry about paying my mortgage…because if I help him he’s gonna help me.”

We have two challenges ahead of us. The first is to quickly educate the American people that throughout all of human history abdication of personal responsibility always ends in bondage. The second is that we are not separate, we are One. Only the illusion of separateness, perpetuated by the few who would have power over the many, can cause us to see one another as adversaries and enemies to be destroyed or upon whom to seek revenge.

It may be too late for the former. It is not too late for the latter and should we get there, be certain there will be nothing and no one left to rebuild or restart.

Personal responsibility and Oneness.  A recipe to save a nation on the brink.

There’s a tragic story out of Canada about a teen suicide. It is the latest in the devastating effects of bullying. I found it so ironic that it followed the Vice Presidential debate by two days because, for me, the connection was unmistakable.  No, I am not blaming Vice President Joe Biden for the suicide of a Canadian teenager. What I am calling him on is his modeling of bullying as viable and preferred method of communication.

As a survivor of attempted suicide at age 24, I have a particular sensitivity to tragedies such as the one in Canada. As a talk radio host, I have a need to keep abreast of the news. As a citizen, I have an obligation to be educated, aware and hold my elected officials to a certain behavioral standard of public service and when they fail, to replace them. As a human being, I am personally responsible for not only my own choices but those of others whom I either condone or condemn.

In a nation plagued by bullying, cyber and otherwise, I was shocked and dismayed that in all the commentary and condemnation of Vice President Biden’s shameful behavior during the debate with Congressman Ryan this past week there remains, even as I write, an absence of awareness and identification of the fact that the Vice President was being a bully.

I make this accusation because his behavior was demeaning, condescending, intimidating, designed to make Congressman Ryan look foolish, stupid, out-of-touch and not worth the time or space the Congressman was taking up…in other words…worthless.  That is always a bully’s intention and modus operandi.

When bullies succeed, as they did in Canada, it ends tragically.  When they are rewarded, as would be the case in re-electing Vice President Biden, we validate them, their behavior and abdicate our personal responsibility to stand and say to the perpetrator, “You are the loser. You are the one who is deficient. You are the one lacking in self-respect.  I choose to condemn your behavior and, instead, stand with your intended victim.”

It is, sadly, too late for the teenager in Canada. It’s almost too late for the Nation…but not quite.

I saw President Obama disrespect Governor Romney by refusing to look at him throughout the debate and deeming him not worth the effort to prepare. I saw Vice President Biden disrespect Congressman Ryan by way of interruption and condescension. That’s all I need.

Hope and change?  I have hope and here’s the change we need.

We have a choice on November 6^th.  We can choose to reject the behavior and politics of bullying, name calling and destruction and choose decency instead. By so doing, we will reject the bullies and move toward ushering in a new era of civility in our public discourse. Perhaps when our leaders exemplify respect for one another, our youth will have new models to emulate and the bullies will be relegated to our national dustbin where they belong.

 

Where did all the hated come from? At what point did it become fashionable, even preferable, to lash out through emails, Facebook, editorials, even in person against others whose political or spiritual ideas differ from one’s own? How and why did we close our eyes, bury our heads in the sand, while the Nation “chose up sides” and created two opposing teams based upon the philosophy of “Us Against Them?” Have we been manipulated into intolerance or did we get here on our own?

What, exactly, have we become?

Recently I experienced the stark contrast in the ways in which we can choose to live our lives. I believe our very survival as a country rests upon each of us making the right choice.

On my Facebook page, through a Facebook “friend,” appeared several postings to another page that was titled “Dogs Against Romney.” It is what it’s titled. People who don’t think Mitt Romney should be President because he and his family traveled on vacation with their dog in his cage on the roof of their SUV.  As someone who has spent her life rescuing animals, I understand the outrage (although I’ve seen dogs on motorcycles thoroughly enjoying themselves so whose to judge?) but also commented on the page regarding the narrow and single issue approach to why someone would or would not vote for anyone when we have so many economic and foreign policy issue to address.

Expressing my thoughts was, apparently, my sin. What followed were personal attacks on me, targeting my heartlessness and my obvious hatred for Barack Obama. Neither is true, and both are extreme and personal attacks targeted at me rather than a dialogue about substance.

On the same day, I watched an interview with Chris Williams, a Mormon whose car was struck by a 17-year old drunk driver named Cameron White (also a Mormon). The accident instantly killed Williams’ pregnant wife, their unborn son, 11-year-old son and 9-year-old daughter. Only Williams survived. In the instant that he regained consciousness immediately following the accident and looked around the car, realizing his entire family was dead, he made the decision to forgive whoever had caused this tragedy. The entire story, including the ongoing relationship Williams and White maintain is chronicled in a new book titled “Let It Go.”

Since both the Facebook incident and the Williams/White interview occurred on the same day, I had to ponder the message. I believe that everything happens for a reason, and so I’ve come away with two thoughts…one personal, one Universal.

Personally, I’ve forgiven those who lashed out at me on Facebook for expressing my differing opinion and send them nothing but love and blessings in return. Universally, we need to awaken from this sleep of illusion that we are all separate, that we can treat one another any way we please and if that includes anger, hatred and even violence we can somehow survive and prosper.

As difficult as it is to comprehend Williams’ forgiveness, it is none-the-less a reality and a clear message about the powers of forgiveness and love. Forgiveness  (and tolerance) heal and we have become a critically wounded species. It is our only cure.

Refuse to be seduced by both the political war and the social media illusion that “I can attack you from a distance and somehow walk away myself unharmed.” We are all connected. Until we understand, accept and act upon this reality we will continue to try and destroy one another with words and weapons.

The saying is true.

United we stand, divided we fall.

 

 

 

Several decades ago I had the opportunity meet, and briefly work in conjunction with then Delaware Senator Joe Biden. It had to do with a change to the U.S. Code that was being sought in order to grant Honorary U.S. Citizenship to Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat and humanitarian known for his successful efforts to rescue somewhere between tens of thousands and one hundred thousand Jews in Nazi-occupied Hungary  during the Holocaust.

I had returned to law school after a decade in the private sector. One of my Professors had been approached by the law firm of Davis Polk to become involved in the lobbying effort needed to add the necessary Code change to pending legislation. Because I had previously co-founded a PAC (Political Action Committee) and had spent time meeting with and advocating before members of Congress, my Professor enlisted me in the project.

Which is how I came to meet Senator Biden.

Prior to that personal experience, I only knew of the Senator as a dedicated father who, after the loss of his wife and daughter in an auto accident, remained in the Senate only upon deciding to daily commute to Washington from his home in Wilmington, Delaware via AMTRAK in order to be there and raise his two surviving sons, also seriously injured in the tragic accident.

I found the Senator to be a decent man, polite, personable and genuinely interested in the issue before him. He readily put his energies behind supporting our goal which was ultimately a success. So it saddens me to see a once respected public servant make a fool out of himself, and the office of the Vice President, by “staying too long at the fair.”

It has been evident for some time now that Vice President Biden has become, like Madonna, someone who was once appropriately positioned in their career choice but, unable to face the realities and natural limitations of the aging process, is unable to timely “exit stage left.” What remains in such situations are self-imposed caricatures of once talented individuals.

In Madonna’s case it shows up as a scantily clad, religion-bashing middle-aged woman trying to look like a teenager. Yet more tragically, in the Vice President’s case, it shows up as his telling a partially African American audience in North Carolina this week that Mitt Romney wants to “put y’all back in chains” and condescendingly saying those words in a speech pattern that mimics how many African Americans often speak. Followed by a pathetic and again, condescending, imitation of the ASL (American Sign Language) interpreter standing nearby.

I would prefer to remember Senator Biden as he was at his best and be done with this travesty of a political figure he has become. That option appears not to be a viable, or likely, as long as this Administration does what it did in reaction to the Vice President’s most recent inexcusable gaffes by “doubling down” in support of such mockery. The President’s refusal to face the reality that the Vice President is no longer fit to serve is yet one more indication that President Obama is out of touch, indifferent to what is best for the Nation, and determined to win at any cost.

Sadly, in this instance, the cost is the ever-increasing humiliation of Joe Biden and the degradation of the Office of the Vice President.

Note: Since publication of this post at 1PM Eastern, a story has broken that Vice President Biden has now gotten the century wrong in a speech given earlier today.

While awaiting Mitt Romney’s live announcement of his Vice Presidential running mate, I watched a 6-minute You Tube video clip of Congressman Paul Ryan taking apart Obamacare, fact by fact, false projection by false projection…and doing so face-to-face with President Obama. Then I watched Congressman Ryan’s acceptance speech. Overall, one word comes to mind.

Fearless.

Whether it was Ryan in the video telling Obama that the overall cost projections in Obamacare were “smoke and mirrors” or Ryan stating that he and Romney will not be about “blaming others but taking personal responsibility” or “that our rights come from Nature and God, not government” I am struck by this 42 year-old’s willingness to speak Truth and, more importantly, Truth to power. It is long overdue.

What we as a nation need, more than anything, is a reality check combined with leadership that exemplifies that “the buck [really] does stop here.” It is time for each of us to roll up our sleeves and get back to the work of creating, not destroying; uniting, not dividing, and believing, not doubting.

Paul Ryan said it best when he said America is “more than a place…it’s an idea. The only country ever founded on an idea.” The idea he spoke of is a compound idea composed of individual liberty, personal responsibility, and mutual reliance.

A bacteria infected our Nation about 100 years ago and reached a critical stage of development during the current Administration. It is predicated upon deceptions that contradict the very idea of this Nation. These deceptions are that individuals are subject to government, that irresponsibility has no consequences and that we cannot trust one another to look out for the best interest of one another.

It’s taken awhile, but as with all infections, American intelligence and ingenuity has discovered a cure.  Mitt Romney, by his choice of Paul Ryan, has made a bold statement we cannot afford to overlook. The choice of Paul Ryan is the throwing down of a gauntlet to Barack Obama and others who continue to spread the disease by not believing in the uniqueness and exceptionalism of the American Spirit.

My only regret is that we have to wait until November 6^th to line up and begin the recovery. Until then, I look forward to the healing words of Truth that Paul Ryan seems more than capable of delivering.

What if water is the Earth’s cerebral-spinal fluid and oil is her blood?

What if the starving child in Africa or Tennessee is your belly aching?

What if breath is a gift given anew every second and you haven’t said “thank you” lately or ever.

What if thinking is not the same as being Conscious?

What if forgiving yourself and others neutralizes every bad choice ever made and you get to choose again?

What if living on the edge is a good thing if the edge is where Spirit and matter intersect?

What if miracles only happen to people who believe they exist?

What if laughter heals and you’ve lost your joy for life?

What if God is a verb and Its you in action?

What if messianic isn’t an adjective but an awareness?

What if every one of these is true?

What if there is only One of Us?

Then Who wrote this and Who’s reading it?