Milt Greek's Blog: The River of Life - Posts Tagged "empowerment"

By Labor Day weekend, the declining light has begun to bring some cool, dewy mornings mixed with the lingering heat of summer. The woods hum with the sound of insects calling and seeking mates and large butterflies, ranging in color from yellow, orange and brown to black and metallic blue, are common on flowers. Later crops are appearing at the market, including the first sweet apples and grapes. After the hubbub and bustle of the hot summer days, the coming fall brings a quiet, peaceful feeling to the woods and fields. The plant and animal lives born and raised in the spring and summer are maturing while the leaves on Black Walnut and Box Elder trees are turning yellow and falling, returning fertility to the soil below them as part of the composting of the approaching dark, cold seasons of fall and winter.

In the abundance of the luscious late summer crops, we repeat our annual trek to an orchard an hour north of us to harvest Concord grapes to make a mildly sweet, robustly fruity wine. The tradition began almost a decade ago when my wife wanted to make a sweet wine like her Grandmother had made for her and her family years before. For years, we would travel with my dear Mother-in-law to the beautiful orchard where pink, plate-sized Hibiscus flowers greet us at the gate and rows of trees heavy with bright red apples stand alongside rows of vines filled with blackish-blue bunches of sweet grapes under a deep blue sky. Gathering the grapes ourselves amongst the rows on a day filled with natural beauty and anticipation of turning the grapes into wine, the event always marked the fullness of our lives in all ways.

Though my mother-in-law passed a couple of years ago, much to our great loss, we continue the tradition and bask in both the day and the memory of years of celebration. After gathering about eighty pounds of ripe, richly colored grapes, we return home and enjoy our good fortune and our labor in this celebration of life. Through many years of trials and challenges, my wife and I have been fortunate to have our relationship strengthen our lives and make many things possible that were impossible for me before I met my wife. Because our relationship works, my life works; in my personal journey, my wife’s presence has made many things possible that were impossible before.

“I give others the gift of my own life working” – Sanaya Roman

Source for Sensitive People begins with this affirmation as the starting point of empowerment. In thinking about the meaning of this, I reflect on times both my life and the lives of others not working.

For years, I volunteered in the struggle for peace and justice in the larger world. In addition to meeting idealistic, self-sacrificing activists, during my journey I saw that some use the problems of the outside world as a way to distract us from our own failings.

For several years, I was in men’s self-help groups where we discussed our problems as men and how we could improve ourselves. At the start of one meeting, a man talked about how awful a powerful politician was and how the politician’s policies should be strongly oppose. His focus delayed discussing our personal lives.

It soon emerged that the man, who had cheated on his wife in the past, was cheating again. The circle of friends around him and his wife were enraged at him while he seemed unable to face how much his infidelity had hurt the woman he loved.

As our men’s group continued, a second man and I grew concerned that not enough was being done to push the cheating husband towards taking responsibility for his actions and showing true remorse, even as the web of life around him become more embroiled in the scandal. I left the men’s group, feeling that by failing to confront the man we were perpetuating sexism in the same way that an all-white group that fails to confront a racist perpetuates racism. Ultimately, resolving the problem was up to the man and his partner, but I felt a strong need to create a boundary so that I would not be complicit in the situation.

From this experience, I saw three things. One was that the man was misusing the power he had as an ordinary man; if he held the power-over-others controlled by the politician he detested, I wondered how much worse the philanderer would have been. The second was that his focus on the failings of a famous, powerful man was a way for the cheating husband to avoid facing his own failings. The third was that by betraying his wife and causing their circle of friends and acquaintances to become embroiled in the scandal, he was making himself less powerful and losing time and energy he could have used in working for policies he supported. His betrayal lessened his own ability to change the world as he wished for it to become.

In my early life, I was self-centered, arrogant and thoughtless about my effect on people around me. I ignored the trauma that contributed to my personal problems and displaced anger onto others rather than face what the psychologist Carl Jung called “The Shadow”—the painful feelings and hideous aspects of my inner self. My early adulthood was filled with crises and turmoil while I trumpeted with pride my belief that I had a vision to make the world better and to overcome evils of those I opposed. Like the man in my men’s group, my own world came crashing down around me as a result of my own actions and the turning of the karmic wheel; what I sent out came back to me, I reaped what I had sown.

The crises and turmoil of my early adulthood were crucial in my overcoming, at least for then, my egoistical failings and my own desire for power over others. Seeing clearly how I was responsible for my life falling apart, I realized that my first responsibility was for my own life to work and for me to try to be honorable and harmonious with those around me.

Rebuilding my life and my ability to provide for myself economically and emotionally took years, requiring the kindness and help of family, friends and professionals. Once I was able to reach the point of self-sufficiency and some luxury, I began to help others in need, including the community around me. While I remain oftentimes far too insensitive to the needs and feelings of those around me, I’ve reached a point in my life where I can say that, for the most part, I can give the gift of my life working to others. In doing so, those around me and those who care about me benefit, just as I do.

There is probably no greater gift that people can give those who love us than caring for ourselves and having lives that work well. This simple, crucial gift is the threshold to a life of happiness, health and movement toward sustainability. Without it, we and those who love us are helpless to change our web of life for the better, much less the larger human and natural worlds.

Slowly responding to the growing night, the temperatures of late summer are cooling. The days are noticeably shorter and the summer crops are passing into fall. While tomatoes and corn are still present, long-lasting storage crops—potatoes, sweet potatoes, winter squashes, pumpkins, onions and others—are filling the rows at the produce auction and our Farmers Market. In a blessing of nature, the early spring crops of berries and asparagus are fragile and quickly make way for later harvests, but the harvests of late summer and fall keep well in unheated cellars and can provide food for us during the cold, dark months of winter.

Preparing for the changing season is a way of life for people who live close to the Earth. I recall a fall equinox gathering decades ago where we sat in a circle on a grassy field in the declining light and a woman encouraged us to think of the animals of the woods while they faced bitter cold, darkness and hunger in the upcoming months. The ebbing light was a reminder of the dark times to come and the importance of preparing for them.

For our autumn equinox meal, we will have a dinner of local late summer crops—including late season heirloom corn, tomatoes, and apple tart for dessert— and open a robust porter that goes with the cooler weather. We hope to share the meal with friends—a couple who run a microbrewery and have two young children. As part of their business and family life, they seek local sourcing and sustainability and have been part of the food club for years. They have had success and outgrown their house on our street and are moving to a larger home for themselves and their children. On the next day, we plan to can tomatoes bought at the auction for use during the approaching fall and winter. It is a time of reflection on good fortune and preparation for the time to come.

In the larger human world, the strife and strains of conflict and hostility continue as always, with the structures built by money-chasers, violent men and puritans doling out winners and losers for all sides. Emotions run high and blame and accusations of the worst in ones enemies are commonplace. In the millennia of patriarchy, spiritual corruption has been commonplace and hierarchies have protected men from the consequences of their acts. Reading the laws of the past is shocking and sometimes horrifying; acts that we now consider crimes have often been a privilege of those with power-over-others. Sadly, the tragedies of our modern history are not new.

Common people like myself are often encouraged to support “our” side and think the worst of our neighbors who have other views and traditions, even though we all share both virtues and failings, as all people I know do. The question in the darkening days is not only about the larger world but also about preserving ourselves in our personal world. No matter the short-term outcome, the problems and crises of our unbalanced and chaotic human world will continue. Self-preservation is a central part of life; ignoring our need for it brings suffering not only to us, but also to all who love us.

For our lives to work, we need to care for our own emotional and physical needs. This is especially true during stressful times and extremely important for sensitive people. Near the beginning of Source for Sensitive People, it says to “Begin all growth by nourishing yourself.”

Some of the suggestions for caring for ourselves include:

“Start the day with 20-30 minutes doing something you enjoy

“Build exercise into your daily life (example: walk to work)

“Laugh every day (example: watch comedies on TV and the internet)

“Have quiet time to seek inner peace

“Do something special at least once a month

“Celebrate life whenever possible (examples: birthdays, holidays, anniversaries)

“Take time off from focusing on stressful events in your life and the outside world.”

It can be very hard to care for ourselves when we are preoccupied with stressful events and responsibilities around us and in the outside world. Though it is not our tendency, the more stressful the outside world and our lives are, the more important it is that we take time off from those stresses and strains and celebrate the good things in our personal life.

Taking time off from the media, including news fasts, and doing something enjoyable—listening to pleasant music, walking in a natural area, visiting with a good friend, or enjoying a healthy meal—is the best way to make it possible for you to help others by caring for yourself. A key focus for our lives must be the needs of the people we love and ourselves. If we care for those we love and ourselves in our daily life, we can create a stable center from which we can influence the world around us for the better. That center needs nourishing most of all as the days darken.

In these hard times, it is essential that sensitive people empower ourselves. Written in the mid to late 1990s after meeting my wife, Source for Sensitive People details a personal spiritual revolution for me. I envisioned living in a more life-affirming way during my psychosis and my wife was a catalyst for a powerful leap forward, giving me more than I could imagine. The book itself is more or less notes on what I learned from that journey and my wife’s wisdom applied to my life.

I want to help people like my wife and I, who have an emotional depth and ideals of peace, love, harmony, beauty and intimacy that make it difficult for us to navigate the harsh and unfeeling constraints of warfare society. I wrote it knowing that whoever reads it will have their own personal world, their own interpretation and their own dreams that I cannot know.

To empower ourselves, we must change our personal world, build on the positive and reduce the negative. Through changing our personal web-of-life, we can overcome traumas, abuse, bad relationships, addictions, loneliness and other challenges that we commonly face. Source for Sensitive People was written concisely as possible, encouraging the reader to focus on her or his face-to-face web of life, learn from those around him or her and gain emotional strength through a happy, healthy face to face community.

After writing it, I set it aside, not particularly interested in bringing attention to myself through publishing. Instead, I continued to apply the ideas to my own life. Part of these ideas were to practice good works and acts of charity in my personal and the larger world. Eventually some of the mental health work I did on that path brought me to the attention of some people outside my community. While on a sabbatical beginning in 2014 from mental health work, I decided to publish writings to help sensitive people like my wife and our family. Using material that mainly developed decades ago, I am now beginning to publish the Small Gifts for Sensitive People series that this book is a part of.

In the two decades since Source for Sensitive People was written our lives have flourished, despite many crises in the world around us. Every few years I reviewed it to see what I would change, which has been very little. Two decades after I wrote it, I would say that my mistakes were mainly times when I failed to apply it. In the meanwhile, I’ve had many happy times and personal successes in my face-to-face community, ranging from gaining many friends to having a positive effect on my community to attaining a deep spiritual understanding of my personal path. When I’ve carried out the practices, I’ve also experienced many times of deep contentment, happiness and bliss.

I’ve gained a deep gratitude for all the gifts I’ve received, which includes everything that Westerners might call “my” accomplishments. I reflect on tremendous good fortune that I can only ascribe to luck, my dear wife and the crucial kindness of strangers.

I do not know if the path I have taken will help you in your personal web of life and with your journey. Ultimately, if someone chooses to read it, it is up to each person to measure it by his or her own life and apply or reject it however seems appropriate. All I can say is that the principles in it have helped me tremendously. I hope it and the other essays and short books in the Small Gifts for Sensitive People series will do the same for you.

Amazon Kindle version: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07J5MKNXQ/...

Smashwords E-book version: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view...

After a long and hot beginning of fall, the temperatures recently dropped. Frost thickly covers the grass each morning and leaves are beginning to change to yellow and red, several weeks behind the natural rhythms of our climate. My wife has observed that in the last few years, the seasons have been getting later, with fall, winter, spring and summer all beginning and ending later than normally. A few days ago, we saw yards with crocuses, the early spring flower, blooming, creating a strange beauty out of sync with the natural cycles of the year.

Still, fall crops are being harvested and we will go to the last produce auction of the season soon, seeking potatoes, winter squashes, beets, turnips, cabbages and daikon radishes if available. We have already canned over two dozen quarts of Roma Tomatoes and in our unheated basement an authentic German crock given to us by a friend has a hot and sour Korean Kim Chi aging in it for the winter. A Rye Stout is fermenting in pales for opening in mid-winter and the grapes we harvested and froze in September are thawing, to be made into wine for next fall.

As the Earth cools and the plants fall into a deep sleep for winter, humanity recognizes the season with traditional holidays. All Hallows Eve, the Day of the Dead, Samhain, and Halloween, among others, mark the beginning of the season of cold darkness and scarcity, a season where animals like us often face death more directly than the robust seasons of spring and summer. In my own family, mid-winter marks the anniversaries of five deaths in my immediate family in the past two dozen years, a reminder that for mortal bodies, the cold darkness takes a toll that is very real and, in many ways, an inevitable part of the joys of a full family life. Each in their own way, the seasonal holidays of mid-fall commemorate the season of death and recognizes our gateway into the unknown darkness. As the Earth sleeps and enrichens itself with the compost of fallen plants and leaves, we animals contend with hardships we do not wish to face.

In the past few years, a wave of deaths, injuries and sickness swept over our web of life with a power and affect like never before. In our personal knowledge of family and friends, extended families lost over two dozen loved ones, including my own dear mother-in-law and her brother within days of each other, with another immediate family member suffering a severe injury and a lasting health crisis. Parents, grandparents, older siblings, friends and tragically a young child all were taken from our web of life and many other illnesses and health crises occurred. I had seen waves of death and misfortune before, but the enormity of the losses were shocking, shaking our personal web of life and changing families and friends deeply.

Then, gradually, the wave subsided in our personal web of life. People who had fallen ill or suffered injury began recoveries. Mourning did not cease, but was lessened by happier times. The wave of deaths and injuries was replaced by a slowly growing wave of healing, pregnancies and births. Babies and young children began to take the place of those we had lost and we found ourselves once again renewing our lives and love of others while still feeling the loss of those who has passed.

As the Earth falls asleep and the scarcity of the coming season renews the season of death for animals, the Earth composts the season’s growth, fertilizing the ground in preparation for the renewal of next spring. In the larger human world, many are distracted by the political challenges, with sensitive people and other traditionally powerless people feeling threatened. What the media dominated by white males calls identity politics is really the politics of traditional power-over, with inequalities of traditional society challenged by the growing strength of women, people of color and other traditionally oppressed people.

The history of the United States is largely the telling of the struggle between the forces of traditional power-over against the growing democratization of society, with our own Apartheid system ending with a finally democratic government in the mid-1960s through the passage of the Voters Rights Act. Recognizing that their numbers are dwindling, the people who adhere to traditional power-over relationships are more desperate to retain their privilege, making their flaws more apparent for a younger generation of more liberated people. Just as the winter composts to make the ground more fertile, I sincerely believe that the challenges of these times will be followed by a greater awakening.

Meanwhile the seasonal cycle continues, the Earth slumbers and nourishes itself, walking into the dark underworld and reincarnating in the new life of next spring. We continue to prepare for winter with harvests of long-lasting storage crops and canning, freezing and fermenting food for the coming season of scarcity. We await, with great anticipation, the births of more new lives into the circle of our friends and family and prepare for the joyful, exhausting work of the season of renewal and new life. For those who prepare for the cold darkness, it can be a time of nestling in, introspection and the warmth of a happy home. In these hard times, I wish the same for all the Earth.

Fulfillment, the second short book in the Empowering Ourselves as Sensitive People trilogy, is being prepared to be published soon. The book proved daunting to me to write, in part because of my busy schedule, and in part because I realized that the claim to have experienced fulfillment is justifiably rare. I had to consider if I really could claim I have and needed to place the experience within the context of the many events outside myself that created and affects it. In doing this, I spent an extra year and a half rewriting and revising the book, including when my wife made the very important observation that the “final” draft was written in the wrong voice, causing me to extensively rewrite it.

The short book describes the key elements supporting fulfillment, which I more-or-less stumbled onto experiencing. The path that led to fulfillment was described in Source for Sensitive People, which I wrote in the late 1990s, following the revolutionary changes in my life brought about by meeting my wife. It was eventually published in 2018 as the first in the series; Fulfillment describes the next step following Source for Sensitive People.

Though some in the mainstream culture might think of this way of life as an unrealistic retreat from the challenges of the contemporary human world, it actually led me to profound personal and spiritual experiences. Fulfillment describes the experience of completing the life lessons that my childhood challenged me to attain and the deep bliss that I’ve experienced as part of attaining it. That journey continues on in my life, with cycles away from and back to those lessons, as well as new challenges that have arisen since then. Once Fulfillment is available, I will publish the links here.

The final book in the trilogy, Creating a Spiritual Center will hopefully be published in about a year, completing the Empowering Ourselves as Sensitive People circle. That book will focus on the lessons of the first two books in the series and sees spiritual centers emerging from how we live our lives.