My Archetypal Dreamwork Website

Hello all, when I'm not failing to update this blog, I have a practice where I work with clients one-on-one doing Archetypal Dreamwork. If you'd like to learn more about this work, please visit my website,

www.DreamItOut.com

Every Interaction Is A Social Interaction

What if we considered every interaction with another human being a social one? I was just thinking about how weird it is that the definition of my “social life” is purely the individuals that I choose to interact with, when and where I choose to do so.

This is how most people define social life, but it’s pretty arbitrary. What if we thought of social life as the parts of our lives when we are around others, period?

Considered this way, my usual confidence in the robustness of my social life falls flat. I realize for most of my day, I pretty consciously ignore people. I live in New Orleans, and my travels have shown me that there is perhaps no other city that can boast the same level of friendliness to strangers. It’s hard to take a walk without someone looking you in the eye and asking you about your day. I love this about my city and try to adopt the practice as much as I can, but even in a place that embraces neighborly interaction, I still fall short. I may say hi, how are you, I may even ask you about your garden or your dog or your work, but can I actually say you are my friend?

Not to mention when I have something that I need to get done, and a timeline to complete it in. Then, just about all of my effort at some kind of social exchange can fall to the wayside as my world closes in upon the task that needs to get done. Any external attempts by others to engage me socially I will very consciously thwart.

Day in and day out, I am not really looking to make friends except in circumstances that I have deemed acceptable times and places where friends can be made. If you are introduced to me by someone I already trust, perhaps we’ll connect and maybe after repeated meetings become friends. If I am near you at a party or a bar and we have a conversation that I feel comfortable with, maybe I will be friendly towards you if I see you again. Maybe if your work or some other activity you do is related to mine there is more of a chance that I’ll make an effort to connect with you. But maybe not.

I think I started realizing the narrowness of my own social life after spending weeks at Occupy NOLA last year. Suddenly I was in a diverse environment that spanned the spectrum of privileged organizers like me to people without homes who lived under the CCC bridge, and the real kicker was--we were all suppose to reach some kind of consensus about what we wanted the place to be like. Even though 20% of people in my state don’t have a high school diploma, I didn’t actually know anyone personally who didn’t have one. Compared with the make up of the city, I realized the make up of my friend group was way off in terms of race, income level, and many other factors.

I figured out one reason I don’t have a lot of these folks in my social circles: it’s hard. It’s hard to have genuine interactions with people when societal structures have made it so you meet each other on unequal terms. When you have money and someone else doesn’t, it's easy for you to feel taken advantage of, or just feel guilty about your own privilege, or be condescending. When you don't have money and someone else does, it's easy to feel resentful, disdainful, or just plain uncomfortable. When you’re educated and someone else isn’t, it takes effort honestly listen and respect the other person's ideas as equal to your own. Roles reversed, it's easy to feel intimidated and like your ideas don't matter.   When you’re from a privileged group and someone else has to deal with the daily reality of racism or discrimination, it’s easy for both parties to get offended, angry, and feel diminished as individuals.  

Beyond the social, it's just plain scary to trust people that are different than us. It isn't a pretty thing about humans, but it's true. Fear motivates so much of the disconnection we feel amongst ourselves. It is scary and vulnerable to trust.

So that’s probably why most people hang out with other people that are mostly like them. It’s a lot easier. It makes it easier to not worry about the social problems that surround us, it makes it easier to feel like there’s a big fat difference between people like you and everyone else. It makes it easier to feel confirmed and safe. It provides an atmosphere where you can feel confirmed in your own opinions, judgments, and ideas about how the world is and how you fit in it. Often these are the very ideas that form the bedrock of our own identities, and to be in social situations that challenge them are extremely uncomfortable. 

At the same time, for many people the bedrock of their identities is the social lives they have cultivated. We come to understand who we are through our connections with other people. But if we expand the definition of social life to include all of our interactions with other people, how often are we judgmental, dismissive, impatient, or downright abrasive? How often do we deny others the benefit of the doubt, how often do we refrain from showing kindness when we have the opportunity to do so? How often do we just straight up ignore the humanity of people around us because of our need to complete daily tasks or just because we don't feel up to it? 

If every interaction is a social interaction, how great are our social lives, really? And thus, what kind of people are we?

New Blog

Hi everyone!

I've decided to start a new blog that focuses on the dreamwork that I have been practicing over the past few years. I hope you'll join me over there at the new site. This has been a great blog for me over the years. Thank you for reading and being so supportive of me.

It is called ZapalaSpeaks.

http://zapalaspeaks.wordpress.com/

A Rare Poem

I wrote this at the retreat I went to last week. Hadn't written a poem since sophomore year of college. Felt great!

Black Eyed Meadow

Can you call something blind that was never meant to see?
Flowers are like that, deaf to the bees and the thunder
to my sighs, my breath.
There's no time for the flowers.

No waiting, no regrets, no tomorrow.
Death comes each day when the sun sets.
Why can't I have faith like that?
Simple petals waiting in eternity
for the sun to shine again.

Can you call something blind if it was never meant to see?
I can be like that, deaf to the cries of agony
echoing across the generations.

I can only watch, the tears crowd my Eye.
Yesterday pulls, tomorrow strains, right now explodes
into a thousand beams---except the one that hurts the most.

I can only barely hear you, time is so deafening.
A whisper of a promise, I can only just feel.

My soul waits with the flowers in the meadow.

What it is like when I am not writing.

I think one reason I named this blog Full of Baloney because I wanted to to be clear with everyone--I don't really know what I am talking about.


That was the way I wanted to present myself--don't worry, everyone else, I won't stomp on anyone's toes. I don't really mean what I say. This was because I was afraid.


I feel like I am very slowly becoming aware of the intense fear that is almost always present in my entire body. It burns beneath my stomach, threatening to take over at any moment. It has the threat of flame and its aftermath, extinction. Where does fear ever end?


At first, it feels like never. The fear feels infinite. So then what is the point of feeling it? So I just try to avoid it, as much as I can, just go on with my life.


Little did I know, that I was carrying this fear in everything that I was doing, all the time, regardless. We have no choice over which emotions we feel. We just have choice over how we interpret them, contextualize them, attach them to a 'story' about who we are, rationalize them, ignore them, project them on to other people, etc. The best thing we can do is just to experience them, as raw as possible. I don't want to make that sound too simplistic, though. It is extremely challenging. 


This is why I often do the same destructive things to myself over and over--this can be repetitively seeking out abusive dynamics, all shades of addictions, or just preventing myself from my own inner desires. When you are caught by fear, you just want anything that has a predictable outcome, that is highly controllable. In moments I know that these behaviors don't make me feel good, but I can't stop them because then the feelings just come floating in, pervasive. It is a difficult trap, but the opening is knowing that not only am I avoiding the difficult feelings, but I have prevented myself from so many of the positive ones as well. 


Avoiding fear, for me, has lead to a paralyzing, frustrating numbness that pervades my life. One of the hardest parts is that I know this and yet it is still there, ever present, lurking.


Writing has always been such a challenge, because I am someone who wants to please people and had been quite willing to sacrifice my own desires in order to do so. But it is quite impossible to both please everyone and be true to your own voice. I have a ways to go in this department, but if nothing else I no longer want to claim that I don't 'really' believe in what I am writing. I don't want to hedge my bet in any way. This is me, trying to be as real as I know how to be. I will fail. There are so many things I haven't figured out yet, I know I'll write stuff that will look so ridiculous to a future me. But I have to embrace my own transformation if I want to change.


There have been so many twisted excuses that have prevented me from writing. There's no point to writing, it's not something I need to be doing, I don't have a clear enough idea of what I want to write about, I am just trying to write for some imagined fame or fortune, if I don't do it perfectly the first time, every time, there is no point. I will think of anything to stop myself. This is what it is like all the time when I am not writing, just a circular, hysterical anxiety. Excuses that go through my mind, pulsing, intense, seemingly air tight, logical, sensible, correct, and yet, somehow, I have stayed up long enough to write this piece, and will publish it. There is this incredible energy that is released when I do what I am afraid of.

Raging Pelican Article

Here's my Raging Pelican article: http://ragingpelican.com/radical-hopes-radical-challenges/

Occupy Wall Street

There are many problems facing our world today. Our economic system is no longer functioning. Our environment is being systematically destroyed. Our government is dishonest and dysfunctional. Our world is ravaged by curable diseases, famines and wars. Adults and children are diagnosed with mental illnesses at an ever increasing rate.

Perhaps one of the most shocking aspects of all of the statements above is how easily one can get the average person to agree with them. The question then turns---so how can we solve these problems? In order to solve problems, you must accurately and precisely determine their cause. And you must be willing to follow that cause wherever it may lead you--even when it means doubting the systems you hold so dear.

How bad do things have to get before we ask ourselves--why do we have all of these problems? At what point should we be forced to consider it is the larger system which puts these things in motion that is the cause, and all of the current issues are just symptoms? Just as taking off the top leaves of a weed is pointless if you leave the root, attempting to solve individual problems is ultimately useless if we don't address their causes.

I believe it is the systems we have in place that cause these problems. Systems that are rooted in unjustified hierarchies that disempower individuals and create inequalities.

Of course, stating that 'the system' is the issue has its own problems. For one, the systems are so vast it is difficult to pinpoint where one begins and another ends. But I think that is just an issue of definition, and could be accomplished through time. But there is another large problem: it is terrifying. These systems are the foundation for how we understand ourselves and interpret our world. To change them would be to shake every individual to their core.

Because suggesting a change in systems is so difficult and terrifying to people, I do not believe that such a change could or should occur by destroying the systems we have in place. The only thing that makes sense to me is the old IWW idea---to build a new world in the shell of the old.

And thus, the occupy wall street protests.

Almost everything you read about the Occupy Wall Street protests criticizes their lack of organization. Bemoans the fact that they don't have a clear mission. Wishes a more broad based coalition was there.

I feel like everyone is missing the point. I'm very glad that the protests aren't the normal, top down organized events where individuals march in protest with a single demand. After all, when is the last time we saw a protest like this actually accomplish its goals?

The black bloc protests in Seattle in the 90's resulted in the continuation of the WTO. The large scale protests of the RNC in New York did nothing to cease Bush's 8 year reign as president. The hundreds of thousands of people who marched on Washington against the Iraq and Afghani wars did nothing to cease the armies from fighting. And what about Troy Davis? Today he is dead.

People from my generation have not lived to see traditional protests work. That is why Occupy Wall Street is exciting. Its backbone is general assemblies, where individuals are allowed to speak freely and suggest actions to the group. Group actions are not taken until all voices have been heard and a consensus has been reached.

Occupy Wall Street does not have a single demand because it recognizes the futility in that when the overall system is the problem. Further, it recognizes that there is something deeply wrong in dictating to people what the demands should be. To proclaim a single demand without the tiring, endless, tedious work of actually listening to those who are present and coming to consensus of what to do would be a waste of time. It would just perpetuate and reflect the same behaviors that have brought our country and our world to the state it is in today--non-justified authority making decisions for others and thus disempowering their voice. 

So to me, the protests are not really protests. They are, in the purest sense, demonstrations. They demonstrate to the world that you can accomplish goals (Occupying Wall Street) using horizontal organizational principles and through non-hierarchical means. They demonstrate to those that have already been trying to create new systems--of food production and distribution through collective farms and food not bombs, of education through free schools or democratic schools and collective libraries, of health care through radical collectives and free clinics, of production through democratically controlled businesses, of community by creating spaces where individuals feel respected and loved and where each voice has a chance to be heard--that they are not alone.

What is their demand? A process, as was explained in this video. The protest is demanding that a new process be put in place, a new way of organizing ourselves, that denies unjustified hierarchies and seeks equal empowerment and liberation for all.

The protests provide a space for the creation of a new world to occur. They are not attempting to dictate what that world should look like--and that is exactly why you should join them. They are giving every interested individual the chance to say what a new world could look like.

The protests are an invitation. What is holding you back? Do you believe the systems are the problem? Are you will to experiment to find what the new system might be like? Occupy wall street.

 Occupy together.