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Friday, July 22, 2016.  As of lately life seems too complicated for me to begin to feel that I can ponder it effectively.  If I cannot ponder I cannot write.  Hence – few posts here!

I am not certain that this kind of silence ever satisfies a writer, so today I will at last put SOMETHING connected to what concerns me in the streams of my thoughts.

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Take this, for example.  We are, in my thinking, a species with WAY (times a trillion) too much capacity for learning and problem solving to be continuing to make such a huge mess of so much of what concerns ALL of us on this planet at this juncture in our evolution!

Thinking?  Truth is behind us in the field of neuroscience and development of our brains as it clearly shows that HOW we come into this world and what happens to us through our connections with other human beings directly forms how our capacities develop.  What we miss at the start of our life – and all the way through the final stages of the development of the higher cortical regions of our brain by age 25-30 – will leave us with depleted capacity to fully be our own best self.

Developmental deficits leave us unable – individually and collectively – to create TRUE happiness and well-being.  Along this altered pathway we also make huge problems for the next generations to deal with.

Then all the aftermath of accumulated trauma leaves those next generations also depleted, very often because those people did not receive optimal care during their early development – and on and on and on things go – a process which found in my thinking a kind of image to express what en masse really cannot be put into words:

An Ancient Device Too Advanced to Be Real Gives Up Its Secrets at Last

by ROBBY BERMAN (June 15, 2016)

Gears affecting gears affecting gears – in the process of acquiring information – and in the process of applying that information in specific ways to create a more coherent life.

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So, skipping forward from the power of optimal human interactions that build optimal brains, I will write for a moment about something I invented today I call Pink Progress.  This is in the arena of community interaction.

Lately as I complete the circle pathway on my evening walks once the glaring heat of the sun has diminished, the end part that takes me through a city park not far from the apartments where I live has had a gathering of beautiful African refugee/immigrant (not sure without asking) Muslim girls dressed in their glorious patterned and colored “traditional” clothing.

Last evening those 8 or so girls approached me as soon as I stepped from pavement onto park grass to form a semicircle around me as they in great animation began to engage me in friendly, curious, intelligent conversation.  During this time they described to me that they can no longer play soccer because “the boys” took their ball.  Missing also was their volleyball I saw them playing with a few days ago.

Now in this culture the girls are closely cared for by parents and grandparents never far from their loved ones.  I will need to consult both with the girls this evening and with someone in their “caring cluster” about my Pink Progress plan I hope to put into action.

This was possibly the funnest investment of money I have ever made – depending on how this plays out.  I now have one brilliant pink volleyball, one brilliant pink soccer ball and one brilliant pink triangle boomerang to contribute to these girls.  The plan must include a firm commitment by all those involved that the BOYS do NOT play with any one of these items without the girls’ specific permission.

Sports?  I have decided to frame this effort toward community enhancement within the sphere of athletics.  I will tell the girls that I will also get them a basketball if they wish provided that diplomacy create a period of play time where the boys will leave the basketball court and two hoops to the use of the girls.

In this whole effort I also want to make clear that no one girl owns the equipment.  It is being given to all of them.  The girls will need to figure out how to manage this cooperative equipment.

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Fargo, ND has hundreds of jobs open.  It is a prime location for the acceptance of both refugees and immigrants in the USA.  Fargo has always been a homogeneous town of predominately Scandinavian ancestry Lutherans.  There is, as you can imagine, a very complex change happening here.  (In this city of 105,000 – 5,000 of the people are “New Americans” – all have arrived here having survived earlier extremely traumatic circumstances.)

Although ONE God originated every world religion through a Chosen Manifestation throughout the duration of human evolution, this fact is far from being universally recognized.  All the issues regarding the oneness of the human “race” as being ONE family are and will be in play here as time moves forward.  The needs of the people coming here matter.  How these processes will be negotiated I do not know.

I just found my one small “area of influence” as a dear friend of mine terms it.  So far – I am very hopeful for a fun and positive empowering outcome!

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LATER:  Oh such a delight delivering the balls to the girls in the park this evening! So much precious beauty!! They LOVED the balls!!! The most touching part was when I was crossing the park grass heading home, and passed a group playing soccer with a lady – the kids were about 6-7, about 150′ from the older girls but they were sure watching. At least 6 of these little ones stopped me and so genuinely, so sweetly, THANKED me for giving the balls to the girls, for “being so kind to them.” I will NEVER forget this!

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Here is our first book out in ebook format.  Click here to view or purchase–

Story Without Words:  How Did Child Abuse Break My Mother?

It lists for $2.99 and can be read by Amazon Prime customers without charge.  A daring book – for daring readers – about a really tough subject.

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Tags: adult attachment disorders, adult reactive attachment disorder, anxiety disorders,borderline mother, borderline personality disorder, brain development, child abuse,depression,derealization, disorganized disoriented insecure attachment disorder,dissociation,dissociative identity disorder, empathy, infant abuse, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD),protective factors, PTSD, resiliency, resiliency factors, risk factors, shame

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Thursday, July 7, 2016.  I know myself well enough to know that it is never a good sign for me to feel speechless.  Is speechless a feeling?  I don’t argue that point.  It sure is for me.

I have been contemplating for days now the action of creating a post connected to the powerful thoughts Dr. Christopher Phillips has placed within the pages of his book — The Philosophy of Childing: Unlocking Creativity, Curiosity, and Reason through the Wisdom of Our Youngest (2016).

This book is important.  Few among us have the capacity that Phillips has to speak for the essential humanity of children.  I not only finished reading his book — Socrates Cafe: A Fresh Taste of Philosophy – I notated the margins and underlined in profusely before lending it to a woman who has opened a fantastic new coffee shop in Fargo, ND (where I currently, and temporarily, reside).

I found a section of Childing yesterday that I have delayed copying into a post until I could summon the inner ‘force needed’ to get this job done.  This morning I hit ‘another brick in the wall’ of difficulty – as I cannot separate myself from the ‘lot of humanity’ (for reasons connected to the passage from Childing I include in this post).

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Today – I need to also mention processes in America that are continuing to tear apart the heart of our nation.  Last night —

Philando Castile Shooting in Minnesota Leads Governor to Seek U.S. Investigation by RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA and JONAH ENGEL BROMWICHJULY 7, 2016

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This is part of a massive problem in our nation, most recently following this police shooting in Baton Rouge, Louisiana

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One of my dear friends feels “righteous anger” in response.  I feel deep, deep grief.  I know myself well enough to know I can become immobilized and trapped in grief – so this post is at least a small effort of mine to contribute to the greater good – because being human is a JOINT venture!

So, here from The Philosophy of Childing: Unlocking Creativity, Curiosity, and Reason through the Wisdom of Our Youngest – — — In my thinking early ATTACHMENT experiences are intimately connected to the descriptions Phillips offers about our experiences – and although Phillips is not mentioning the exodus of mothers away from their infants and young children as they “dump” their precious “luggage” in what I call “day orphanages” – I do believe what makes us most human is in this regard also taking a serious and devastating hit in line with what Phillips writes about as the “decrease in genuine intimacy” that IS the basis of safe and secure early attachment and therefore of the fruits the following words are concerned with.

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“If compassion in the US these days is missing in action toward our most vulnerable, how might this be remedied?

“In Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle asserts that it is imperative for us to be raised from our “Very youth…so as both to delight in and to be pained by the things that we ought.”  Who are those with the most highly attuned sense of compassion, altruism, and empathy, and as a consequence most adept at determining what we ought to delight in, and what to be pained by?  Many cognitive scientists and developmental specialists today believe the evidence points to children, hands down.  Alison Gopnik’s disturbing, important question is, “If children are so good, if empathy and altruism are such a deeply rooted part of human nature, then why are adults so bad?”  [I am adding some paragraph breaks for ease of online reading]

“Is it because, as she speculates, that “the impulse to evil seems to be as deeply rooted as the will to do good”? If so, why is it, as she claims, that the impulse to do good is so much at the fore when we’re young, and how is it that it is so often supplanted by the impulse to do evil as we grow older?

“To Gopnik, it is indisputable that “early empathy and altruism emerge in the close face-to-face intimate encounters between babies and their caregivers – the most intimate relationships we ever have.”    If this most intimate relation [sic] we ever have is getting less and less intimate, then it almost goes without saying that it will lead to an ever earlier development of less healthy – or more harmful – impulses.

“Even when parents are with their kids these days, they’re often not with them.  Rather, they’re ensconced in their home media centers or are absorbed in their smartphones or tablets – when they’re not sharing them with their babies and toddlers, quite often to distract or calm them so they aren’t disruptive.

“Studies also indicate that the predictable outcome when parents spend scads of time on their potpourri of electronic devices rather than engaging with their infants is that their language development takes a huge hit.  Same goes, in even more abysmal scales, for parents who allow kids to use these devices, even when parents are in their close company.  Surely, it will soon be found that this decrease in genuine intimacy not only impacts language development [and I would add, therefore, of development of the ability to THINK, as well – along with impeding the development of self], but spills over to hinder or stunt the development of empathy and altruism.

“Surely, the dearth of kinds of intimate encounters between child and parent or caregiver also severs kids’ deep empathic and altruistic roots, which are pushed aside by darker impulses that otherwise would never have taken firm root.  This is a tragic outcome, needless to say.  As Gopnik recognizes, “for genuine global morality we need to extend those feelings beyond our intimates to the six billion other human beings out there.”  {Today there are over 7.4 billion of us sharing life on earth.]

“First, though, we need to nurture those feelings for our intimates.  When intimacy is stillborn during one’s youngest years, we never develop much of a local morality, making the prospect of realizing a more global morality a pipedream.  If we lost the innate ability to empathize with our nearest and dearest, we can’t come to feel the pain and suffering of those we don’t know nearly as well, or don’t know at all.”  pp. 118-120

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This morning on my Facebook page I posted this in response to the horrible news from North Dakota’s eastern neighbor state:

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Such actions as these belong to all of us! Freedom? Justice? Shelter? Not ONE of us ever has ONE of these if ONE of us does not:

“The incomparable Friend saith: The path to freedom hath been outstretched; hasten ye thereunto. The wellspring of wisdom is overflowing; quaff ye therefrom. Say: O well-beloved ones! The tabernacle of unity hath been raised; regard ye not one another as strangers. Ye are the fruits of one tree, and the leaves of one branch. Verily I say, whatsoever leadeth to the decline of ignorance and the increase of knowledge hath been, and will ever remain, approved in the sight of the Lord of creation. Say: O people! Walk ye neath the shadow of justice and truthfulness and seek ye shelter within the tabernacle of unity.” — Bahá’u’lláh

[written circa 1854]

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Here is our first book out in ebook format.  Click here to view or purchase–

Story Without Words:  How Did Child Abuse Break My Mother?

It lists for $2.99 and can be read by Amazon Prime customers without charge.  A daring book – for daring readers – about a really tough subject.

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Tags: adult attachment disorders, adult reactive attachment disorder, anxiety disorders,borderline mother, borderline personality disorder, brain development, child abuse,depression,derealization, disorganized disoriented insecure attachment disorder,dissociation,dissociative identity disorder, empathy, infant abuse, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD),protective factors, PTSD, resiliency, resiliency factors, risk factors, shame

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Monday, June 20, 2016.  There are perhaps more words in this post online at The Mind Unleashed – Uncover Your True Potential website than what anyone needs to read who already KNOWS they “are an empath” – but every so often even we can use a booster shot of reality.  Those who have never considered such a state-of-being-alive might also enjoy taking a look at this post:

30 Traits of an Empath (How to know if you’re an Empath)

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Scroll down through the article to find the numbered list of these 30 traits –

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While everyone needs to find and utilize soothing, nurturing, supportive and restorative people, places and experiences in order to maintain health on all levels, I think this process has to me MUCH more pronounced for “Empathic People.”  As world population grows by billions, as the environment deteriorates for living beings, the more complex the “inform-ation” empathic processes accumulate.

Because empathic abilities can be fatiguing it is even more important than ‘usual’ to find ways of making sure we are always getting stronger, not weaker.  This can all be tough going in a materialistic culture where it seems most people are running around like so many animals (birds, fish, etc.) accumulating goods while enduring few empathic interactions in the process.  Do these conditions create an overbearing overload on the most sensitive – including infants and young children?

Today I am simply pondering some of these things in terms of two images as I compare and contrast them:  Feather and stone.

In both cases I don’t imagine (image in my mind) either of these in individual terms as being full of SOUND.  I find this implication of silence interesting.  Do we receive empathic information silently?

What can “act upon” us – or act upon a feather or a stone, to move us?  How passive are we during these processes?

Do I receive information “in a feather mode?”  Can I proceed to protect myself in ways that make what I experience stone-like – for good reasons – without losing the information as it might be useful?  Which mode, then, is my “take in” mode and which mode is my “use it” mode?

What other images might arise for you when you think about the benefits, risks and processes of being on the very, very sensitive end of a spectrum of being-in-the-world?

What new universes of information are we being faced with in this time of rapid global changes?  Who is paying attention to what?  We really are information processors.  Our responses?  Tender, gentle, loving and kind.  At the same time our species is learning about justice, without which mayhem rules – and that is NOT a good thing.

We are all, globally forging a new world.  Humanity is growing up.  In the meantime the ride is bumpy and risky at best.  Perhaps what I need to do is visualize myself as an Iron Canary working in the mines of change.

Yeah.  I’ll try that image on awhile.

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The Paper Kites – Featherstone (Official Music Video)

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Leave a Comment »

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Here is our first book out in ebook format.  Click here to view or purchase–

Story Without Words:  How Did Child Abuse Break My Mother?

It lists for $2.99 and can be read by Amazon Prime customers without charge.  A daring book – for daring readers – about a really tough subject.

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Tags: adult attachment disorders, adult reactive attachment disorder, anxiety disorders,borderline mother, borderline personality disorder, brain development, child abuse,depression,derealization, disorganized disoriented insecure attachment disorder,dissociation,dissociative identity disorder, empathy, infant abuse, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD),protective factors, PTSD, resiliency, resiliency factors, risk factors, shame

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Tuesday, June 14, 2016.  Never, NEVER did I see ahead when I started this blog seven years ago where the trajectory of my “stop trauma” efforts would take me.  I was willing to take off on a journey back then.  But there’s a spiral of concern going on here.  Into my future.  Into the future of all of us!

I can’t say I like where “this” is taking me.  THIS WHAT?

Violence in America?  (Let alone across the planet.)

What IS violence?  Is neglect violence?  If not, where, exactly, is the line between these two?  Don’t BOTH harm? How is HARM — good?  Is it nothing but sheer lunacy to ask questions like, “Which harm is more harmful than the other harm?”  My HEAVENS!  It is time for adults to wake up!

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I will stop my spiraling journey of concerns long enough right here to mention this book, which I have not read yet.  I am four pages from the end of Socrates Cafe: A Fresh Taste of Philosophy by Christopher Phillips and next plan to read his May 2016 book, The Philosophy of Childing: Unlocking Creativity, Curiosity, and Reason through the Wisdom of Our Youngest.

But, even here, I must admit I do not know if I have the HEART (yet) to open up the covers to begin reading Childing.  A dear friend of mine today read to me a post Phillips has on his Socrates Café blog today —  please read:

On tragedies — and the opportunity youth present us to avoid repeating them

by Socrates Cafe | Jun 13, 2016

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Followed this morning by an email mentioning THIS book, whose title alone sends me whirling through curls of what seem to be unending spirals of complexity – and concerns.  This book is an Amazon.com #1 bestseller in medical psychology:

The Collapse of Parenting: How We Hurt Our Kids When We Treat Them Like Grown-Ups by Leonard Sax (December 2015)

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It doesn’t take me any time at all, a blink of a twinkling of an eye, to put #1 above and #2 above together and land on this thought:  How absolutely terrifying it is to me to consider that it is our CHILDREN who

– although so few adults are or CAN (evidently) hear them –

are being faced with even considering the questions and answers to HUGE global-crisis questions that in their very essence are about problems NO CHILD IN A HEALTHY CIVILIZATION SHOULD EVER HAVE TO CONSIDER?

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The world is changing so fast on so many levels of significance that there are VERY few on the planet who are able to keep them all in focus.  There ARE answers, and there ARE people working on solutions!!!!  The forces being set lose by defunct, outworn, archaic, and decaying patterns of human civilizations ARE at the same time being grabbed by the fistful to be used in the building of a new peaceful civilization:  Collaborators and workers on the grassroots levels of culture and society ARE building a new peaceful world that works now and in the future.  And, yes, the most significant positive changes on this planet are centered on programs empowering children and youth – with total adult support (see ‘building‘ link above)!

We are an organic species.  Everything we accomplish IS organic in process.  Every single person on the planet is part of this process.  There ARE answers for those who can pay attention.

Trajectories – tides – we CAN turn them!  What we think, how we feel, what we say and what we do MATTERS!  We ARE greatly empowered beings – IF we choose to wake up – we CAN and we WILL change the world for the better!

Paris Talks

“I charge you all that each one of you concentrate all the thoughts of your heart on love and unity. When a thought of war comes, oppose it by a stronger thought of peace. A thought of hatred must be destroyed by a more powerful thought of love. Thoughts of war bring destruction to all harmony, well-being, restfulness and content. ”

‘Abdu’l‑Bahá / 6. The Pitiful Causes of War, and the Duty of Everyone to Strive for Peace

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All together now – ALL OF US!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiPzU75P9FA

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Click here to read or to

Leave a Comment »

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Here is our first book out in ebook format.  Click here to view or purchase–

Story Without Words:  How Did Child Abuse Break My Mother?

It lists for $2.99 and can be read by Amazon Prime customers without charge.  A daring book – for daring readers – about a really tough subject.

++++

Tags: adult attachment disorders, adult reactive attachment disorder, anxiety disorders,borderline mother, borderline personality disorder, brain development, child abuse,depression,derealization, disorganized disoriented insecure attachment disorder,dissociation,dissociative identity disorder, empathy, infant abuse, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD),protective factors, PTSD, resiliency, resiliency factors, risk factors, shame

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Saturday, June 4, 2016.  Welllllll…….  I DO have one more post in me today!  My baby sister shared this with me today – in her comment saying she knew how much I would enjoy this video – and she was so right!

This is what I am truly about in my lifetime – healing for all of us, our whole glorious, beautiful human race!  And this short video is one of the MOST beautiful ones I have ever watched!

The DNA Journey

Would you dare to question who you really are? These people took a DNA test to find out. You have more in common with each other than you think.

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In honor of the 1.6 billion relatives of ours who are Islamic, 22% of our world population, I also present this article (scroll down a little, it’s under the short slideshow):

Everything you need to know about Ramadan 2016

I am surrounded by refugee and immigrant families in these apartment complexes in Fargo, ND.  Such lovely neighbors and people in every way.  Blessings, prayers and love — to all around the world.

We are on our way to a permanent and lasting Universal Peace on this planet.  We all have a part to play in this glorious destiny.

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AND, while I am here – are a few more links I’ve found and am enjoying –

Tibetan Bowl Music – beautiful and so relaxing, as is this –

Rain and Native American Flutes – Relaxing Music

And this incredible instrument!

Hotel California (The Eagles) on harpejji g16 by Mathieu Terrade.

Here’s the link for the site that makes the harpejji instrument

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And for some reason, THIS new information FEELS very important to me,  I deeply honor these ancient relatives of our species.  God has His reasons, not for us to fathom.

This very recent incredible discovery turns over so much of what we have thought we knew about hominid species’ life on this planet:

Early Neanderthal constructions deep in Bruniquel Cave in southwestern France

Neanderthals used fire in caves: French cave sheds new light on the Neanderthals

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And here is a very interesting looking book!

Adult ADHD: How to Succeed as a Hunter in a Farmer’s World – June 19, 2016

by Thom Hartmann

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Oh, and here’s another important book by the author of Socrates Cafe: A Fresh Taste of Philosophy –

The Philosophy of Childing: Unlocking Creativity, Curiosity, and Reason through the Wisdom of Our Youngest – May 17, 2016 – by Christopher Phillips (who has written MANY books)

On Amazon.com about this book:

“Weaving together philosophy, social science and neuroscience research, personal anecdotes and dialogues, The Philosophy of Childing takes a radically different approach to the traditional boundaries between childhood and adulthood to reveal how rather than lapse into adulthood, we can achieve what the Greeks of old call arete—all-around excellence—when we look to children and youth as a lodestar for our development.

“Childhood is our primary launching pad, a time of life when learning is more intense than at any other, when we gain the critical knowledge and skills that can help ensure that we remain adaptable. This book weaves together the thinking of philosophers from across the ages who make the unsettling assertion that with the passage of time we are apt to shrink mentally, emotionally, and cognitively. If we follow what has become an all-too-common course, we denature our original nature—which brims with curiosity, empathy, reason, wonder, and a will to experiment and understand—and we regress, our sense of who we are will become fuzzier and everyone in our orbit will pay a price.

“Mounting evidence shows that we begin our lives with a moral, intellectual, and creative bang, and in this groundbreaking, heavily researched and highly engaging volume, Christopher Phillips makes the provocative case that childhood isn’t merely a state of becoming, while adulthood is one of being, as if we’ve “arrived” and reached the summit. His life-changing proposition is that if we embrace the defining qualities of youth, we’re not destined to become frail, dispirited, or unhinged, we’ll grow in a way defined by wonder, curiosity, imaginativeness, playfulness, and compassion—in essence, unlimited potential.”

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Click here to read or to

Leave a Comment »

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Here is our first book out in ebook format.  Click here to view or purchase–

Story Without Words:  How Did Child Abuse Break My Mother?

It lists for $2.99 and can be read by Amazon Prime customers without charge.  A daring book – for daring readers – about a really tough subject.

++++

Tags: adult attachment disorders, adult reactive attachment disorder, anxiety disorders,borderline mother, borderline personality disorder, brain development, child abuse,depression,derealization, disorganized disoriented insecure attachment disorder,dissociation,dissociative identity disorder, empathy, infant abuse, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD),protective factors, PTSD, resiliency, resiliency factors, risk factors, shame