It is a Good Day to Die!
The photo above is of Geronimo. "Geronimo was the leader of the last American Indian fighting force formally to capitulate to the United States. Because he fought against such daunting odds and held out the longest, he became the most famous Apache of all. " For more information go to the following link.
http://www.indians.org/welker/geronimo.htm
The photo of Geronimo is the only photograph of a Native American war chief taken while he was still at war with the United States. The chi and Shen of his photograph is good and appropriate for this blog entry.
"I cannot think that we are useless or God would not have created us. There is one God looking down on us all. We are all the children of one God. The sun, the darkness, the winds are all listening to what we have to say." Geronimo
Sometime it can be very healthy and good to admit to ourselves and each other how incredibly mysterious, inexplicable, difficult and empty life can be. Sometime it is important to kick out the false supports we use so often and so well to deny our real feelings and thoughts about ourselves and the lives we lead. And sometimes it is important for us to say to God and our societies and our world views and pseudo understandings, "Fuck you! Fuck you God! Fuck you Christianity! Fuck You Judaism! Fuck you Islam! Fuck you Buddhism! Fuck you Hinduism! Fuck you Atheists! Fuck you Humanism and all the other Fucking isms and philosophies and psychologies! And especially Fuck you Big Corporations that chose profits over the good of the people and the planet! Fuck you, the vernier of personality that we all wrap ourselves in and while I am at it, Fuck me!"
A good " Fuck you!", to the world and existence and the self can be so good every now and again. Try it, or not. Do as you will or you wont. It is entirely up to you. When I was young, before the acid trip that let me experience a small bit of the Unity of all things I use to regularly tell God to go fuck It's self. I would tell God that because You put me here, You are responsible for my life here. And life here is shit. I was young what can I say? I use to give God hell a lot. When my dad came home drunk or when my parents fought or when things did not go my way I called on God to say fuck You. I have to admit I have never been afraid of God. I don't know why in retrospect. Now I am not afraid of Goddess either but for very different reasons. A lover is never afraid of the Beloved and a child is never afraid of his mother as one of my Sufi teachers use to tell me. So why should I fear Her when She is both to me.
Today I say I am glad I am here. I am honored to be alive and on this planet. But all the same it is very difficult being human because of the way humans share the world with each other. Societies which are organizations that regulate human relationships all over the world suck. This I believe in my heart of hearts. Societies do not so much serve the average man, woman or child as they do the rich and powerful and connected. They are not societies dedicated to the betterment of the people but are instead societies for the protection of ideologies, religions, politicians, corporations and the very powerful. Societies pay lip service to the real welfare and concerns of the people and do the bare minimum for them only when they are forced to do so. Yet all societies bow before the rich and powerful and rush to serve and protect them when they feel threatened. Thus has it always been. This is true all over the world. Show me where that is not true if you can?
My first good Chinese medical teacher told me that you can not have a healthy individual in a sick society. She was and is RIGHT. I see the truth of that every day from the macro to the micro levels of social and physical life. We live all over the world in multidimensional and interrelated societies that cause much harm and suffering for the people of the world. That is not to say they do no good at all because the good they do is obvious. But, the harm they inflict is equally obvious and that must be faced and changed for any real healing to have a chance.
Do not let yourself be confused by what is good about families and societies and organizations. Healers are not to concerned with what works. That is good when things work. We are concerned with pain and suffering caused by what is not working for the good of the person or a people. Healer-warriors search out the cause and effect of pain and suffering and work there. We acknowledge and support the good in everything. But the pains and sufferings of the world holds our attention and strengthens our determination to help.
Look at the suffering that families, societies and organizations inflict on their inmates and work to change that. Look at the suffering of the people. Look and look and look. Go beyond your comfort level. Look honestly at the everyday suffering of people of the world and how they are forced to live. Look at the lives of the poor and suffering of Africa. Look at lives of the poor and suffering of Asia. Look at the lives of the poor and suffering of South America. Look at the lives of the poor and suffering of Europe. Look at the lives of the poor suffering of the people of the United States. What do you see? If you are happy with what you see than I say in all sincerity, fuck you! Look once more until you really see and above all feel the poverty and suffering so many people and animals have to live with day in and day out. And than thank God if you are not one of them and lend a helping hand when and where you can.
Look at the societies and organizations you live in and how they effect you and the people you live with. Look at your families. Look at yourself. Look with courage and a ruthless honesty. Where is there balance and love and security and real good and wholesome life? Maybe you are one of the lucky few. Good for you. But your are the exception not the rule. Most people on this planet are kept poor and oppressed by the societies and organizations that control their everyday lives. For far to many people life is hard and brutal. Am I wrong? Wouldn't it be wonderful if I was? But I am not.
Why do I write this? Because as I said a long time ago when I started writing this blog that real healing is Revolutionary. Real healing demands the fierce determination of warriors and warriors who are willing to bear looking for a long time and in many locals for what is there not what they want to be there. We have to be willing to face ourselves and our societies and challenge our selves and our societies. Internal and external jihad is called for if we want to be healthy.
We must face the unpleasant reality that the families, societies and organizations we live in are responsible for most of the problems that we face in our lives. And we must also accept that as members of families and societies we are responsible for causing a lot of stress and harm to others by our actions and our lack of actions. The stress of trying to live in these families, societies and organizations are creating untold physical, mental, and emotional and indeed spiritual problems. This will not change until the families, societies and religions change. I say again, real and long lasting healing will not occur until we change the paradigms of the families, societies and organizations that control our lives.
Until the welfare and security of people of the world is the primary focus and aim of all societies and organizations that exert control on this planet there will be no real healing. Until profit and power serve the people and not just the few there will be no real healing on this planet. Corporations and governments and religions must be held accountable for the misery of the people and animals of this world. And they must change. Let us face it , families societies, governments, corporations and religions will only change when you and I in our billions insist that they change. And the billions I am writing about are composed of you and me. If we want change we must change. Real change occurs by example not force. Real change starts with our selves and spreads to all our relations and situations. That is a fact.
Until the people of the world do not have to live in fear of their families and neighbors and governments and religions and corporations their will be no real healing. Until people all over the world do not have to wonder where their next meal will come from and how they can support themselves and their families there will be no real healing.Until health care and education and decent housing are available to all the people of the world there will be no real healing. That is why to be healer is to be a revolutionary.
Why do we fight? We fight for our right to have a good life, a life worth living.We fight to live in societies that do not exploit us but that support us. And we fight not just for ourselves. We fight the healing jihad for our loved ones and for our friends and our families. We fight for people we do not know just because it is the right thing to do. We even fight for people we do not particularly like, because that too is the right thing to do. And we fight for the very real and suffering people and animals of this planet.
My analysis of the situation we find ourselves in on this planet is that it is going to get far worse before it can get any better. I am an American and frankly I fear for my country and by that I mean the people and animals not the elite and the corporations. In this country and around the world, I believe life will only get better if we abandon hope that some doctor or politician or religion or philosophy is going to save us. We must save ourselves and each other.
The problems that are causing us so much pain and suffering will not get better in any real and long lasting way unless and until we each personally commit to changing our selves and our societies for the better. We need to take the heroes journey and strive with our lives to be examples of the power of positive healing transformation. We need to become the medicine not stay part of the problem.That means you and me personally. It means you. It means making a warriors oath that as the Native warriors of America use to say before a battle,"It is a good day to die!" To say that means among other things that I let go of fear and embrace the battle. I will be a warrior worthy of life and do honor to myself and my people with my efforts come what may. I take a vow to struggle to be a better person, a better husband or wife, a better father or mother, a better son or daughter, a better brother or sister, a better friend. I take a vow to help change the world for the better and I am responsible for my actions. It is a good day to die.
Anyone can learn about herbs, or chi kung or the many other aspects of healing. But that does not make them a healer. A healer is a warrior who choses to faces the many enemies that threaten the people, including ignorance and discomforts, and trains to understand and wrestle with them for the good of the people.
We come into being in our mothers wombs. POP. Here we are. Our education about ourselves and the nature of existence is limited, contradictory and usually biased and misleading and mostly wrong. We act on what we are told or what we think we understand from our experiences and the results are more often than not far from what we hoped they would be. We get older and sadness or apathy or cynicism or fanaticism become our guides. We say to hell with it and stay inside our forts and cages and wait it out till death relieves us of the strain and depression of living. We need to do something different now. We need to stand up and walk outside our homes and begin the journey
You cannot find very much about the more meaningful aspects of life just using so called science and truths and logic. They all have there important uses but beware my friend. Science "truth" and logic all to often will betray you when you need them the most on your journey of the self and healing. They become the servants of safety and ignorance rather than the guides you need to get you past the more dangerous aspects of your education and journeys.
I recommend art and intuition be your more trusted guides. Have other guides but listen especially to the poets and look to the works of the artists for inspiration.
Maria Rilke understood a lot about what it takes to be a healer-warrior. Read his poems below and let your intuition and heart speak to you. You can find all of his poems on line at the following link.
http://www.poemhunter.com/rainer-maria-rilke/
Rainer Maria Rilke
(1875 - 1926 / Germany
Fear of the Inexplicable
But fear of the inexplicable has not alone impoverished
the existence of the individual; the relationship between
one human being and another has also been cramped by it,
as though it had been lifted out of the riverbed of
endless possibilities and set down in a fallow spot on the
bank, to which nothing happens. For it is not inertia alone
that is responsible for human relationships repeating
themselves from case to case, indescribably monotonous and
unrenewed: it is shyness before any sort of new,unforeseeable
experience with which one does not think oneself able to cope.
But only someone who is ready for everything, who excludes
nothing, not even the most enigmatical, will live the relation
to another as something alive and will himself draw exhaustively
from his own existence. For if we think of this existence of
the individual as a larger or smaller room, it appears evident
that most people learn to know only a corner of their room, a
place by the window, a strip of floor on which they walk up and
down. Thus they have a certain security. And yet that dangerous
insecurity is so much more human which drives the prisoners in
Poe's stories to feel out the shapes of their horrible dungeons
and not be strangers to the unspeakable terror of their abode.
We, however, are not prisoners. No traps or snares are set about
us, and there is nothing which should intimidate or worry us.
We are set down in life as in the element to which we best
correspond, and over and above this we have through thousands of
years of accommodation become so like this life, that when we
hold still we are, through a happy mimicry,scarcely to be
distinguished from all that surrounds us. We have no reason to
mistrust our world, for it is not against us. Has it terrors,
they are our terrors; has it abysses, those abuses belong to us;
are dangers at hand, we must try to love them. And if only we
arrange our life according to that principle which counsels us
that we must always hold to the difficult, then that which now
still seems to us the most alien will become what we most trust
and find most faithful. How should we be able to forget those
ancient myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into
princesses; perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses
who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps
everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless
that wants help from us.
Rainer Maria Rilke
