Born Into the Light

Many issues covered by the US media seem trivial - a fixation with car chases, murders, or celebrity-based scandals, as opposed to serious coverage of major world events. But one story about a small group of people struck a deep chord, even if it was not a critical analysis of global economic, political or environmental issues.

Midwives in the Cameroon countryside do not have electricity. As babies don't plan their entrance during daylight alone, those born at night come into the world by the glow of the midwife's cellphone. She works 24 hours a day, seven days a week, but many women in her area die in childbirth because of zero health care tools such as light, sterilized equipment, running water - let alone an operating room for the emergency caesarian section.

An obstetrician from the United States traveled in the area and became aware of the plight of pregnant women in labor. Her husband, an inventor, designed a yellow plastic box that not only contains some basic equipment but also functions as a solar panel. With this boon with that arrives with the dimensions of an over-sized briefcase, the midwife and her compatriots in other poverty-stricken rural areas now have the most basic necessity: light so that they can see the precious cargo they are steering into the dawn of life.

Any mother who has given birth can relate to this precarious passage, during which time the intense suffering of the mother and the potential for fatal mishaps can kill both woman and child.

This magic yellow box is being reproduced as quickly as time and money will allow; at this juncture a few thousand have been donated throughout the region.

This simple and elegant design has made the difference between an agonizing death and a joyous event. And just one compassionate doctor and her science-prone husband made this difference.

Human beings can be so creative, kind and effective. Thank god for the magic yellow box and the inspired doctor. The world is a better place because they are here.

Meat, Ice Cream and War

During his 27 years prison tenure, Nelson Mandela could have easily died in a cold, damp cell, or have been "disappeared" by South African special forces. Instead, as Archbishop Desmond Tutu states of the infamous prison where Madiba stayed his course, "Robben Island was defeated by someone who could take everything it threw at him by melting courage into forgiveness, creating the gold of reconciliation.” 

The alchemy of this act takes a grace and understanding that lies deeper than the deepest part of the ocean. Contrast this pinnacle of human behavior with the jargon of military men, in this case the United States army.

Meat Eater - a particularly disgusting term referring to Special Forces soldiers whose mission focuses on a violent act of taking out the enemy (a.k.a. someone's son or daughter), as opposed to armed forces with a mission to promote stability and training. Note: the meat eaters are also born of parents who probably never imagined that their cute little ones would become government sanctioned killers.

Self-Licking Ice Cream Cone - military propaganda or political doctrines that produces misleading statistics to justify an action. For example, a boastful piece of press will talk of the amount of weapons seized in a tribal village in Afghanistan, while the real result was the death of villagers. Net result: nothing to brag about and hardly a victory because most people will take revenge and counterattack; thus the cycle of hatred perpetuated.

As one of my spiritual teachers once said, "Just because we all have human bodies, it doesn't mean that everyone is a human being."

Point well taken.

Imagine

According to new age pundits, the key to a successful life lies in the ability to visualize a goal, and then step into it.

Consider a study performed on pro basketball players. One group practiced tossing balls into the hoop for an hour. The other group did the on-court boogey for thirty minutes and spent the other thirty on their backs (by choice) visualizing the ball swooshing through the net. Then they went into action; the ones who had imagined that coveted swoosh scored better than the ones who practiced trying to swoosh it. Apparently, imagination can be harnessed to powerfully influence an outcome.

At the other end of the spectrum, a celebrity with serious depression remarked famously about his illness, "There is a magic wand across the room that can grant your every wish, but you can't be bothered to get up and get it."

This leads to an interesting puzzle. Why can some people see a bright picture on the horizon and move towards it by leaps and bounds, while others defy the logic of such positive action, sinking deeper and deeper into a paralyzing malaise?

The pharmaceutical industry has tried its best to remedy this conundrum with drugs of all types to sway the mood from black to bright. Millions of people and even their dogs are on Prozac. (Yes, dogs in America are prescribed that famous anti-depressant with regularity and do tend to bite their owners less often once dosed properly.)

A throw of the genetic dice probably explains the propensity for some to have a more cheery disposition than others, but nonetheless, the key to the kingdom lies in one's perception.
Every man-made item we see around us was born in the mind first; even our atmosphere now responds to mankind's creations in the form of global warming.

What we imagine gives rise to all sorts of phenomena, so it behooves us to think carefully lest our jumble of ideas leads to self-fulfilling prophesies. As ever-so-clever human beings, perhaps our species could do a collective vision quest.

In the words of John Lennon, bard of the 20th century:

Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people living for today 

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people living life in peace 

You, you may say
I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one
I hope some day you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people sharing all the world

You, you may say
I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one
I hope some day you'll join us
And the world will live as one

Failure is Feedback

A quote by Nelson Mandela, frequently broadcast on the days following his passing: "Judge me not for my successes but by how many times I fell down and got up again."

Thomas Edison, Louis Pasteur and many others would agree with this sentiment - as well as every wee child who wants to learn how to walk.

In the age of instant gratification, this law of evolution bedevils the young and the restless weaned on MTV and video games. Hardly auspicious for the long arc of career development and penetrating expertise.

But it is not just our youngun's who exhibit such traits. A few years ago, the Dalai Lama rebuked his American audience. The gist of his remarks centered around his students'
desire for instant enlightenment and blissful freedom from neurosis. That it might take years of disciplined practice to master the mind, to develop true compassion and wisdom, was frustrating to people weaned on fast food and fiber optic networks. Apparently, His Holiness had gotten an earful of western whiners and saw fit to set us straight.

So the watchwords for today are patience and perseverance. Even if our dreams don't come true, we will have been happier living out our time on earth with these virtues!

 

Madiba's Magic

A great soul has passed on. The world will always remember Nelson Mandela as a man who brought an end to apartheid peacefully, when no one believed it could be done. From prisoner to president, he will remain an inspiration to all cultures and all nations around the world. The impossible is possible.

In 2009, my husband and I filmed a documentary titled Reconciliation: Mandela's Miracle. It is not we who coined the phrase but the South Africans themselves. After 300 years of vicious oppression, the black and colored people of that nation were able to let go of generational torment to allow peace to prevail.

We filmed on Robben Island, where Mandela had been held captive for 27 years. The cell where his transformation occurred, from armed terrorist to consummate mediator and peacemaker, was the last stop on our shoot. As the location was being filmed, a Robben Island guide hurried into the area to inform us that the ferry taking us back to the mainland was leaving earlier than expected.

Our crew wrapped up quickly and began hoofing their heavy gear back to the dock. The guide, who was an aspiring producer, offered to help the crew. He handed me the keys to the prison cell where Mandela had lived for several decades and hurried off to help carry bulky camera gear.

There I stood, alone in the jail that was once a house of horrors, now a museum that maintained the cells as they were when Mandela and his compatriots were confined. A pervasive, eery silence permeated the atmosphere. I wondered what karma brought me to this moment, standing alone in front of Madiba's cell, holding the keys to his steel cage. As the moment burned into my brain, a ray of light shot through the window, beaming dead center onto the spot where Mandela must have endured through all those years.

It was only sunlight breaking through the clouds, but somehow those rays illuminating Mandela's cell seemed to come from a divine source. That little cell radiated a sacred energy befitting the man who had graced its cement floor. 

And lest the world forget Madiba's magic, he had one last gesture. At the world premiere of a feature film on his life, attended by his daughter-ambassadors and the British royal family, news was delivered while the film in progress: he had just passed.

Mandela's spirit soared into the Light as his legacy was brought to the masses through the light of a projector.

Crazy Juice

Dreams have intrigued waking man for centuries upon centuries. The "science" of dream interpretation boasts various schools of thought, and philosopher-artists have produced numerous works related to the significance of dreams.

Shamanic traditions hold the dream state in high esteem, its lightness of being a window into other dimensions. The art of lucid dreaming proclaims an unbroken continuum of consciousness between the waking and sleeping state and can be taught to an adept. And last but not least, mediums claim that the spirits of the dead come most easily to us in dreams, when the heavy veil of physicality is lifted. 

For that matter, approximately one third of our lives pass us by in slumber, not an insignificant statistic by any measure. (Make it 1/8th for insomniacs.) So it behooves us to take at least minimal interest in this phenomenon.

As for me, formal dream analysis never captured my imagination or piqued my curiosity. Dreams seem too magical to be interpreted with the logic of the waking state; they have a life of their own that reflects a reality back to us through a hall of uniquely designed mirrors. 

In that spirit, I would like to relate my most unusual dreams of late. I have been visited by George Harrison, Bill Clinton, Carlos Santana, Hillary Clinton (with Bill in tow) and Clint Eastwood - all within a ten day period. Virtually every other night, an icon of our era has conversed with me as if he or she were a confidant and regular every day friend. No Chagall fantasy landscapes or superhuman acts of flying or walking on water took these dreams into a land of altered space and time.

Normally, my dreams take place in public spaces with lots of people not known to me in waking hours. So this series of intimate conversations was not only out of the ordinary; upon awaking it felt like I actually was with these people.

Which leads to the best line of conversation I had in the dreamtime. I was sitting with Mr. Eastwood in his office and related how I almost died from chemotherapy treatment. He nodded and communicated that he too had had a near miss of some kind, but survived. He then smiled gleefully and said, "Crazy juice."

Need I say more?

Feel Your Way

A woman with thirty years of marriage under her belt and five children to her credit got a big shock one day. Her husband ran off with their attractive and much younger accountant. Although this story is not unique, this abandoned wife had a highly interesting perspective.

She said, "Gabe was a difficult man, but we never gave him feedback about his behavior when he berated us - for what he thought was our own good. Maybe if we told him how it made us feel he would have changed. We denied him the opportunity to grow because he never knew."

Her insight struck a deep chord. How many of us silently react to the actions and words of another without letting him know his impact? Smoldering inside with a smile on one's face, or hurting inside but pretending you've deflected harsh word/acts, won't go very far in helping the aggressor to know his impact. And if he doesn't get a light shone on the results of his behavior, everyone is left in the dark to keep wandering down the road of disharmony.

Even psychopaths and sociopaths could probably gain some empathy if they were consistently confronted with the suffering they inflicted on one or more human hearts. But for the moment let's consider the average person, although no such thing exists. Most people want to get along, to be happy, to lead a peaceful life. But a Gordian Knot of past experiences, learned behavior, and ignorance of skillful communication lead to breakups, fights, and damaging imprints on the psyche.

If our universal person dishing out the dirt could be honestly told, "When you scream at me, I feel like I want to die it hurts so bad," it gives that perpetrator the opportunity to think about what they are doing. But if one cries and hides, or calls the other person some nasty names, a cycle of emotional violence continues. It's about telling the other how you feel and not telling them what an asshole they are. 

Try this method some time. Express how someone's behavior makes you feel. It's not as easy as it seems. We are conditioned to fight fire with fire, to meet rage with counter rage. We are conditioned to hide our feelings because showing them would make us vulnerable. But when we do let the other know that their actions have hurt us, without hurling back accusations and judgments, the possibility of an amazing transformation just might become a reality.

As with all things in the learning curve of life, repetition probably yields the best results. Firstly, most of us are not used to expressing our feelings although expressing our thoughts roll off our tongue like a carnivore's saliva when contemplating a steak on the barbie. 

But with practice comes results. The more we acclimate to telling others how their behavior makes us feel instead of counter-attacking or dying inside, the better the chance of positive evolution.

Gandhi said, "An eye for an eye make the whole world blind." So next time someone tries to take away your sight, give back insight. It just might work.