Monthly Archives: June 2012

Take Action: Ask your Senators to pass the DISCLOSE Act

Take Action

From Public Citizen:

Shine Sunlight on Election Spending

Tell Your Senators to Pass the DISCLOSE Act

If a group is trying to influence your vote, then you should know who is paying them to do so.

That is the commonsense principle behind the DISCLOSE Act (S. 2219, H.R. 4010) – a bill to require that the identities of those who fund election-season political ads be disclosed to the public, regardless of whether that funding comes from corporations, labor unions or millionaires and billionaires.

Use the form below to tell your senators to support the DISCLOSE Act.

Please type your zip code into the box below. Then take a moment to add your own words to the email message that appears. This greatly increases the likelihood that your message will make a difference. You can also ask your senators to support the DISCLOSE Act by phone by calling the U.S. Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121. Let us know how it goes with an email to action (at) citizen (dot) org!

 

 

Click here to take this action on Public Citizen’s website. And here’s me calling Senator Franken and Senator Klobuchar:

 

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How to forgive someone for committing suicide

The Messages,

The purpose of this post is to help you, the person reading this who has lost someone to suicide, feel empathy for the person who killed themselves which in turn induces the desire to forgive. Would it surprise you to hear that most of us lack empathy? It’s sympathy almost everyone has. When we have sympathy for another person, it’s because we would (or think we would) feel the same way they do if we were in their position.

 

 

Empathy is a whole other ball of yarn: when we empathize with another person, we have not been in their shoes, and we have almost no idea what it would be like (which is why Hallmark doesn’t make empathy cards for funerals). But because we’re human and the other person is human, and we know what that’s like (sometimes awful, sometimes awesome, usually somewhere in between), it is possible to ask ourselves a series of questions in order to induce the ability to emotionally relate to them despite being unable to relate to their experiences. So, they’re in pain. Have we been in pain before? Yes. For the same reason? No. But we know what pain is like, right? Yes.

 

 

It hurts.

Now, think of the worst pain you’ve ever been in, whether that was while enduring a migraine (physical pain) or betrayal (emotional pain). While you were enduring the pain, you very likely hurt someone that you loved using words as weapons, even though you had no intention to, and later apologized. When you explained, “I was in so much pain from my headache/back ache/sports injury/cramps that I could barely see straight,” the other person most likely nodded, in sympathy, and forgave you. Why? Because they’ve lived on earth for their entire life too and know what it is to experience the physical pain of a headache/back ache/sports injury/cramps. And if you lashed out because you were in emotional pain, no doubt they have experienced that too at some point in life, and could empathize with the pain of a bad breakup, betrayal, psychic attack, malicious gossip, physical attack, sexual attack, etc., etc. So when you apologized later, they accepted the apology.

 

 

When we are in a little pain (either emotional or physical), we are usually a little irritable. And when we are in excruciating pain, we are usually a lot irritable (think woman in labor making threats of imminent castration). Now imagine anguish — the torture of being unable to feel love at all. How irritable would you become? And now imagine that anguish lasting for years. Not hours of child birth or eight weeks in a hospital burn ward but years of despair that will not go away. How irritable would you become? And how long do you think it would be before that pain just literally broke you? How long before you stopped fighting it? Years? Decades?

 

 

Now think of this person you have lost and how angry you are that they could take for granted the value of their own life, how sad you are that they could leave you, how mad you are that they didn’t ask for help, how angry you are that they didn’t say why they did it, how bad you feel that you couldn’t prevent it, whatever combination of regret and anger and sadness you personally feel, and now go back to a time when you were in pain and hurt someone you love.

 

 

You couldn’t feel love at the moment you took the action that caused pain because you were in pain. And so was the suicidal person who eventually took their own life: they were in pain when they took an action that caused you (and the rest of their friends and family) pain, that’s why they did it.

 

 

Now, ask yourself a question, please: Do I understand that this person I love was in pain when they committed suicide and that’s why they committed suicide?

 

 

If the answer is yes, then give the desire for their ability to feel Joy to God, in the form of a prayer. This may sound strange, but that’s all forgiveness is — a prayer. When we love someone, we desire their happiness (the ability to feel Love). When we forgive them, we desire their happiness anyway. To forgive a suicide, we ask, “God, please let me be healed of all pain and sadness and filled with Joy. And please let [the person who committed suicide] be healed of all pain and sadness and filled with Joy.” We request both our and the other person’s healing when we forgive.

 

God is Love and there is no punishment for those who take their own lives. Indeed, punishment would be redundant. There is no worse pain than the anguish of being unable to feel Love for prolonged periods of time with no hope of relief in sight.

 

 

For more on the link between physical and emotional pain, please read my CIPA post.

 

For the longer version of the forgiveness method, please visit my other website.

 

 

If you are suicidal, call 911 or go to an emergency room and ask to be admitted right now. Your life has intrinsic value. Your life matters. Forgive daily and get professional help right now.

Who’s holding false images of you and false visions of your life?

Chakras, The Messages, ,

Who’s up in your 6th chakra, envisioning — through your third eye — your life? Hint: anyone in your life who doesn’t TOTALLY desire YOUR happiness, YOUR success, and the realization of YOUR dreams and goals. Who’s the first person that pops into your mind? Forgive that person right now. Otherwise their energy will stay stuck via the powerful glue of doubt, which allows their false images of you and false visions of your future to take root in the heart chakra and grow like ivy up into your 5th, 6th and 7th chakras where that doubt will influence your actions down in the 3rd, 2nd and 1st chakras.

 

 

Faith is the inverse of Doubt: people say that when you have faith, you believe in God. Not so. When you have faith it’s because you can feel God’s belief in YOU.

 

 

I believe in you, your guardian angel believes in you, and GOD believes in you and desires your happiness — no matter what you’ve done in the past, no matter what you’re doing right now, and no matter what you’re planning on doing in the future. You are loved anyway (and anyone who tells you otherwise is using shame as a tool of manipulation because they are filled with either greed for power, greed for money, or both). Remember, punishment is redundant. When we or other people take actions that cause others pain, it’s because we couldn’t feel Love — that’s why we or they hurt others in the first place; we were already in pain. There is no punishment worse than not being able to feel Love (Joy). People kill themselves to make that kind of pain stop — and if they are not submissive, they end up hurting and/or killing others (engaging in displays of dominance).

 

 

^i^

On Bullying: just walk away?

protesting injustice, The Messages,

Bullying is an element of the 5/3 Communication/Power chakra mirror, where our action or inaction down in the third chakra, relating to power and control, is a reflection of a blockage up in the 5th chakra, relating to communication and silence. An open heart causes an open 5th chakra, indicated by respect-based communication which is then reflected down in the third chakra as the Power of Service. In this space of love, we serve humanity by communicating our desire for other people’s happiness.

 

 

Another element of the 5/3 chakra mirror from an open heart is protesting injustice and objecting to abuse of power. Bullies use words as weapons to threaten and attack because they feel compelled to assert dominance and leverage control (a compulsion which is caused by a closed heart and the inability to feel love). Openhearted people use words as tools to serve with love. Bullies often stop just short of physical violence because they know that would be illegal, but will use words as weapons just as cruelly. Forgiving them each night and pre-forgiving them each morning is an excellent way to act as the conduit for the healing power of love. And, we would ideally follow the act of forgiving or pre-forgiving with our own courageous objection of any injustice bullies would attempt to perpetrate against us. The BEST action to take, when being bullied, is to take out your cell phone camera and begin to film the person. I encourage any member of our society who is being bullied, no matter how young, to speak up, to be brave, and to protest injustice. Film yourself saying to the bully, “Please, leave me alone. I am asking you directly, to please leave me alone.” Keep repeating this request, over and over and over and over.

 

 

Many of us were taught by our Boomer and Gen X-er parents to “just walk away,” and ironically they were actually teaching us to do exactly what the bullies want. And what is it they want? To know that they can simply say the word and phonetics alone will cause another human being to move! Think how much physical energy it would take to pick up and move another person. The bully effects this same outcome using only psychic energy, via psychic, emotional, and verbal attack.

 

 

Other tips for dealing with bullies are …

  • when in the presence of the bully, to request & receive love from the other person’s guardian angel and your own guardian angel
  • when in the presence of the bully, to give the forgiveness prayer silently (“Please, God, let me be healed of all pain and sadness and filled with Love, let ______ be healed of all pain and sadness and filled with Love, and please don’t let ______ hurt anyone else the way s/he’s hurting me by bullying me.”)
  • to join in prayer with the guardian angels of all bullies anywhere in the Universe for their healing and happiness (“God, I join in prayer with the guardian angels of all bullies at my school and anywhere else in the Universe for all of them to be healed of all pain and sadness and filled with Joy by the Power of your Love.”)
  • to pre-forgive each morning with the Circle of Angels (“God, I join in prayer with the Circle of Angels that perpetually surrounds the Earth and envelops it in a cocoon of divine love: please let everyone on Earth be healed of all pain and sadness and filled with JOY by the power of your Love!”)

 

 

Now you may be asking,

 

Why would we want to desire the happiness of someone who has hurt us instead of their punishment?

 

There’s a logical reason for forgiving (also defined as desiring another person’s happiness not because they have earned it with behavior that has earned it, but simply because they exist, that is to say, to love them the way that God does, for no reason) and that is that forgiving people heals them and fills them with God’s Love. And people who can feel God’s Love don’t hurt others. Why not? Because they no longer have any desire to. In this way, forgiving not only heals people, it causes the prevention of future pain of the same nature.

 

 

Finally, let’s remember here that people talk to others the way they have been spoken to, especially by their most dominant and most present authority figures, usually their parents, whose energy resides “up in” the 5th chakra of communication. In other words, the bully almost definitely has a bully parent. Imagine having to go home to that after school. It makes neglect sound like a day at the beach, no? (Okay, a cold day at an overcast beach ….) So after you forgive the bully, you might add a second prayer for the healing and happiness of the bully’s parents, who undoubtedly use words and weapons, and possibly even fists and weapons as weapons. Their kids are doing at school and in life what they learned at home.