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A thought storm

A thought storm today, my friends: my readings tell me there’s company in this storm, and I’m glad. The implications astound me.
Consider that we are a nation devoid of leadership today and suffering greatly in the resulting turbulent void. Might it be that we, the common people, can, and indeed must, find the power to manage the collapse of the executive branch of our government – the power to restore its integrity. Could it be that we’ll find the needed integrity in the third, judicial, branch? Are we perhaps finding it already? Look at the judicial rulings that oppose the POTUS these days.
Consider, too, that progressive displays of executive misbehavior are frank displays of a wish to be removed from the position of POTUS. After all, it is quite clear that he did not expect to get elected. Well, we made a mistake, and yet, because we can learn from our mistakes, it is appropriate that he be relieved of the job… without animosity, but with compassion and forgiveness. And let us look at ourselves with the same compassion and forgiveness, learning a vital lesson of what it is to be a human being created by the same Source that created the Universe, which includes Mother Earth and her children.
Combine the power of the people, supported by those who know law, and trust them with the power to trust each other to steer the ship through the turbulent waters to a caring, creative, interactive way of governance that works for the good of all.
Won’t we be able to find a form of democracy already known to those who were here when the fair-skinned people sailed in from the East? And wouldn’t today’s self–governing small groups like H.O.P.E. Groups and twelve–step groups find a home in the legendary creative way of working out of unanimity as the Native Americans have done for centuries… passing no law unless it has the 100% approval of the legislative branch of the government?
I am of a mind that this is our future, once we have found our way out of the dark forest that threatens us with our own fear, guilt, anger, shame, and rage; the healing of which is love? Can we simply pray for and meditate on this and ask the Great Spirit to keep the world together a while longer? Is a Purification not coming… a Unification? Are the Purifiers not among us already… as Unifiers?
Just thinkin’….

War brings no good to anyone

War brings no good to anyone, unless one wants to believe that enriching a cabal of warmongers is “good”.

Yesterday was not only my wife’s birth day, it was so-called “Veterans Day” that honored all who had served in the armed forces of this country. In our family, we always went out for dinner on that day, but yesterday, we ordered our food at home and drove to our restaurant to pick it up. The server who brought it to us asked if I was a veteran, and when I told her that I had served in the US army for three years, assigned to an army hospital in Germany during the Vietnam conflict, she said, “Your meal is free.” I was honored to hear those words.

I had enlisted in the army in 1960 to be assured that I would not be drafted to work in a dispensary, but to serve at the end of my general surgical residency training as a general surgeon. I did not serve in combat, but I was on “active duty” and I got to see military life from the inside out. I also got a lot of second hand experience from serving military types who had been in the Vietnam combat. I felt very upset by the stories of murder that I was hearing… the sources of terrible PTSD… and when my obligatory service period ended, I was relieved to know that I had no reserve obligations; so I resigned my commission.

Shortly after returning stateside, I found the position for a staff surgeon in a fine, country hospital in rural Maine. I served there for 19 years, during which time I was introduced to the human development work of Earl Nightingale who taught me the power and value of knowing the effects of “attitudes” on one’s life. Several of my patients were Quakers, and because of my spiritual interests, they invited me to become a member of the local Friends (Quaker) Worship Group.

I was born into a Christian Science and Episcopal family. When I was six, I was given a copy of Marguerite de Angeli’s 1940 book, “Thee, Hannah”, which was a story about a young Quaker girl meeting an escaped slave in pre-Civil War Philadelphia. Through that book, I learned that Quakers were pacifists also known as “Friends” and that they believed that there was “that of God” in everyone.

As Life would have it, I was advised to seek admission to the Quaker College, Haverford College. They accepted me, and the next four years were rich in the Quaker way. In addition, my parents joined a summer vacation resort in the Pocono Mountains that had a strong Quaker background. I became active in the local Quaker Worship Group and soon requested invitation to join The Religious Society of Friends. My request was accepted, and I was thereby given the opportunity to develop a rich appreciation of peace.

In 1990, I found the rich Tibetan Buddhist practice of Tonglen, a practice of compassion that prayerfully offered the means to let suffering become peace. I had grown up with a lot of anger that I struggled to “control”. The struggle ended with Tonglen, which altered my body chemistry gently and beautifully.

Along with yesterday’s gentle offering of a free meal earned by being an army veteran, I experienced a precious synchronicity that brought home all thoughts and feelings leading to be a participant in the work to end war. I opened my computer to find a post from yesmagazine.org that brought home all the thinking and experience of our need to practice peace… to become peaceful inside regardless of what is happening outside. I encourage you to open this link and see what veterans are saying about war: https://www.yesmagazine.org/social-justice/

Blessing thoughts come and abide, Ken

The “novel” coronavirus

The “novel” coronavirus is, most certainly, an extremely threatening micro, micro, micro pathogen. There is a perception that this is a part of universal evolution that we need at this time. I do not wish to debate this point, but I do wish to point out something that happened for me and my wife yesterday.

As you are aware, our point – to – point movement that is so dependent on fossil fuels is incredibly curtailed at this time. We are staying home and figuring out how to teach virtually all curricula: grade school, high school, college, and post-graduate. We are eliminating large classrooms and lecture halls full of people who can contaminate each other with that thing we call the “novel” coronavirus. Those of us who have wisely decided to put a 2 metre space between any two of us can talk without the protection of a mask over nose and mouth. If we use such masks, we can get closer to each other without fear of infecting because the fabric of the mask traps the particles. I have insisted on these two methods working whenever anything in H.O.P.E. takes place if Skype and Zoom cannot be used.

What did I just say? Our close communication using electronic means makes it possible to stay at home, not burn any fuel, and get to see each other face-to-face.

There are concerns expressed about the third means of communicating beyond voice and micro gestures – consciousness! What we know about consciousness is it does not depend on space-time for communication to take place! Has anyone ever met a telepath? I had a distant cousin who had grown up in England, emigrated to Canada, but maintained constant non-verbal communication with his mother still in England! I know others who have communicated telepathically and it has been shown that that telepathic communication takes place instantaneously. Hmmm.

I needed to tell you this because I’m aware of the changes in communication today due to the novel coronavirus.

Yesterday evening, I witnessed something else. My wife and I were curious about the comet, Neowise, wondering if we could see it from our home in rural Maine. We saw that it was to be visible in the northwestern horizon after sunset yesterday. Our sources in the Internet said that the comet would not be visible without telescopes or high power field glasses. That was fine, because we had just such a pair of field glasses. We drove to a place where we could see the entire northwestern horizon and started looking for the Big Dipper whose visual presence was near the comet. We had to wait until virtually all of the light of the setting sun had disappeared and, strangely enough, a cloud appeared in that area preventing us from seeing the comet. So I drove the car a 10th of a mile south, giving us a clear view of the Big Dipper. I let my wife out so I could go and park the car while she looked. As I opened my door, she cried out, “I see it!” I looked in the direction at which she was pointing and there it was – the tail was fully visible to the naked eye, looking like a long tapered cloud. Using our field glass, we could focus on the point and there was a spot of light… the body of the comet.

The thing that struck me was the fact that I had read in good authority that the comet would not be visible to the naked eye. Wrong! To us, it was fully visible to the naked eye! “How come?” says I? Could it be because there was less fossil fuel residue in place up here in Maine between me and the comet Neowise?

I shall leave you with that observation and question, and invite you to consider what the “novel” coronavirus presence implies for our future. The comet will be visible tonight, and I would love to hear from anyone who goes looking for it with and without field glasses.

Evolution

Isn’t it about time we ended the violence?

Revelation: the Uncaused Cause has been revealing itself to us continuously. We have evidence in the cave drawings of what can well be said to be revelation of The Source because they are graphical representations of our curiosity about the Mystery. They go back 30,000 years. It was not until about 2,500 years ago that we developed writing, relying on the comments of a campfire to tell the stories of the tribe including its mystery stories. And let’s be clear about this: the Judeo–Christian–Islamic Bible is full of mystery stories… and that is just great.

I consider it to be tragically naïve to assume that The Source stopped revealing Itself to us humans 2 1/2 centuries ago. Why in the name of all that is holy would such a behavior take place? Might it just be that we human beings – at least the children of Abraham – believe that revelation stopped when we stole the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge from The Source. To my way of thinking – today – I cannot believe that The Source would deny Its holy children anything of Itself. Rather, I believe that revelation is essential to the evolution of The Source, Itself! For me, therefore, Albert Einstein’s fascinating theories of relativity, Beethoven’s fifth Symphony, and the Hubble telescope are all a part of the ongoing revelation necessary for the evolution.

We have only been able to understand that the whole universe has been evolving since the first spectrographs of stars came into the hands of Edwin Hubble in 1929. Albert Einstein saw in his general theory of relativity that the universe was not static and it stunned him so he modified it so the universe would be static. Hubble called him out and Einstein admitted to “the greatest blunder” he ever made in his life. What are the implications of this discovery? This has occupied the minds of brilliant people the world over ever since… not just a few, but millions of brilliant people – people who have access to the creativity of human minds as manifest in measuring equipment that can chase down the implications of Hubble’s 1929 discovery. The greatest implication here is that evolution is a fundamental quality and function of the whole universe!

With what we know now, our solar system is 4 billion years old. Moreover, our universe – and who knows how many other universes there might be – has shown us that it is something short of 14 billion years old! In other words, the evolution of the universe took ten billion years to create our solar system. It took one or two billion years to create the first bacterium, and we did not come on the scene in any form until a million years ago, and it would take 800,000 years before the first modern humans walked. Consider this… The universe has evolved itself into us! Consider this… in early 1933 it evolved itself into the first strand of my DNA. Consider this, too… I have been evolving ever since… and so have you.

And none of this is a random, accidental process…. It is a process that arises out of a field of consciousness that has no dimensions and comes to know itself by manifesting itself in a physical form: you, me, my children, that apple tree, the ocean, the fish in it, the Earth, the moon, the solar system, the galaxy, the galactic cluster – all of it, and the more it creates, the better it gets to know itself.

So consider the tremendous variety in human life… it’s not a mistake… we’re all here together… and the Universe needs us to help it evolve; so let us voluntarily put an end to the violence by getting involved in peaceful, compassionate, caring, and respectful non-violent creative dialogue. After all, we have known for centuries that “we become what we think about most”.

(A note about that quote: it came as the first part of a three-part “gift” from Earl Nightingale in the 1990’s that comprised a Formula, a Goldmine, and a Word. What I quoted above was the Formula. Earl said it was common to all spiritual traditions. The Goldmine was the mind that does the thinking. The Word was attitude, the key that opened the doors to the rooms of the mind. Nightingale taught me that attitudes are always chosen, and the attitude that I am using today gets reflected back at me by the universe – a “law of correspondence” – and I can change it in the blink of an eye.)

The Malignant Ego-mind

Helping us remember who and what we really are: spiritual beings immersed in the human condition.

I would like to share with you the thoughts that arose as I considered the implications of Easter in the Christian tradition. I got an Easter greeting from an old friend of mine and his lovely wife. He and I have shared some very rich experiences – some painful and some comforting. Here are two of the opening thoughts they shared with me:

In this real life horror movie in which we are living, we know there’s a vicious creature we cannot see. But – because it is not causing any symptoms – it can secretly be living in anyone who is near us. Equally frightening, we know this virus can suddenly – without any of us even being aware – fly into our lungs & kill us.

This is the horrible Good Friday merry go round ride on which we are all stuck. Nobody knows when it is going to stop, but Everybody knows that the triumphant positive energy of Easter comes next.

I offer you an image for your thoughts… the name for that vicious creature you (we) cannot see… “Wetiko”, a thought form that is pure evil. The word comes from the Cree people and has a couple of analogues in other eastern tribes. Paul Levy translates that into “Malicious Egophrenia”. If you’re like me, “ego” is just what you think it is, and “phrenia” means “mind”. The Eastern Natives saw that the coming of the pale ones from the East was the arrival of a devil in disguise with a nice song but murder in its mind. “Wetiko” stands for humans and their institutions that mindlessly destroy Mother Earth and her children…. Look at our leadership….

I have been rereading a lot of Paul Levy’s thoughts, and I realize that I learned much from him and my cousin Pat – a respected Jungian counselor – quite a few years ago. I have carried this ego-mind concept in my mind in “guiding” 5,000-odd H.O.P.E. Group meetings where many people have surrendered to powerful egos, either their own or somebody else’s. So, I take the twelve-step concept of ego and use their acronym, “Ease God Out” from the word that means “I”.

I was shown years ago that the ego needs the love and compassion of the spirit that shows us that my “I” is part of a spiritual collective known as “We”. Dreams have shown me that my ego – my secular, DNA-related part of me – does not know why it was created, but my soul – my “higher” spiritual self – does know why it is here, having occupied other “human animal” bodies through their lifetimes before this one I’m living today.

I am of a clear mind that Jesus of Nazareth knew that he was taking on the Wetiko of society and he knew that he would have to give up his human body in order to start the healing metamorphosis. And the struggle goes on in the Amazon forests and in the minds of Monsanto and in a lot of what we call “politics” and even “medicine” today.

This is, indeed, a remarkable time in the life of humanity, and we might even sense a gratitude to COVID-19 for clearing our polluted air and our fearful minds.

Thank you for your thoughts, and the opportunity to re-examine those thoughts that I have just shared with you. If a dialogue grows out of this, so be it. I welcome it.

With much love, Ken

“egophrenia” means, literally, “I–mind”… as “schizophrenia” means “split–mind”. And I invite you to join me in an appreciation of who or what is actually in charge of – “minding” – my life.

I had a cousin who was a natural “guide” for people looking to make some sense in their lives. She found this talent when she was working as a clerk in a large Montreal department store that was across the street from a junior college, and the two were connected by a pedestrian bridge. My cousin, whose education had been interrupted by World War II, decided to finish her college education by crossing that bridge to classes of her choosing. Her fellow students turned to her for her counsel, and a visiting lecturer encouraged her to study the work of C. G. Jung.

She spent two years at the Jung Institute in Zürich, Switzerland polishing her natural skills and came back here to take up a counseling practice in North Carolina. Through her, I found a deep appreciation of what “ego” was all about… it was much more that just the Latin word. I had several dreams that led me to a rich appreciation for my ego: The first was a dream of me being at the wheel of a large, ocean-going freighter – the “captain” steering this “ship of life” named “Kenneth Hamilton” crossing the “ocean of life”. Not knowing what course I was traveling became a problem when I grounded the ship on a reef. Angry, frustrated, I heard a door open behind me admitting a stranger into my bridge.

To my “Who are you?” he replied “I’m the captain of this ship. I came here with the ship’s manifest under my arm, knowing where the journey was headed, with all ports-of-call, including the final destination where we’d run the ship aground to be recycled under your direction, and I’d take the ship’s log to Source in gratitude for the journey it had given me. You’re the first mate-navigator of this ship and we are to work together to get it back on course and headed home.” Ego agreed.

I had another dream in which I was standing at a work station in my home, using my computer to do some creative work, when I was suddenly aware of a hand with a pointing ego-finger waggling in my face, and a stern voice saying, “Don’t do anything stupid now!” I knew it was my ego, and it had come through patio doors from a deck, and it was time for me to ask where it lived. It showed me its quarters in my house. I knew that this part of me was the same as the ship’s captain… my spiritual director… my soul.

I’ll close this post with the reassurance that I have been shown through many dreams and studies that, as Peter Kingsley says in the closing pages of his masterwork, “We are immortal” and we have had these lives promised to us since the beginning of time, some 13.7 billion years ago. We are not accidents but products of a Divine Imagination, and we are here to help It evolve.

We have been hustling along subject to intense manipulation by a malignant egophrenia that is the natural progress of our evolution. I am being so bold as to advance an idea that I got from the passionate creative human, Paul Levy… the First Nation people in the central and eastern regions have a name for what Levy calls “malignant egophrenia”… “Wetiko”. Look and listen to the world today, silenced by the novel coronavirus. Is it not giving us cause to go within and find our spiritual nature? The skies have cleared so we can see the beauty of Earth. In the silence, we stop our violent ways. Is this not the deeper reason that Life has brought us this humble virus?

The H.O.P.E. Group Opening

As I said in the introductory blog, and, as most of you know, I am devoted to the health of the world in which we find ourselves. I do it by “keeping a H.O.P.E. eye on the world…” I write these blog posts to express my thoughts of concern about our human condition. I share my 30+ year experience with helping people “get on with their lives” by participating in H.O.P.E. “Attitudinal Healing” support groups.
Here, I present the thought of how the “H.O.P.E. Group Opening” actually guides a H.O.P.E. Group meeting; for in H.O.P.E. Groups we build images of ourselves that relate to what goes on in the world around us. We open every H.O.P.E. Group meeting by reading a three-page pamphlet H.O.P.E. created in 1993 called the “Goldbook“. (Clicking here will give you a .pdf copy of it.)
It comprises the ten lines of the “H.O.P.E. Group opening”; the twelve “Principles of Attitudinal Healing”; and lastly the ten “H.O.P.E. Group Guidelines”. The group participants take turns individually reading one line at a time, going around clockwise. At the end of the meeting we recite together the “Serenity Prayer“.
I offer this to everyone curious to know more about the Goldbook: I shall add a short description of each phrase in it every week.

    The second line of the H.O.P.E. Group Opening is “We come together to find wellness” and here is its summary description:

Wellness is more than a goal… it is an intention, and that goes beyond a “goal” because it has no final line to cross. Rather it is a guidance for a life without a specific end… it crosses the end-line in any goal-setting, opening into the true riches of a life’s potential, riches that do not need to be related to money.
For me and for H.O.P.E. Groups in general, that “wellness” refers to that spiritual essence of being human… being “well” which is synonymous with “wealth”. That, in turn, is a “state of being” which contains that wealth.
I have always derived much pleasure out of exploring the question with anyone expressing a concern about the “why” of their life.

The Rainbow

A fascinating true story first given to H.O.P.E. in 2010 by a family member who was present to the second rainbow in the post. It was published with permission in the H.O.P.E. periodic newsletter, Ripples, on July 10 that year. It is a stunning account of aspects of reality that keep on happening in my direct and indirect experience. I love the mystery, and it is my intent to remind readers that the Mystery is…

The bow is a covenant between God and man that never again would the floods come to wipe out the human race. This is the story of a rainbow that may have something to do with that covenant.
In June, 1970, a woman died in a single car accident in Maine. Her two-year old daughter was thrown clear of the car and soon found by the occupants of another vehicle who noticed signs of the accident. They noted the time on the dashboard (analog) clock of the wrecked car—12:30 (p.m.).
The woman’s family was vacationing in Switzerland at the time, and as day-long rains ended that same afternoon, they saw a rainbow of such intensity that they felt it had special meaning for them; so they noted the time…6:30 p.m. (When one adjusts for the time zone difference, the times are the same!)
The family heard of their daughter/sister’s death early the next morning and returned to this country. On the flight back, her brother wrote this poem:
What a shame to lose my sister,
a fine woman and mother, and a part of me;
It rained all day the day she died,
and then a rainbow did appear.
It was a full one and beautiful to see:
It seemed to link everyone together
as if to say that no matter
how miserable the weather, or how
depressing or terrible things may
seem, there is always a rainbow
or a ray of goodness for us to see.
She has done so much for me and
other people-hundreds actually.
I could always see that goodness.
That beautiful rainbow that meant
so much to me.
She made people feel like people
and never was a mean word spoken.
Not many individuals such as she
could understand and make people
so happy.
Isn’t this the ray of goodness I’m
talking about?
How fortunate that is still
alive to carry a part of that rainbow
along.
It’s really not so sad or depressing
if you just remember what she has
been. Maybe she filled that Rainbow
from end to end.
And if that’s so, isn’t it time to
start over again?”
At her memorial service, the minister read that poem, moving everyone to tears. After the service, the family and friends gathered at the family home on the shore of one of Maine’s loveliest lakes.
Suddenly, an intense, brief summer shower came through, leading some of those present to comment guardedly about the possibility of there being a rainbow. The brother who had written the poem was quite upset by the idea and felt compelled to look outside. He returned a moment later, quite beside himself with emotion, and said, “There is a rainbow! Come and see it; you’ll not believe it!”
The rainbow was indeed there – right in front of the house! In order to see it, they all crowded onto a floating dock which settled ankle-deep under their weight. The rainbow appeared to rise with breath-taking intensity from a rock on the shore not twenty feet from where they stood. It did not change at all for many minutes, holding everyone in awe.
The silence was broken by the cries of the little daughter whom they had left in the house in her crib on the second floor. She was standing in her crib, pointing at the rainbow, and crying out, “Mama, Mama!” In stunned silence they listened to her cries. Her maternal grandmother was the first to speak, saying, “Now I know! Now I really know!” And in that moment, all the others knew, too.
Just then, the rainbow started to move away, disappearing from sight in but a few moments!

A Contentious Election in Irrational Time 2nd ed.

We are experiencing a contentious election in irrational time. I am a Depression Baby and I remember the contentious irrational behavior of the 1930s that led to a disastrous war. I am seeing much the same today, and I recognize a common pattern that goes back thousands of years. The only problem today is that wars can become nuclear, wiping ourselves off the face of the Earth. It would seem, too, that we are using other ways of wiping ourselves off the face of the Earth. What is going on? I strongly sense that we are being asked to evolve rapidly out of the industrial revolution into a time of creativity and service at a higher level than we have ever known, collectively. [continue reading…]

Keeping a H.O.P.E. eye on the world…

As most of you know, I am devoted to the health of the world in which we find ourselves. I do it by “keeping a H.O.P.E. eye on the world…” I write these blog posts to express my thoughts of concern about our human condition.

I am fascinated by the whole concept of “archetype” as models of our human behavior. I owe a debt to C. G. Jung for his study of archetypes as expressed through a beloved cousin of mine who was a Jungian analyst and therapist. She taught me to look for and find the archetypes that any human being might be serving.

When our current president started his moves into his candidacy, I saw the wounds of Narcissus in his behavior towards other humans of both genders. There was a lot of talk about narcissism in this man, and I wanted to be kind and compassionate toward him; so I was patient with life… as Life has taught me.

Earlier this year, I was loaned a copy of a book by Kurt Kaltreider, PhD, called American Indian Cultural Heroes and Teaching Tales. (Hay House Inc, 2004) Fully half of it was devoted to an archetypal “trickster” of Lakota legend that was used by the elders to help the youth learn the Lakota way of acting “honestly, generously, and in a good way.” I saw that archetype in our leader, and felt I needed to look no further to see what caused his tendency to do harm. On May 15, last, I wrote the blog, Iktomi and Narcissus.

I waited on posting what I had written… because I do such things at times. I was reviewing some publications I had created for H.O.P.E. and came across this quote from J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring :

“Frodo: I wish none of this had happened.
Gandalf: So do all who see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to do is decide what to do with the time that is given to us. There are other forces at work in this world, Frodo, than the will of evil.”

IMHO, we have entered into a time in which the will of evil seeks to dominate our human condition. It coincides with natural forces that have the potential to be destructive. I would add that native prophecies speak of this time as a time of purification… a time of great suffering. As I study those prophecies, I see the potential for relief of that suffering. Because it is my core passion to help people get on with their lives, I devote my 40-plus years of H.O.P.E. experience to helping us see the way through this challenging time.

I submit this blog to your scrutiny and commitment to do what you can to help ease us through this challenging time. Should you wish to make a comment, your thoughts would be welcome at Ask Us. Thank you.