Seeking Asylum is the Tenor of Troubled Minds in These Times
I dream of a compassionate community that sees self interest as best interest. The real insanity is not understanding this as always someone knows better than the group. As a market analyst I learned that there was always common sense in the group. The real insanity in my view is disconnecting from what makes us human, what makes us feel happy and that sense of value. Self determination, empowerment, positive praise, love and kindness and community are the balms that sooth tensions and will generate productive exciting communities that will more than survive, they will thrive. When they lose that sense of democracy or shared power, they then experience the poverty of disconnection, this is the real insanity. It is never true. We are all equal and together great things can happen. We are the ones who create poverty and equally we are the ones who can create abundance, much depends on how we think and feel and whether that is integrated in a balanced and healthy way. Mental illness is really disconnection from self love and feeling like a victim with no choices. I know many that may fit into that category and they deeply suffer. Yet we can create a different form of leadership, one that truly serves and extend that to all members of a community, each can be leaders. It is a question of people taking themselves in hand and deciding what they want as a group. Loving approaches are the most effective, they rise above self interest and bring everyone along. My hope is we can move from mental illness in all its forms to a compassionate society where those fears do not arise, and if they do, we assist one another as a group or individually in loving service to each other.
When I was with Patch Adams in Saint Petersburg, Russia this is what he said in his speech:
“…If you really want peace and justice, really want Presidents and world leaders and a world that survives, you got to hear that people think you’re great, know you’re great and get to work. Get articulate about it, Great does not mean greater than, it is not a comparison or competition, everyone is great, most people give it up or never see it. Not one of you isn’t great diagnostically. Without operating from a base of feeling you are great, you’re not going to be able to do your dreams for peace and justice, you will be mouthing them, got to get articulate…
In a love revolution the money and power revolution operates with a very few people and wanting to lessen that number all the time. And they lead through money and power over model from the beginning of recorded history. The love revolution will never lead from the few to the many. A revolution where everyone is the leader. No one will feel like a ‘not’ leader. This trip was lead. How you make a group of people that are completely diverse and different, don’t speak the language, within 24 hours make them feel part of a team, is a made thing. If you are interested in learning about leadership I can talk to you. The main way it happened is in the people you chose to work with. The MIR team, individual people, exposing you to Maria and her team choosing the five of us who lead the trip. All that made this experience happen, it did not happen by happenstance, happened by direction. Not happened by me ordering things around, it happened by you taking yourself in hand and deciding on this trip to be loving, to be a group.
Since 9/11 I’ve been asking my audiences, “What is your love strategy?” we know the revenge, fear, violence strategy. People go into the twin towers blow up, lets blow up Afghanistan, boy was the country behind it. Did anyone in the Pentagon say, you know it’s never worked, violence has never worked in history, I wonder how love would work on it.
So I started to ask: “What is your love strategy and how are you implementing it?” This trip is a love strategy. It is manipulated to give you two weeks to see what regular day to day loving and service would be like. Ladies and gentleman these are average, it becomes special in a world of loving money and power. These are average days in a loving world. A bunch of diverse people, don’t even share the language, really having fun with each other, looking after each other of all ages. We have the first nine decades represented here. We have people who don’t speak the language, people watching me not knowing what I am saying. [Patch points to non-English speaking clowns] They are sitting here absorbing something.
We don’t have a lot of time. You can’t be wimpy about being loving, if you like this, you made your part. No-one here made your part in it. If the whole is great [it is] because each one made their part. You can learn it. Learn how to go into an elevator and make the love revolution right there. Walt Whitman was a revolution, Einstein was a revolution, most revolutions have been non-violent. The love revolution is not going to have a violent anything. You notice when you watch people speak last night about loving. What happened, how it happened, your own role in it, how you might carry it on. It was created by leadership; a different kind of leadership. A simple way it is called is servant leadership, have the people leading work harder than the other people. Again, I’m saying these things partly because I have my own concerns about how long humanity can last…”
The poem (below) I wrote was inspired today as I felt troubled about the times we are in and the lack of love I witness as emotional disconnection. Poetry is my refuge and it eases my troubles as I seek for inspiration to lead me to another way of seeing. It is interesting I am working in a building that was the old asylum. I find it interesting that it is now a university, a place where the mind is used often to the exclusion of how people really feel. The latter is seen as not as important as one’s thoughts. Yet great confusion arises through the thinking mind and it is often our feelings that can guide us to truth. The philosophers of old were often both intellectuals and poets. The advantage of this was integration of both forms of intelligence and an ability to rise above the confusion. I find poetry the best way for me to see through our troubled times.
Enjoy.
SEEKING ASYLUM IS THE TENOR OF TROUBLED MINDS IN THESE TIMES
Patch Adams believed his negative thoughts,
And sought refuge in an asylum,
For those deemed insane,
Robin Williams believed his negative thoughts,
And sought refuge in escape,
To return from whence he came,
Yet one chose to live each day in positive service,
The other chose a sombre service as one way,
As he couldn’t escape his thinking,
When alone.
La Trobe was a former asylum,
Where many believed their negative thoughts,
Mont Park institutionalised those deemed insane,
Mental illness was locked away for fear of incurability,
Yet troubled minds need not be locked away in pain in a physical prison,
For many are suffering psychological injury beyond bricks and mortar,
Typecast as normality behind closed doors that no longer value
shared humanities.
For what is sane or insane in a troubled world?
Where democracy is only in voting,
But not where we live or work,
Where directives rather than real choices are edicts from above,
Rather than democratic consultation from below,
Thus ‘as above so below’,
All can share perspectives of what they know,
For the betterment of society,
For this was how power was checked by community,
Some call the unity of the commons,
or common-unity.
I see the bars outside the windows,
I contemplate those unseen from within,
I wonder at the ghosts from the past,
Many unresolved issues in darkness with no light,
As mental illness knows not harmony,
As beliefs become the tormenting jailers,
Fears project shadows on psychological walls,
That see to divide and conquer,
Rather than conquering what is denied,
Facing the shadow with understanding,
By questioning unquestionable theories that bare no standing,
Upholding power and prestige as a label,
Suppressing equality and humility at the table,
Masking vulnerability is the underground cable,
Unseen as the message sent,
Realising the gods must be crazy,
As the mask of civility disconnects from reality,
Masking economic rationality as the real ‘incompleteness theorem’,
Disbanding humanities from rationalism,
A chimera doned for the good of nationalism.
Funding cuts engender scarcity as the real poverty mentality,
That brooks no challenge,
Insecurity keeps heads down behind walls,
And stress breeds fear and anxiety that bodes not a well-spring,
Anti-depressants keep the dragon from the door as the bell tolls,
Life becomes re-moat and detached as each performs their role,
Not desire to feel anything is the unspoken catch-phrase,
For as we feel and emote,
Vulnerability opens the door of defiance,
Suppression quickly becomes the call to silence,
As many seek asylum by not rocking the boat,
And this becomes the breeding ground for psychological disturbance,
Reverberating from one to the other in observance,
A silent collusion,
A collision of solutions,
Masking the real confusion about democracy,
That knows but dares not act,
Repression becomes the fact,
For to get the sack or a redundancy package,
Cannot weather the storm of reform,
An intellectual leakage decoupled from tenure becomes the norm,
The comedy becomes tragedy,
As the tenor of these times.
The real mental illness rocks back and forth
reciting the same economic mantras
decoupling trade from the right to be human,
Hence to build real community creates the real immunity
to unchecked power
as a non-renewable source.