"Earth"

How can we ever hope to place our life-giving biosphere before our own greed, comforts, and addictions if/when we can't even honor our Mother with a designation connoting respect and honor. We capitalize all other names--even the names of storms and hurricanes as well as those of mountains and oceans--but we can't even humble ourselves for fear of feeling the shame of admitting to our place within the Circle of Life by capitalizing the name of the Mother of us all:  Earth. 

This or That with No In-Between: The Binary World of Absolutes We've Been Herded into

Ones and zeroes. This and that. Here and there. Mine and theirs. Us versus them. Nationalism. Religion. I have to admit to feeling a bit disappointed at the insidious sway of "black and white" thinking to which our American population is succumbing. Absolutes are very hard to come by as most everything is on a spectrum, yet the number of people who have been brainwashed into thinking in terms of "one or the other" with no in-between is truly alarming. But, then, the creation of this Game of Earth-based of Human Existence has set in motion some amazingly inventive means to ever-deepening the deprivations we can experience through the use of the Illusions of Cosmic Creation and the infinitely variable perceptions of "reality." I thought addictions were a great addition to the game's strategic bag of tricks but the expansion of consciousness and understanding of psychology of the Ego and its resultant refuge in the growing lists of "mental health" dis-eases and issues has been nothing short of remarkable. 

The success of depraved tactics like these have made me bored and disgusted with the Earth-based Human game--which is why I shall be leaving soon . . . and not returning. 

A "Kid-Free Zone"

What if we could create a haven, a "place" in time--a Kid-Free Time Zone--in which we did not have to be, or feel responsible for, our adult children? What would be wrong if we tried to recreate those spaces of time that existed before the introduction of the cordless phone, before the advent of email, before the hostile takeover of the smart phone, before the invention of electricity and/or the telephone itself! What if we could declare sacred a time period in which our dependencies from and to our poorly adulting children could be suspended, in which we could feel free, if only temporarily, from the instantaneous demands (perceived as "needs") of our less-than-thriving children. What might that do for our own personal sanity?

     Taking care of oneself with some undisrupted "me-time" certainly couldn't be a bad thing. What if you had a job that discouraged--or even prohibited--personal calls (and texts!) or cell phone use during work hours? Why not create a similar kind of bubble or "time zone" in you life, say, weekly, or, (why not?) daily? It might be the best thing you could do for A) your child's skills of autonomy and self-reliance and/or B) your own psycho-spiritual health. Co-dependency is hell!
     You can prep your kids by saying to them, "You will survive. And, if you don't then, so be it: We're all on the same relentless and inexorable trajectory with death. Besides, even if Your human bodymind is unable to figure out how to survive this crisis, You will survive. The real You will just retreat to that Place of Origin that you imagine, and the rest of the world will go on."

So, why not do your self a favor!