Justified Resentments -- Murdering Our Selves

Resentment -- a poison we take, and then wait for the other person to die .....

Anger tells me about my pain and separation -- unpresence -- not about the ultimate truth of what is .... or what should be ....

In unpresence, everything -- every relationship, every life event, and every perception becomes tinged and contaminated by gangrenous resentment -- and shame - unpresent ....

My need is to be constantly improving my conscious contact with my God -- especially when my ravenous disease of humanness is engaged in the self destruction by conscious present resentment and rage ....

For example, Hitler killed millions of Jewish people .... and millions and billions continue to kill themselves with resentment .... maybe Hitler killed more people by having people destroy themselves -- after he no longer had the power to kill their body .... dunno ....

Very sad - grief -- what are we losing in our "righteous indignations" .... justified self murder ..

I Think Therefore I Am NOT -- Experiencing Daily Inspirations

Two phrases are frequently used in our culture: “I think, therefore I am” (Descartes) and “Think before you act (or speak).” In my experience, both phrases seem to reflect a misguided wisdom.

We “think” with the cerebral parts of our brain – reason, learn, decide, judge, believe – all are cerebral thought operations. And the assumptions are that they are the higher mental functions of our brain, and therefore they are the “rulers” of our neural activity and consciousness. Nice fantasy, but totally contradictory to real life. Alcoholism and addiction alone totally blows this apart – as well as codependency, PTSD, and gambling addiction – and even typical human depression and anxiety. Thought has no significant effect on serious dependencies and emotionalmental disorders.

Yet thought is worshipped as the God of humanity who controls and can control any problem and challenge a human being might face. In the end, humanity becomes severely crippled, injured, diseased, and generally self destructive. At best, thought is a powerful mood altering neurochemical that suppresses and anesthetizes brain pain cells. At worst it becomes the excuse and justification for massive harm and abandonment of others.

Thought operates at the discretion and direction of the primitive limbic brain. The primitive limbic brain does not reason, learn, decide, judge or think anything. Its function is to monitor and control the neural energy levels of the brain as a whole. And it does so in minute increments that have no real consideration of long term consequences. Hence, “insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results” is really untrue. The primitive limbic brain is only monitoring and controlling on short impulses of time and results. So repetitive actions produces the “desired” and anticipated response. It is not dealing with long term effects.

Relationships are guarded and protected from intimacy and true closeness because it would make the brain so vulnerable to explosions of neural energy – energy- in motion (emotion) – when the intimacy and closeness results in rejection and abandonment. So human brains are attracted to others who have similar levels of ability to be intimate and close in order to protect our brains. Relationships are like xray scanned images of where our brains are and what they are really unconsciously seeking. There are really no mistakes – just cerebrally unexpected and undesirable outcomes.

Perhaps, we could rephrase these phrases as follows:

1. “I think therefore I am” – I consciously experience my self in God’s Presence and therefore I am becoming more and more my Self.
2. “Think before you act (or speak)” – I will experience conscious contact with myself and with my God before I act or express myself with others.

Experience involves consciously feeling the energy frequencies that our brain constrictions are causing – numb, angry, scared, sad, lonely, guilty, and ashamed – and connecting with a higher Presence who can bring levels of manageability back to our brains and lives.

When we are tempted to think, let’s take a few deep breaths, and let our God help us experience consciously the emotional and spiritual wholeness of who we really are.

Love Lived -- Finding Presence in Daily Inspirations

The paradox is that looking for love is not the way to find it. Abundant love will find us when we make the decision to attentively and unconditionally give it to all the people God has invited to share our life. Our primary purpose is to know and give love.

In God’s Care

Much more can and will be said about love and loving, but for now I want to conclude this present series with something fairly simple – yet very powerful – to me.

To me, love is an unconditional acceptance, and sometimes even an enjoyment of others enabled by my conscious contact with my God. It is limited by the severity of my “humanitis”, but restorable by reestablishing and improving my conscious contact with my God, with my self, and with others.

So we decide that we “want” to love. And we are realizing our powerlessness over loving – that our relationships have become “unmanageable” –frequently or periodically uncomfortable. We experience consciously our own weaknesses so we can consciously experience our God’s empowering Presence to love. And now we are ready to surrender our wills and our lives over to care of our God’s love by loving others. What do we do?

For twenty-five years I have journalled – very nearly every day. My journaling began in a very troubled time of my life, with an assignment by a minister counselor to write a letter to God. After we had read and discussed it, he said, “Now I want you to write a letter from God to you.”

I was amazed at the assignment – and even more with the experience. I had never listened to my God in that way before. And from that time to now, I have written – journalled – to my God – my feelings, and my thoughts, and my reactions and my questions, and then I have taken a few deep breaths – listened with my heart – and began to write what I heard Them "say". It has been very powerful in my life.

One word that I have heard thousands of times over those years from my God was “Listen!” Our relationship – my conscious contact with Them – has been built on attentive listening as an “act of faith”. Listening – not really to just words or thoughts – but to Their loving caring Presence – Their still small voice in the middle of massive avalanches and sunamis of emotion and human consciousness. I have learned from Their listening to me how to listen to Them, to my self, and how to listen to others. And I have been loved, nurtured, supported, and cared for by my God. They have taught me, I believe,
the highest expressions of unconditional and conscious love – intimate Presence – that I am currently capable of.

As I was sitting in my spiritual group this morning, I was listening to Them, and They reminded me of four types of love-listening that I have given and been given:
1. Simple physical presence and visual attention.
2. Mental presence or listening to and hearing the others thoughts.
3. Emotional presence or empathically listening to others feelings through the medium of my own feelings.
4. Spiritual presence or listening to others from a place of conscious intimate connection with our God, with ourselves, and with other human beings.

When others are listening to me, I experience an heightened level of my God’s loving Presence – and theirs. When I am listening to others, I experience the same, and also an intuitive use of silence, words, and nonverbal gestures to communicate our presence.

Maybe along with any Valentines, cards, flowers, etc… maybe we can add the loving gift of an attentive ear, and a listening heart – not just on this particular day – but everyday – and with – nearly -- every person in our lives.

“Sincerely touching the soul of someone else can tap the well of happiness within each of us.”

Each Day a New Beginning

The first duty of love is to listen.

Paul Tillich

Love Found -- Finding Presence in Daily Inspirations

For Part One, click here: Love Lost

(This is my experience, strength and hope. Please do not misunderstand the energy or passion of my words to indicate any level of authority – except perhaps about my own experiences, strength and hope.)

The Journey Begins
Imagine for a moment, that we are on exploratory expedition, with the intent being to find a strange new place called “love”. Where would we look? What would be indications that we were close – or far away -- from our destination? What resources would we use to find clues and directions? Who could we turn to for help?

We could “Goggle” the internet using the word “love”, and \we would find many, many links to sites dealing with the subject. We would find tons of information and stories about, and descriptions of “love”. And I believe we could be no where closer than we were before.

Maybe the place to do an “internet” network search is in our own hearts.

Following our Hearts
Let’s start our pursuit with the consciousness that love cannot be found by or in our brains. It can be only be experienced in an area called our “hearts”, and then shared – experientially – through the medium of words and thoughts – which must be experienced also. Using our brains to experience and pursue love is like trying to see a sunset with our ears – it is not the medium of perception that can be used on sunsets.

Where Is Love Hiding?
There are several places where love becomes hidden:
1. The Trees of Distraction: what most people, including myself, have interpreted as love is the relief we have felt when a relationship distracted us from ourselves – partially anesthetizing our senses. Relief from the conscious or unconscious pain of being human and being separated is most frequently perceived by humans as “love”. In romantic relationships, for example, opposites attract because they distract.
2. The Forest of Intimacy: when relationships have gone on long enough or gone deep enough, the inebriation caused by the initial distractions of the relationship begins to wear off, and we begin to experience increased consciousness – and historical unresolved pain and fear. At this point, our brains conclude that the closeness and connection is not real or acceptable, and initiates a relationship destruct sequence.

So if real love is not the pleasurable feeling of relief from others distracting us; and if true love improves our conscious contact with ourselves to the point that we can experience overwhelming unhealed, historical pain; and if our unconscious brains are programmed to protect us from the pain of increasing consciousness with others, where are we left in the pursuit of love.

A Different Place
My first spiritual adviser taught me relentlessly page 417 in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous as the basis for relationships, living, and love:

And acceptance is the answer to all my problems today. When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, thing, or situation – some fact of my life -- unacceptable to me, and I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing , or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment. Nothing, absolutely nothing happens in God’s world by mistake.

The writer later describes the effects of acceptance on his relationship with his wife.
His emotional illness had caused major disruption and disturbance of his perceptions and reactions – to the extent that the beautiful person he had married had become perceived as a flawed and unacceptable person. In his disturbance, he had judged, rejected, and abandoned her – he had lost his inner place of “love” for her.

As he began to heal with improving conscious Presence with his God, he was given a “new pair of glasses” – he was restored to his truer self, and in that experience he rediscovered the wonderful person he had met and loved before – and more.

In learning to live in unconditional acceptance, we begin to realize that acceptance is the truest “location” of love. And it is only possible when we are personally and consciously connected to our God’s unconditional acceptance -- love – of us. The new pair of glasses is beginning to see others – and ourselves – through Their eyes. We are all wonderful, exciting, and perfect in Their perception – and They know all our secrets – even the ones we don’t know.

A GPS Prayer

God, grant me the Presence to accept and love others without their having to change, the Presence to be changed by your acceptance and love, and the Presence to know the difference between love and distraction. Amen

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Love Lost -- Finding Presence in Daily Inspirations

The paradox is that looking for love is not the way to find it. Abundant love will find us when we make the decision to attentively and unconditionally give it to all the people God has invited to share our life. Our primary purpose is to know and give love. In God's Care

As human beings we are looking for love – frequently, “in all the wrong places” – but we are still looking – because we are really so incredibly alone. The complexities and detail of modern culture with its blasting medias, ultra- virtual video and computer worlds and with its frenzied and pulsating artists of entertainment –have created alternate universes of numbing irrelevant thought—a culture no longer dependent on chemicals to be stoned out of our minds.

We are separated and alone – disconnected – and basically stripped of the emotional and spiritual securities of any real Presence that would enable us to unconditionally offer and receive loving connections to others.

So – alone, in this massive darkness – we humans tend to grope for any fleeting brushes with warmth and human presence – finding that every rose of hope has thorns of disappointment and ultimate abandonment.

The obstacles, in my experience, are the absence of clear experience of what “love” is, the inability to maintain a steady and conscious spiritual Presence beyond physical form and sensation, and the confusion about what human relationships are really about.

Our culture seems to use the term “love” with unconscious ease – as if everyone knows and has agreed on what it means. As I have listened to my own inner voices, and the inner voices of others, I have heard the word mean everything from “I like you” to “I need you” to “I will like you if you will give me what I need”. It seems to be used like a magic word that should somehow immediately create closeness where none to little actually exists.

It is seemingly a word of attempted mastery over the stifling darkness of separation, and over the emotional starvation for human and spiritual Presence. For me, without my God’s higher Presence, human presence has been only a mental fantasy, a legend or a fairy tale. But what exactly does “loving Presence” mean? Where and how does it exist? How do we find the invisible in the blinding glare of what is only visible?

Love seems to be an attempted mastery over increasing human consciousness – the feverish awareness of past and impending abandonments by others, our selves – and seemingly by God. We “fall in love” as a moth is drawn to a flame – we are starving for intimacy and become filled with the euphoria of distraction – and are finally burned by loss of the beloved delusion.

When consciousness blinks briefly into existence on the screens of our minds, we shut it down with the most convenient and available distractions we can find. And we are powerless to stop – the genetic programming of our primitive, reptilian brain is simply doing its unconscious best to protect us from harm and pain. We have no conscious choice.

Disconnected from the “loving” and caring Presence of our God, we are damned to incredible separation and loneliness – wandering the darkness and silence of human existence – attempting to hope for and experience a “love” that does not ultimately destroy and maim our human hearts – even more.

See Part Two.

For article, for other articles, click here: Part Two: Love Found. and Love Touches Hearts.

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Will Wass and Kathy Thomas Family Holiday Greeting and Pictures to our Friends

Inside Pictures ......

The "Legendary" Dr. Kathy Thomas

Every year, every day from Thanksgiving to New Years, Kathy wears a different Christmas outfit collection, including blouse/shirt, pants, ear rings, watch, other jewelry, and more and more frequently hats and antlers ..... her patients and friends love to see her outfits .... the spirit of a season she lives all year round .....

Speaking of antlers .....

Barbie Christmas Tree

"We" -- Kathy -- goes to the Barbie convention every year .... she has a huge collection of Barbies......

Hopscotch, one of Kathy's cats .... about 20 pounds of playful attention seeking affection .....

Hopscotch and Sweet Pea .... Kathy isn't home enough for them .... or anyone else

Kathy got an new car after over 16 years ..... Accord Coupe with 6 speed transmission .... doesn't "let" me drive it ....

Kathy loves to dress up for Halloween .... this outfit is very "mild" compared ....

Kathy's new house is almost finished .... beautiful Victorian

Kathy looking for antique furniture at Architectural Salvage ....

Antique furniture .... needing to be arranged ....

Antiques .... Joe Ley's

Kathy and new granddaughter, Nancy ......

Kathy's dad, Ron, was Mason of the Year for Kentucky .....

Kathy and her mom .....

Kathy and her dad .....

Kathy's parent at Grand Chapter ......

More Pictures and Information to Come ......

The grandkids got new pajamas last Christmas.

Granddaughter Becca inspecting mommie's belly, where Baby Nancy was sleeping.

The "family" after Nancy was born.

I get to hold Nancy for the first time.

Becca loving her new little sister.

Snowden Family Christmas Picture:

Dana (daughter), Billy (son-in-law), Mandy, Nancy, Eva. and Becca


Becca and Papa

Becca and Ally enjoying playing pool. Just threw this picture in.

Son, Chris and granddaughter Ally -- chips .....

Daughter-in-law, Debra, making Princess Castle Cake for Ally's birthday ..... amazing ....

Grandson, Jake .... Dr. Jake, maybe .....

Grandson, Luke .... nice that Legos can bring smiles on birthdays .....

Grandson, Levi .... the loving and attentive big brother of his little sister, Ally ......

My cat, Sammy, likes the laundry basket ....

Eva and Mandy (granddaughters) saved up their money and bought a trampoline so they can do their gymnastic stuff ....

Tiggers are not the only ones who bounce (Winnie the Pooh)....

My parents .... Elma and Willie .... our whole family loves Chinese food ....

For over 25 years, I had a mustache .... my two oldest granddaughters, Eva and Mandy remember this, and got me this doll/puppet for my birthday .....

More pictures to come .....

Becca glows the light of Presence ..... loving Presents of self .....

From the Depths of My Selves -- Rebirth and Daily Inspirations

“Each night a new layer of my “onion” becomes exposed and begins to peel away .... by morning I am consciously experiencing rips and tears within my self – pain and fear – shame and separation – as more of my past becomes current in my present .... fortunately, I am not alone – They are with me .... and each day becomes rebirthing into presence of those I left behind ....” My Journal (October 3, 2010)


Motions –
crisscrossing, repeating,
over and over the surface and depths of my mind –
energies exploding, then rippling upward and across
from the buried depths of what cannot be found or remembered.

Silence creeps unexpectedly across shallow pools
beyond and into deeper and deeper depths of selves.
Waiting , expecting,
knowing that something, someone,
will again touch the hidden triggers –
explosives –compressed, constricted,
volatile energies of selves
forced to remain while others continued forward and beyond.

Darkened depths,
cold currents of fluidly controlled space,
time wandering restlessly the surface above,
dangers seem imminent,
like walking tight ropes
above precipices of racing raging falls –
balance and unbalanced –
waiting for a shifting current of selves
and blinding flashes of sight, sound and feeling,
as more and more of me
rips their way to the surface of my mind.

Removing Movies From My Mind - Poetry and Finding Daily Inspirations

Stepping across aisles,
another row of seats
filled with memories, the “selves”,
the forgotten ones –
deeply abandoned parts of who I was to become ....
Hidden in the darkness –
the cinema that I believed was my life –
projected images, drama, sadness, silence,
hope, flights of happy relief,
suspended in dangles of questions
and contrived answers.
My life now staggers with Their revealing truths –
the vagueness becomes clearer,
the movies of my imaginary living are ending abruptly
and I must follow Their lead –
deeper and deeper
present with in my self,
Their comforting Presence –
hands, hearts touching,
closeness and beyond closeness,
Their quiet voices introducing me
-- more and more to “me” I have forgotten,
reminding me of Their present love
and my helpless past.
I experience massive waves of regret and fear –
And wonder --
wondering
if the stupor of the screen’s fabricated images
were not maybe a “better” way to go.
So much to re-experience.....
So much remains.
In our Presence together.