Tag Archives: Patch Adams

As the Kaleidoscope Turns

Definition of kaleidoscope: 

  1. an optical instrument in which bits of glass, held loosely at the end of a rotating tube, are shown in continually changing symmetrical forms by reflection in two or more mirrors set at angles to each other. 
  1.  a continually changing pattern of shapes and colors.

I’m applying this definition, as I see things differently every day, to a conversation between Joe Rogan and Bret Weinstein. It went like this:

Bret Weinstein: The problem is, the folks who have been loyal democrats, who will “vote blue no matter who,” need to wake up!

That party has been captured by something that is not interested in the well-being of the country, of the West, of the citizens. It is time for them to go.  

Personally, I think RFK Jr. is the solution to this problem. I don’t know that anybody can solve the problem of the capture.  

Joe Rogan: Can he win? Is there a pathway that he could become the president?  

Bret Weinstein: Yep, there are multiple pathways. That said, do I expect it to go that way? I think we all need to start thinking differently. 

I think we need to recognize that the capture of our system is such a profound threat to the well-being of the country. to the future of our kids and grandkids, that whatever needs to happen for us to come together and usher those people out in favor of something that is at least just not part of that plan has to happen.  

So as far as I’m concerned, the best shot we’ve got is Bobby Kennedy.

Now here’s the interesting essence I picked up on. Let’s explore its implications.

The democrat party has been captured . . . . tacitly, by covert operatives pushing a globalist agenda. This poses an existential threat to humanity so urgent that we must come together to overcome it.

Bobby Kennedy is our best shot for defeating the globalist agenda. However, we all need to think differently about how this can be accomplished.

His conclusion echos the words of Einstein, to which I often refer:

We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive.

Yep. The problem is that serious. It calls for a quantum solution. Perhaps given the larger commitment to saving humanity from the globalist agenda, Trump and Kennedy need to set aside personal differences and join hands, perhaps across the public and private sectors.

It’s critically important to note that while Bret sees Kennedy as the solution, he does NOT say that his being president is the solution. Though Kennedy is our best shot, it isn’t at all clear how that will play out. We have to keep our minds open to other possibilities, be willing and able to think differently about solutions.

WHAT IF the proper path for Bobby to follow is NOT the path which killed his uncle and father?

While I agree with his publisher and friend, Tony Lyons, that RFK Jr. is by far the most authentic, courageous and knowledgeable candidate, standing head and shoulders above everyone else in the field, I have to ask: Why waste him in a draining, debilitating campaign just to land him in a role that might just destroy him?

Why not, instead, let him serve as a leader the private sector where his virtues/shinning attributes can best manifest, lead to successful outcomes, be used, expressed freely, without resistance/conflict/obstruction.

Consider the possibility that it’s far more likely possible for RFJ jr. to complete the legacy of his father and uncle in the private sector than in the public. 

Let me tell you what I’m envisioning, how the kaleidoscope looks to me today.

I’ll divide my observations in two parts. First, why the political route isn’t best, and second, why the private sector path is filled with positive potentials. It depends on cooperation, of course . . . the “we all” piece of Bret’s comment.

For starters, there’s no overnight solution. Because, in 2024, there is no sufficient base of supporters to effectively implement a Kennedy agenda.

If RFK Jr were elected president in 2024, he would find himself (much as Trump was) surrounded by jackals –political hacks who Yes him to his face, but secretly use him for their own personal reasons.

Presidency would be a nightmare. Subordinates, all schooled in the fragmented paradigm, themselves internally pulled apart in multiple directions, would continue to give superficial compliance and support, while covertly going their own directions.  

Removing individual representatives of a dying paradigm who are each fighting for their lives inside deep state bureaucracies would be a horrendously difficult job. Negative. Punitive.

Rather than punishing pseudo-leaders who are really symptoms of a deeper problem, why not go after the problem itself? The real problem is the obsolete paradigm — the pervasive, culturally conditioned mindset of hollow, incomplete empirical science.

RFK Jr. deserves better than to be hemmed in on every side by the political demands of a presidency. Let him be a free actor, a truly independent leader and visionary accomplishing something truly worthy of him.

Let him start small, building one exemplary intentional community where all the health goals he advocates – clean food, air, water that he advocates are implemented. Not by law and legislation, but by positive action. Let it be organized around leadership based on merit, not big money and hardball politics. 

Let it be located not in neither extreme, East or West coast, symbolically as well as physically in the Center of the country. Let the intentional community be a center of light in a dark world, far away from the corruption of Washington, DC. The capitol city is a swamp. Relocate to a place of sanity and wholeness, literally centered in heartland the United States.

I recommend central Wisconsin for its location, for all the reasons that OA chose it as most likely to survive long-term from disasters, both natural and man-made, safe from possible tectonic plate shifts, tsunamis, volcanoes, earthquakes and even predictable paths of fallout from atomic attacks – all taken into account. 

Let this community demonstrate with how-to examples, a model for other communities to follow. Look to the precedent set during the last dark ages, where monastic communities both in Europe and China (think Shaolin) served as centers of healing, hospitality and light (as well as mutual self-defense) in an increasingly dangerous world. 

But let Bobby work hand-in-glove with the federal government led by Trump, doing things government isn’t suited to do. Let him devote his time/attention/energy in this creative, positive direction rather than wearing himself out doing combat with the deep state from within the government.

Concurrently, let him spearhead a School-Without-Walls which he uniquely has the reputation and clout to draw sponsors. Let it be an interdisciplinary school designed to build the next generation of leaders in every field of endeavor, intended as a quantum solution to the current, deleterious leadership gap.

A School-Without-Walls would recruit qualified mentors from all walks of life. They would advise self-responsible students in designing tailor-made, purpose-based programs of study. Students would be given access to whatever learning resources — academic and experiential — necessary to achieve their unique learning goals, and earn a degree as proof of competence.

Increasingly, small cohesive intentional communities will become the real power bases, with the role of federal government being to be to support and be supported by them.  

And at every incremental step along the way, let every mentor and student in the School-Without-Walls dedicate themselves serving the community with integrity by quantum standards — meaning whole, integrated. Let this new generation of leaders approach problems from unity consciousness, with wholeness objectives.

Civil War

In a video titled Adamus St. Germain REVEALS About 2024 ELECTIONS & The Coming FUTURE WAR it is foreseen that the U.S. is so polarized that whoever wins the presidential election, it will only be by a small fraction of the votes. And If Trump wins, there will be riots the same night in the streets of major cities, as prelude to possible civil war.

Is imperative to foresee and forestall the globalist, intentionally polarizing dynamic that would lead to civil war. And beforehand, as a matter of mutual survival upon which most can agree, let’s restore sanity and genuine unity on all sides. Community interests must prevail over strife between political parties.

In a public-private pact between Kennedy and Trump, let there be mutual agreement that it’s a top priority to call out deliberate, self-serving provocations to unnecessary civil war and proactively move to overcome that danger. 

There’s potential danger in Trump’s declaring that when elected, he’ll attack and deport illegals. It invites a backlash from the very minute he’s elected. It’s a mistake to let Illegals believe they have nothing to lose, and everything to gain by tearing the country apart, in an effort to prevent deportation.

To soften that threat, emphasize possible opportunities to assimilate the honest workers among them onto the land in intentional communities. Downplay enmity to illegals (versus the real problems: Cartels, leftists allowers, etc.). Offer a ray of hope. Keep a lid on the potential for explosive backlash. 

As a back up, have a strong presence of National Guard at the ready in the large cities and the most endangered rural areas. Put potential rioters on notice that they are well advised to desist. They can’t get away with rioting. Quite the opposite. They’ll be quashed from the get go. 

Possibilities

  • Attach to the +A intentional community a healing center based on the model of Patch Adams’ Gesundheit Institute. Make an end run around the for-profit alliances amongst insurance providers, pharmaceutical corporations and large hospitals to render the drug and surgery-based allopathic medical model obsolete. 
  • Let Kennedy and Simon Parks along with his international Connecting Consciousness community join ranks. Share resources, information, savvy, clout, and influence to achieve similar ends. 
  • Bring Elana Danaan onboard. Include in curriculum as basic what she has to teach about our place in the universe and our kindred intergalactic brethren. 
  • Invite Elon Musk onboard as a participant, advocate and financial backer of the School- Without-Walls. 

Conclusion

When I recall the quotes which sum up JFK’s vision and the legacy yet to be fulfilled, the vision he described could just as easily be fulfilled through service in private sector as in the public realm. Perhaps better.

JFK said:

I look forward to a great future for America — a future in which our country will match its military strength with our moral restraint, its wealth with our wisdom, its power with our purposes. I look forward to an America which will not be afraid of grace and beauty, which will reward achievement in business or statecraft, which commands respect through out the world not only for its strength, but for its civilization as well. 

Had he not been murdered on the day of its scheduled delivery, JFK would have delivered the words of this speech:

. . . our duty as a Party is not to our Party alone, but to the nation, and indeed, to all mankind. Our duty is not merely the preservation of political power but the preservation of peace and freedom. . . So let us not be petty when our cause is so great. . . .

This link between leadership and learning is not only essential at the community level. It is even more indispensable in world affairs. Ignorance and misinformation can handicap the progress of a city or a company, but they can, if allowed to prevail in foreign policy, handicap this country’s security. In a world of complex and continuing problems, in a world full of frustrations and irritations, America’s leadership must be guided by the lights of learning and reason . . .

But, in today’s world, freedom can be lost without a shot being fired, by ballots as well as bullets. The success of our leadership is dependent upon respect for our mission in the world as well as our missiles – on a clearer recognition of the virtues of freedom as well as the evils of tyranny. . . .

We in this country, in this generation, are – by destiny rather than choice – the watchmen on the walls of world freedom. We ask, therefore, that we may be worthy of our power and responsibility, that we may exercise our strength with wisdom and restraint, and that we may achieve in our time and for all time the ancient vision of “peace on earth, good will toward men.” That must always be our goal, and the righteousness of our cause must always underlie our strength. For as was written long ago: “except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.”

Rethinking HOPE

hope

Paradoxically, the following Essay on Hope compliments the one on Death shared in The Phoenix Response. Tellingly, it reflects beliefs significantly different from those held by my grandparents, Ellie and Hubble West. It might explain, at least in part, their experience of old age.

Nor is the subject merely academic. As I currently face unanticipated health challenges, like many baby-boomers of my generation, I’m being challenged to face and rethink my personal survival expectations.

I’ll explain all this at length later. But for now, here are my earlier thoughts on Hope, for your thoughtful consideration.

Essay 63. HOPE

That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of Glory, may give unto you wisdom the spirit of and revelation in the knowledge of him:

The eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints,

And what is the exceeding greatness of his power to usward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power. . .

— St. Paul, Ephesians

Here the people could stand it no longer and complained of the long voyage; but the Admiral cheered them as best he could, holding out the good hope of the advantages they would have. He added that it was useless to complain, he had come [to go] to the Indies, and so had to continue it until he found them, with the help of Our Lord.  — Christopher Columbus, Journal of the First Voyage

We live at a particularly perilous moment, one in which self-deception is a subject of increasing urgency. The planet itself faces a threat unknown in other times: its utter destruction. . . The splitting of the atom, said Einstein, has changed everything, save how we think. And thus, he observed, “we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.” — Daniel Goleman, Vital Lies, Simple Truths

We are seeing a health care system in pain, people in pain, and a world in pain. I believe that something can be done to make it better. — Patch Adams, Gesundheit!

THE FRONT

Webster’s defines hope as a feeling that what is wanted will happen. It’s a desire accompanied by expectation. It can mean that which one has a hope for. It can mean a reason for hope. A meaning listed as archaic is to trust or rely.

In I Ching context, hope transcends short-sighted wishing and emotional wanting. It is a trust that one has the wherewithal to respond appropriately to every change of fortune. It is not total self-sufficiency, but awareness that one’s efforts are met half way. When one does the best one can, the rest is supplied in the right way, at the right time.

Daniel Goleman emphasizes the direct relationship between honest self-awareness and survival. Like Einstein and like Strauss and Howe (authors of The Fourth Turning), Goleman is a messenger of awareness we’re often trained to block out.

His vision accords with The Book of Change philosophy in this: ignoring dangers, deceiving ourselves that all is well when it isn’t, doesn’t make problems go away. It only renders us powerless to recognize early warning signals in time to prepare and ameliorate the worst that might come.

In The Fourth Turning, Strauss and Howe emphasize that declining resources will necessitate major changes in healthcare delivery. Anticipating that the cost of health-care will continue to rise and become increasingly unaffordable, they recommend that cost-effective, affordable alternatives along the lines of Adams’ work be put in place now.

Forward-looking health practitioners are therefore now turning to inexpensive, preventive self-maintenance practices like Tai Chi, Qigong and yoga.

There are hidden benefits to timely austerities. Though it is unfortunate that people see fit to return back to self-responsible methods only as a last resort, if the prospect of hard times returns people back to their more simple and beneficial roots, it is a (however well disguised) blessing.

In his epistle to the Corinthians, St. Paul wrote of hope in the context of faith and charity. His hope isn’t Webster’s hope of wanting and expecting. Like I Ching hope, it is trust that human events which make no sense in the short-term fit into the larger pattern of life, and that God’s will inevitably in the long-term prevails.

THE BACK

The opposite of hope is despair. Seeing one’s situation as hopeless is a self-fulfilling prophecy. So long as one places hope in externals, one feeds the illusion of powerlessness. Turning the focus of hope inwards makes all the difference.

Self-deception is a perversion of hope. Lacking a concept of cyclical change, linear thinkers hope to control time. They defy the aging process or pretend change can’t or hasn’t happened rather than adjusting and benefiting from new opportunities that arise to replace the ones which pass away.

Rethinking COMMUNITY

For years now, the same familiar pattern repeats. Whenever I decide I’m finished with writing, something comes along to make me rethink my decision. Two such events triggered today’s post. One was a thought-provoking article, “Mindfulness, Behavior and Social Change” by Mark Leonard, Director/Mindfulness Trainer at the Oxford’s Mindfulness Exchange.

I responded with a question: I’ve often thought about the possibility of building intentional communities, despite the evidence that experiments in the past have not always worked out well. Any thoughts on the subject?

In fact, I had mentally sketched but not followed-through on an article about intentional communities based on my connection with Spring Green and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin Fellowship. It was an example which, for many important reasons, I would not recommend following.

He replied: I suspect an intentional community needs a suite of conditions including contemporary analogs of functions which hold traditional societies together. I think that mindfulness meditation could play a part here.

The basic axioms listed in The Positive Paradigm Handbook are my recommended contribution to this cohesive foundation. They were fatally lacking in the Spring Green experiment.

Coincidently, these axioms were the reason for accepting an invitation from Swami Narasimhananda to submit an article to Prabuddha Bharata, a journal devoted to the social sciences and humanities started by Swami Vivekananda and in continuous publication since 1896.  [See When Conflict Escalates, What Can Be Done NOW? ]

Timing being everything, I had decided a few hours earlier to list them there in the context of rethinking leadership, family and community based on timeless wisdom traditions.

My interest is based on the observation made in The Age of Heretics (Charles Krone) that when chaos enveloped the civilized European world, monasteries appeared during the dark ages as islands of purposeful community — centers of learning, healing and hospitality. Similarly, monasteries of refuge from barbarism appeared in Asian lands during particularly harsh historical times.

This dynamic seems highly relevant today, for, as Mark Leonard details in his article, the world is surely sinking into another dark ages. Intentional communities may once again become the necessary counter-balance of positive change — the means for ensuring human survival, which, as Einstein warned us, can no longer be taken for granted.

So for starters, from Conscience: Your Ultimate Personal Survival Guide, here are my original thoughts on community. It forms a hopeful basis for rethinking intentional communities. Although my frame of reference for thinking about the dynamics of change is the Chinese Book of Change, resonance with the immediately popular mindfulness movement will be immediately apparent.

globe

Essay 14. COMMUNITY

We can create communities and relationships that are based on love and intimacy rather than fear and hatred. We can learn from the suffering of others. Awareness is the first stage in healing. . . Likewise, we can create a new model of medicine as we move into the next century that is more competent and cost-effective as well as being more caring and compassionate.” — Dean Ornish, Love and Survival

As we accept the smallness of the world, the density of the population, and the myriad influences on individuals and families, someday we may recognize the community and even the whole society as the patient. Imagine, then, what a “doctor of society” might do, what kinds of diseases he or she might treat!” — Patch Adams, Gesundheit!

Each celestial body, in fact each and every atom, produces a particular sound on account of its movement, its rhythm or vibration. All these sounds and vibrations form a universal harmony in which each element, while having its own function and character, contributes to the whole.” – Pythagoras, quoted in The Healing Power of Sound 

THE FRONT

Community stems from a root word meaning fellowship. In English, the word refers to all the people living in a particular district or city. It can also mean a group of people living together as a smaller social unity within a larger one, and having interests or work in common, such as a college community.

Alternatively, it can refer to a group of nations loosely or closely associated because of common traditions or for political and economic advantage. It also covers similarity of tastes and preferences. The last definition Webster’s gives is the condition of living with others in friendly association and fellowship. The last definition has come full circle back to original meaning.

Communities are founded on a common cause. It can be as practical as survival or idealistic as freedom. Often, community cohesion is artificially stimulated by fear and hatred of a common enemy. Hitler inflamed passions against Jews and foreign bankers to mobilize his war-weary country into a second world war even more devastating than the first. Then Americans rallied behind the common goal of defeating enemies of democracy on two fronts, Asia and Europe.

In Common Sense, Thomas Paine wrote about the relationship of divine, natural and human law in a way that inspired readers at the time of the American Revolution to fight for freedom from tyranny. Winning that war did not, however, automatically secure freedom for all times. Democracy isn’t a static achievement that can be passed on unchanged from one generation to the next. It must renewed and earned again, one individual at a time, each generation at a time, continuously redefined in the context of immediate circumstances.

Nor can the structures of American-style democracy be imposed by force, whole, from the outside, on peoples whose beliefs are shaped by vastly different cultural influences. It is the common respect of life and liberty, not external forms, which is universally translatable. The music of life that moves every organization, smallest to largest, is the basis of harmonious fellowship. Approaching natural law and social organizations from the deeper understanding of the ancients could inspire a new, more humane and effective approach to international relations now, one based timeless values which the human community shares in common.

Sages say that freedom from tyranny begins with dispelling ignorance and overcoming negative emotions. True freedom and stable communities begin with the self-awareness and self-mastery which can be gained by diligent use of wisdom tools like the I Ching. First remembering the core of compassion and caring within, we can then extend and expand this good-will into healing society as well.

Put another way, it’s useless to fight for a democratic world before one cleans out the inner swamp of negative emotions. Since inner life projects into external experience, fighting tyranny in the turmoil of anger and hatred reaps results in kind. Therefore, working to establish positive community relationships before attitudes of good-will and willing self-discipline are established is a futile exercise. As Covey reminds us, first things must come first.

Conversely, the more individuals free themselves from personal problems, the more they become open to the calling to community and able to play their part in the harmony of the natural whole.

THE BACK

Street gangs, terrorist groups, religious cults and secret societies are subgroups within the larger community. To the extent that their goals oppose and even endanger the community at large, these organizations are antithetical to the general good.

Pariahs, nomads and outcasts [heretics!] are individuals excluded from society, either voluntarily or by edict. Whether justified or not, their attitudes and behavior are out of harmony with accepted norms. If enough of them find common cause to band together, they form alternative groups which become the foundation of new communities.

globe bullet size

Rethinking HOPE

New years are traditionally welcomed as a harbinger of fresh hope and the opportunity for new beginnings. In these perilous times, I have searched my heart for the most realistic approach to fulling the eternal hope for love, unity and survival which everyone everywhere shares in common – a way that acknowledges escalating world challenges while balancing them with their inherent potential for renewal.

Because it rings true as the vision of realistic hope, I have chosen to return to this simple essay, written in the year 2000, included in Conscience: Your Ultimate Personal Survival Guide.

May your New Year be filled with the blessings of your dearest heart’s desire.

121714 rose

ESSAY 63. HOPE

Ephesians

Here the people could stand it no longer and complained of the long voyage; but the Admiral cheered them as best he could, holding out the good hope of the advantages they would have. He added that it was useless to complain, he had come [to go] to the Indies, and so had to continue it until he found them, with the help of Our Lord.  — Christopher Columbus, Journal of the First Voyage

We live at a particularly perilous moment, one in which self-deception is a subject of increasing urgency. The planet itself faces a threat unknown in other times: its utter destruction. . . The splitting of the atom, said Einstein, has changed everything, save how we think. And thus, he observed, “we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.” — Daniel Goleman, Vital Lies, Simple Truths

We are seeing a health care system in pain, people in pain, and a world in pain. I believe that something can be done to make it better. — Patch Adams, Gesundheit!

THE FRONT

Webster’s defines hope as a feeling that what is wanted will happen. It is a desire accompanied by expectation. It can mean that which one has a hope for. It can mean a reason for hope. A meaning listed as archaic is to trust or rely.

In I Ching context, hope transcends short-sighted wishing and emotional wanting. It is a trust that one has the wherewithal to respond appropriately to every change of fortune. It’s not total self-sufficiency, but awareness that one’s efforts are met half way. When one does the best one can, the rest is supplied in the right way, at the right time.

Daniel Goleman emphasizes the direct relationship between honest self-awareness and survival. Like Einstein and like Strauss & Howe (authors of The Fourth Turning), Goleman is a messenger of awareness we’re often trained to block out. His vision is in synch with The Book of Change philosophy in this: ignoring dangers, deceiving ourselves that all is well when it isn’t, doesn’t make problems go away. It only renders us powerless to recognize early warning signals in time to prepare and ameliorate the worst that might come.

In The Fourth Turning, Strauss and Howe emphasize that declining resources will necessitate major changes in healthcare delivery. Anticipating that the cost of health-care will continue to rise and become increasingly unaffordable, they recommend that cost-effective, affordable alternatives be in put in place now. Forward-looking health practitioners are therefore now turning to inexpensive, preventive self-maintenance practices like Tai Chi, Qigong and yoga.

There are hidden benefits to timely austerities. Though it is unfortunate that people see fit to return back to self-responsible methods only as a last resort, if the prospect of hard times returns people back to their more simple and beneficial roots, it serves as a blessing in disguise.

In his epistle to the Corinthians, St. Paul wrote of hope in the context of faith and charity. His hope isn’t Webster’s hope of wanting and expecting. Like I Ching hope, it is trust that human events which make no sense in the short-term fit into the larger pattern of life, and that God’s will does in the long-term prevail.

THE BACK

The opposite of hope is despair. Seeing one’s situation as hopeless is a self-fulfilling prophecy. So long as one places hope in externals, one feeds the illusion of powerlessness. Turning the focus of hope inwards makes all the difference.

Self-deception is a perversion of hope. Lacking a concept of cyclical change, linear thinkers hope to control time. They defy the aging process or pretend change can’t or hasn’t happened rather than adjusting and benefiting from new opportunities that arise to replace the ones which pass away.

globe