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Sunday thoughts as we head to an election…
Rosemary and I dropped off our ballots yesterday. We mutter about our effect on the Presidential election…Maryland is far from a “swing state” so our votes for President get lost. They will likely be two of millions more that Kamala receives over Trump Nationwide. But those millions may not matter if swings states go a different way by a few thousand votes.
How did we get here? I journaled the following a couple of days ago as part of my continuing quest for answers to hard questions like this one.
Blog post for 10/27/2024
For the most part men are shit; this is more observation than judgment. We can’t help it; we have not been taught any better. We have been raised in and are part of a patriarchy that has lasted at least 5000 years, 200 or more generations. That is a long time, a lot of conditioning, indoctrination to overcome. It is deeply seeded and rooted, and it is self-perpetuating; it propagates through humanity as an unrelenting plague would. All of our institutions support this propagation and sustainment.
There has been some small progress over the course of the last hundred years or so: women have risen to prominence in many fields once dominated by men. But this progress has been small and slow, and it has been throttled and stymied at every turn. The Dobbs Decision is a case in point where progress in women’s rights over their own bodies has been stopped cold. And the men who would want to stop all women’s progress are still in powerful positions; they have too much, through greed and the perpetuating patriarchy, power and resources.
The election of Kamala Harris to the Presidency of this country could have a hugely positive impact on progress toward equality and freedom. This would have a worldwide impact, but is it possible? I can hope it is possible, but the opposing forces are strong. The money don’t want this to happen. The powerful men don’t want this to happen. And their influence is broad and deep.
How do we overcome 5000 years of power and prejudice? It is not clear to me, despite my hope, that there has been enough time to create a lasting shift. Even if a miracle sees Harris rise to the White House, remember the reaction to the election of a black man in 2004 and 2008. It was fierce; it created MAGA.
I hold out as much hope as I can muster.
I am blessed with this hope and positivity.
All the best for all of us!
My Message from the “Divine Feminine” on October 15, 2024
Rosemary held a “Conversation with The Other Side” on October 15 and I got a message I’ll be working with for a long time. It actually does fit with this blog and at least some of my intention to start it many years ago.
First, here’s the message:
Rosemary: All right. Another poet, another writer another creative. I’m hearing: Just do it. But I also am seeing a future-self asking for something from you, asking for it to come out. It’s not… It may not be a future You. It’s somebody from the future who is saying they want to have study groups to work with the material that you’re here to bring in.
Richard: Yeah.
Rosemary: If you would bring it in, please. And so, sitting on it doesn’t help them in the future. So they’re really asking you to write your poetry, bring your poetry, bring it into books, write books, write blogs, get material that comes through you. You’re one of the… I’m hearing pioneer elders. It’s like a different kind of an elder and the wise man and you it’s like time is running short for you to get everything downloaded that has to come in.
Richard: I know.
Rosemary: So can you please get it downloaded and out, download and out, download and out. That seems to be another theme from tonight. Download it and get it out. Okay. And it may not look the way you’re planning in your head again, another theme. But if it comes into your heart and you just receive it and get it out. Receive it and get it out, no matter what that looks like. Don’t worry about the form on the outside, just like we’re telling the artists. Don’t worry about it. Don’t think through. Just allow, allow, allow. And when you accept, Richard, that you are the elder. that you have been the wise one. I know that you know groups of other wise men, elders, but you’ve been on the path raising your frequency, lifting your consciousness really evolving. and the more you put that out there; beg pardon…
Richard: A long time.
Rosemary: A long time. but it’s not good enough for that to be just for you. And so It’s not even just the poetry. But it’s about the journey, the evolutionary part that men can do it right. That’s the important thing. You can help men figure it out. Yeah. And you’re here to do that.
Okay? All right.
Here is my first response that I downloaded today:
So, the message from the Divine Feminine during the CwTSO on 10/15/24: I am to download content for men and for some men in the future; they are calling for it. And it seems to be more than poetry. “Poetry, books, blogs.” I am a “pioneer elder.” The form does not matter – download and get it out!
So, what is a “pioneer elder”?
I am a man working to better understand what it is to be a man in the 1st quarter of the 21st century. There are many models for this – good and not so good. President Obama vs. President Trump: a very poor pair of examples, but they are clearly modeling behavior of men (not necessarily for men). They are in sharp contrast: a black man who rose to the Presidency from humble beginnings, a scholar, orator, Harvard Law School graduate, Constitutional law expert, family man. We have little insight into his spiritual life. He has seen and known a lot, waged war, indirectly killed.
Trump is nearly the exact opposite.
What are the lessons in these contrasting men? One is the bringer of hope; a forward looking evolutionary who would guide a nation toward a higher standard. His single greatest achievement was “Obama Care” that brought health insurance to 40 million people. He also pulled us out of a deep recessionary period.
The other is the reactionary regressive who would pull us back into the darker times of the 50s, even back to segregation and the repression of women (the first step here was the Dobbs Decision). How is he even a choice in the election of 2024? How did we get here?
There is a lesson we have not yet learned as a nation: desegregation of the 60s was difficult and incomplete. The election of Obama was an amazing accomplishment but triggered an extreme reaction that powered the regression and countered integrative momentum. It gave voice and semi-legitimacy to racial hatred that has been an underlying offense since the founding of the country; perhaps since the emergence of humanity.
Humans have been at each other’s throats for a hundred thousand years (what did happen to the Neanderthals?)!
Yet I hold out hope! I came across this quote while preparing my Qigong class for Saturday:
A human being is part of a whole,
the “Universe.”
Our task must be to free ourselves
from the delusion of separateness,
to embrace all living creatures
and the whole of nature.
— ALBERT EINSTEIN, PHILOSOPHER AND PHYSICIST, TWENTIETH CENTURY
In other words, “what I do to another I do to myself.” What if we lived by that creed? Could it be that simple?
Men and The Goddess 