Barry Garden Path

Many forces have shaped who I have become and how I daily experience the world. Ever since I was born, I have been shaped and molded by countless influences. My experiences continue to shape me in a constantly changing way. I carry with me, impressions from encounters with countless people, situations, ideas and awareness.

It has not been a passive experience. I have not simply yielded to all the forces shaping me. I have my own perceptions that influenced how I receive all the shaping I have received. Moreover, I have control over my perceptions. I have been willing to be shaped or I resisted being shaped. I still remain a product of a shaping that has gone on for decades and continue today.

I have been able to choose whether to be shaped. But I have constantly been shaped by outside influences.

For some time, I’ve been puzzled over why so many women embrace and support the misogyny in our culture. Why, in our elections, would so many women support candidates who are blatantly misogynistic? Why does any woman support a cultural role that is supportive of misogyny? For me, this line of thought has stumbled on a question of why men would want relationships with women based on a strong aspect of their misogyny?

Today, I think some women support misogyny because they are struggling with self-hatred. They see themselves forced into a cultural role that makes them feel subservient. This is not a pleasant place to be, and they turn their discomfort against themselves for enduring such a cultural role. They yield to all the societal messages that tell them that they are “less than” men, and they look down on themselves. Supporting misogyny is just a way of affirming the self-loathing that they feel.

Misogyny is related to a feeling of helplessness that many women feel. They feel forced into a role of helplessness, and they resent that they and others see themselves that way. They resent that they are forced into a role of powerlessness.

Misogyny among men is quite similar to that feeling of powerlessness. Many men feel less than the women around them. They see and feel the emotional power of women and they feel lacking something basically human. They feel guided and dominated by women in their lives, including their mothers. Some men resort to misogyny as a way of asserting their power over the women they feel threatened by. Misogyny is a way of putting down women they actually feel inferior to. Misogyny among men reveals their deep gender uncertainty and feeling of being inferior to women, another gender.

Besides expressing an unresolved conflict with the opposite gender, misogyny for many lays the foundation for attacks on trans-gender people. Those who are trans make the issue of gender roles front and center for many of their attackers. They remind their attackers of their own unresolved, deeply felt conflict about their gender identity. Their attackers carry an abundance of self-hatred because they are uncertain, even threatened by their confusion about issues related to their gender roles and the associated misogyny.

For me, it is helpful to see misogyny as an expression of self-hatred. Those choosing to live out a hatred of another gender or a mixed gender, suffer a confusion and powerlessness associated with their selected gender. Self-acceptance may be a suitable antidote for those embracing misogyny.

I do not want to lose touch with my anger. I want to be aware of it, and all the human reactions I feel when I see the terrible things done to people by He-who-shall-not-be-named and his cohort of Death Eaters.

I will not be consumed by my anger, even while I direct it to the actions that are so harmful to so many people. I will not be identified by my anger. I will not become an angry man, even while my anger may appear quite evident. I may express my anger at others, especially those who I see as Death Eaters. But I refuse to become identified with my anger. I can be angry and express anger at the same time that I am compassionate and kind.

But I will continue to be angry.

Every morning I am faced by the swirling chaos that has arisen in the past week. Maintaining equanimity in the midst of paying attention is a challenge. I settle into my body. I find refuge in the practice of paying attention to my total body. I try to concentrate on my awareness of my whole body as known.

Chaos is hard to ignore.

There are frequent times that I am aware that I am no longer just breathing air. These are the times that the rush of air in and out of my nostrils continues, but there is more. My chest expands and contracts, but I no longer feel the rising and falling. My awareness shifts from the fundamental sensations to a focus on my breathing as known.

I become conscious of the awareness of my breathing. My whole body lets go of sensation as I become conscious that sensation is known. I become absorbed, not in breathing, but in the awareness of my breathing.

Breathing becomes a different kind of experience. I am aware that I am breathing air, but my actual sensation of breathing fades away. I might as well be breathing water because my consciousness has shifted to an experience of something other than air. I am breathing something else.

What I am conscious of is more like an inhalation and exhalation of the fabric of the universe. I feel afloat in a vast ocean and I am breathing in that ocean and becoming part of it. The experience has shifted from the sphere of my senses to the conscious reach of my mind. My mind is at rest as it floats on an ocean of awareness and becomes aware that I am part of it.

I have been breathing air all my life, since that first moment when my lungs expanded. Now it is my mind that expands, and I breathe in the vast ocean of the sphere of everything.

I feel as though we have entered into a national Alice In Wonderland world. Especially today, I feel surrounded by a kaleidoscope of reality. The news has become a warped distortion of the real world, not the one I choose to see. Sometimes I feel thrown into a distorted realm where it has become difficult to be in touch with what is real.

Even the guardians of a stable reality are running into one another, mimicking the antics of the Three Stooges. Those who I have elected and relied on to maintain a semblance of ordered reality are rushing to life boats and bailing frantically and ineffectively.

We have descended into a rabbit hole and reality is totally distorted. I grasp for the world I am being pulled from, resisting a tumble into that rabbit hole. In the midst of this madness, I reach for my anchors of stability, my connections to reality.

My anchors are my friends and my garden. I am also anchored within, by the awareness that relies on my inner stability. When the world seems to be morphing into a whirlwind of madness, I reach inside for the oasis of equanimity I hold securely. It is a stable island, and I welcome my friends to join me there.

The cognitive dissonance evidenced by the recent election is becoming more obvious to me. Polls continue to show that people support the right to choose abortion, the rights of women, the continuance of social security, etc. These are all policy positions not supported by a majority of those elected.

The electorate seems to be influenced not by what their rational thoughts dictate, but more by malice, bigotry and misogyny. It makes as much sense as someone announcing their intent to lose weight as they reach for a second piece of cake.

In all of us, there are the residuals of trauma. I am aware that my trauma is a combination of my inheritance and experience. The trauma constantly induces fear, and that fear can overpower what my cognition is sorting out. I act based on my deep fears sometimes, not what my rational mind is saying. Some aversions and attractions overcome what I rationally think.

Some people who think progressively, who know how to act progressively, act in a way that is not guided by their ideas and ideals. People who are insistent that they are not racist, who think benevolently about people of color, still act in ways that are rooted in racism.

I have grown up in an atmosphere that promotes bigotry and misogyny. Fearing the power and presence of people different from me, fearing the power and presence of women is part of my inheritance, culture and early experience. I think this is true of many people living in the USA. Men learn that they must dominate woman and women yield to an atmosphere of patriarchy. White people fear people of color and feel the need to dominate them, to stay in charge.

These trauma based fears promote cognitive dissonance. People think they have no malice, no bigotry, no racism, no misogyny. But it is a powerful, often unacknowledged part of them. So people act contrary to what their cognition tells them. They act contrary to what they think they intend to do, or what they think they should do. They even elect individuals who do not support their ideals.

It is both a gift and a skill to accept what I cannot do. I am no longer able to go cross-country skiing. I now realize that I am unable to change anyone. I am unable to save anyone who does not want to be saved. I am unable to convince anyone who does not want to change what they think. I cannot undo what has been done.

I am unable to turn back time and change what I have done or what someone else has done. It all remains a part of me and part of them. I do not resist that. I cannot unlove all those I have loved. Nor can I reach back and love anyone I felt estranged from.

I am not even sure that I can change who I am at this moment. Perhaps I am able to shape the future in some small way by actions I take. The past has consequences, none of which I am able to change. Perhaps the future is something I am able to affect.

It is best for me to accept what I am unable to change or affect. There is much else that I can do

What does it take to realize that I am connected to all things? What does it take to experience my unity with the earth and the stars? I know and feel that I am connected to the friend I hug as they leave my home or as I meet them in the hallway at Sangha. How do I learn to feel that unity that is such a deep and intimate aspect of us and has been there since we came into existence?

I want to remember we are not separate and never have been. We are one. We are united.

For me, freeing up this reality begins by my touching whatever is near to me. It might be a table, a plant, a person, or the rug under my bare feet. I practice letting go of the raw sensory experience and I become aware of the touch in a manner that reaches beyond the sensory. My deep awareness and the object touched or seen are experienced as one.

I am no longer touching the tablet on my knees or the keyboard at my finger tips. I enter into and am part of the unity that binds us.

I walk down the stairs and my feet become part of each step they touch. My hand is united with the railing, not by touch alone but by experiencing the unity we share. I touch a friend in a loving and intimate way and we both experience more than the simple sensory connection of touch.

Throughout the day I am reminded by a bell to become aware of the unity I share with whatever is near me. It is often a table or a wall. The table or that wall becomes a portal to all that is. I open to unity through practice. I enjoy the unity I have with all things.

All answers are within. My senses can be a source of impressions. But all the answers are within. Even my own eyes are unreliable. Reality is known from my inner awareness. Only within is my consciousness aligned with the consciousness of the universe.

Communication from others is always somewhat suspect. Communication may be based on another’s own inner awareness, but the consequence of language is that I am only perceiving a shadow of another’s awareness. Today, communication is becoming even more distorted by the fabrication of AI technology and is deceptive.

Communication typically suggests a point of view based on the author’s imagination, and not necessarily an inner awareness. I have seen this fabrication of imaginative reality for years in the words of clerics. The landscape maps they describe is based on their creativity and imagination or that of others. Even the most skillful individuals offer but a shadow or reflection of an elusive experience.

Answers about reality are within. What I see and hear is a suggestion of reality. I only trust what resonates with clarity coming from my own inner experience. That is the inner place where I choose to live and trust. That is where I intend to be present.