Love is my Religion.
Action is my Gospel.
Following the Feather of Peacefulness.
A scar and a resentment look curiously identical to the untrained eye. The fundamental difference between a scar and resentment is, first and foremost, that resentments are *1 Sanable Scars. Resentments are a form of insanity, and unless taken seriously, undermine a willing restoration to sanity. Dwell on the above word 'difference' for a moment. It's in the Serenity Prayer.
“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free”
― Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe, Elective Affinities
I’ve been using this idea in my speeches for at least the last ten years.
It's mind over matter (if you don't mind...it don't matter). Decisions Determine Destiny. The Destiny of Choice! Break free!
On August 19th, 1990, I made a decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of God as I understood God. For me, if it’s not about Love, it ain’t about God, because God is Love.
Love! If you are the reason someone feels loved, you are doing God’s Work. Look for the good, you’ll find it. God is everywhere. If I decide everything is in God’s Hands, then I have dropped the rock that weighed me down. I released the ballast from my balloon and began to fly free.
One last quote. ‘The universe is simply a turtle upon a turtle upon a turtle...all the way down.’
William James, philosopher, and psychologist
Without forgiveness, life is bland. I blame forgiveness for this. OK, bad joke, but there is a flip-side to everything. Being thankful for EVERYTHING is part of true forgiveness (to me). Catch & release is like what you describe. Remember (catch), feel, forgive (release). I feel, therefore, I think I Am. The point of peace between catch & release is oftentimes the prism of acceptance. Intuitively knowing is a balance between feeling and thinking, but only when it is surrendered. Otherwise, we are only sponsoring ourselves. I don't exactly buy the concept that a person representing themselves in a court of law has a fool for a lawyer. Having a genius sponsor without a sponsee's prayers is a complete waste of 'conscious' (ha!) energy. ...seeking only for knowledge of God's will and the power to carry it out. The door to hell is only opened from the inside, but like Kid Rock said, get in the pit and try to love someone. Knock on the door so they can find it in the dark.
On the third Thursday of January 1991, I started speaking for MADD Minnesota. I was terrified to speak and seriously, I used to break out in perspiration, run to the restroom to vomit in sinks, maybe deal with diarrhea, or just plain cry before going on stage to talk about drunk driving and how I impacted lives. It took years before the fear subsided and I was healed of debilitating guilt.
Tomorrow, I’m interviewing Candace Lightner, the founder of MADD, and current President of We Save Lives (wesavelives.org).
Seems like an apropos way to celebrate 32 years of speaking. She started speaking way before me and continues to use her Voice to uplift victims and make changes in our society. She knows I drove under the influence and killed a baby, yet she hasn’t treated me like garbage and never judges me that I know of. That makes her a hero in my book. While I never put humans on pedestals either in heaven or in hell, I am unapologetically an admirer of her spirit and work. She is a woman of consummate courage; she had to dig deeper than most of us to make sense of what oftentimes seems to be an insane world.
My Podcasts are not LIVE, but we might try to do one LIVE on LinkedIn. TBD.
I’ll post a link to the interview on my Blog tomorrow.
Here are some of my website platforms:
www.facebook.com/QuantumCommunicationz/
www.linkedin.com/in/timothy-g-cameron-21b91b32/
My Contact Email: cameroncommunicationz@gmail.com
If you want me to ask Candace any questions in particular, please email me (or comment here).
Thank you, and of course, Happy New Year!
The deepest wounds have no perfect words, and forgiveness is more than echos from the walls of desire. Maybe that's why Simon & Garfunkel sang of paradoxical ironies and poets only die decades after their parting. However, I suspect not meaning to be mean can be replaced with meaning to be loving, even when done far from the mysteries of perfection.
Lifting prayers for the families of Daunte Wright and Kim Potter.
This morning, I was watching closing defense arguments in the Kim Potter trial and had some feelings come up.
I said in a FB post,“
Kim Potter much has been hitting the crack pipe when she picked a lawyer. Total freaking idiot. Makes me wonder if the end game is winning on appeal after all the heat dies down. Might get a new trial possibly even. Amazing how graduating from law school can still produce completely incompetent trial attorneys.
Perhaps majoring in law and minoring in in social work would be a good combination.”
My friend answered with an interesting possibility. She said, “Mistook gun for taser... subconsciously wanted to kill.. would this be an excuse if it wasn't a cop?”
I responded, “Never thought of that! Maybe there was a subconscious desire, I don't know. A very slow brew, if that's the case. I've seen people frayed at the edges who make poor decisions that turn into tragic consequences. Getting cops the right help they need before they implode is crucial. Trauma can destroy anyone if unresolved. I know a guy who offed himself recently from unresolved grief. I think a lot of us are suffering from exactly that. Rage...kneejerk reactions compounded over time sublimate into serious mental illness. So many people are attacking each other just because they're there when they lose it. Finger-pointing and fostering a spirit of bullying the bullies perpetuates and ingrains the problem. Honesty is the beginning of the pathway to peace. A good cop is one that helps bad cops heal or stops them from harming others. I have stories of police abuse on many levels, but I also have good stories to recite post-sobriety. When one side quits contributing to the problem, it cuts the problem down to a manageable size (not always, of course). Change IMO begins with transparency and honesty. Hence, Body Cams and offering psychological screening for new employees and having MI professionals seeing officers periodically for 'check-ups from the heart-ups.' Process Drift affects every industry, but high-stress jobs wear down people's empathy over time until they end up only feeling HUGE emotions like rage or depression. I don't wish that on anybody. Generational Trauma is a real thing. But mistaking a gun for a taser is better than mistaking a taser for a gun, but both are nearly impossible for me to wrap my mind around.”
THEN my friend responded:
yes, the other cops have to help, and not lie and cover-up for the ones who do wrong. Seems like it's always been like that, though, the cover for each other. they never know if THEY might need to be covered. I read this book long ago. Since it happened in MA and I was living there at the time, it was more of a big local deal”. https://www.amazon.com/Cops-Are-Robbers.../dp/0933341709
She continued, “of course, not all cops are corrupt or bad, but since police are "the law" (there, at the time) it's really only them who can police themselves. Like George Floyd, the other cops there COULD have stopped it.”
I ended the conversation (so far) with this:
“There were citizens there trying to stop it. Had I been there, I'd have gone to jail, because I would have pushed him off with my foot, saying while recording, "I'm only trying to save his life." The discipline and self-control of the onlookers were astounding. The recordings helped secure a conviction, despite anti-cop hatred and brainwashed citizens that assume every cop is a wonderful angel on earth. If the book is in audio, that would be cool. My eyes get too tired reading actual books these days. Sad, because I love reading books.”
Here’s Kim’s Mug Shot.
Many have traveled this path. I've met people from every walk of life and discipline who have fallen short of what they want for their lives because of alcohol. To the judges that got sober, and the cops, and the crooks who got sober, I salute you. Alcohol doesn't discriminate. Neither does recovery.
I hope he uses what happened to give a break to other people struggling with alcoholism or addiction.
Kim Potter is in the news a lot, as her trial is going on as I write this. I’ve read how many people want her to get nailed but good. We all know she'll get twice what is coming to her. That should make you happy, I suspect. All I can say is, THANK GOD LIFE AIN'T FAIR! If it were fair, I know a lot of people, GOOD PEOPLE, who would be dead or in prison today. That day was the worst day of her life. Yes, she should face consequences, but the hell she is already in is pretty difficult and she’ll need serious therapy.
But back to Sherrif Hutchinson. Someone complained as follows (I didn’t correct misspellings, as it’s a quote): “He's only admitting he needs help because he got caught. He just thought that he was Sober enough to make it home like hes probably done a 100 times before. It doesn't mean he has an addiction problem hes got a Selfish problem.” I responded: “Yes, that's true, like a lot of people. Some people are lucky enough to not kill someone. Most people that say "I didn't mean to" should instead say, "I meant not to" and see the difference that makes in their lives. I can't tell you how many times I heard someone complain that they are a '1st-time offender' of a DWI when I suspect that most people have done it many times. The likelihood of getting caught the very first time is, well, unlikely. Indeed, selfishness is the root of many problems in addiction. Fingerpointing is selfish, too. Selfishness doesn't try to help people. Selflessness doesn't hurt people.”
TRANSFORMATION: SETTING ASIDE EVERYTHING WE THINK WE KNOW TO BECOME ANONYMOUS
Most of us have probably attended a significant number of meetings where we read How It Works. We often refer to The Twelve Traditions as “Why it works.” How a thing works and why it works are usually two different ideas. Here let’s give some attention to the transformative power of the 12th tradition, especially the parts about anonymity and working these principles in all our affairs.
Tradition 12: “Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our Traditions, ever reminding us to place principles above personalities.”
Undoubtedly, alcohol is cunning, baffling, and powerful. Before recovery, people suffering from alcohol addiction carried the selfishness blamethrower, which kept wellness as far away from them as possible. The big book reads that we had a thinking problem, not a drinking problem and that drinking was but a symptom of our thinking problem.
Conversely, before recovery, those suffering from people addiction habitually lose themselves in the selfishness of other people. They continually walked directly into the blast of the blamethrower until, over time, recovered and realized that, as they say in the Friends of Lois Program, The Three C’s: they didn’t Cause it, Couldn’t control it, and couldn’t Cure it. Alcoholism has to run its course, and to try to save the alcoholic from themselves is impossible. Throwing a pillow under the alcoholic when they are falling toward their bottom, my sponsor explained to me, can kill them. We have to let them hit the concrete, she explained.
One of the hardest things I’ve done in my entire life was to let alcoholism take its course in the life of someone I loved desperately. Ultimately, she drank herself to death, but I knew that she had a higher power God and that it wasn’t me. Part of How It Works reads, “Probably no human power could have relieved us from our alcoholism.”
My sponsor explained to me further that she was holding on to the bottle and drowning. I was holding on to her to save her from drowning. She said if I didn’t let go of her, I would drown right along with her. I prayed about it steadfastly and received a message from my Higher Power about the course of action I was to take. I truly Let Go and Let God. This was without a doubt the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my entire life.
It is not a moral weakness to be an alcoholic. I eventually came to believe that I would no longer judge an alcoholic for drinking themselves to death, just as I would not judge someone who was suffering from obesity that died of a heart attack. Alcoholism and heart conditions are both diseases.
But where does the 12th tradition fit into all of this? My sponsor said that if God took away all my character defects, I would disappear (or become anonymous), AKA, become the hole in the doughnut.
If there is one who has all power, and that One is God, then what is my role in providing service to those who reach out for help? Fleshing this out was simple but not easy for me.
I’ve heard it said that it is none of my business what others think of me. That has brought me some peace. I started to believe that it is also none of MY business what I think of me. Instead, I thought it was only my business what God thought of me.
Whether they know it or not, perhaps when someone reaches out for the hand of help, it is probably the case that God is directing their attention to you. Some people think they are not ready to sponsor, but if God puts it on someone’s heart to ask you for help (because they are attracted to something in your life), who are you to tell them no? Praying about your answer and telling them no afterward is not YOU telling them no, but is your Higher Power telling them no. God led them to you to hear a no and go to the next person and learn how to accept the no answers of life. You are not Omni-responsible. God is. When the Big Book reads that there is one who has all power, it might mean that you don’t get any (control). Thus, we are back to the hole in the doughnut thing. That’s the anonymity part.
Steps 1 to 11 are there to clean and keep our gifts clean in preparation for Step 12. Step 11suggests we seek through prayer and meditation ONLY for knowledge of God’s will for us and the power to carry that out. We can only do this by becoming invisible ourselves. We have to get out of our own way to be of maximum service to our fellow and our Higher Power.
When I (as a Messenger) tell my story, it’s a story about how all roads lead from and back to God. God gave me the 12-Step program, and the 12-Step program and Fellowship gave me God. When we surrender our will and life to the care of God as we understand God, our problems are no longer ours. Most of us can’t get out of our own way because of fear. The program founders begged us to be fearless and thorough ‘from the very start’ of getting out of our own way (beginning Step 4) because they knew from experience how fearful they were and how it kept them in a self-imposed prison.
Consider the Serenity Prayer. Perhaps you have not because you ask not? Anonymity is a gift, not a curse, from God. The smaller I get, the bigger God gets. God GRANTS us serenity and acceptance; both are gifts from God (our part is to be willing to ask for it). Courage is a gift that we received from God, as is wisdom. Profound principles that rise out of working Steps 1 through 11 allow us to pass on these gifts through step 12 (if we get out of our own way to do so).
We are the Messengers, not the Message. If people remember us more than our Message when we tell our story, we have failed them. If you get out of your own way and realize it’s not about you, you can’t fail them or yourself. You’re in charge of what you say; people are in charge of what they hear.
If everyone has turned their will in their lives over the care of God, they will hear God’s will even if we say everything wrong and they don’t understand anything that comes into their ears. God can transform everything! Remember that it’s not possible to be off your spiritual path. All mistakes are blessings in disguise. As Bill W.was fond of saying, “In God’s Economy, nothing is wasted.”
The Highest Degree of Self-Esteem comes from God-Esteem.
Knowing is overrated. So is thinking. I feel, therefore, I think I Am (because nobody knows anything about anybody, not even themselves). Feelings are less transitory in my life than thinking, but for most people, it's the other way around.
Be you. We are all just guessing our way through this thing we call life. Here’s something you might identify with, readers. Have you done much writing? If so, you know your heart, mind, and soul all get in the game. Yet, what do we notice and why?
Poetry. I think it helped save my life. But guess what? I didn't even notice that no one commented on any of my poems for five years. When I realized how long I went without a comment, I didn't blame anyone. I was a little sad momentarily, feeling alone as if I myself was a book under Emily Dickinson’’s bed.
But I didn't blame anyone for not knowing what to say. I was probably crazy, like a lot of us poets are, but ultimately, I was only writing for myself anyway. Everything was so abstractly linked so as to not have psychiatric care called on me, that readers probably just scratched their heads and moved on to read elsewhere.
I don't know if my being alive is a miracle or if I'm just too stupid to move on myself. I do know how to laugh at irony from time to time. My life means something to somebody once in a while, and that makes me feel useful and most grateful.
Smudge, don’t grudge.
In 1992, maybe 93, I went downtown Minneapolis looking for ANY article of clothing that was "MADE in the USA" and it took SERIOUSLY over three hours to find a single item (yes, I found ONE item). I hit every store and I mean every store in the IDS and surrounding areas. OK, so I went to the cashier about carrying that Made in the USA item.
Just kidding. Um, yeah, I bought it and single-handedly exhausted the entire supply downtown of retailed American Made clothing. LOL!
Look, I don't why people are noticing this now, but greedy, rotten ripoff capitalist scumbags have been hiring slaves abroad starting with the end of slavery here. Slavery became illegal here; true abolition of slavery took some time to make it stick in the north.
By the 1960s, we had our first real chance of giving America back to the average working American. Ironically, when the compromising puppets QUIT doing what they were told and really tried to make a difference, they got shut (or shot) down.
It's a complicated mess today, but we still have the 1st Amendment (it's almost gone, but we can resuscitate it with the 2nd Amendment).
The Civil Rights movement is supposed to be about our being 'civil' with each other. Being Civic Minded, that sort of thing. But instead, well-meaning fear-mongering anger addicts let the addiction to judgment cloud their hearts with unreasonable passions & poisons.
Dictatorship and forcing solutions have never worked. Like Buddha pointed out about holding the hot coal of anger. That.
Love is the only real chance we have of healing this broken woken cesspool. Almost everyone thinks the 'other' side is either 'woke' or broke, or are the sheeple.
Don't starve the sheep. Feed them. Or in the Native Tradition, DO feed the white dog/wolf. But yeah, don't feed the slave masters.
BUY LOCAL. At the very least, buy from our allies that are under siege.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/VPdiR7QiV8eV/
I know people can skillfully put videos up that manipulate emotions. I hope this is not one of them. The testimonies as so sad.
Knowing is overrated. So is thinking. I feel, therefore, I think I Am (because nobody knows anything about anybody, not even themselves). Feelings are less transitory in my life than thinking, but for most people, it's the other way around. Be you. We are all just guessing our way through this thing we call life. I didn't even notice that no one commented on any of my poems for five years. When I realized how long I went without a comment, I didn't blame anyone. I was a little sad, feeling alone, but I didn't blame anyone for not knowing what to say. I was probably crazy, like a lot of us poets are, but ultimately, I was only writing for myself anyway. Everything was so abstract, readers just scratched their heads and moved on. I don't know if my being alive is a miracle or if I'm just too stupid to move on myself. I do know how to laugh at irony from time to time.
My pen is my oar.
Into a world which needed you
My wish for you
Is that you continue
Continue
To be who and how you are
To astonish a mean world
With your acts of kindness
Continue
To allow humor to lighten the burden
of your tender heart
Continue
In a society dark with cruelty
To let the people hear the grandeur
Of God in the peals of your laughter
Continue
To let your eloquence
Elevate the people to heights
They had only imagined
Continue
To remind the people that
Each is as good as the other
And that no one is beneath
Nor above you
Continue
To remember your own young years
And look with favor upon the lost
And the least and the lonely
Continue
To put the mantel of your protection
Around the bodies of
The young and defenseless
Continue
To take the hand of the despised
And diseased and walk proudly with them
In the high street
Some might see you and
Be encouraged to do likewise
Continue
To plant a public kiss of concern
On the cheek of the sick
And the aged and infirm
And count that as a
Natural action to be expected
Continue
To let gratitude be the pillow
Upon which you kneel to
Say your nightly prayer
And let faith be the bridge
You build to overcome evil
And welcome good
Continue
To ignore no vision
Which comes to enlarge your range
And increase your spirit
Continue
To dare to love deeply
And risk everything
For the good thing
Continue
To float
Happily in the sea of infinite substance
Which set aside riches for you
Before you had a name
Continue
And by doing so
You and your work
Will be able to continue
Eternally
Oftentimes I don't waste my vote by voting. Looking in the pot, the 2021 frog-stew is showing the frogs almost expired, never jumping out of the hot mess the republicans and democrats have set fire to. Tired of hearing promises of getting things better when they themselves created the shyte-storm. Didn't someone say that you can't solve problems with the same mind that created them?
OK, so I've voted both republican and democrat, but it had NOTHING to do with mindless party-politics BS. It had to do with the person running and their honesty. I voted twice for one unnamed local democrat who never answers PM's, emails, and isn't in the office after I showed up for a scheduled meeting. No apology for not being there, nor any explanation. I'm done with that one. Another democrat I voted for ghosted me, too. One republican met with me but never recognized the need for freedom at the level to effect change. Too many people are 'following the money.
So gonna bundle up, head to the polls, wearing my prayers to keep my soul warm. My vote will be wasted due to predetermination by the media as to who is heard (herd-ed) and branded as part of the roundup, but after their brand heals, the chance for leaving the party is nil. I still treat each and every one of them with respect and decorum and love them even if they choose to see the world as an enemy. Forgive them, they know not what they do.
I hope Sasquatch is a Vegan or Vegetarian? LOL! Check out my Podcast interview of Nate “The Honey Badger” Atkins. The Incomplete Skeptic Interviews The Honey Badger for Mayor of Minneapolis
"Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence."
— Robert Frost
Halloween at 1:30 in the afternoon, The Incomplete Skeptic will be ZOOM-ing with Nate "The Honey Badger" Atkins, who is running in the Minneapolis, Minnesota Mayoral race. https://honeybadgerformayor.com/ To those that attended the Minnesota State Fair, you may have noticed his stand.
The Incomplete Skeptic is about UNmarginalizing Voices that are generally relegated, controlled, or bullied into silence by societal pressures, judgments, or other unwitting prejudices that are often characterized alongside logical fallacies.
My YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPlmJHQqRSCTUOBfOBdv0rQ
I suspect most of us mean well, so my starting point is to trust, as the song goes, that most "people are people, so why should it be, that you and I get along so awfully?" Avoiding the habits of manipulative people is often difficult, but respect (one of the tools of love) for one another is imperative in my world.
To be, as the saying goes, "grown-ass women and men" we have to put on our big girl panties or tighty whities and follow Rodney King's imploring but rhetorical words...you know what those words were, so I won't say it here. Here’s an article I did with Corcoran Press in 2019: https://corcorannews.org/the-incomplete-skeptic-will-the-real-rodney-king-stand-up
Hope springs eternal in the human breast. I hope people give Libertarians a chance someday, but I won't hold my breath thanks to the addictions to fears & party politics and the implanted arguments that marginalize anyone that disagrees with the control-freaks that own everything. I know it's hard to hear other points of view that you disagree with, but suspend your beliefs for a while, tune in, then make up your mind?
photo credit Loïc Fürhoff @imagoiq
I'm hoping for a breath of fresh air in the political realms, no matter what party someone is in, but personally, I usually vote Libertarian. I've been slightly left of center (most of the time), but it wasn’t always so. I’ll leave you with a quote by Covey: "Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply." — Stephen R. Covey (The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change).
