Gratitude, Psychiatry and World Politics

Well I’ve made it to another weekend. I haven’t been fired by the extreme left wing government. I haven’t been arrested (yet) on any of the new anti speech legislation.  I’ve not been notified by the authorities that some one has complained ‘anonymously’ about me.  I’ve survived the zero tolerance that’s now in place for being masculine. I’ve read the article in the news this week about why it’s okay to hate men.  I’ve tried desperately to be as boyish and girlish as I can be and it seems to be working.  I’m staying under the radar. In Canada the tall poppy gets cut.  The left makes themselves look taller by cutting off the heads of the right.

I’ve not been raped in Canada ( known the world over as an infamous world rape centre.).  I’ve not been shot at.   I’ve not been bombed. I’ve not been attacked on the street by rabid crowds of Trump Haters who lump anyone whose not a card carrying Pravda spouting Marxist as a Trump fan.  I’ve continued to say I’m a Christian and only been persecuted in covert ways.  It’s still not quite acceptable to persecute Christians in Canada overtly. The Jews are taking a beating there. Since Trudeau came to reign it has been open season on Christians and Jews but I’ve got through the week without being attacked or arrested. I think it helps that I’m not a very good Christian.  I hear that the finest Christians and Jews and even Sikhs and Buddhists I know are feeling the heat much more than me. It’s always indirect though. The enemies of freedom don’t feel strong enough to do more than send the Antifida Nazi Bullies to shut down speakers.

I watched the Munk Debate on Political Correctness and Steven Fry gave me hope.  I enjoyed Red Sparrow and the exposure of the thinking in the State spy schools.  It’s a way of believing. It’s all about ends and means and power. But I’ve not been assasinated or attacked in the newspapers by the big money Bud Inc Goebbels with their lies and marketting. Big tobacco and the Liberal money are so behind the marijuana legislation passing in Canada, money, money and more money.  If I was still smoking marijuana I’d see freedom to grow my own plants as an advance and not notice that freedom of speech has been stepped back decades.  Tit for tat.  Politics.  It’s somehow not affected me directly. It’s a bit removed.

The tax grab carbon tax and all the lies and corruption associated with that has affected me. I am paying double to drive and commute.  I can’t afford to live in Vancouver, the money laundering real estate and casino capital of the world.  I increasingly question whether it’s worth the commute.  It certainly wouldn’t be if I had to drive my truck. But this week I’ve been riding my motorcycle and as dangerous as that is in Vancouver where so many bad drivers reside it’s been really enjoyable and cheap.  So I’m thankful that these things in general have not been in my face.

I’ve watched the Lindsay Shepherd tapes and am so glad that these back room sociopathic administrators are being exposed. I’ve been involved in several of the those kangaroo court quasi legal affairs with exactly the same personality and lines right out of the same ‘playbook’.  It probably had something to do with the nightmares I had several times this week.  Being interrogated in a room with swaggering men and women intent on silencing opposition to their rule and gaining more power for their aberrant ideological position.  It’s been terrible watching the palace revolt and going along with it because I felt so alone.  

Yet here is my heroine Lindsay Shepherd suing Wilfred Laurier University for it’s nepotism.  It took me back to my correcting this administrator, pointing out their error, quoting and referencing the true facts only to be told “I don’t care what the facts are . This is the way it’s going to be and I don’t care what you think. Either you do as you’re told or you’re out.”  By then I’d learned to tow the line, not
question, do as I was told, collect my pay cheque and thank God I wasn’t the other guy who was getting shook down and robbed.  At times like this I’m back on the playground surrounded by the tough boys and their girlfriends having the boots put to me and getting knifed knowing all I can do is



be defensive protect my head and hope the abuse is over soon. Because if I fight back the whole legion comes forward. I’ve stopped the killing and negligence so many times but it’s just ended in pay back.  But there’s  Lindsay Shepherd standing up to these low brow knuckle dragging thugs.  It gives me hope. I am so thankful for seeing that this week.

I was thankful too for the Christian baker going free but saddened that Trinity Western College couldn’t graduate law students because the aetheist hegemony in the Canadian law society has yet again dominated the administration.  I can’t wait till the pendulum swings back to the middle and the extreme left wing Supreme Court of Canada gets a compass.  CBC news propaganda persisted so I was happy that I resisted the fried foods of journalism and listened to audio tapes this week instead.  Campbell’s series on Neurology was terrific.  I liked best the interview with the writer of Neurology for Dummies.  My gay neurologist southern friend did a great job of an addiction medicine series that I so enjoyed. His humor was infectious.  

It’s so easy to get into tunnel vision and miss the really good in the world. I loved the blossoms and taking pictures of the first black berries of the year. I loved walking with Gilbert along the river and seeing the glorious green foliage.  The winter is over and spring and summer are on us. The sunshine and heat have been so life giving. I ve enjoyed being outside. More walks for Gilbert.  Motorcycling and cycling.  It’s really wonderful to be in the green of Burnaby. I love the green of Burnaby.  It’s just that I can get in my head and miss what’s around me. I remember my sponsor Scotty telling me 20 years ago that his sponsor told him to get a wildflower book and pay attention to the surroundings. I did then and I’ve done it again.  I’ve got the app, Plant Snap and am so enjoying getting an idea of the names of the wonderful inhabitants of forest and garden. 

I think maybe the grief is lifting.  Losing my brother, my best friend and another really good friend and Gilbert losing his eyes was all so sad and tragic. I hate that any weakness brings out the attack in the hostile toxic workplace. I’ve only shown weakness a few times in my life and each time the authorities have played their ‘we’re only helping, we’re not the enemy smiling attack’. Any imperfection and you’re struck down while they’re utterly grandiose and incompetent and only
survive by being above the law that the rest of us play by.  It’s equally true that I’ve not been focussed because my hearts been broken again. When my mother died it was the same.  Get back to work and don’t pause , 2 weeks for grief and any longer and we’re kick you out. Bean counter Stalin’s . I see it done routinely in my work and do everything I can to protect the grieving. 

I’m thankful for the week I trained with Elizabeth Kubla Ross.  I didn’t know the society was so cruel then when she spoke of advocacy but I know it first hand now.  I’ve been blessed to be there helping so many parents who have lost their children and their childless bosses have been incorrigible.  I’m thankful I still have empathy. I found myself again wishing I had more psychopathic traits to deal with the authorities but I know that to be like that you have to see the world in a unidimensional way. I’m thankful for Piaget and his teachings of development and the capacity for abstraction. There’s a capacity for ‘empathy’ which is a developmental process.  The minds that jack step and fill little

boxes and do exactly as they’re told suffer the banality that was Neuremburg. 

I don’t have that ‘missing bit’.  I do judge too much and have a false idealization of authority as a Canadian. My immigrant doctor friends laugh at me because they say coming from the corrupt
countries they came from they don’t expect the management to be anything but corrupt so are more often impressed than I am who expect the beurocrats and leaders to just do their jobs without all the favouritism and nepotism and influence peddling.

I’m grateful that I know these great docs who give me perspective. I’m really blessed to be in Canad and must resist the old man thinking of ‘the way it was.’  I’ve lived with more ‘acceptance’ this week, with reality, living ‘life on life’s terms’.  I was at more meetings too. I was honoured to be asked to give a friend a cake.  It was a wonderful return to a place where I had so many years of friends and saw some of them again this night.

I am blessed to have Laura as a friend.  It’s sad there are so many lonely people, so many alienated, frightened souls, all the Elinor Rigbys of all the  genders. It’s fun to have friends’ like Kevin and Anna and the God Kids and to go to church and join wit  the other hopeful positive members of society. 

I tried to tell a ground burrowing person an air and sea story. I suspect it’s like the Air Force guys and Navy guys experience talking to the mud jumpers in the Army. I was telling them about a famous psychiatrist, now dead, one of my earliest mentors, author of dozens of books, world renowned. He had been praying at funerals for the dead to resurrect.  It’s not something he broadcast.  I heard about it from a world renowned minister and another psychiatrist.  The minister was worried for the great man’s ‘reputation’ whereas the other psychiatrist, a close friend had told me he’d begun doing the same. The latter said it helped keep him humble. Neither he or the great man had resurrected anyone. He believed however that Jesus  could resurrect a person and said that we could do what he did if we believed.

We’d all seen unexplainable miracles in our practices and we knew the great man’s idea about mind over matter and spirit over mind. He believed that the world was a collective idea, like Dr. Owen Barfield, one of the Inklings in Oxford and Dr. Carl Jung’s “Collective Unconscious’.   Like Dr. Eben Alexander, the Harvard Neurosurgeon, son of a Neurosurgeon and father of a Neurosurgeon, explained in “Proof of Heaven’ he believed that the “person idea’ , the ‘soul ‘ as it were ,continued and that perhaps it was possible to communicate with this ‘person’ despite their death.  Lazarus was by far just one of thousands of cases and Dr. Moody another psychiatrist had taken the time to study
the Near Death Experiences. 

 I was trying to explain ‘gently’ this idea in terms of the ‘information packet’ and the computer,servers , nodes and the internet. I’ve always been interested in fractals and communication but I could tell I was ‘upsetting’ this person.  Like a lot of people even the word ‘death’ upsets them It was obvious she wasn’t a psychiatrist and hadn’t read the classic text “Denial of Death’ which so informs the work of a psychiatrists communication like the other classic “the Discovery of the Unconscious’ or even “Man’s Search for Meaning.”  

She thought the ‘great man’ was ‘crazy’ and said ‘he’s wrong’. And I knew she was a ‘judgemental’
on the Meyers Briggs scale, that this was her character and that the ‘great man’ by contrast was the
opposite, a “Potential” , truly open minded sort.  I was ‘both’ and so often wished for that closed mindedness that couldn’t see the ‘possibility ‘ in people. In my work in psychotherapy I have ‘believed’ in my patients. I’ve seen the IQ increase 10 and 20 points in therapy and I’ve watched the 
become rich and the psychosomatic heal. Over and over again I see people overcome addictions and it’s always a joy to be part of this process.  If anything I know to my very bones the possibilities of people and have been so glad to see the work on ‘resilience’ catch up with our clinical observations. 

But this ‘ground person’ didn’t ‘believe’ and was even angry that the great man with no illusion persisted in trying to see the dead resurrect. I thought of the Wright Brothers and their plane. This woman would never fly no matter how important she was in her own eyes and the eyes of the Army but I love the ‘creative’. I loved reviewing Dr. Valiant , head of Harvard Psychiatry’s book on Creativity and Psychotherapy and Communication.  I was taught I must believe because the patient has given up hope.  Yet I’ve also been taught that I can help an individual who wants help and I can even according to Prochaska move their motivation along from contemplation to determination but that I must consider always the very essence of ‘triage’.  

Four of the ISIS killers Trudeau says can be ‘cured’ with ‘counselling’ have gone ‘missing’ in Canada. The veterans who fought fanatic Muslims in the Middle East think Trudeau is a dangerous fool. I just talked to one who was wounded overseas and they’ve had increasing nightmares since it was reported that this murderers were lose in Canada. Apparently there are now hundreds of them. 

Dr. Milton Erickson believed that people could be healed and changed with hypnosis but he knew that ‘time’ was a factor.  Even with millions of dollars worth of psychotherapy many hours weekly and years there were those sociopaths who simply could not be changed any more than school can teach all students to read and write let alone work computers.  A Canadian ISIS returnee has been bragging in the American papers about killing allies and raping women. Trudeau didn’t ask psychiatrists about the ‘limits of counselling ‘ and didn’t even respect the scientific, medical and public health communities concerns about the ‘legalization’ of marijuana. We have all considered ‘decriminalization’ but the Liberals and in the south the Democrats have always been keen on manipulating language.

I just learned their are 32 recognized pronouns in New York. I pity the immigrant trying to learn English.  I’ve always liked the idea of the three , masculine, feminine and other, as this idea is actually present in a lot of languages. In English it was subsumed under the ‘plural’.  He , She , They.
 No need for ‘new’ pronouns and further obfuscation just a little creative intelligence, solely lacking in law and government.  Think of all the law makers who can write 32 versions of the same law charging $300 an hour. It’s that simple really, sadly, but a major factor.  In Canada the label companies were a major proponent of the two languages because all the tomato cans in Canada needed new labels and these Quebec sign makers overnight became millionaires. 

The trouble is this all doesn’t contribute to the whole. I’m thankful though I’ve the eyes to see this and haven’t been praying for stupidity as I once did. I’m blessed with intelligence and heart and family and friends.

I can see the silliness and down right insanity without being hysterical and also know that none of
this really affected me this week. I had a good week. I had a place to stay. I had great food. I even tried SKIP this week and we had a meal delivered other than Chinese or Pizza.  The possibility and advances in home improvement are so easily overlooked. I love the Grocery Store and London Drugs. I love the city with everything available so easily. I also love Amazon. I order Kindle books and physical books. Niall Ferguson’s The Square and the Tower and Barbara Ehrenreich’s Natural CAuses. They are here  on my desk being read slowly and savoured ,thanks to Amazon.  I ‘ve even got an item I’d normally have got at a hardware store but ordered on line and got it rather than waiting till I remembered to get it in some ‘specialist store’. This is amazing.  

I love that Gilbert and George are such good friends. Dogs and cats can get along so it remains possible that people will likely muddle along as they have for at least 80,000 years. 

I love that Anita and Ganesh have married and loved so long and their family is so amazing. It’s great seeing these people like seeing the cranes on top of buildings. Naomi and Dereck and Faith are just so precious. Whenever I feel down and hope fades I just look up and see the cranes which show so many people believe in the future, just like the fabulous women having babies.  I love these ‘signs’ like the spring flowers and the first berries I tasted.

God is good.  I love jokes and animal pictures on Facebook.  I seem to be helping more than 90% of those I’m with. It takes me back to being a straight A student.  I’m still getting A and even A plus in my life and work and yet the expectation is always perfection. Increasingly the society we live in demands 100%, with words like Zero Tolerance bandied about in the workplace and the mess of social life despite every engineer in the real world understanding the true nature of ‘tolerance’ . I do think Social Justice Warriors need to be required to run a dangerous machine for a few hours to learn the importance of oil and ‘tolerance’.  

But then Professor Fiamengo from the u tube  Fiamengo Files out of the University of Ottawo so graciously acknowledged the contribution of men even if the media so discriminates against the work of men.  I’m thankful I her You Tube  and saw that the ‘worker’ and the ‘doers’ were acknowledged. I never lose sight of the importance of the ‘builders’ .  I love my refrigerator and the plumbing and freshwater. I love the contributions of science and would never denigrate them or their workers. I appreciate art and culture but know even a hair dresser with her scissors depended upon a miner, a metallurgist and an inventor to be able to have the finely honed blades.

I”m thankful for today.  I see some blue sky. That’s heavenly.  So much is perspective and I am so thankful that I know that a bad attitude just makes things worse.  I loved learning the saying this week, that ‘worrying is praying for bad things to come.”  Paradoxical but true. I am thankful for the daily learning and that while there are so many struggles I am able to rise above them and see things truly.  I loved reading the history of the Crimean War with the politics of the day and Florence Nightingale and the spread of the telegraph. It was hilarious hearing how angry the Generals were to have the politicians suddenly with telegraphy trying to ‘micromanage’ the battlefields from their armchairs.  

 So much of today’s politics remain the same, what one person called ‘monkeys in space ships’.  Cannons versus rocket launchers. But the same bickering and the same childish debates.  Lots of saber rattling. Let’s hope North Korea continues to move forward into the 21st century and I can only hope that the religious fanatics in Iran will stop their supporting attacks on Israel. Yet locally my own concern is that our city council stops increasing the city congestion and pollution with more bike lanes.  Now there’s a reminder on perspective. Things really have been good this week even if I have been unsupported in work and saddened by the ravage of the Fentanyl crisis.  

I loved the  best joke this week, “I hope they don’t find life on another plant so Justin Trudeau doesn’t start given them our tax dollars and pensions.” 

I’m so grateful when I see the humor in this place. I’m thankful for the laughter.  God really must have a great sense of humor.  Thank God for comedians.  

Holy Week 2017

I attended Palm Sunday Service at Cariboo Community Church with Laura, Kevin, Anna and the God Kids.  They were a thorough entertainment. They walk on chairs and crawl on the floors just like Gilbert does.  And the aisles of the church, wide open freeways for fast running children’s feet.  Anna took them out during the sermon.  A serious affair about Passover,  Jews being saved from judgement because of their personal relationship with God and their obedience to God. Sabbath and the Last Supper.  Purification with Hyssop.  Hyssop figures in the psalm of recovery 51.  Hyssop is on the vinegar given to Jesus as he dies on the cross.

Now this is Holy Week.  Palm Sunday was the celebration of Jesus entering triumphant into Jerusalem riding a donkey. I’ve forever loved the donkey.  Perhaps because it figured in the first childhood Sunday School stories.  

We’d go to church with my parents and go downstairs during the service to have a class room of Christian teaching with colouring books of Christian stories.  Later we’d rejoin the parents after the sermon.  Not long away with strangers. I remember well the Sunday School at Trinity Baptist, Fort Rouge, Winnipeg. Later I’d teach Sunday School for a couple of years at Fort Garry United.  Looking back I realize I’ve been of service. I’ve participated.  There’s still too much time watching tv.  Not enough of it watching the Ben Hur’s of today.  Uplifting inspiring tales of Biblical proportion but spins off instead like Star Wars and Star Trek.  I loved studying Joseph Campbell and the role of myth in society.

As a psychiatrist we say if you don’t agree to a collective insanity then you’re doomed to having a personal one.  My favourite collective insanity is the legal agreements we all sign ‘in faith’ with computer companies where on the next to final page we have agreed to give our soul and our kidneys to Microsoft or Apple.

WWIII is heating up.  A competing channel.  I don’t think anything will come of it.  Russia, Syria, Jordan, Iran, Israel and the US all raising the stakes on this Easter week.  Meanwhile the American navy is steaming towards North Korea when the kid, another one, like our own Pretty Boy Prime Minister Trudeau, has blasted off midrange missiles. Sarin in the Middle East and Tomohawk Missiles and the threat of nuclear missiles in the east.  

Jesus, we say was son of God. In the Hindu tradition a man evolves from slug to God. But in this Christian twist on an old story, God descends into Man then resurrects.  The Sufis, despite their Muslim warlord masters believe in the revolutions of the spiritual.  The Christian Jacobs Ladder mysticism is the rising and falling.  The descent and resurrection.  It’s a feeling thing to a mystic.  Meanwhile the Kundalini is another bi-directional thing.  Our minister today at Cariboo Community Church talked of the blood.  

Blood is the circular pumping flow.  The greath is in and out but the blood goes round and round.  It’s all movement. Our minds are the only part that’s stuck.

And Jesus was ever obedient to the prophecy and to the call.

He didn’t have to return to Jerusalem. It’s like New York and the girl from Kentucky.  She didn’t have to go to New York or LA even. If you stay at home you’re safe.  Avoid the big city.  Jesus was from Galilee. He could have stayed safe there but the real egos of the world are always in the government towns.  For us in Canada it’s Ottawa. Her in BC it’s Victoria. For Americans its Washington. For Russians Moscow.  If Jesus was in France today he’d have to go to Paris to be crucified. In China he’d be crucified in Bei Jing.  The Ego of the dictators, republicans, kings and queens and committee leaders and czars and prime ministers demand that Jesus be upstage.

Every day in my moment to moment life there’s God’s will and my will. I say ‘Thy Will Be Done’.  I want to do the right thing but mostly I avoid pain.  Jesus could have avoided pain. He asked that this cup be taken from him.  But he was betrayed and the Government of the day Crucified him.  

To the Christian this world isn’t the big deal it is to the Herod’s of the day and the beheaders of today and yesterday.  Herod wanted to sleep with his daughter so beheaded John the Baptist on a whim.  Beheading wasn’t just an ISIS or French thing. It’s biblical.  So much is. But the education today doesn’t teach history and kids are easily impressed by the plagiarism of television.  All the old myths and stories of Biblical proportion made into cartoons for wealth and profit.

Not that wealth and profit aren’t a concern. The disciples of Jesus carried Swords. Swords don’t come cheap. I was looking at Glocks and a good one puts you back a thousand.  All the men and women around the presidents and prime ministers and Kings of Saudi and Syria are carrying a thousand dollars of hard ware on their hips or under their arm pits.

Jesus said “My Kingdom is not of this world”.  

Way before physicists rediscovered alternative worlds Jesus was speaking of heaven.  Position is important. Heaven is in here not out there.  The Yogi sings “I am the bubble make me the sea”.  My perception to the psychologist today is like the tip of an iceberg. So much more goes on within.  All the linear journeys of the Bible , from Egypt to the promised land, from Eden to outside Eden, from Bethlehem to Jerusalem are metaphorical.  They’re true just was the Temple of the Jews in Jerusulam is historic and true.  

Alpha is a series of dinners and discussions which goes on in church for anyone who wishes to become a Christian or learn what Christians believe.  There’s the various Creeds and Third Day sings the Creed best of them all but practically it’s just an old fashioned Community Hall.  The Cariboo Community Church had that pentecostal feel. The Hillsong movie catches that Spirit filled grace of the pentecostals. Lots of song and celebration with education in sermons.  Everyone is welcome.

We all says ‘Come to the Table.   Father Matthew at my church helps the homeless old men and then goes to the opera with his lovely wife.  He’s in the guts and gore of creation uplifted by the word of God and music of the ages.  He says, “just think of it as your mothers dinner.”  Mom was always glad to have her kids come for dinner.  

The Prodigal Son, one of my all time favourite Biblical stories, and the masterpiece of painting in the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg is about a father inviting his son home after his son has been eating with pigs.  They killed the fatted calf in celebration.

The Last Supper of the Holy Week is Jesus’s gathering with his closest.  It’s the basis of communion.  We celebrate the breaking of bread and the drinking of wine.  The bread is the body and the wine is the blood. It’s a sacrificial symbolic cannibalistic rite. Robert Graves in Golden Bough followed the myth of the sacrifice of the king for the tribe throughout history.

Jesus, the pure, is the sacrifice of man.  

It makes the world go round.

The sun comes up.

We get to live on.

The Pharisees,cynical and arrogant get to judge. The Sanhedrin pompous and vacuous with fear as Sanhedrins always are releases the real rebel because the rebels of the world are nothing compared to the saints.  The saints had a bad lot, killed off by Nero and finally that entertainment stopped only by Constantine because Christians were the only ones truthful in the days of pagans.  

We are slouching towards Bethlehem.

We are nearer Jerusalem. 

There’s death and laughter.  This is just a dream like every day and every night and we awake and it’s all been a play.  We may go again or that may be it.  And for some who want nothing of immortality they might well get the peace of eternity.  But I’m in for the journey.

I’m following Jesus.  A follower of Jesus believes in God and heaven and doing unto others as you would have them do unto you.  These were once Canadian values.  Kellie Leitch is trying to get agreement on what is Canadian because Justin Trudeau hating Christians and Catholics and English and most things Canadians has started another Muslim jihad with his encouragement of Bill M-103.  Islamaphobia is to be outlawed by the Christophobe Justin Trudeau.

What will President Trump do.  I don’t think WWIII but maybe it’s about ratings.  As we’re gathering for the ascension of Jesus we may be all taken back to the passover.  I expect buying Hyssop would be in order.  I will trust in the blood of the lamb rather than going around to butcher shops looking for lamb.  Hyssop will have to do.  

Jesus Christ means literally “God within, god will come again.”  So all my life I’ve played hide and seek with God.  They dark times have only been when I was hiding and forgot I was hiding and thought the game was over and no one had come to find me.  All I had to do then was come out and play.  Just like I come when Mamma calls for supper.  Turning and twisting and circling and rising on eagles wings.