conversations

I once did time in a provincial reformatory for shooting a guy. It’s a bit of a long story but the gist of it was I was attacked from behind and beaten with nunchucks over a girl. Not any girl, she was runner-up Miss Nude Ottawa and a good friend of mine. I wasn’t even fucking her, then.

To shorten the story, the owner took a dislike to me sitting there with all the strippers at my table drinking and snorting lines with the girls. I ended up a little drunk with a high school buddy who happened to come in looking to see pussy. The owner  waited until the afternoon lull before picking a fight, then siccing the headwaiter on me from behind with nunchucks. I went down but not out and left.

I came back and shot one of them and tried to kill the other one. Fucker kept throwing beer cases at me and hiding behind people as I fired, until I had only one bullet left which I kept to cover my exit.

I got away but turned myself in a few days later once the cops had raided everyone I knew. I was holed up at a gal’s place who was not my girlfriend, being looked after. From there, I arranged arrest on my terms, after a hospital visit with my lawyer to sew up my head 48 hours after I was injured, something rarely done..

I got bail after a few days, thanks to my brothers and sisters stepping up to vouch for me. This despite my having not lived at home for several years. It was also the one time my folks were not in town I found out later. My eldest brother even pledged his motorcycle as surety for bail. I guess you could do that in those days. We used a lot of the “out of character” phrase, a mantra for some time afterwards.

At the preliminary, I was suddenly thrust into a waiting room at #1 Nicholas Avenue with all the people who were going to testify against me. So, I went downstairs with my gal to the coffee shop and bought about 30 coffees and sandwiches to serve my witnesses. While asking if they needed creamers or sugar, I had a chance to give them my side of the story, impressing upon them this was “out of character” and resulted from being attacked first.

Not only that, the guy who had hit me from behind and whom I’d shot, taking out his spleen and leaving a bullet lodged up against his spine, suggested we make a deal. He’d admit he hit me first if I’d testify for him later at a criminal compensation hearing. I agreed.

Whereas my lawyer had told me straight up I’d get at least five years, waving the book with the attempted murder statute under my nose, I ended up with a deuce less. That is two years less a day. Which means I was in a reformatory. No pen time this bit.

As I returned from court and was being re-booked into the county jail’s maximum wing on Innes Road, one of the guards was a little impatient with me as he demanded yet another search at the Max Rotunda. “Turn around, hands against the wall, spread’em,” he said gruffly. I noticed some broad looking at me and stared back her with contempt, thinking she probably liked to see me humiliated in this way.

photo by Wayne Cuddington/ Postmedia

Not an hour went by before I was called out of my cell to speak through the bars at the top of the range to this very lady. Apparently, she was our new classifications officer and wanted to hear my story. Prisons were being staffed by women suddenly in our rush to progress.

Of course, I told her it was all a mistake, that it was an overreaction on my part after being brutally beaten for no reason other than petty jealousy. I did my best to convince her it was “out of character” and told her about my jewelry and furniture businesses.

By the end of the week, I had buddies deliver letters attesting to my businesses and how I was needed outside to keep things afloat. I got out within ten days of being in. The guys on my range—many of whom I knew from the outside—couldn’t believe it. I left them the rest of the hash I’d smuggled in up my ass on the day I was sentenced.

That worked out well for a while. I was in a halfway house out on Riverside, with an apartment on Innes just a few miles down the river. Meanwhile, my buddies had rented a place further out the river for the summer. I bounced between the three places.

Peanut Haven out by Manotick it was called, and I rented half of one of the three cottages with my buddy Flo. Every morning at ten while at the halfway house, I’d dress in a suit and tie, grab my briefcase and go outside to meet my partner. He’d show up in our Cadillac dressed in jeans and a T-Shirt with bulging muscles. He looked like my body guard and we didn’t deny it. Then I’d either go deal dope one place or another, the time away barely causing a ripple in my schedule.

Sometimes, my partner had other shit to do so I’d drive the Caddy around and take care of business myself. It so happened I walked into a buddy’s place to collect some money one evening, just as he was being raided. I’d almost forgot about this until my high school reunion a few months back. Someone there reminded me they were there when it happened.

I knocked on the door and when it opened I saw he was being raided and ran. They caught me on the stairs and found my keys. They searched the block and tried the locks until they found the right one. My partner had left a few ounces of pot tucked into a construction boot in the trunk without me knowing. I was busted.

I remember the ride downtown in the wagon with the other guys. How I had to push my handcuffed arms from behind my back and under me, and how they had helped me get my legs through one at a time, so I was cuffed from in front instead of behind. I remember that.

I was returned to the county bucket and reclassified. I kept telling them it was all a mistake; the pot wasn’t mine and was left there by mistake. It was still, “out of character,” despite how it looked!  I even had someone else claim the pot as theirs. We took a shot at it. The guards started calling me “silk.” My poor classification officer gal listened patiently and told me she’d send me to the easiest place possible. I was shipped out to a minimum-security joint.

No sooner than I arrived at what we called Burritts Rapids, I immediately applied for a half-way house. I remember that interview with the warden. He called me a con-artist and reminded me of the silk nickname which had followed in my classification reports from Ottawa. He denied me outright and told me to do my time. I told him I was happy to re-apply again later.

I worked at it. The thing was, you could be denied and re-apply the next day. So that’s what I did. I was turned down over and over for transfer out to the city. And the food at the Rideau Correctional Facility, as it was known officially, was terrible. By far, the worst food I’ve eaten in prison and where I was introduced to hickory tasting coffee. Horrible, I found punishing.

So I aimed for and won a day-job working at a local developmental hospital in Smith Falls. They had those at the time, since closed. I’d be bused to the hospital every morning and spend the day there working as a pool porter. I’d get a voucher where I could eat cafeteria food which was ten times better tasting than joint food. I’d also get to wear my street clothes and talk to women, good smelling gals. I could also swim in the pool if I wanted, with women lifeguards who worked there, and were nice to me! It was a good go, as they say.

It was there I saw what they used to do with all the kids no one wanted. There were kids wards and adult wards, male and female. They even had a series of cottage style buildings where some of the more high-functioning kids could live. I never met anyone from those.  Blind, deaf, dumb kids were dumped here by families, encouraged by doctors.

Autistic headbangers occupied whole wards, banging their hockey helmeted heads on the floor all day. Many were in diapers, toddlers who screamed and self-harmed in their self-soothing attempts, but some were older. None of those kids swam that I remember. Or if they did, I was sent to fetch them strapped in a wheelchair and brought them down one at a time.

Several wards held schizophrenics, separated into male and female. Those places were nuts at times, depending on when the meds had been given out. The male wards were tough. I saw attendants dressed in while smacking people in desperation when they were attacked, or someone was stealing an ashtray or a smoke. It was an angry place when meds wore off.

Many Down Syndrome kids and adults lived there. Every developmental issue was represented at the Rideau Regional Centre. If you had never encountered anything like this in your life, the only thing I can reckon it to is the freak shows at the ex. In those days, families gave these kids up to the state, to be institutionalized. The place had to house a thousand, I bet.

Whole wards of alcohol damaged individuals, Korsakoff Syndrome and tardive dyskinesia had a place there. Wards with people in straight jackets for their own protection and the protection of the staff. The developmentally delayed child who lives becomes a developmentally delayed adult in a place like this. Without good stimulation in these warehouse-type institutions of old, it becomes a horror story, far beyond Steinbeck’s, “Of Mice and Men.”

Everyone smoked in the place, and during the day it had clouds of smoke in every hallway and in every dorm, cigarette butts everywhere on the floor. I remember a kid who had really bad brain damage from a car accident. He was one of my first pool-porter patients. Because of him, I learned to walk on the right side of my charges with my left hand on the back of their neck and my right hand folded across my mid-section and holding on to their right forearm. This way I could pivot them one way or another in a hurry.

Big and tall and you could tell, once good-looking, Stephen was pica. And he was addicted to any stimulant, not just tobacco. He once got away from me and ran into a ward and grabbed their instant coffee and started to scoop it into his mouth by the handfuls. The attendants freaked and physically intervened and taught me how to hold on to him.

He’d run through his weekly allotment of smokes in a day or two and nic-fit the rest of the week. He’d gesture to me, two fingers tapping his mouth slowly while saying in a deep and clearly brain-damaged way, “mokee? mokee?  moke?” with a twinkle in his eye. Sometimes I’d oblige him, and become his new best friend. He could answer questions about his accident, but it took a great deal of effort. I’d bust his balls about how all the girls must have liked him.

I’d be walking him down the hall to the pool and I’d sense him looking at me out of the corner of his eye, sizing me up, getting just slightly more anxious. First time it happened he broke free and dove upon a cigarette butt on the floor and gobbled it down before I could stop him. After that, I see him start to twitch a bit and look ahead and spot his target, taking precautions.

In one of the male adult wards lived Birdman. Staff would get him up in the morning and dressed. Soon he would strip naked and sit up on the window sill in a crouch for hours and hours. His whole body, from head to toe, would turn blue from the constricted blood vessels while his tongue would dart in and out like a lizard. His penis would hang down over the side as well,  a vestigial long dong of blue. He was mostly catatonic, staring off into space.

I happened to be there when a kid with cerebral palsy sued the government for the right to make his own decisions about where to live and how to spend his monthly stipend. I can’t remember his name (Mike?) but he won in Ontario court while we were all pulling for him.

He used a Bliss board, and I had several wonderful conversations with him in his wheelchair, a big board of symbols in front of him like a table, and him awkwardly but effectively using Blissymbolics to communicate. He had a goofy smile and an intelligence in eyes that twinkled easily. I gave him my best props and pep talks as he waited his own reclassification. He was an amazing guy, really inspiring.

Perhaps it was these kids and adults who first awakened in me a dormant caring I’d suppressed on the street for many years. They were doing time like I was, society’s refuse, shuffled aside and locked away. I was a prisoner and so were they. We were on the same side, with me at Rideau Correctional Centre, while they were at the Rideau Regional Centre.

In 2013, the Ontario liberals awarded survivors of the Rideau Centre 20.6 million. David McKillop, then 63, placed there when he was just four years old, was the representative plaintiff. “I got beaten up by staff, sexual assault, everything… You couldn’t do anything about it… You couldn’t say anything about it at that time” he told the CBC after the settlement. “I still dream about memories about it… We’re going to get help for that too.  I wanted to make sure the government paid for it, what they did to us.”

Bless your heart my man. Seeing what I saw late 1970s during the day when it was at its busiest, I can only imagine what it was like at night. It’s horrifying to think of now.

It was later while studying behavioural sciences in the late 1980s where I was exposed to the Cornwall project, an initiative to keep developmentally challenged kids with their families with the support of the community. I attended “People First” meetings and became friendly with some of these charming ambassadors living with their families of origin, or in small community-based housing. It was better than what I saw by far.

We’d learned by then the more stimulation challenged kids gets in the first few years, the better their chances later. It was also admitting the best place for a kid is usually at home. At the same time, it was forcing families to take greater responsibility for their offspring, despite the problems, but with support from the state. With that, the stigma of the retarded child began to disappear. I like to believe I witnessed that turning point when my little buddy and his bliss board won his court case.

As for me, I kept applying for release and getting shot down. Each week or two, I’d appear before the warden flanked by two guards and make my case. He’d say no, and compliment me on my improved story, with a smirk on his face. Off I’d go to my dorm.

Then a miracle happened: a prison strike. The Canadian Army were called in to man the security of the province’s prisons. And you guessed it: anyone with an application for early release or transfer to a halfway house in town was automatically approved.

I was out again. Fuck you warden.

A few years later, I encountered the guy I shot at a bar, Billy’s on Somerset where I’d taken my new gal for an afternoon beer. He was still dragging one foot as he walked and thanked me for not killing him. Turns out because he admitted he attacked me first from behind in the preliminary hearing transcripts, the criminal compensation board turned him down for any award. Tough break lad.

Besides the kid with the Bliss board, and Stephen the pica, what haunts me most from those times was pulling up every day at the Rideau Regional Centre in our prison bus and seeing a big black hearse at the back of the place. I don’t remember not seeing one there in the months I was privileged to work outside of prison among these brave souls.

Sometimes the worst places teach you the most. Without contrast, what would we know about bliss?

Stay powerful,

Christopher K Wallace
© 2018, all rights reserved.

www.advisortomen.com

https://www.facebook.com/groups/advisortomen/

It’s About Words 

Gents, this is not a post about Shakespeare. Though reading the bard gives leaves me feeling a bit dizzy, searching for levels of meaning I missed, I still appreciate him and his talent.

What this post is about is the words we choose. It’s a post about one of the two superpowers of the Chain of Being. Focus and Language transcend the Chain, affecting both physiology and thinking. I want to talk about word choice.

My father was first a newspaper reporter in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He resisted going into advertising, something which would have been a natural fit for him considering it’s what his father and uncles did. Estranged from his dad for most of his life, he challenged himself elsewhere as a wordsmith.

Eventually, he wrote the style manual for the Canadian Armed Forces, and then chaired the group which developed the Public Service of Canada’s reference of the same name. Often, books would arrive at my home asking dad to review them for an author. In retirement, he served as editor and proofreader at a local outfit near his home, the Grunge Press.

Our family grew up surrounded by books. Indeed, I have many of my father’s old volumes, now added to my own collection. It’s interesting to see the differences in writing styles from his era and before, and now to today.

The Right Words

During my childhood, my father would ALWAYS correct me when I spoke, helping me to find the right word to express what it was I was trying to explain. It wasn’t enough for him to rely upon, “You get what I mean.” Nope. The old man insisted on the exact word to best describe your thoughts and to fit what was said.

To that end, most, if not all, of our conversations entailed corrections, rewordings, clarifications and more rewording. When I was young, this was annoying. Often the words he used I did not know, not very well anyway. But those small exactitudes helped me be more precise. The problem was this: his precision often had to do with how I somehow came up short on something.

But overtime, especially as I learned to read more complicated books in my teens, these subtle differences made for deeper understanding. And it helped me explain myself to others better. I’m sure it got me laid.

Language needs precision because of its ability to carry memory. As you know, the Chain of Being starts with Physiology, which creates an Emotional State, upon which the brain predictively derives Feelings based on past experiences and finally, Thoughts, best understood as bodily explanations. All of it is done surreptitiously, beneath awareness, with body, state and feelings lightning fast, thoughts coming up at the rear later, then measured up against reality.

Words with Extra Bullshit

Because of our various histories, words can become loaded, meaning they can carry more meaning than just their dictionary versions. Use a word too many times for the wrong purposes, or in an exaggerated way, and it quickly loses its power. Words like “awesome,” fantastic,” and many others no longer carry the same weight they once did. They become a cliché, part of cultural memes no longer tied to their original meaning. They lose power.

It’s hyperbole. Now there’s a word. I first encountered this one selling magazines door to door when I was sixteen. A customer refused my sales pitch and said, “I’m not taken-in by your hyperbole and my answer is no,” as he shut the door. I had no rebuttal for this one because I had no idea what he’d said. Later, my manager, a college grad, gave me a definition but I had to go look it up myself to get what kind of dismissal it really was.

“Awesome” and “fantabulous” are hyperbole. My customer could have just cut to the chase and used the word, “bullshit.” That one I understand.

Thinking or Feeling?

We also fool ourselves with language in every day speech. When we say, “I feel that…”, we are not telling someone what we feel at all. We are telling them what we think. Only, we are using the “feel” word to manipulate the listener, hopefully so will be more accepting what we say. After all, a feeling is personal, and each person’s feelings are their own. There’s no accounting for them, so hiding behind “I feel that…” is a great way to dishonestly deceive another. It’s loaded.

We are also hard on ourselves when we insist on using the sometimes self-flagellation words “should” or “must” but just as often these are used to demand something from others. “You should…” or “We all should…” have a place in life, especially in the context of suggesting an approach we favour, one that will result in a better world. But we must be careful about allowing should and must to tyrannize our souls with inadequacies, the kind amounting to “I’m not good enough.”

You’ve no doubt heard it said as “coulda, woulda, shoulda,” the triumvirate whips of coming up short. Be on guard for these insidious perversions of language. Know them for what they are, often petulant demands of ourselves and others.

“Have to” is another one. Nobody “has” to do anything. Make sure you are deciding you “have to” and not lamenting you “have to.” Big difference. One is agency and power, the other is self-pity and weakness. Know which is which. Better still, why not just make the commitment and say, “I will?”

Then, there’s “I can’t.” It’s another devious one. I can’t fly. This is partially true. I am certain if I jump off a tall building and start to flap my arms I’m going to hit hard far below. In this case, it’s a statement of fact. But I can certainly fly in an airplane along with another hundred or so passengers and come and visit you.

If I don’t like flying in airplanes, and refuse to do so, a more honest statement is “I won’t fly in a plane.” Now, it’s a decision. Can’t means won’t. It’s tricky, and it’s one of the ways a man allows bullshit to creep into his life.

To Be and E-Prime

What about “to be” verbs? These are a mess of trouble. The ones we need to discuss are as follows: Being, been, be, was, is, am and are. Problems arise when we use these because they describe things as fixed entities.

He was “being” a baby. You’ve “been” fooled. Don’t be mean. It “was” wrong. I “was” better..  He “is” wrong. I “am” OK. You “are” OK. These are all examples of pronouncements, fixed state qualitative judgments. What about “I am not good enough? Where’s the possibility of transformation in that?

Not great for communication, you and I both still use them. Only, now you’ll be aware of their extra power. They don’t easily permit change, or a fluid state of affairs which would allow dialogue and compromise. They suggest a fixed state of being not easily moved forward into something else, something more.

You could try the above these ways: He’s struggling to find his maturity. If you were fooled, what did you learn? Can you be nicer? It wasn’t the best response given circumstances. You excelled today. His answer might not produce the result he’s looking for. Today, I feel good. I think you look OK, are you? Now, you’re introducing the possibility of change, of levels of quality, of fluidity.

Based on E-prime language from a fella named Korzybski’s book from the 1930s, Science and Sanity (available online as a free PDF), Mel Schwartz gives a bunch of examples in his essay, Change a Word, Change a Life. Among the examples he uses are these:

It’s hot.
I don’t feel hot.
Now if I said, it’s not hot, I’m in for an argument. Instead, I’m just reporting from my personal perspective.

I am stupid.
Maybe I’m not so stupid… but have often felt this way. Why?
This opens possibilities.

I am nothing
I feel like nothing
Now, it’s just another feeling to deal with, to examine for origins and why it is being used predictively by the brain in certain situations. To create new feelings, create new experiences. Now, there’s possibilities.

You are so selfish.
You seem self-centered to me.
Why do you see me that way? Now discussion can happen.

I agree with Mel’s advice when it comes to broaching a subject we think might get pushback. We all know times like this. The tendency is to be ballsy and just step and take a swing. But saying, “You’re an idiot,” is unlikely to produce dialogue and compromise. On the contrary, it’s likely to make things worse.

May I, I think, I feel

Better to open with a qualifier, “Do you mind if I give you my two-cents,” can go along way to breaking down at least a bit of people’s natural barrier. Assuming you’ve been given permission (not that you need it but you’re being diplomatic—the art of letting someone else have your way), follow it up with either “I think” or “I feel|” as you give your impressions and how whatever it is impacts you emotionally.

Make sure you take the high road and don’t resort to the “I feel that…” mentioned earlier. If you say I feel, tell them an emotion. If you say I think, tell them your thinking. You don’t do anyone any favours by introducing deceit into discussion.

Try to keep Korzybski’s E-prime advice in mind. Use less “to be” verbs, and more “I think” and “I feel” instead. Catch yourself making pronouncements at your own and other people’s expense.

Watch carefully for the kinds of demand words making it into your speech. Should and Must are the big ones, with “Gotta” not for behind.  It’s one thing to influence, it’s another to close possibilities in communication.

You’ll find by the elimination of an untruth like “I feel that,” you take greater responsibility for your life and impact on others through your words.

Language is a special Chain of Being force affecting your belly and your mind.

Think for a moment about different words, and how they may have been used to hurt you, to punish, to harm or to cause you pain. Now, think of words which have been used to compliment, to boost you and to reward you over time. It’s easy to see there is both a physical effect to words, and a mental one too.

The Better Man is aware of the power in his words. My father may have known the power of his words but not in this way. What my dad lacked was how to discern how restrictive they can be. We didn’t know how words keep us stuck in a cycle of bullshit over time. In the ensuing decades and the advent of word psychology, we know better.

Not worth your time? Can’t be bothered?

That’s fine: just realize can’t means won’t.

Stay powerful,

cw

©ckwallace 2018 all rights reserved

https://www.facebook.com/groups/advisortomen/

Notice there are videos showing up about feelings and the body lately on social media? I must have seen five or six in the past month alone. Let me tell you why I think it’s great.

I say it’s a good thing because finally people might at least start getting on to a whole host of physical issues which have at their crux the feelings they carry each day.

Feelings live in the body has been my assertion for 30 years. How do I know this? My back… and Fritz Perls.

Fritz Perls was this old bearded psychiatrist who with his wife Laura founded Gestalt Therapy back in the beginnings of the great psychological heyday, mid-last century to present.

Never mind the details of his approach, it was this one thing he mentioned which struck truth in me. It was the idea of carrying around a gunnysack of anger. How it would eventually bend you over with its weight.

No kidding Fritz, cause my freaking back was killing me at the time and I was often really pissed off!

That’s when I made the connection. Just as exhilaration is manifested physically with butterflies in the belly, a quickened heartbeat and breath, and a flushed face and wider eyes, so too does negative emotion have an effect in the body.

Only, it’s more than that. It’s not just the frowns and the downturned mouth and focused eyes. And that’s because of the second thing old Fritz taught me: unfinished business.

You know what unfinished business is like, it drives us nuts! You mean to get something done but there it lies halfway done and you have to leave it and hope you remember how to get back into focus when you finally have time.

Start to learn a new platform on your computer at some point. Be it Photoshop, WordPress, or this one: C-Panel.(*!%&!!). Go take on one of those as a complete rookie and then leave them alone for a time and go back. It’s a start over.

Do it halfway through a project that got put on the shelf and it’s likely the frustration factor goes up, WAY UP.

Hell, switch from a PC to a Mac. Don’t use it often and every new thing you try is a whole other learning curve. UGH!

OK, so we agree on unfinished business in general. And what about emotional unfinished business?

See, the problem with us humans is we need each other to get along. In fact, our need to belong drives most of our psychology. So, what happens when we interact, and those connections don’t happen to our liking?

Sometimes, let’s face it, we can come across as assholes. I’ll be the first to admit this. And sometimes other people are assholes. In my experience, they are the last to admit it. But that’s besides the point.

And that is where the gunnysack of anger and unfinished business meet: In the body.

It’s in the body because of the Chain of Being. Your existence is run on Physiology, Emotional States (comfort/discomfort, aroused/relaxed), Predictive Feelings (based on experiences) and Thinking.

The Vagus Nerve Complex connects the brain stem and the organs. Most of the neurons lining the gut and heart and elsewhere signal towards the brain, but some run the other way. When we have unfinished business, the body records it.

It does this protectively, and predictively. It wants to avoid future pain and so, beneath awareness, registers our pain and holds on to it for future reference.

There are two ways to intervene in the Chain of Being. One is through the body, the other is through thinking.

And you could say there is both a fast way and a slow way of impacting the body with feelings and emotional states.

Trauma is one way. When we experienced something significantly scary and are able to fully express our fear physically (crying, running away, being comforted by people) and resolve it with those around us, our sense of safety is restored to some kind of balance.

When we are prevented from doing this, when our natural defensive mechanisms are thwarted because of circumstance, we can become stuck in a defensive position indefinitely, depending on how far along we were in the vagus signaling.

And then, there is the insidious piling on way. That’s when we build up unfinished business over time to where it becomes as burdensome as trauma. It’s quantity over severity. And it can be just as devastating to physiology.

The brain ascertains what’s going on with the body, then predictively creates your emotional state using the databank of your previous emotional experiences before you are even aware. It all happens beneath awareness. Only afterwards is this measured up against social reality and made open to correction.

Carry around that gunnysack of anger and the Chain of Being is polluted with negativity. The body remains tense, emotional states remain aroused, feelings are neutral or negative. And thoughts, which Peter Levine in “In an Unspoken Voice” says are explanations from the body, are similarly influenced.

Now, you’ve got yourself a classic loop. A vicious cycle of negativity and eventually, the possibility of despair.

Hence, my bad back.

Medical science has known for a time some guys with two ruptured disks have pain and others with the exact same condition don’t experience the same level of discomfort, or any at all. How can this be? It’s either broken or it’s not, I thought.

Well, so much for the notion of a separate brain and body. Nope. One system.

Hopefully, you have an address, a place to put all your stuff and collect your mail, a place you call home on some street, in some town or county somewhere. No doubt, you have a number out front so people can find you.

Let me tell you something: the true universal address of your existence is in your body. That’s where you, (insert name here) really exist. It’s like the turtle who carries his home with him. You’re no different. That body of yours is your domain.

Four things main things I learned over the years to fix my back. Oh, there are plenty of subtleties I’ve picked up since then, but these were the broad strokes which saved me from being bent over like an old man every day in pain.

You can intervene on the Chain of Being at two places, physiologically or thinking. You attack it from the ends.

So, when I’m feeling tension build up, I do ten burpees. Nothing releases trauma from the body better than movement. And going at the body is fastest. Engaging the body causes a chain reaction all the way to thoughts at the other end. As my home, as the place where I live, I take care of it.

The second thing was a decision. I learned this under the influence of an old preacher who wrote a book called “The Power of Positive Thinking,” way back. it’d been out for a long time before I got around to it. I’d just left a psychology class in the mid-80s and was walking down the hallway when it hit me: “Happy is a Decision.” I’ve been telling myself this since.

Thirdly was something my psych prof taught me. Anita Roy was a Gestaltist herself and a real fire-cracker of a teacher. She embodied the Gestalt Prayer I’ll include with this essay.

She explained something which changed my life. It was that people always make the best decisions for themselves at the time, If they could have made a better one, they would have.
You can’t fairly apply hindsight to yourself or others, it’s a bullshit ploy. It’s a judgment not available in the moment.

And with that understanding, I learned how to let go. People bring their own histories, locked and loaded into their bodies and predictively being operated by feelings derived from old experiences, and are doing the best they can.

Sure, they come up short. And don’t we all?

It’s here where I was lucky, perhaps more than most. I’d lived such a faulted life to that point, how could I possible judge someone else’s? That’d make me even more full of shit than I already was while accusing someone else of being in the wrong.

No, couldn’t do that. That avenue was closed. Which left only one possibility. Forgiveness. Well, I can’t tell you how annoying it was to come to THAT conclusion. WTF!

You mean, I’d have to let it all go? Because my anger had driven me for many years. There were secondary gains to hanging on to my bullshit, to my complaints, to my judgments and excuses. I’d have to let them go too.

So, I did. I used these four strategies and let all of it the fuck go. Gone, out. Shot to the moon in a rocket. And my back got better. Not cured, but damn it, WAY BETTER!

Which by way, the moon helped too. I’d picture myself up there sitting near the “one filled with cheese” during my first meditative experiences, and picture my life far below, a metaphorical ant climbing around down there somewhere on planet earth with all the other humans as ants too.

Gave me perspective. Powerful perspective.

Take care of that body.

Stay powerful.

cw

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CKWallace
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